PUBLICATION ETHICS
Journal of Quality and System Engineering - JQSE follows ethics norms accepted by international scientific community. It makes all efforts to prevent any infringements of the norms. This publication ethics statement, based on guidelines and standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), includes respective responsibilities of authors, reviewers, and editors.
EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
The Editor in Chief is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to JQSE will be published. The Editor-in-Chief is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
The Editor in Chief reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within six months from the date of the manuscript submission.
The Editor in Chief shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.
The Editor in Chief must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Board. In case one or more members of the Editorial Board hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members of the Editorial Board shall withdraw from the selection of reviewers and all decisions related to the manuscript.
The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
The Editor in Chief and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
PEER REVIEW POLICY
The submitted papers are subject to a peer review process (double-blind peer review), where original scientific papers are subject to external peer review. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editor in making editorial decisions. Through the editorial communications with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper.
The reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.
The reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. The reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.
All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other's identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers. The Editorial board shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.
AUTHORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES
Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by JQSE.
The Authors also warrant that the manuscript is not and will not be published elsewhere (after the publication in JQSE) in any language without the consent of the copyright holder (Publisher).
In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in Acknowledgement at the end of manuscript, before References.
A paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in JQSE.
It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to JQSE are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review before manuscript submission to the JQSE, it is necessary for authors to have deleted their names from the text and replace it with "Author" in used references and footnotes, also. Author identification should also be removed from the properties of the Microsoft Office documents.
Reporting standards
A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards. Book reviews and technical papers should be accurate and they should present an objective perspective.
Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public. The Editorial Staff can ask authors to submit a written consent of the copyright holders for all materials (eg, illustrations) that are sent (to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers) or a signed statement that they have obtained such consent.
Authorship
Authors must make sure that all and only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors . If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section.
Acknowledgment of Sources
Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.
Plagiarism
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:
Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
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.
Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism with iThenticate tools. Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and the authors will be temporary (one year) forbidden to publish in the Journal.
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 below under Retraction policy, and authors will be permanently forbidden to publish in the Journal.
Conflict of interest
Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.
COPYRIGHTS POLICY
Authors retain copyright of the published article under the - Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI.
Third parties who wish use the article in a way not covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license must obtain a written consent of the publisher. This license allows others to download the paper and share it with others as long as they credit the journal, but they cannot change it in any way or use it commercially.
Authors grant to the publisher the right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.
JOURNAL ARCHIVING POLICY
Paper and electronic versions of all published volumes are delivered to the Repository of the National Library of Serbia. The aim of volumes deposit is permanent preservation and use of published articles.
DISCLAIMER POLICY
The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the JQSE Ethics and Policy.