Editorial Policies

Open Access

ACIG is fully open access, i.e. research articles and any other content are available free of charge. The articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).

Archiving & Repository Policy

All articles published by ACIG are assigned a digital identifier object (DOI). Manuscripts are submitted to Crossref and are archived in Portico, which provides permanent digital archiving for scholarly journals. Authors may self-archive their manuscripts and/or archive them in an institutional repository without embargo time.

Publication Ethics Statement

ACIG enforces a rigorous peer review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure the highest quality scientific work. ACIG takes publishing ethics issues very seriously at all stages of manuscript review and publication. The Editors proceed with a zero-tolerance policy to enforce COPE’s Core Practices and Guidelines and swiftly handle complex cases of plagiarism, data falsification, authorship credit, and the like. Any allegations of research or publication misconduct are not tolerated, and further sanctions will be taken once the evidence of misconduct is confirmed, including retractions and corrections of published material. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journals, we use iThenticate to screen all submissions for plagiarism prior to publication.

ACIG is strict about data fabrication (i.e. intentional misrepresentation of research results), data falsification (i.e. the manipulation of research data with the intention of creating a false impression), and image manipulation. The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles in which the results are found to have been fabricated, falsified, or subjected to image manipulation, will be sanctioned, and their published articles will be retracted immediately. ACIG will follow the flowcharts recommended by COPE on handling suspected cases:

Fabricated data in a submitted manuscript

Fabricated data in a published article

Image manipulation in a published article

ACIG is committed to observing the highest ethical standards in scientific research. All studies involving human subjects or human-related data or material must always adhere to the professional code of conduct as well as COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Experiments performed using animals, cell lines and plants must be conducted under strict ethical standards and rigorous protocols.

Authors' Responsibilities

• Authors are obliged to ensure that the manuscript is original and authentic. Authors are accountable for following discipline-specific guidelines;
• Two minimum requirements define authorship across all definitions – making a substantial contribution to the work and being accountable for the work and its published form. Any form of authorship or scientific misconduct is prohibited. Editors will take disciplinary action as per COPE recommendations if a case of misconduct has been reported;
• Authors need to declare that the submission is an original, unpublished work that does not infringe upon the copyrights of any third parties, and in whole or part, is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere;
• Authors must list all sources of research support relevant to the manuscript. All grant funding agency abbreviations should be completely spelled out;
• All papers submitted for publication in ACIG are subject to double-blinded review performed by at least two independent academics appointed by the Editors;
• The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. Furthermore, they ensure that all ACIG’s administrative requirements (i.e. providing details of authorship, ensuring ethical integrity of research) have been met;
• Should any errors be detected upon the paper publication, the Authors are obliged to immediately report them to the Editors. All corrections will be included in the journal’s electronic version with an appropriate disclaimer.

Editors’ Responsibility

ACIG upholds the right of authors to be treated fairly and professionally throughout the peer review process and beyond. To uphold this right, the Editors have the responsibilities detailed below.

Confidentiality

• Submitted manuscripts will be handled with due respect for the authors’ confidentiality. Information about manuscripts and their content will not be disclosed to anyone other than the authors and reviewers until a decision has been taken as to whether the manuscript is to be published;
• Confidentiality of the names and other details of reviewers is ensured. Reviewers can choose to voluntarily sign their comments to authors if they wish. See our policy on reviewer anonymity for more information;
• We are fully compliant with data protection regulations, as appropriate.

Professionalism

• Editors are responsible for ensuring the efficient, fair and timely assessment of submitted manuscripts. They are deeply committed to upholding the highest standards in the submission, review, and publication process;
• Editors shall make the final decision concerning the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript in a timely and efficient manner. The decision will be based upon the manuscript’s importance, originality, clarity, scientific value, and its relevance to the journal;
• Editors must not be a party to any conflict of interest with regard to the manuscript or the Author. A potential conflict of interest arises when Editors have financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately influence their actions. In cases where an editor is an author of a submitted manuscript, the manuscript must be passed to another editor for independent peer review;
• Editors must respect the intellectual independence of authors;
• Editors will consider the use of an Author's suggested reviewers for their submitted article. However, Editors have the right to invite reviewers of their own choice. Editors will not invite reviewers which an Author has requested not to be consulted, unless the Editor reasonably considers there to be a significant over-riding interest in so doing.

Editors will respond to any suggestions of scientific misconduct or to convincing evidence regarding the manuscript, usually through consultation with the Author. This may require the publication of a formal ‘retraction’ or correction. We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Flowcharts as the basis for our best practice guidelines when investigating allegations of misconduct. An Author’s appeal against the rejection of a submitted manuscript will be fairly dealt with.