Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The Brazilian Information Design Society (SBDI), publisher of InfoDesign - Brazilian Journal of Information Design, believes that all parties involved in the act of publishing (authors, journal editors and peer reviewers) must agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior. The ethics statements for this journal are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

 

Duties of Editors

 

Fair play and editorial independence

Editors, Associate Editors and Peer Reviewers evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity) and its relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation. Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of the journal itself. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content. 

 

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, peer reviewers, and other editorial advisers, as appropriate.

 

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editorial board members as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors and peer-reviewers will recuse themselves from considering 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 a manuscript; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

 

Publication decisions

The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts beig considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are expert in the field. The Editor-in-Chief, along with the Managing Editor, is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

 

Duties of Reviewers

 

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of scientific endeavour. All scholars who wish to contribute to the scientific process have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.

 

Promptness

Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

 

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

 

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been mentioned by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant bibliographic reference. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.

 

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Duties of Authors

 

Reporting standards

Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, while ‘opinion’ or perspective pieces should be clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

 

Data access and retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

 

Originality and plagiarism

Authors should ensure that they have written and submitted only entirely original works, and that, if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited and referenced. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be explicitly mentioned. Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own, 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 publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

 

Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication

Papers describing the same research in the same terms and with the same results and interpretation should not be published in more than one journal or publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal, in books or conference proceedings. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable.

The publication of some kinds of material (such as translations) in more than one place is sometimes justifiable, provided that certain conditions are met. The authors and editors of the publications concerned must agree to the secondary publication. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.

 

Acknowledgement of sources

Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also mention explicitly publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services. 

Authorship of the manuscript

Only persons who meet these authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; and (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section after their permission to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate coauthors are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.

 

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Authors should —at the earliest stage, if possible along with the submission of the manuscript— disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results of the research or their interpretation in the manuscript. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any).

 

Hazards and human or animal subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involves the use of animals or human participants, the authors should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them; the manuscript should contain a statement to this effect. Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants. The privacy rights of human participants must always be observed.

 

Peer review

Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, participant subjects consents, and copyright permissions. In the case of a decision of required revision, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

 

Fundamental errors in published works

When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum, or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper, or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.

 

Duties of the Publisher

 

Handling of unethical publishing behaviour

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the Brazilian Information Design Society (SBDI), in close collaboration with the editors of the journal Infodesign, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

 

Access to journal content

The Brazilian Information Design Society (SBDI) is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research, making all efforts to ensure accessibility and maintenance of the journal digital archives.