ETHICAL STANDARDS

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement 

FORTHEM Journal follows ethical guidelines set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) described in the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing: https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing. All stages of the publishing process are handled according to the above-mentioned standards. 

Authors 

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. ONLY ONE author is designated as the corresponding author with contact details: e-mail and full postal address. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the FORTHEM Journal Editor.

To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. 

Contributions 

For transparency, we require corresponding authors to provide co-author contributions to the manuscript using the relevant CRediT roles. The CRediT taxonomy: https://credit.niso.org/ includes 14 different roles describing each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output. The roles are:

• Conceptualization;
• Data curation;
• Formal analysis;
• Funding acquisition;
• Investigation;
• Methodology;
• Project administration;
• Resources;
• Software;
• Supervision;
• Validation;
• Visualization;
• Roles/Writing - original draft;
• Writing - review & editing.

Note that not all roles may apply to every manuscript, and authors may have contributed through multiple roles. 

Conflicts of interest 

Corresponding author, on behalf of all the authors of a submission, must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include:

• employment,
• consultancies,
• stock ownership,
• honoraria,
• paid expert testimony,
• patent applications/registrations,
• grants or other funding.

All authors, including those without competing interests to declare, should provide the relevant information to the corresponding author (which, where relevant, may specify they have nothing to declare). 

Use of generative artificial intelligence

Authors must disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the core manuscript file, before the References list. 

Misconduct

The FORTHEM Journal will ensure the integrity of the scholarly record by taking necessary action in line with COPE guidelines for any form of misconduct, including:

• Affiliation misrepresentation
• Copyright breaches or unauthorized use of third-party material
• Citation manipulation
• Duplicate submission or publication
• Image or data manipulation or fabrication
• Peer review manipulation
• Text-recycling or self-plagiarism
• Undisclosed competing interests
• Unethical research practices

Plagiarism

The FORTHEM Journal takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously. To prevent plagiarism in published papers Editors use iThenticate program. Editors had to expose any detected case of ghostwriting, guest authorship as well as plagiarism to the appropriate subjects. 

Research ethics and consent

All research featured in Taylor & Francis journals must adhere to both international and local ethical guidelines. This includes ensuring that any studies involving human subjects, whether individuals, samples, or data, are conducted in accordance with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/.