Center for Systematic Entomology (CSE)

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Ethics Statement

Insecta Mundi (IM) is an academic journal published by the Center for Systematic Entomology (CSE). The integrity of the articles published in IM is of utmost importance and should be ensured during all steps of manuscript processing. Thus, all the people involved with IM publication, including authors, peer reviewers, review editors, layout editors, and members of the editorial board, are expected to fully adhere to all of our policies regarding publication ethics and malpractice. We have adopted many of the policies proposed by the European Journal of Taxonomy which are listed below with modification as needed.

Authors

-Content-

Insecta Mundi manuscripts must be original and adhere to a high scientific and technical standard. All images contained within manuscripts must either be original or used with expressed permission of the images' owner. The corresponding author must attest that they have followed our preparation guidelines by including a signed submission contract with their manuscript submission.

-Material studied-

When new material has been collected for the purposes of the study, the authors must ensure that all necessary permits have been obtained prior to collecting. Although we do not require reviewers and editors to independently verify that permits were obtained, if they have reason to believe that new material was obtained illegally, they are responsible for notifying the chief editor.

The authors are required to deposit all type material in an institutional collection and to provide clear statements of deposition in their manuscript.

-Copyright-

Insecta Mundi is a free, open-access journal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. By submitting and publishing articles in Insecta Mundi, authors grant the CSE and Insecta Mundi's host institutions permission to make the article available through Internet posting and electronic dissemination, and to otherwise archive the information contained both electronically and in a hard printed version. When used, information and images obtained from Insecta Mundi articles must be referenced and cited appropriately. Articles may be reproduced for personal, educational, or archival purposes, or any non-commercial use. Permission should be sought from the author(s) for multiple, non-commercial reproduction. Written permission from the author(s) is required for any commercial reproduction.

-Authorship-

To avoid copyright issues, authors must agree to the following:

If authors submit a manuscript to Insecta Mundi, they cannot submit the same paper to another journal unless the manuscript is explicitly rejected by the chief editor.
All co-authors must be aware of and agree to the contents of the submission.
All co-authors agree with the copyright policy of the journal.
If authors include any non-original images in a manuscript, it is their responsibility to notify the editors in their initial submission, and to take all the necessary steps to avoid breach of copyright.

-Peer review-

Authors must obtain critical reviews from two outside reviewers. Those review comments and Reviewer Report forms (signed by the peer reviewers) must be submitted with the manuscript. Peer reviewers are not anonymous, and their contributions must be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript. Authors are responsible for obtaining reviews from peer reviewers that have sufficient expertise in the subject/s of the manuscript. If an editor believes that these reviews were unsatisfactory, they can request that the authors seek out additional peer reviewers, or they can solicit additional reviews on their own.

-Plagiarism-

Authors are expected to contribute to their research field by publishing original and relevant results and data. The following elements are considered essential for an ethical publication: data integrity; sound presentation of methodologies, sources and techniques used; reproducibility of results; acknowledgment of contributors to data collection and research; acknowledgments of funding agencies and/or previous institutions where (part of) the work was carried out.

Authors must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the results presented in their manuscript. Plagiarism is unacceptable; any suspicion of plagiarism will be investigated by the editors.

Self-plagiarism (also known as text recycling) should be avoided as much as possible; however, when text duplication from previous works is necessary, it is then reported transparently and these previous works are fully cited in the publication itself.

Whenever possible, data and results gathered in the same framework (e.g. a single research project) should not be broken up into smaller publishable units. We encourage authors to publish their data and results obtained in a single framework as a unique and original publication.

-Research misconduct-

Invention of data and malicious manipulation of data (including figures) are unacceptable. If there is conclusive evidence that authors have done this, their manuscript will be immediately and summarily rejected.

Illustrations used to present data should not be manipulated, except for clarity purposes (e.g. adjustment of the contrast, colors…). Authors are responsible for mentioning this image manipulation in the Materials and Methods section and/or in the figure captions if they believe that this manipulation could lead to misinterpretation of data.

-Conflicts of interest-

There is a conflict of interest when authors are influenced in their choices or actions by a personal or financial interest. Any suspicions of conflicts of interest should be reported to the IM editors or to the CSE officers.

-Compliance with Nomenclatural Codes-

To be compliant with the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, our papers are recorded in ZooBank before publication and an LSID (Life Science Identifier) is assigned to them and inserted on the inside cover page of each publication. A PDF version of each article is available on our website, and printed copies of each issue are deposited in several international libraries, as listed on the inside cover of each article. These are printed and mailed once a year.

-Privacy statement-

The names, affiliations and e-mail addresses that appear in IM articles and on the CSE website will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Ethical issues: Action of the Editorial Team

-Potential issues-

Anyone who suspects an ethical issue, regardless of whether they are an active CSE member, is encouraged to contact us. The chief editor can be contacted at insectamundi@gmail.com. Every suspicion of ethical issues, misconduct or conflict of interest will be investigated by the journal.

-Investigation-

The chief editor will conduct the investigation. All members of the IM editorial team, as well as review editors, authors, and CSE board members, are encouraged to provide their feedback and suggestions to improve communication during the treatment of ethical issues.

The chief editor will contact both parties in any conflict and study their responses. No repressive action will be decided without sufficient evidence of misconduct. If the case involves another journal, its editorial staff will be contacted and both editorial teams will investigate and, if possible, make a common decision.