PUBBLICATION ETHICS

The journal adheres to COPE’s Guidelines and DOAJ’s Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing. Additionally, the journal has further provisions (described in this section), which constitute the Journal’s Code of Ethics and aim to ensure the fairness and transparency of the editorial process. Such policies apply to all participating parties, including (but not limited to): Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and members of the Scientific Committee.

The adoption of a Code of Ethics ensures that the published articles are of high scientific calibre and that the procedures to assess and make decisions about proposals abide by moral and legal requirements.

All decisions shall be taken regardless of the participating parties’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, as well as scientific, academic, and political views. Papers shall be judged only on the basis of their intellectual and scientific merit.

The following responsibilities and policies apply to participating parties under the current (post-2023) ownership, copyright, and licensing terms. For reuse of content published in previous issues (pre-2023), written authorization should be obtained from the Copyright holder. Please refer to the Copyright and Licensing Section of this website for further information.

Responsibilities of the Editorial Board
The Editorial Board, whose responsibility lies with the Editor-in-Chief, commits to enforce applicable laws, as well as the norms of the scientific community, to prevent and counter malpractice, plagiarism, copyright infringement, and libel. Editors shall take appropriate measures to identify and halt the publishing ofmanuscripts that result from or contain scientific or legal misconduct. When making these decisions, Editors may consult with other Editors or Reviewers. Editors shall reject articles that do not adhere to the journal’s aims and scope. They also undertake all necessary steps to perform pre-selection screening of the proposals and to select external Reviewers that comply with the review process requirements. Editors do also commit to the rules of anonymity and confidentiality, as mandated by the Review Process policies of the journal. They also commit to liaise with the Authors by informing them in a timely fashion about decisions concerning their proposals or by requesting additional documentation and corrections. On a similar basis, the Editors commit to clear communication with Reviewers and potential Reviewers.

Responsibilities of the Authors
Authors are required to assure the originality of the manuscripts they commit and to refrain from submitting
papers that are already published or under consideration by other journals and publications. This includes
translations of the submitted papers or parts thereof in a foreign language. Articles concerning studies that have already been published may be published if they manifest new aspects of said studies, such as results and interpretations that were not covered in the already published text. This does not exempt Authors from correctly citing the previous source that manifested the study. Authors are responsible for making sure that any contributions they submit for publication do not feature any type of plagiarism or falsification, as well as false, illegal, or misleading claims. This provision extends to bibliographic referencing, which should be produced with state-of-the-art methods to ensure no mistakes are present in the version of record of the article. Authors commit to disclose any conflict of interest (financial, commercial, political, academic, or otherwise) that might affect (or have affected) the process of investigation, writing, as well as the study’s results and interpretation. On a similar note, Authors shall disclose all funding sources used to conduct the study and/or prepare the publication. Authors commit to submit works that feature high quality scientific writing. Articles shall be properly organized. This includes an appropriate discussion of the methodology, quality abstracting, and concise discussion of the results. False claims, including misrepresentations or knowingly erroneous information are inappropriate and constitute unethical conduct. Corresponding Authors commit to report to Co-Authors all editorial decisions in a timely manner. Additionally, all final drafts submitted by the Corresponding Authors must be approved by all Co-Authors, as well as the list of Co-Authors, their role, and the order of their names in the publication. Whenever possible, Corresponding Authors should make reference to NISO’s Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to clarify all roles and responsibilities featured in the paper. A definition of “Author” is given in the journal’s Author Guidelines section. Individuals who do not qualify for Authorship but have provided significant assistance to the undertaking of the study or the drafting of the paper should be properly acknowledged in the Acknowledgment section of the final draft. All Authors are bound to ensure that their study is approved by relevant Ethical bodies, according to the applicable legislation and depending on the jurisdiction where their study took place. Given the interdisciplinary nature of Turistica’s published papers, it is not possible to list all ethical authorities pertaining to each disciplinary field of interest. As a general rule, The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and The European Charter for Researchers shall be applied. Concerning the proposal and the editorial process, COPE’s Guidelines apply. Before submitting their Articles, Authors must ensure they have secured the necessary permissions for research practice, content usage (including quotations, tables, figures, and images). They must also ensure that their articles do not contain violations of copyright. Authors are responsible for reporting flaws and errors in their published work as soon as they become aware of it. This ranges from small inaccuracies to serious errors.

Responsibilities of the Reviewers
Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the treatment of the proposals, without attempting to identify the Authors, obtain information other than those offered by the Editor, or make themselves known to the Authors or other third parties. Reviewers commit to undertake their work fairly and professionally, without letting personal prejudices affect their observations and conclusions. Reviewers shall offer concise, well-supported, and thoroughlymotivated comments on the scientific quality of the proposals, according to the criteria outlined in the Review process section of the journal’s website. Reviewers should promptly inform the Editor of existing or ensuing conflicts of interest, as well as sharing their suspicions of plagiarism or other forms of malpractice. Reviewers have the duty to inform the Editors if they feel inadequate to the task or not sufficiently trained and lacking the abilities necessary to evaluate the article with appropriate scientific professionalism. Last but not least, Reviewers commit to respecting the given deadlines and to promptly inform the Editor of any impediments to the completion of their task.

Plagiarism
Turistica condems plagiarism and takes timely action to retract plagiarized articles.

Recycling
Turistica usually does not approve of recycling as it aims to publish original research. To address allegations of recycling, Editors shall consider:
 How much of the text is recycled;
 What parts of the paper are concerned with recycling (e.g., methodologies might be repeated without
   constituting a case of recycling);
 Whether the recycled source has been acknowledged;
 Whether the article presents novel interpretations of previously gathered data (in this case,
   acceptance is a possibility if the paper adds substantial value to the scientific debate);
 Whether copyright was breached;
 What were the cultural norms at the time and place of publication.
As a house rule, recycling is never acceptable when it concerns a results, interpretation, discussion, conclusion, or extensive parts of a manuscript’s introduction. Therefore, it must be avoided at all costs.

Conflicts of interest
Conflicts of interest must always be disclosed in a timely manner by the participating parties of a manuscript proposal. Editors will assess conflicts of interest on a case-by-case basis. Versions of record of the article will feature a disclaimer on conflicts of interest that outlines their nature. To avoid further conflicts of interest, all submitted manuscripts must be properly anonymized.

Members of the Editorial Board may publish original articles in the journal they manage. However, if that is the case, they cannot be involved in the peer review and in the editorial decisions concerning their own article. Additionally, the journal undertakes measures to minimize endogeny.

Should an issue of conflict of interest be raised after the publication of a manuscript, the Editor will communicate with the Corresponding Author to obtain adequate clarification, as well as communicating with the Reader to collect evidence of misconduct (if present). This could result in a correction of the article (if the conflict of interest bears no prejudice on the scientific content and on the review process) or retraction (if the conflict of interest biases the editorial process and/or the scientific content of the published work).

Post-publication critiques
This section draws on COPE Guidleine’s Handling of post publication critiques. On a general basis, critiques are welcome in the form of post-publication debate or discussion. However, critique with the following features shall be rejected:
 Plainly libellous critiques;
 Defamatory critiques (in this case, the Editorial Board will also alert the Authors should they suspect
   a breach of the Italian Defamation Law);
 Lack of appropriate referencing (e.g., baseless critique);
 No value is added to the scientific discussion;
 Refusal by the Authors of the critique to have it published in the journal.
In case the Editorial Board accepts the critique, the Authors of the original article are invited to reply. Replies to critiques are assessed against the same criteria of critiques. On some occasions, the Editorial Board might deem it more appropriate for the Authors of the criticized paper and the Authors of the critique to co-author another paper and have it peer-reviewed and published. The critique process shall be finalized either by the publication of the next issue of within 60 days (whichever is the longest). If the Authors of the original paper do not respond, the Editorial Board may publish a reply in which they acknowledge the critique and clarify the Authors have “declined to reply”. If the critique does not raise just scientific concerns but also ethical ones, the Editors will act according to the type of reported ethical breach.

Corrections
Turistica aims to distribute articles that are clear and error-free. Published articles are final, definitive, and citable: “Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact, and unaltered to the maximum extent possible” (STM Guidelines on Preservation of the Objective Record of Science).

In exceptional circumstances, it might be necessary to amend a published article. Such operation is carefully considered by the Editor-in-Chief. Normally, corrections are published as a separate paper, titled “Corrigendum: Title of the Original Article”. The update of metadata does not involve a Corrigendum.

Retraction
See COPE’s Retraction Guidelines.

Retraction of a published article occurs in one such cases:
 Beyond legitimate doubt, it is found that the article’s results or interpretation derive from an error
  (e.g., experimental error, calculus mistake, etc.);
 The article is a fabrication (data are made-up) or falsification (data or figures are manipulated)
 Findings were published elsewhere (also by other Authors) and there is no acknowledgement of their
   work;
 Unauthorized usage of content;
 Copyright infringement;
 Unethical research conduct;
 Proven manipulation of the peer review process;
 Unsolvable conflict of interest.

A retraction is published as a Notice of retraction, which must contain:
 Link to the original article (URL, DOI, etc.);
 Clear identification of the retracted article (including title and Authors);
 Clear indication that the reader is reading a Notice of retraction (this phrase is included in the title);
 Statement describing who is retracting the article and why;
 The Notice shall contain no unfounded allegations;
 The Notice shall be written with an appropriate language.
The Notice must be published in a timely manner and made available to all readers.

Upon publication of a Notice of retraction, the original article’s title is edited by adding “RETRACTED:” at the beginning. Other measures (such as watermarks) might be adopted to flag the article’s galley as retracted.

In the following cases, retraction is not warranted:
 There is an Authorship dispute without breach of Law and with no prejudice to the article’s scientific
   content;
 A Corrigendum is sufficient to address the concerns;
 Inconclusive evidence of the infringement;
 Post-publication conflicts of interest that do not breach the Law and do not affect the scientific quality
of the paper and the peer review process.