Publication Ethics
The ethical policy of MACS is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of MACS Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with MACS. The ethical policy of MACS is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org.
*The MACS has applied to become a member of COPE and accepted all COPE statements.
All articles submitted to Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structure (MACS) must be original (not copying other data) and not published or submitted for the publication else journals. All articles should be submitted electronically through the website to send for reviewing. Authors are asked to consider all topics of publication ethics in writing their articles. After the acceptation of an article and before its publication, the copyright form should be signed by all authors. Authors are responsible for each material in their published articles including the accuracy, the credit and the validity of all materials and also all topics of publication ethics.
Authors of a submitted article claim that their scientific materials are related only to their scientific activities. Utilizing other comments or sentences, in the title of an original research, is not ethical and it is a serious illegal, which entitled "plagiarism". Besides mentioning utilized references, all or a part of materials in articles should not be a part of or copied from published or un-published manuscripts.
The MACS keeps confidential all details about submitted articles and do not comment to any outside organization about manuscripts under consideration by the journals while they are under consideration or if they are rejected. The journal editor-in-chief may comment publicly on published articles, but their comments are restricted to the content itself to evaluate articles. Referees of articles submitted to MACS maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and any other data.
All articles submitted to MACS undergo a single-blind peer review process. According to the reviewing system in MACS, each submitted article will be sent to three reviewers based on a double-blind peer review process. It should be noted that if one reviewer accept the article and the other reject it, the forth reviewer will determine the article status. After the final acceptance, the article will be published in print and electronic (open access) versions.
Duties of Authors
(http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)
Policies on authorship and contributorship:
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, 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 coauthors 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.
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).
Reporting standard: The authors are committed to report 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 submit 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.
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 consents 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.
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 authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the article or provide evidence to the journal editors of its correctness.
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 expert 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, 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 circumstance, 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 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 dedicated email/comments section in 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 for improving 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 the Publisher
(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code%20of%20conduct%20for%20publishers%20FINAL_1_0.pdf)
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: "Semnan University" as the publisher supports the journal for each published issue by paying a defined budget according to its published annual rank in Portal of Scientific Journals of 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.
Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Misconduct
Publisher and editor of the journal take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. 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.
Policy on complaints and appeals
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 Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures. In such cases the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial and peer reviewers' comments and gives 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 new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.
How to Make a Complaint against the Staff of Journal, Editorial Board or Publisher
The procedure to make a complaint is easy. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail. Please email to: macs@semnan.ac.ir
All complaints will be acknowledged within three working days.
Post-Publication Discussions
This journal allows debate post publication on journal’s site, through "Send letter to the editor. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication depends on the content of the received comment and must the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors.
Acceptance of the Papers
The editor-in-chief is responsible for accepting or rejecting the papers. The editor-in-chief with the consultation of the editorial board, advisory board, reviewers, and editors while considering copyright, plagiarism, and other related issues, decides on the acceptance of the papers. Refusal and rejection of a paper review are necessary according to the time and setting. The reviewer who feels disqualification for reviewing a paper should refuse the review.
Fairness
The editor-in-chief has the responsibility of judging the papers only according to their scientific features and should act without any bias, personal hatred; nor should he/she act with a bias to nationality, gender, religious and tribal, racial, and political issues.
Privacy
During the reviewing process, the editor-in-chief and members of the editorial board and advisory board should not reveal any material about the article to anybody except the reviewers, authors, and editors.
Originality and Plagiarism
Authors must present original works for consideration in MACS. In papers containing any part of a published article, authors have to properly cite or quote the source of the published article. MACS utilizes "Plagiarism Detection Software (iThenticate)" for checking the originality of submitted papers in the reviewing process.
Confidentiality
MACS has commitment to protect all information of submitted articles from untrusted ones. In this regard, MACS editorial boards such as reviewers and advisers are only able to access the information.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be affected on influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Please click here to download the CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE FORM.
Reporting the Results
The corresponding author is the person held responsible for the contents of the submitted paper. The authors are responsible for a comprehensive and complete report of their findings, and they should be particularly careful in reporting the results and interpreting them. The paper should include enough details and sources so that other researchers will have access to similar data for replication of the study.
Copyright
MACS has made clear the type of copyright under which authors' work will be published. Upon receipt of the manuscript, authors will be asked to sign the MACS copyright agreement. Please click here to download the MACS COPYRIGHT FORM.
Submission Process
Manuscripts for MACS should be submitted online at https://macs.semnan.ac.ir/. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript.
Accepted File Formats
Authors must use the Microsoft Word MACS template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. Please click here to download the MACS TEMPLATE.
Correction and retraction policy
The corrections must be made by the author during the revision step.
After the manuscript is submitted, the corresponding author is required to send a request through the signed MACS Authorship Change Form to add or remove an author or to rearrange the author names of the submitted manuscript.
Please bear in mind that:
All of the above should be requested from the corresponding author and all authors must signature it.
Deceased Authors:
For cases in which an author or co-author dies during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative. The policies of MACS in the case of deceased authors are as follows:
Before acceptance of the manuscripts:
After acceptance of the manuscripts:
It should be noted that the name of the deceased author should be mentioned in the footnote of the paper.
This Journal retracts a publication if:
Publishing schedule
Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures (MACS) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal (print and online) within mechanics aspects of advanced materials and composite structures and is now published twice a year, which was founded in 2013 by Semnan University and approved as a scientific and research journal by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.
Open Access Policy
All articles published in MACS are fully open access; immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published in the MACS title is under the terms of a Creative Commons license 4.0 (CC-By 4) which permits users to read, print and download, redistribute or republish the article (e.g. display in a repository), translate the article, download for text and data mining purposes, reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works, sell or re-use for commercial purposes.
As open access Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures follows the Creative Commons license 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) which states that you are free to:
Under the following terms:
The author retains certain rights as defined in the copyright and licensing policy.
Copyright
MACS has made clear the type of copyright under which authors' work will be published. Upon receipt of the manuscript, authors will be asked to sign the MACS copyright agreement. Please click here to download the MACS COPYRIGHT FORM.
Plagiarism Prevention
All manuscripts submitted to MACS are checked for similarity by iThenticate plagiarism checker to be assured about its originality and then rigorously peer-reviewed by the international reviewers. MACS allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. In case the similarity index is higher than these permissible limits, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.
Publication Charge Policy
All articles published in our journals are open access and freely available online, immediately upon publication.
Publication of papers in MACS is FREE OF COST. MACS is a 100% free of charge journal for both authors and readers and all accepted papers are published in the journal without any publication fee. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures, or supplementary data.
Advertisements
The Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures doesn’t accept and publish any advertisement in the journal website and articles.
Archiving (Digital Preservation plan)
Website Archiving: All of our electronic content (website, manuscripts, etc.) is stored on two different sources. Content on one server is online and accessible to the readers. The copy of the same content is kept as a backup on one other sources. In case of failure of one server, any one of the other sources can be made online and website expected to be accessible within less than 24-36 hours.
Abstracting/Indexing Services: Our journal’s Abstracting/Indexing services store many essential information about the articles. Additionally, two of our journal’s Abstracting/Indexing services (Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) and Iran Scientific Journals System) archive not only the metadata about the article, but the electronic versions of the articles, as well. Therefore, copies of the articles are available to the scientific community through their systems as an alternative to the journals own.
Self-Archiving: Authors may archive the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication.
Policy against Plagiarism
The Editorial board of Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures 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 Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures.
Plagiarism in any forms, 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 free from any aspect of plagiarism. All authors are suggested to use a 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 unacceptable).
If any of the above unethical publishing behavior is detected by the Journal Editorial office or by one of the reviewers, the paper will be immediately rejected and the Editorial Board will communicate with the author(s) to demand an explanation and the amendment of the plagiarized content. If the author(s) does not respond within a reasonable length of time or does not make the necessary adjustments, the editor of other journals (for Multiple submission) and the author's respective institution are notified and the authors’ name are blacklisted and they will not be able to submit manuscripts to Mechanics of Advanced Composite Structures.
If plagiarism is reported by someone after publication of an article, the case will be investigated by the Journal’s Editorial Board, and if the plagiarized content is noticeable, the article will be withdrawn from the archive of our journal and the author's respective institution are notified and the authors’ name are blacklisted.