The FORMATH journal publication ethics is based on recommendations of COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the standards of ethical behavior is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors and Reviewers.
The FORMATH journal is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics with all publications, and to uphold ethical research practices. The FORMATH journal adheres to the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (COPE, 1999), the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (COPE, 2011)
We encourage editors to follow the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors and to refer reviewers to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers as appropriate. We shall take all possible measures against publication malpractices.
The FORMATH journal is responsible for enforcing a rigorous peer-review with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure that high quality scientific works are added to the field of scholarly publications. To avoid cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and other malpractices, the reviewers and editors of the FORMATH journal are advised to be extra vigilant in identifying such issues as serious offenses, and to flag offending authors for appropriate actions.
Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript has not been previously published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication (see ‘Preprints’).
If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in the journal, they should first withdraw it from the journal.
Submission
The journal welcomes manuscript submissions from authors based anywhere in the world.
Submission of a manuscript to the journal implies that all authors: have approved it, warrant it is factual, have agreed to its submission, and have the right to publish it.
Originality
Authors warrant that the submitted manuscript is original work. Any manuscript with an unacceptable level of unoriginal material may be rejected or retracted at the Editors’ discretion.
Preprints
To support the wide dissemination of research, the journal encourages authors to post their research manuscripts on community-recognized preprint servers, either before or alongside submission to the journal. This policy applies only to the original version of a manuscript that describes primary research. Any version of a manuscript that has been revised in response to reviewers’ comments, accepted for publication or published in the journal should not be posted on a preprint server. Instead, forward links to the published manuscript may be posted on the preprint server.
Authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.
Scooping
When assessing the novelty of a manuscript submitted to the journal, the editors will not be influenced by other manuscripts that are posted on community-recognized preprint servers after the date of submission to the journal (or after the date of posting on a preprint server, if the manuscript is submitted to the journal within 4 months).
Authorship　
Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Changes to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of author names, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the editor.
Only persons who meet the following four criteria for authorship should be listed as authors in the manuscript (ICMJE Recommendation 2018) as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work
- Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work
- Drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content
- Have investigated and approved the final version of the manuscript for its submission for publication.
The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are based on the above four criteria, and no inappropriate co-authors included in the author list.
Contributing to research can broadly be classified into the following categories:
- Intellectual contribution (ideas, writing)
- Practical contribution (conducting research, data analysis)
- Financial contribution (funds, experimental material)
Any researcher, who does not meet all four criteria for authorship should be listed as a contributor in the “Acknowledgements” section of the manuscript. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who 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 approval.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication
The authors should ensure that their work is original, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, they should appropriately cite or quote them. An author should not publish the same work (i.e. work describing essentially the same research) in more than one journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publication behaviour. Simply said, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a previously published paper. Accepted manuscripts undergo similarity check before publication using the iThenticate service (ithenticate.com).
Data falsification, data fabrication and image integrity
Authors must not falsify or fabricate data. Authors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add or enhance individual parts of an image. The editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.
Reproducing copyrighted material
If a manuscript includes material that is not under the authors’ own copyright, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) to reproduce it.
If a manuscript includes previously published material, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owners and the publisher of the original work to reproduce it. The authors must cite the original work in their manuscript.
Copies of all reproduction permissions must be included with the manuscript when it is first submitted.
Secondary publication
One of the main ambitions of the journal is to ensure the dissemination of knowledge, especially knowledge that which is inaccessible to the journal’s broad international audience. Following ICMJE policies on this issue, the journal therefore considers articles that have been previously published in Japanese if the following conditions are met:
- All authors of the original publication agree to the secondary publication, but understand that acceptance in the journal is not guaranteed.
- The manuscript undergoes full peer review.
- Editors from both journals approve of the re-publication.
- Full copyright permissions, per the section ‘Reproducing copyrighted material’, are supplied upon manuscript submission.
- A reasonable period of time has elapsed before the publication of the English version, to maintain the priority of the original publication. This time will be decided by the editors of both journals.
- The journal’s audience is different to the original publication’s audience. Differentiating elements can include that the original publication and the original journal are published wholly in Japanese; the original journal is not in PubMed, the Science Citation Index Expanded (Clarivate Analytics), Scopus (Elsevier) or other large international database; and the original journal has a restricted distribution (e.g. in print to members of a society only). Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief for clarification if needed.
- The secondary publication faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the original publication.
Secondary publications will include text that indicates they are fully peer-reviewed translations of an original publication. They will contain a statement such as: “This article is based on a study first reported in [journal title, with full reference].”
Data and reproducibility
All available data upon which the conclusions of the manuscript depend on must be made available upon request, while considering the manuscript for publication in FORMATH, and upon reasonable request immediately after publication.
It is recommended to deposit datasets in public repositories, where available. Datasets in repositories should be bidirectionally linked to the published material in a way that ensures proper attribution of data production.
It is encouraged to present all other data values in machine readable format as supplementary information. Materials sharing after publication may be required.
Sharing information about code and software is also encouraged. At a minimum and where relevant, a statement must be included in the manuscript that describes availability of the code or software and how it can be obtained.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools
As per COPE guidance, authors must disclose and fully describe any use of generative or non-generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools (also known as Large Language Models or LLMs) in the Methods section. This includes, but is not limited to, using AI tools to collect or analyse data, produce or amend images or graphics used in the manuscript, or write all or part of the manuscript. Authors must describe which tools they used and how the tools were used. In general, the use of generative AI tools is allowed only where that use is an integral part of the research design or methods. Other use will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. In all cases, authors remain responsible for all the content of their submitted manuscript.
Authors should be aware that there are ongoing concerns about the copyright status of any AI-generated content. Authors must adhere to the instructions in the ‘Reproducing copyrighted material’ section of this document and comply with relevant statutory and other copyright laws.
It is acceptable to use non-generative AI tools to improve the readability of a manuscript, such as through spelling and grammar checking, but any such use should be declared to the Editors upon submission.
Reviewers and Editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts to any AI tool or service. Doing so would breach privacy and confidentiality provisions, as described elsewhere in this document. There are also potential copyright issues if unpublished material is uploaded to a third-party service.
Author competing interests and conflicts of interest
A “Conflict of Interest” is defined as any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications or opinions stated, including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.
A simple test for “Conflict of Interest” is to seek if there is any arrangement that would compromise the perception of your impartiality or that of your coauthors if it was to emerge after publication and you have not declared it.
- The corresponding author is expected to obtain the relevant information from all coauthors on the “Conflicts of Interest” described above.
- FORMATH requires a declaration of any “Conflict of Interest” to be included in the manuscript upon submission. This information will be available to the Editors. If your manuscript is published, this information will be communicated in a statement in the published manuscript.
- The corresponding author must report on behalf of all coauthors.
- On submission, any potential “Conflict of Interest” should be clearly stated for each author by the corresponding author. The corresponding author is responsible for confirming with all coauthors whether they have any conflicts to declare.
- All reviewers are either asked to decline to review a manuscript if they have a potential conflict or declare any potential conflict.
Editors would not handle the review of a manuscript if there was a potential “Conflict of Interest”.
Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Acknowledgements section of their manuscript.
Confidentiality
The journal maintains the confidentiality of all unpublished manuscripts. By submitting their manuscript to the journal, the authors warrant that they will keep all correspondence about their manuscript (from the Editorial Office, editors and reviewers) strictly confidential.
Self-archiving (Green Open Access) policy
Self-archiving, also known as Green Open Access, enables authors to deposit a copy of their manuscript in an online repository. The journal encourages authors of original research manuscripts to upload their article to an institutional or public repository immediately after publication in the journal.
Long-term digital archiving
J-STAGE preserves its full digital library, including the journal, with Portico in a dark archive (see https://www.portico.org/publishers/jstage/). In the event that the material becomes unavailable at J-STAGE, it will be released and made available by Portico.
Advertising Policy
The journal does not allow advertising on its articles, other pages, or websites.
Publication frequency
The FORMATH journal is published annually on every December.
Date of Submission is the date when the submitted manuscript arrives at the secretarist of FORMATH. Date of Acceptance is the date when the reviewers determine that the submitted manuscript can be published.
The Listing Order is the order of acceptance. A certification of publication will be issued upon request.
Open access policy
The FORMATH journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge under the term of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.