Sustainable Marine Structures

Publishing Ethics

Sustainable Marine Structures requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The Editors, authors or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a submitted article may constitute an academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice.

The violations include(but are not limited to):

• Plagiarism
• Falsification of research
• Data fabrication
• Improprieties of authorship
• Misappropriation of the ideas of others
• Duplicate publication
• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research
• Undisclosed competing interests

The journal adopts iThenticate to detect possible plagiarism, which ensures the originality of submitted content. We encourage all reviewers to report potential misconduct of the manuscripts they reviewed. We also encourage all readers to contact us to report potential misconduct related to published content. The journal deals with all allegations of potential misconduct in a serious manner based on the COPE flowchart.

In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, the Editorial Office will investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the Panel’s Decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the Publisher at nass-sms@nassg.org within 28 days of the decision date.