▢ Dealing with unethical behavior

Anyone may inform the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behavior or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary credible information/evidence to start an investigation.

Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation.

During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in the process.

The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.

If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Minor misconduct, with no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal, for example, when it comes to misunderstanding or wrong application of publishing standards, will be dealt directly with authors and reviewers without involving any other parties. Outcomes include:

Sending a warning letter to authors and reviewers.
Publishing correction of a paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list.
Publishing an erratum, e.g. if editorial staff made the error.

In the case of major misconduct the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board may adopt different measures:

Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
Informing officially the author's/reviewer's affiliated institution.
The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy.
A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

The above actions may be taken separately or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the case, relevant expert organizations, bodies, or individuals may be consulted.

When dealing with unethical behavior, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

▢ Plagiarism prevention

The Welding and welded structures journal does not publish plagiarized papers. The Editorial Board has adopted the stance that plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:
Verbatim (word for word), or almost verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment in a way described under Authors’ responsibilities;
Copying equations, figures, or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under the Retraction policy.

To prevent plagiarism, the manuscripts are submitted to a plagiarism detection process using iThenticate/Quillbot/Crossref. The results obtained are verified by the Editorial Board in accordance with the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

▢ Retraction policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder, or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, or any major misconduct, require retraction of an article.

Occasionally, a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as "Retraction." A two-way communication (HTML link) between the original work and the retraction is established. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is "retracted.”

Retractions are published according to the requirements of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

▢ Conflict of interest

The Welding and welded structures journal adheres to the conflict-of-interest policy recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and/or other international research publishing regulatory authorities (ICMJE, EASE). The authors must declare their conflicts of interest in the Conflict-of-Interest Statement (CoIS). In the CoIS, each named author of the article is required to provide:

(1) A statement of any potential conflicts of interest relevant to the content or a statement that there are no such conflicts
(2) Disclosure of how the article is funded, including specific disclosure of all company funding (partial or total), or a statement that there was no such involvement (if applicable).
(3) A comprehensive explanation of the role of sponsors in article preparation if the article is sponsored in part or whole.

▢ Informed consent policy

Authors of papers published in the Welding and welded structures journal are obliged to demonstrate that they handle the information with the highest levels of confidence and discretion.