Publication Ethics

The Dig­i­tal Schol­ar: Philosopher’s Lab is com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dards. All the man­u­scripts sub­mit­ted to the jour­nal are sub­ject to dou­ble-blind peer review.

For all par­ties involved in the act of pub­lish­ing (the author, the jour­nal editor(s), the peer review­er and the pub­lish­er) it is nec­es­sary to agree upon stan­dards of expect­ed eth­i­cal behav­ior. The ethics state­ments for our jour­nal are based on the Com­mit­tee on Pub­li­ca­tion Ethics (COPE).

Duties of the Edi­tor-in-Chief and Assis­tant Edi­tors:

Fair play

Sub­mit­ted man­u­scripts are eval­u­at­ed for their intel­lec­tu­al con­tent with­out regard to race, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, reli­gious belief, eth­nic ori­gin, cit­i­zen­ship, or polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the authors.

Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty

The Edi­tor-in-Chief and the Assis­tant Edi­tors must not dis­close any infor­ma­tion about a sub­mit­ted man­u­script to any­one oth­er than the cor­re­spond­ing author, review­ers, poten­tial review­ers, oth­er edi­to­r­i­al advis­ers, and the pub­lish­er, as appro­pri­ate.

Dis­clo­sure and con­flicts of inter­est

Unpub­lished mate­ri­als dis­closed in a sub­mit­ted man­u­script must not be used in an Editor’s own research with­out the explic­it writ­ten con­sent of the author(s).

Search of peer review­ers

The Edi­tor-in-Chief and the Assis­tant Edi­tors are engaged in the selec­tion of two qual­i­fied peer review­ers. The peer review­ers could be select­ed from the Edi­to­r­i­al Board or be out­sourced.

Pub­li­ca­tion deci­sions

The Edi­tor-in-Chief should con­fer with the Edi­to­r­i­al Board in mak­ing the deci­sion about which of sub­mit­ted papers should be pub­lished. This deci­sion should be based on the prin­ci­ples of Jour­nal pol­i­cy and con­strained by such legal require­ments as shall then be in force regard­ing libel, copy­right infringe­ment and pla­gia­rism.

Duties of peer review­ers

Con­tri­bu­tion to edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions

Peer review assists the Edi­tor-in-Chief and Edi­to­r­i­al Board in mak­ing edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions and, through the edi­to­r­i­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the author, may also assist the author in improv­ing the man­u­script.

Prompt­ness

Authors will nor­mal­ly receive feed­back about the accep­tance of his/her paper for the review­ing process with­in three weeks.

Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty

Any man­u­scripts received for review must be treat­ed as con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments.

The pre­view­ing process is anony­mous both for the author(s) and the peer review­ers.

Stan­dards of objec­tiv­i­ty

Reviews should be con­duct­ed objec­tive­ly. Per­son­al crit­i­cism of the author is inac­cept­able. Ref­er­ees should express their views clear­ly with appro­pri­ate sup­port­ing argu­ments.

Any invit­ed ref­er­ee who feels unqual­i­fied to review the research report­ed in a man­u­script or knows that its time­ly review will be impos­si­ble should imme­di­ate­ly noti­fy the Edi­tor-in-Chief so that alter­na­tive review­ers can be con­tact­ed.

Con­flict of inter­est

Review­ers should decline from eval­u­at­ing man­u­scripts in which they

have con­flicts of inter­est result­ing from com­pet­i­tive, col­lab­o­ra­tive, or oth­er rela­tion­ships or con­nec­tions with any of the authors, com­pa­nies, or insti­tu­tions con­nect­ed to the sub­mis­sion.

Acknowl­edge­ment of sources

Review­ers should iden­ti­fy rel­e­vant pub­lished work that has not been cit­ed by the authors. Any state­ment, obser­va­tion, deriva­tion, or argu­ment that had been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed should be accom­pa­nied by the rel­e­vant cita­tion. A review­er should also call to the Editor’s atten­tion any sub­stan­tial sim­i­lar­i­ty or over­lap between the man­u­script under con­sid­er­a­tion and any oth­er pub­lished data, of which they have per­son­al knowl­edge.

Duties of authors

Report­ing stan­dards

Authors are account­able for the sound­ness and hon­esty of their research. Authors must use appro­pri­ate meth­ods for report­ing their research and pro­vide suf­fi­cient details for oth­er researchers to repeat their exper­i­ments. Authors must pub­lish the

com­plete results of their research and not with­hold find­ings that are incon­sis­tent with their hypoth­e­sis.

Fraud­u­lent or know­ing­ly inac­cu­rate state­ments con­sti­tute uneth­i­cal behav­ior and are unac­cept­able.

Orig­i­nal­i­ty and Pla­gia­rism

Authors must com­ply with aca­d­e­m­ic integri­ty stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly with respect to pla­gia­rism, data fal­si­fi­ca­tion, image manip­u­la­tion and the like. Authors must appro­pri­ate­ly quote and cite all sources used in their research and refrain from includ­ing indi­rect quo­ta­tions from sources that they have not con­sult­ed.

Authors must obtain per­mis­sion to use any third par­ty images, fig­ures and the like from the respec­tive copy­right hold­ers.

Mul­ti­ple, redun­dant or con­cur­rent pub­li­ca­tion

By sub­mit­ting a man­u­script to The Dig­i­tal Schol­ar: Philosopher’s Lab, the author(s) war­rant that the man­u­script is their own, orig­i­nal work and that it has nei­ther been pub­lished pre­vi­ous­ly nor is cur­rent­ly being con­sid­ered for pub­li­ca­tion else­where.

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

Author­ship of a man­u­script

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 sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions should be list­ed as coau­thors. The cor­re­spond­ing author should ensure that all appro­pri­ate co-authors (accord­ing to the above def­i­n­i­tion) and no inap­pro­pri­ate co-authors are includ­ed in the author list of the man­u­script, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final ver­sion of the paper and have agreed to its sub­mis­sion for pub­li­ca­tion.

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’s Edi­tor-in-Chief or Assis­tant Edi­tors and coop­er­ate with them to either retract the paper or to pub­lish an appro­pri­ate erra­tum.