Publication Ethics

Green and Sustainable Environments adheres to the guidelines and best practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All editors, reviewers, and authors are expected to follow COPE's principles of transparency and integrity in scholarly publishing.

The editorial team follows COPE flowcharts when handling suspected misconduct, including cases of duplicate submission, plagiarism, data fabrication, and authorship disputes.

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a substantial contribution to the work. All listed authors must meet the following criteria (based on ICMJE recommendations):

• Substantial contributions to the conception/design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be published
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work

Authors are required to use the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) to specify individual contributions.

All submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate). Manuscripts with significant text overlap may be rejected at the editorial stage or require revision before review.

Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original and properly cite all sources. Redundant or duplicate publication of the same data is not permitted.

All authors are required to disclose any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could influence the interpretation of their results. This includes funding relationships, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, and patent applications.

Reviewers must disclose any conflicts and recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts where a conflict exists. Editors will not handle manuscripts where they have a competing interest.

Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript. Where possible, data supporting the findings should be deposited in a public, trusted repository (e.g., Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad) and referenced via DOI.

Research involving human subjects requires ethics committee approval (IRB) and informed consent. Research involving animals must comply with institutional and national guidelines (ARRIVE guidelines recommended).

The journal follows COPE guidelines for handling post-publication issues:

Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision may submit a detailed appeal letter to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days of the decision. Appeals must include a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments and a clear explanation of why the decision should be reconsidered.

For complaints regarding the editorial process or suspected ethical violations, please contact: gsevn@greensus.org