Publication Ethics

This statement applies to all Ital Publication journals. It follows the guidance and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Each journal’s website holds the authoritative version of its policies.

Our commitment

Ital Publication and the editors of its journals are committed to the integrity of the scholarly record. Authors, reviewers, editors and the publisher are all expected to follow the standards below. Where questions arise that this statement does not cover, the editors follow COPE guidance and flowcharts.

Publisher, ownership and editorial independence

• The journals are owned and published by Ital Publication, Via Reggio Campi 23, 89126 Reggio Calabria, Italy, which holds the journal titles, websites and full archives.
• Ital Publication was established in 2016 with the support of EUHERA. EUHERA does not own or manage the journals or the publisher, does not fund them, and has no role in editorial decisions, peer review or the appointment of editors.
• Typesetting and production are provided under contract by ItalPub Publication Services L.L.C. (Dubai, United Arab Emirates), which has no role in editorial decisions.
• All editorial decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board on scholarly merit alone. Fees, discounts, sponsors and paid services have no influence on acceptance.
• The full names and affiliations of each journal’s editors are published on the journal’s website.

Peer review

All research articles, review articles and technical notes undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent external reviewers. The full process is described in the Peer Review Policy.

Responsibilities of authors

Authors must confirm that:

• the submitted manuscript is their own original work and has not been published before;
• all co-authors have approved the publication, and the corresponding author, who acts for all authors with the editorial office, is responsible for this;
• the sources of all data used in the manuscript are acknowledged;
• every listed author made a significant scientific contribution and approves all of the manuscript’s claims (see the authorship criteria);
• any error discovered after submission will be reported to the editor promptly;
• they understand that manuscripts under review or published are screened with plagiarism-prevention software.

Responsibilities of editors

• Have full authority to accept or reject a manuscript, and base decisions only on its intellectual content.
• Keep submitted manuscripts confidential while under review and until publication, and protect the anonymity of reviewers.
• Share information about a manuscript only with the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, editorial advisers and the publisher, as needed.
• Not use unpublished material from a submitted manuscript in their own research without the authors’ written consent.
• Declare and avoid conflicts of interest. Editors take no part in decisions on papers written by themselves, family members or colleagues, or on papers relating to products or services in which they have an interest. Such papers are handled by an independent editor under the journal’s usual procedures, and the published paper says so.
• Investigate suspected misconduct and publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Associate editors handle assigned manuscripts through review and revision and make recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief. Guest editors of special issues work under the oversight of the Editor-in-Chief, who makes all final decisions.

Responsibilities of reviewers

Reviewers follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Their duties are listed in the Peer Review Policy.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers and editors must declare any financial, personal, professional or institutional relationship that could be seen to influence their work. Authors declare competing interests in the manuscript and on submission. Reviewers decline invitations where a conflict exists. Editors with a conflict hand the manuscript to an independent editor.

Funding

Authors must declare all support received for the research, which acknowledges funders and makes the research process more transparent. Manuscripts in which any research costs or authors’ salaries were funded, in whole or in part, by a tobacco company are not considered.

Ethical oversight

Research involving human participants

Studies involving human participants must be approved by an appropriate institutional or national research ethics committee and conducted in line with the Declaration of Helsinki or comparable standards. The manuscript must name the committee and give the approval code and date. If there is doubt about whether the research followed these standards, the authors must explain their approach and show that the committee explicitly approved the doubtful aspects.

Informed consent

Written informed consent must be obtained from every participant, or from a legal guardian for minors and people unable to consent, with the participant’s assent where appropriate. Participants must be told the purpose, procedures, risks and benefits of the study and their right to withdraw. Identifying information is published only when it is essential and the person has given written consent for publication; otherwise data are anonymised. The manuscript must state: “Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.” Research with vulnerable groups, indigenous communities or on culturally sensitive topics requires particular care.

Research involving animals

Experiments on animals must follow international, national and institutional guidelines for animal care and be approved by a research ethics committee. We endorse the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting animal research.

Cell lines

State the origin of every cell line. For established lines, give the source and a reference to a published paper or commercial supplier. For new lines, give the ethics approval and, for human lines, confirm written informed consent.

Plants

Research on cultivated or wild plants, including collection of plant material, must follow institutional, national or international rules. We recommend compliance with the Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES. For rare and non-model plants, voucher specimens should be deposited in an accessible herbarium or museum.

Research and publication misconduct

The Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers involving misconduct, and handles allegations following COPE guidance and flowcharts. If misconduct is found during review, the manuscript may be rejected; if it is found after publication, a correction or retraction may be issued. Misconduct includes:

Plagiarism

Using text, ideas, images or data from another source, including the authors’ own earlier publications, without attribution. Reusing a Methods description from the authors’ own earlier work is acceptable with a citation. All manuscripts are screened with iThenticate.

Fabrication

Making up data or results.

Falsification

Manipulating data, images or processes to give a false impression, including inappropriate image editing, removing inconvenient results, or changing, adding or omitting data points.

Duplicate submission and redundant publication

Submitting the same or substantially similar work, including in another language, to more than one journal at the same time, or publishing it more than once.

Authorship issues

The journals keep clear authorship and contributorship requirements and handle authorship disputes following COPE advice.

Citation manipulation

Including excessive citations that do not contribute to the scholarly content, only to increase citations to an author’s work or to a journal.

Manipulation or bias of peer review

Reviewers are selected with care to avoid any conflict of interest with the authors, and suggested reviewers are verified independently. See the Peer Review Policy.

Anyone can raise a concern about a submitted or published paper by writing to the journal’s editorial office.

Citation policy

• Cite all content drawn from other sources, including the authors’ own earlier work. Put direct quotations in quotation marks with a reference.
• Cite your own work only when it is directly relevant, and avoid excessive self-citation.
• Cite only work you have read, chosen for its scholarly merit and relevance, not to favour particular authors, collaborators or institutions.
• Do not cite advertisements, sponsored content or promotional material.
• Reviewers and editors must never ask authors to cite their own work or the journal’s papers to raise citations.

Data and reproducibility

Every manuscript must include a data availability statement. Authors are expected to deposit the data supporting their results in a suitable public repository, such as a subject-specific repository, an institutional repository or a generalist repository like Zenodo, Figshare or OSF, and to cite the dataset with its DOI. If data cannot be shared for ethical, legal or commercial reasons, the authors must explain why and, where possible, make the data available on reasonable request.

Artificial intelligence

• Authors must disclose any use of generative AI tools beyond basic language editing, such as content generation, data analysis or study design, in the Methods and the Acknowledgements, including the tool’s name and version. AI tools cannot be authors. The human authors are fully responsible for all content.
• Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, or any part of them, to generative AI tools. Using AI to generate review content is discouraged, and any use for language editing of a review must be disclosed to the editors.
• Editors must not use generative AI tools to make editorial decisions or to process manuscript content.

Copyright and licensing

All articles are published open access under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Authors keep the copyright of their work and do not sign a copyright transfer agreement. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search and link to the full text and use it for any lawful purpose, with attribution.

Complaints and appeals

Complaints

We welcome complaints about delays, communication, editorial conduct or possible breaches of publication ethics. Send a description of the complaint, your contact details and any supporting documents to the journal’s editorial office. Complaints are acknowledged within 3 working days and answered within 14 working days where possible. If needed, they are escalated to the Editor-in-Chief or the editorial board for independent review.

Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they believe it was based on incorrect or incomplete information, bias or a conflict of interest, or if important information in the manuscript was overlooked. Send the manuscript ID, title and a detailed explanation to the editorial office. Appeals are acknowledged within 5 working days. The Editor-in-Chief arranges an independent review, which may involve other board members or external reviewers, and a final decision is given within 3 to 4 weeks. An appeal is not a second round of peer review.

Corrections and retractions

Erratum

Corrects an error introduced by the publisher during production.

Corrigendum

Corrects an error made by the authors, such as misreported data or an incorrect reference.

Retraction or editorial note

Issued when an error substantially compromises the validity of an article, following the COPE retraction guidelines.

Correction notices are published promptly, linked to the original article and clearly labelled in the table of contents. Minor typographical errors that do not affect interpretation are not corrected. Every post-publication change is documented, dated, labelled and linked to the original article, and earlier versions remain accessible. Readers can send comments on published articles to the editorial office; valid concerns are put to the authors, and their response may be published.

Archiving

The journals are preserved through the LOCKSS distributed archiving system, and the National Central Library of Florence keeps permanent archives for preservation and restoration.

Advertising and marketing

The journals do not accept advertising. Any direct marketing on behalf of the journals is appropriate, well targeted and unobtrusive.

Last updated October 2026.