CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development follows the standards of publication ethics as stated in the Core Practices of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). These include the policies regarding procedure allegations of misconduct, authorship and contributorship, handling complaints and appeals, handling conflicts of interests/competing interests, policies on data and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, peer-review process, and post-publication discussions and corrections.

Allegations of Misconduct

CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development (CJID) takes seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication. The journal will assess any information to identify any type of misconduct. Should there be the allegation take place, the journal reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publish corrections; retract the article; communicate this issue with the relevant author institution and/or academic body or community, or take appropriate legal action.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author is responsible to ensure that all appropriate co-authors have been included in the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to the submission of the paper for publication. 

Complaints and Appeals

The following procedure applies to publication decision appeals, post-publication decisions, and publication ethics complaints. In the first instance, the complaint should be handled by the Editor-in-Chief(s) and/or Managing Editor who handled the paper.

Complaint about scientific content, e.g. an appeal against rejection
The Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor considers the authors’ argument, the reviewer reports and decides whether
- The decision to reject should stand;
- Another independent opinion is required
- The appeal should be considered.
The decision is communicated to the complainant, along with an explanation if necessary. Appeals decisions are final, and new submissions take priority over appeals.

Complaint about post-publication decisions
The Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor will decide whether a published article should be retracted or if other corrective action or notification should be taken in relation to the published article. If an author has concerns about a retraction or other action taken on their published paper (such as a correction or expression of concern), they should contact the Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor with a detailed written description of their concern and any supporting materials, if any.

The journal will acknowledge receipt of the email, and further investigation will be conducted to determine whether the proper procedures were followed and whether the author's concerns were addressed fairly and without prejudice. The journal will investigate the paper's peer review history as well as any correspondence between the author, Editor, and reviewers. If necessary, the journal may contact the parties involved to obtain additional information.

The outcome will be communicated to the author in writing. The journal strives to resolve issues as quickly as possible, but please keep in mind that investigations can take several weeks or longer depending on the nature of the concern or complaint, the availability of relevant data and information, the involvement of multiple authors and papers, and the possible involvement of the author's institution or other external parties.

We respectfully request that anyone raising a concern or complaint wait until the process is completed before publicly commenting on the case in order to allow due process to take place and investigations to proceed without prejudice.

Complaint about publication ethics, e.g., researcher's author's, or reviewer's conduct
The Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor follows guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics. The Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor decides on a course of action and provides feedback to the complainant. If the complainant remains dissatisfied with the handling of their complaint, he or she can submit the complaint to the Committee on Publication Ethics. More information can be found here.

Conflict of Interest/Competing Interests

Authors are asked to disclose any conflicts of interest that are directly or indirectly related to the work that has been submitted for publication. All such interests (or lack thereof), such as project roles or funding sources, should be explicitly stated by authors upon submission of the manuscript. This is not to say that a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research, or compensation for consulting work, is inappropriate. Articles will be evaluated fairly and will not necessarily be rejected when any competing interests are declared. 

Data sharing and Reproducibility

The journal advocates for research and scholars to be reported as transparently and clearly as possible, and as such, we advocate for the appropriate maximum sharing of underlying important materials. The journal strongly encourages authors to present their data availability for reproducibility of scientific claims. It is the responsibility of the Editorial Board or Peer-Reviewer(s) to identify the use of fabricated data. If there is cause for suspicion, the Editorial Board will consult with more than one additional peer-reviewer, and the authors will be investigated. If there is a suspicion of data fabrication, the journal has the right to inspect data sets provided by the Author.

Ethical Oversight

Authors and editors must follow the publishing ethics outlined in this document at all times. Unethical practices may include, but are not limited to plagiarism, authorship falsification, falsification or fabrication of research, redundant or duplicate publication, and peer review manipulation. We will follow the COPE flowcharts and may seek outside counsel as well. If we discover conclusive evidence of misconduct, we will take corrective action, which may include issuing a correction or retraction.

Intellectual Property

All journal content is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License that allows others to use the articles for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal (see Copyright Notice page for more detail).

Every article submitted to the journal will be checked for plagiarism using appropriate software. When an article has a similarity index of more than 20%, it will be rejected. We encourage readers and peer-reviewers to report duplicate publications and salami publications to us. Duplicate publication (also known as redundant or dual publication) refers to the reporting of identical or very similar data in multiple papers. The improper fragmentation of data into the smallest publishable units is referred to as salami publication (also known as salami slicing and salami publishing).

Peer Review Process

CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development conducts a peer-review process to ensure the quality of publication in the journal. It consists of initial review, double-blind review, and the decision by the editor.

Post-publication Discussions and Corrections

Amendments to published articles will be made only if they affect the integrity and accuracy of the scholarly record. Formal notifications will be published on the website of the journal, falling into one of three categories:

• Erratum: An error introduced by the publisher that affects the integrity of the scholarly record, the reputation of the authors, or the reputation of the journal.
• Corrigendum: An error introduced by the author(s) that affects the integrity of the scholarly record, the reputation of the authors, or the reputation of the journal.
• Retraction: Withdrawal of a published paper due to invalid results or conclusions. All authors of a paper must sign a retraction request, indicating the error and describing how it affects the paper’s conclusions. If authors are not in unanimous agreement in requesting a retraction, the pertinent Editor-in-Chief will consult Editorial Board Members and, as necessary, external reviewers and apply the category of amendment that appears most appropriate, indicating dissenting authors in the text of the published amendment.