Publication Ethics
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and complies with the highest ethical standards in accordance with ethical laws.
FUM Policy on Using AI and LLMs
In compliance with the position taken by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in all FUM Press publications, including academic papers, authors may use AI and LLMs tools to prepare initial drafts “in the Materials and Methods (or similar section)” of their manuscript. They may do so transparently, and only if they maintain full accountability and responsibility for the content of their work. Since these tools cannot take responsibility for submitted manuscripts, “AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship” at this stage. FUM Press remains strictly committed to the long-established academic standards regarding authorship, plagiarism, transparency, and accountability; authors are thus required to properly document and state their use of AI or LLMs.
Ethic statements of Iranian Journal of Numerical Analysis and Optimization (IJNAO) are based on COPE's (Committee on Publication Ethics) best practice guidelines for journal editors. The Editorial Board, reviewers, and authors are encouraged to study these guidelines and address any questions or concerns to the IJNAO Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Ali R. Soheili: soheili@um.ac.ir
Duties of Editors
http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
Publication Decisions: The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for making the decision to accept or reject the submitted manuscripts to the journal, 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 the final decision.
Fair Review: Editors should give fair consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to country, race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s). Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of this journal. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.
Confidentiality: The editors will ensure that systems are in place to ensure the confidentiality and protection from misuse of material submitted to the journal while under review and the protection of authors’ and reviewers’ identities and will themselves take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of authors’ and reviewers’ identities.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The editors should ensure that the submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, or reviewers, as appropriate. The editors should excuse themselves from considering a manuscript in which they have a real or potential conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, financial, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript. In such circumstances, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.
Involvement and Cooperation in Investigations: Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. The editors follow the COPE Flowcharts when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct. If, on investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.
Duties of Reviewers
http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf
Fair Reviews: Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of scientific endeavor. Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly, and professionally. They should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers must provide substantiated and fair reviews to assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.
Right of Refusal: Any selected reviewer who feels that is not qualified to review the assigned manuscript or is unable to provide a prompt review, should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process. If they know any other expert reviewer(s) they may suggest them to the Editor-in-Chief via a dedicated email/comments section in the Reviewer Dashboard. Furthermore, reviewers should refuse to review manuscripts where they have provided written comments on the manuscript or an earlier version to the Author, and, in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, financial, institutional, personal, or other relationships or connections with any of the companies, institutions, or people connected to the manuscript.
Confidentiality: Information regarding the manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Editor-in-Chief, nor discuss any information from the manuscript without permission. This applies also to the 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 to improve the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.
Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Conflict of Interest: Any invited reviewer 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 invited.
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 the invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.
Duties of Authors
http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf
Reporting standard: The authors are committed to reporting their findings completely and to be especially careful in presenting the findings and their interpretation. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior 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 center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism: All data and statements in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrications, or omission of significant material. Authors should ensure that they have written and submitted only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, they have been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. 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 behavior and is unacceptable.
Multiple, Duplicate, Redundant or Concurrent Submission/Publication: Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Authorship of the Paper: Only persons who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content including: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript 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, and general support) but do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section after their written permission to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors 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.
Peer Review: Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to the editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consent, and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of "Need 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.
Acknowledgement: The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research. Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite 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 reviewing manuscripts or grant applications unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Authors should—at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript)—disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results 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, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or 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).
Fundamental Errors in 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 author’s obligation to promptly correct or retract the article or provide evidence to the journal editors of its correctness.
Duties of the Publisher
https://publicationethics.org/core-practices
Handling of Unethical Publishing Behavior: In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, 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 manuscripts 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 publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining their own digital archive.
Publisher Business Model: "Ferdowsi University of Mashhad" as the publisher supports the journal for each published issue by paying a defined budget according to its published annual rank in the Portal of Scientific Journals of the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology for costs including those pertaining to setup and maintenance of the publication infrastructure, routine operation of the Journal, processing of manuscripts through peer-reviews, editing, publishing, maintaining the scholarly record, and archiving.
http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Full%20set%20of%20flowcharts.pdf
The Editorial Board of the IJNAO acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable in any of its forms:
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by the IJNAO as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with IJNAO are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (e.g. iThenticate). Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.
Simultaneous Submission: Care should be taken to ensure that the work has not been published elsewhere, in any language, and is not simultaneously submitted to other journals.
Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more articles, without full cross-referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
Data Fabrication: Data fabrication means the researcher did not really carry out the study but made up data or results and recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation implies excessive citations in the submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Do not forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
Policy against Plagiarism
The Editorial Board of the Iranian Journal of Numerical Analysis and Optimization takes the necessary measures to examine the incoming papers on their originality, reliability of contained information, and correct use of citations. The Editorial board of the Journal acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore establishes the following policies that state-specific actions if plagiarism is identified in a manuscript submitted for publication in the Iranian Journal of Numerical Analysis and Optimization.
Plagiarism in any form, including quotations or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s article (without attribution), “passing off” another’s article as the author’s own, or claiming results from research conducted by others, constitutes unethical publishing behavior is unacceptable. The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript describes completely the original work and is free from any aspect of plagiarism. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to do the similarity checking. Care should be taken to ensure that the work has not been published before in any language and is not simultaneously submitted to other journals (Multiple submissions are unacceptable).
In the event of research misconduct or plagiarism detected in a submitted article by the Journal Editorial office or one of the reviewers, the editor-in-chief takes the matter seriously and requests comprehensive explanations from the author(s), along with relevant documentation. If the author provides a satisfactory response, the standard peer-review process continues. However, if the author fails to respond for instance does not respond within a reasonable length of time, or the explanation is deemed unsatisfactory, the article will be rejected. If the article has already been accepted or published, it will be promptly removed from the journal's website and archives and a retraction message will be published. Additionally, a report will be submitted to the institutions affiliated with the authors. The responsible author's name will be added to the journal's blacklist. As long as the author's name remains on the blacklist, submissions from that author will not be accepted. The journal's editorial board reserves the right to review and decide on the removal of an author's name from the blacklist.
Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
This journal allows debate post-publication on the journal’s site, through "Send comment about this article" section to the editor up to one month before final publication. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising, or retracting articles after publication depend on the content of the received comment and if the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors, they will be shown under the reference section of the articles pages.
Complaint Policy
If the authors disagree with the editorial decision on their manuscripts, they have a right to appeal. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the Iranian Journal of Numerical Analysis and Optimization. In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial and peer reviewers' comments, and give his/her decision for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief may, if so required, send the manuscript to a new handling editor for a fresh editorial review and to a new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such a case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.
How to Make a Complaint
The procedure to make a complaint is quite simple. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail to: ijnao@um.ac.ir
All complaints will be acknowledged within three working days.