As a rule, Silva Iaponicarum only accepts original contributions not published or considered for publication elsewhere. The authors listed in the submission are required to have full autorship over the submitted work. Practices such as plagiarism, autoplagiarism and ghostwriting are not tolerated and, if unremedied, will result in unconditional rejection of the contribution.
The procedures implemented in Silva to ensure the maintenance of highest standards of ethical publishing are outlined below, and they have been devised to reflect the Principles of Transparency & Best Practice devised collaboratively by The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Database of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
Upon submission and prior to the preliminary content evaluation of the paper, the submitted text undergoes a verification for plagiarism/ghostwriting with the software tool iThenticate. If the verification yields acceptable results, the text is further evaluated for originality and general level of academic quality by by at least one of the editorial board members who has expertise in the pertinent research field. Usually the same board member later becomes an individual supervisor of the paper, overseeing the publication process of the paper until its eventual release.
If the assigned editorial board member/individual supervisor considers the paper potentially fit for publication in Silva Iaponicarum, the paper is forwarded to the peer-review procedure.
The task of the individual supervisor is to oversee the content and structure of the paper as well as to ensure comments and improvements suggested by the peer-reviewers and the proofreader have been implemented by the author. In case the author declines to implement a suggestion, they are obliged to justify the decision to their individual supervisor.
In case an infringement of publication ethics is detected, one or more of the following may be implemented, depending on the severity of the infringement, its effect on the entire text, and the author’s response:
1) the author is requested to adequately modify or remove the problematic fragment(s) of the text;
2) the editorial board makes a collective decision concerning the future of the text;
3) the text is disqualified from publication.
Step 3) is effected unconditionally in case of plagiarism or if the author refuses to cooperate in step 1).
Following a successful peer-review process, the author is required to sign the Author’s Agreement, including the statement of authorship as below:
“The Author hereby declares that she/he is entitled to personal and property (material) copyrights to […] the Work, and that these rights are not limited by the terms of this agreement, and warrants the originality, authorship, and sole ownership of all rights to the Work”.
In case of a potential conflict of interest, a „Conflict of interest declaration” note clarifying the situation is included at the beginning of the text.
Peer-reviewers receive a completely anonimized pdf file with the reviewed paper. Following a meticulous reading of the paper by the assigned member of the editorial board, the file has had all personal information removed, including both explicit and implicit references to the identity of the author. Reviewers are obliged to observe the double-blind peer-review standard. Before the reviews are passed on to the author, the assigned member of the editorial board verifies the reviews to ensure their complete anonymity.