Before the submission or review of an article, authors and reviewers are required to carefully read and understand the following Research & Publishing Ethics. They describe, in details, the authors’ and reviewers' duties as understood by the Iraqi Journal of Architecture and Planning (IQJAP), based on Elsevier Publishing Ethics and the Publishing Ethics set by the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors wishing to submit their article must ensure they fulfilled these duties completely, they will be asked to confirm following these standards in full in the Publishing Ethics Agreement page upon submitting their paper to IQJAP. If it is proven that the author did not comply with any of these duties, IQJAP reserves the right to take any action deemed necessary to overcome the issue from rejecting/removing the article to banning the author from future publishing at IQJAP. Should any questions arise or further clarification is needed, please contact IQJAP’s editorial office.

1)      Reporting Standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. The underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial ‘opinion’ works should be clearly identified as such.

2)      Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review and/or to comply with the open data requirements of the journal.  Authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable number of years after publication.

3)      Originality and Acknowledgement of Sources

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted and permission has been obtained where necessary.

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the reported work and that give the work appropriate context within the larger scholarly record. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.

Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others.  Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable and will be checked for by IQJAP’s editorial office and editors.

4)      Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable.

In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a paper that has been published previously, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint.

5)      Confidentiality

Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

6)      Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study.  All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the paper (e.g. Language editing or data gathering), they should be recognized in the acknowledgements section as researcher assistants/associates. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are included, and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. The authors take collective responsibility for the work.  Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider (at their discretion) the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been submitted and the author must clearly flag any such request to the Editor. All authors must agree with any such addition, removal or rearrangement.

7)      Declaration of Competing Interests

Conflict of interest is “a divergence between an individual’s private interest (competing interests) and his or her responsibilities to scientific and publishing activities, such that a reasonable observer might wonder if the individual’s behavior or judgment was motivated by considerations of his or her competing interests”. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could be viewed as inappropriately influencing (bias) their work.

All sources of financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article should be disclosed, as should the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest possible stage.

8)      Notification of Fundamental Errors

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and publisher, and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper if deemed necessary by the editor. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains an error, it is the obligation of the author to cooperate with the editor, including providing evidence to the editor where requested.

9)      Image Integrity

It is not acceptable to enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce a specific feature within an image. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Manipulating images for improved clarity is accepted, but manipulation for other purposes could be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly.