About the Journal

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

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 the European Journal of Ecology are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Editor Responsibilities

Accountability

The editor of a peer-reviewed journal is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal should be published, and, moreover, is accountable for everything published in the journal. In making these decisions, the editor may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board as well as by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers when making publication decisions. The editor should maintain the integrity of the academic record, preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards, and always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Fairness

The editor should evaluate manuscripts for intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s). The editor will not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than the author(s), reviewers and potential reviewers, and in some instances the editorial board members, as appropriate.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff 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, conflicts of interest, and other issues

The editor will be guided by COPE’s Guidelines for Retracting Articles when considering retracting, issuing expressions of concern about, and issuing corrections pertaining to articles that have been published in the European Journal of Ecology.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

The editor is committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.

The editor should seek to ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process. Editors should recuse themselves (i.e. should ask a co-editor, associate editor or other member of the editorial board instead to review and consider) 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 (possibly) institutions connected to the papers. Editors should require all contributors to disclose relevant competing interests and publish corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication. If needed, other appropriate action should be taken, such as the publication of a retraction or expression of concern.

Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct. Editors should pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct. An editor should take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Peer Review Process

All materials published in European Journal of Ecology are subject to detailed peer review.  European Journal of Ecology typically seeks two peer reviews per manuscript submission. In cases of conflict between those two reviews, a third opinion or that of one of the editors may be sought. In some cases, the editors may decide to return manuscripts to authors prior to review with preliminary comments designed to improve the manuscript's chances of eventual acceptance. Each manuscript is inspected for non-original text and other unethical practices via a variety of means.

Plagiarism

Originality:  By submitting papers to European Journal of Ecology, the authors attest that the work submitted to the journal is original. Any use of work or words of others must be appropriately cited or quoted.

Plagiarism:  By submitting articles to European Journal of Ecology, the authors attest the following:

• No part of manuscript is plagiarized from other sources
• Proper reference is provided for all content extracted from other sources
• Strong action will be taken against cases of plagiarism

All papers submitted have to pass through an initial screening, and will be checked through the Advanced Plagiarism Dectection Software (CrossCheck by iThenticate). 

Publication Frequency

European Journal of Ecology will be published continuously, with papers appearing as they are ready throughout the year.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain copyright in their articles.

Articles in the European Journal of Ecology published in 2020 and after are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. 

Articles in the European Journal of Ecology published 2015-2019 are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides open access to all of it content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Such access is associated with increased readership and increased citation of an author's work. For more information on this approach, see the Public Knowledge Project, which has designed this system to improve the scholarly and public quality of research, and which freely distributes the journal system as well as other software to support the open access publishing of scholarly resources.

European Journal of Ecology provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Authors will never be charged to submit or publish a manuscript through European Journal of Ecology and all articles after 2020 will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Archiving

European Journal of Ecology is archived in Portico (www.portico.org) and at the University of Kansas