PARKS Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
PARKS is committed to ensuring ethics in publication and quality of articles. PARKS editors and publishers support COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and adhere to the ethical standards of scientific publication as described in detail by Graf et al. (2007). Conformance to these standards is expected of all parties: authors, editors and reviewers.
Authors
- Authors should present content of a consistently high professional standard and all claims must be verifiable. Papers should be objective and comprehensive.
- Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. Parks editors expect submitted work to be the author’s original contribution, that it has not been plagiarized (i.e. taken from other authors without permission), that the work and/or words of others have been appropriately referenced, and that copyright has not been breached (e.g, if figures or tables are reproduced).
- Authors must acknowledge use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any aspects of the research design, data analyses or manuscript production.
- Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
- The list of authors should accurately reflect who contributed to the work. Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design; 2) data acquisition, or analysis and interpretation of data; and 3) writing the article or revising it substantially for intellectual content. The corresponding author should ensure that full consensus of all co-authors on the final version of the paper before submission for publication.
- Any sources of funding for research should be disclosed in the acknowledgements.
- Authors have a right to appeal editorial decisions (outlined in instructions to authors and see Conflicts of Interest)
Editors
- Editors should evaluate manuscripts based exclusively on their contribution to the stated objectives of PARKS (see guidelines for authors). They are responsible for ensuring the peer-review process is fair, unbiased and timely.
- Editors may ask authors to state that the study they are submitting was approved by the relevant research committee or ethics review board of their institution. Any human participation in a study must be accompanied by a statement that the authors secured free, prior informed consent
- Editors will exercise sensitivity when publishing images of objects that might have cultural significance or cause offence (e.g. indigenous settings, rituals, or remains).
- Editors must recuse themselves from editorial decisions concerning their own work
- Editors should take reasonable measures to respond to complaints concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper (see retractions, corrections, publishing malpractices).
Reviewers
- Reviewers should treat all manuscripts as confidential documents, keeping all information or ideas obtained private and not used for personal advantage.
- Peer reviews are “single-blind”, i.e. the reviewers’ identities remain anonymous to authors, but the author’s identities are open to reviewers.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively (as per reviewers’ guidance circulated with every review request) and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so authors can use them to improve their paper.
- Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review a manuscript should notify the editor. Reviewers should inform the editors if they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to papers they have been asked to review (see conflict of interest below); the editors will decide whether any conflict will impact the objective review of the paper.
Conflicts of Interest
- Editors, authors, and reviewers have a responsibility to disclose interests that might affect their ability to be objective. These include relevant financial, personal, political, intellectual, or religious interests. For example, people approached to review a paper should disclose if they have worked with an author previously and decline to review if they have an extensive an on-going collaboration that would affect their capacity to review the manuscript objectively
- If there is doubt among reviewers or editors about a conflict of interest, is it within their right to request statements of disclosure from authors.
Retractions and Corrections
- PARKS will take seriously the matter of any suspected errors in publications reported by authors or readers.
- PARKS is committed to publishing corrections when errors in a publication could affect data interpretation and study results, and to clarify the cause of the error (i.e. arising from author errors or from editorial mistakes).
- PARKS endeavors to publish ‘retractions’ if any work published is proven to be fraudulent, or ‘expressions of concern’ if editors have well-founded suspicions of misconduct.
Publishing malpractices and misconduct
- If peer reviewers raise concerns of serious misconduct (for example, data fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image manipulation, or plagiarism), these should be taken seriously. However, authors have a right to respond to such allegations and for investigations to be carried out with appropriate speed and due diligence.
Version 2: 2025