Research and Publication Ethics

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal are not copyrighted, published, or submitted elsewhere, except in abstract form. Review articles should provide critical surveys of progresses in a specific field of science, engineering, or technology related to wood. For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in this instructions, the journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

Process of a Disciplinary Action

When a disciplinary action is recommended by the ethics committee, the chairman should convene a board meeting to determine whether or not to take any disciplinary action. A warning, suspension or dismissal of a membership can be applied to the member who has violated ethical policy. The result of the final decision may be made public if necessary.

When the manuscript submitted is proved to have committed misconduct in its research, the editorial board should reject or withdraw it. The author should be banned of submitting a manuscript to this journal for three years from the time of decision.

Authorship

An 'author' is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. According to the ICMJE guidelines (https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf), authorship credit should be based on:

• 1) Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and/or analysis and interpretation of data; AND
• 2) Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• 3) Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• 4) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors wishing to make any changes to authorship will be asked to make and submit an official letter to the editor. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

Duplicate Publication

Any manuscripts submitted to the Journal must be original and the manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journals. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are checked for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication by CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate manuscript submission will be handled and the editor may contact the authors’ institution. Before reviewing, all submitted manuscripts are inspected by Similarity Check powered by iThenticate (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/), a plagiarism-screening tool.

Conflict of Interest

The Journal requires authors to declare all competing interests including financial or non-financial support related to their work. Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests”. The editor may ask for further information relating to competing interests.

Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Review Board Approval

Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical studies with human subjects, there should be a certificate, an agreement, or the approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author's affiliated institution. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.

Statement of Human and Animal Right

Clinical research should be done in accordance of the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013), available from: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/. Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Care and Use of Animals

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The manuscript must include a statement of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) compliance that should appear as the first item in the section of materials and methods. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request an official number of IACUC approval. The Journal maintains the right to reject any manuscripts on the basis of unethical conduct or misconduct of animal studies.

Selection and Description of Participants

Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.

Permissions for Reproducing Published Material

The journal cannot give authors legal advice about their rights to use third-party materials. If a manuscript contains any materials such as photos, images, figures, tables, audio files, videos, etc. that the authors do not own, the authors must provide us proof of permission from the owners. If authors do not have owner’s permission, they should remove the materials or replace it with other materials owned by the authors or allowed for use in the submission with such permission. Authors are responsible for the rights they have (if any) to use materials owned by others. Authors should not use materials that they are unclear about the owners or their licenses. If authors are unsure about their rights, they should review the license or contact the publisher to clarify the license terms and make sure they can use the materials. If photos, captures, images, figures, tables, illustrations, audio and video files, or any materials are included in your papers that are not permitted by their owners, the journal reserves the right to remove them whether before or after publication.

Managing Research and Publication Misconduct

When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as a redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, an ethical problem discovered with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. The journal will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Editorial Responsibilities

The editorial board of the Journal will continuously monitor research and publication ethics. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.