Publication ethics

Ethical standards are crucial to ensure the high quality of scientific publications, credibility of scientific findings, and that authors receive credit for their work.

Copernicus Publications has several policies in place to guarantee high ethical standards. These guidelines can be viewed in the general terms, the general obligations for authors, the general obligations for editors, and the general obligations for referees.

WES is a member of, and subscribes to the principles of, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Copernicus Publications especially recommends COPE's Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors as well as the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers as best practice. As a founding member of OASPA, Copernicus Publications also pursues OASPA's principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing.

Amongst other duties, editors have to ensure that all manuscripts received by their journal are reviewed for their scientific content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors. Furthermore, the editors need to ensure that any information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.

The reviews of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively, and the referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Furthermore, referees need to be aware that any information regarding the manuscripts they are reviewing should be treated as privileged information.

Copernicus Publications itself aims to follow the Core Practices of COPE by

• guaranteeing editorial independence;
• respecting privacy of all stakeholders in the research and publications process;
• ensuring author's copyright and a liberal distribution licence.

In addition to the above-mentioned points, authors should be aware in particular about the following:

Originality

In order to avoid ethical violations, all journals published by Copernicus Publications are committed to only publishing original material that was not published before, except in the form of abstracts, preprints, published lectures, theses, discussion papers, or similar formats that have not undergone full journal peer review, and that is not under consideration for peer-reviewed publication elsewhere. Manuscripts based on conference proceedings should include a significant novelty compared to the conference paper and the proceedings publication should not make out more than 60% of the manuscript content. Authors have to agree on that in a consent form. Furthermore, redundant publications ("salami tactic" of publishing small parts of the same research in several papers) should be avoided. Please also view the general terms.

Author contribution and funding statement

All authors listed on a presented scientific work must have contributed a significant part to it. Vice versa, all persons who contributed to the presented work need to be named in the list of authors. In addition, sources of financial support, if any, must be clearly disclosed.

Citation manipulation

Any manipulation of citations (e.g. including citations not contributing to a manuscript's scientific content, citations solely aiming at increasing an author's or a journal’s citations) is regarded as scientific malpractice.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means the use of any material and ideas developed or created by another person without acknowledging the original source. To avoid any form of plagiarism, each manuscript newly submitted to the Copernicus Office Editor (our online editorial support system) will be checked regarding plagiarism using iThenticate. The decision on whether a manuscript should be rejected because of fraud or should proceed to the peer-review process rests with the handling editor. The similarity reports are also made available to referees.

The Copernicus Office Editor automatically informs the handling editor and the Copernicus Publications Editorial Support if an author whose former manuscript was rejected because of fraud submits another manuscript to one of the journals published by Copernicus Publications. It is up to the respective handling editor to decide on whether the new manuscript should be considered for peer review.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy

WES subscribes to the AI policy of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which states that "AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. [...] Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics."

When accepting the terms and conditions during the submission of a paper, authors acknowledge that they are aware that the use of AI tools must be described in either the Materials and Methods section or the Acknowledgements. Failure to comply with such a policy may result in the rejection of the submission or retraction of a published paper.