Publication Ethics

Correction / Retraction

We encourage authors to notify us if they discover an error in one of their already published articles. Depending on the severity, we will correct it, replace the PDF and include a short note to the readers, or we will retract the article. Reasons for a retraction are: double publication, plagiarism, copyright violation, unreliable data due to data fabrication or honest error, willful exclusion of a legitimate author and otherwise unethical behavior. If any reader notices a major problem, please bring it to the attention to one of the editors-in-chief. We adhere to the retraction guidelines of the Committee of Publication ethics.

Authorship

Only people who contributed substantially to the writing of a manuscript or to the research presented therein should be named as authors. Providing funding or lab space is not reason enough to be listed as author. We do not support guest or gift authorship. Should a manuscript feature a suspiciously large author list, the submitting author might be asked to state who contributed what to the submission.

Self-Citation

Authors should cite their previous publications where appropriate but should avoid excessive self-citation. We do not request authors to cite from previous JABFQ issues for the sake of impact factor improvement and citing many JABFQ articles does not influence the editor’s decision. However, authors are free to cite from the journal if suitable.

Text recycling

While text recycling, also called self-plagiarism, is sometimes unavoidable when describing a method, we take it seriously in all other parts of a manuscript. All incoming submissions are screened for plagiarism and the authors’ previous publications are checked for substantial overlap. If an author chooses to split one big experiment into several publications, they should make a clear statement on this in their manuscript, explain their decision and cite the other publication (or provide the unpublished manuscript along with the submission). We do not approve of manuscripts, which contain a minimum of content to enhance a scientist’s publication list. If we become aware of this practice, the manuscript will be rejected and the author might get grey-listed and their next submissions will be scrutinized very carefully.

It is difficult for scientists to handle the ever-increasing amount of published research articles. Therefore, results should be presented as concise and complete as possible and not be scattered in several articles across different journals.