Italian Journal of Sociology of Education (IJSE) is the flagship journal of the Educational Section of the Italian Sociological Association (AIS-EDU). The prevention of publication malpractice is one of the important responsibilities of the editorial board. The Code describes IJSE’s policies for ensuring the ethical treatment of all participants in the peer review and publication process. IJSE Guest Editors, Reviewers and Authors are encouraged to study these guidelines and address any questions or concerns to the IJSE Managing Editor, Anna Dal Ben (anna.dalben@unipd.it).
These guidelines apply to manuscripts submitted to IJSE starting June, 1, 2013, and may be revised at any time by the Editor-in-Chief and the Board of the Educational Section of the Italian Sociological Association. The following duties outlined for editors, authors, and reviewers are based on the COPE – Code of Conduct for Journal Editors and Best practice guidelines (version, 2011).
 

Duties of Editor in Chief (Editor) and Guest Editor(s)

Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for the content of the journal and for ensuring the integrity of all work that is published in it.

• Publication Decisions: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) have the right to make the final decision on whether to accept or reject a manuscript with reference to the significance, originality, and clarity of the manuscript and its relevance to the journal.
• Review of Manuscripts: IJSE follows a double-blind review process, whereby Authors do not know Reviewers and vice versa. The Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for securing timely, independent and anonymous peer review from suitably qualified reviewers who have no disqualifying competing interests, of all manuscripts submitted to the journal. The Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for ensuring that the journal has access to an adequate number of competent reviewers. Reviewers will be acknowledged by the journal at the end of each year.
• Fair Review: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) and their editorial staff must ensure that each manuscript received by IJSE is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.
• Confidentiality of submitted material: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) and the editorial staff will ensure that systems are in place to ensure the confidentiality and protection from misuse of material submitted to the journal while under review and the protection of authors’ and reviewers’ identities and will themselves take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of authors’ and reviewers’ identities.
• Disclosure: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should ensure that submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, as appropriate.
• Conflicts of Interest: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should excuse themselves from considering a manuscript in which they have a real or potential conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, financial or other relationships or connections with any of the Authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript.
• Authority: The Editor in Chief must have ultimate authority and responsibility for the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief should respect the Journal’s constituents (Readers, Authors, Reviewers, Guest Editors, Editorial Staff), and work to ensure the honesty and integrity of the Journal’s contents and continuous improvement in journal quality. 

Duties of reviewers

• Fair reviews: Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly and professionally. Reviewers should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers must provide substantiated and fair reviews. These must avoid personal attack, and not include any material that is defamatory, inaccurate, libellous, misleading, obscene, scandalous, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable, or that infringes any other person’s copyright, right of privacy, or other rights.
• Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the IJSE Editor/Guest Editor(s), nor should they discuss any information from the manuscript without permission.
• Acknowledgement of Sources: Manuscript reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Any kind of similarity or overlap between the manuscripts under consideration or with any other published paper of which reviewer has personal knowledge must be immediately brought to the Editor/Guest Editor(s)’s notice.
• Timeliness: In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the Editor/Guest Editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.
• Right of refusal: Reviewers should refuse to review manuscripts: a) where they have provided written comments on the manuscript or an earlier version to the Author, b) in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, financial, institutional, personal, or other relationships or connections with any of the companies, institutions, or people connected to the papers.
• Complain: Any complaint relating to the journal should, in the first instance be directed towards the Editor-in-Chief of IJSE.

Duties of Authors

• Originality: Authors must ensure that no part of their work is copied from any other work, either authored by themselves or others and that the work is original and has not previously been published in whole or substantial part. The author should not submit concurrent manuscripts (or manuscripts essentially describing the same subject matter) to multiple journals.
• Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contribution must be listed as co-authors. The author should ensure that all coauthors have affirmed the final version of the paper and have agreed on its final publication.
• Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism: All work in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrications, or omission of significant material. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism constitute unethical publishing behavior and are unacceptable. IJSE reserves the right to evaluate issues of plagiarism and redundancy on a case-by-case basis.
• Acknowledgement of Sources and Conflict(s) of interests: The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research and also declare any conflict(s) of interest.
• Data Access and Retention: The author should provide raw data related to their manuscript for editorial review and must retain such data.
• Timeliness: Authors should be prompt with their manuscript revisions. If an Author cannot meet the deadline given, the Author should contact the IJSE Managing Editor as soon as possible to determine whether a longer time period or withdrawal from the review process should be chosen.
• Fundamental Errors in Published Works: The author should promptly inform the Editor/Guest Editor(s) of any obvious error(s) in his or her published paper and cooperate earnestly with the Editor-in-Chief in retraction or correction of the paper. If the Editor-in-Chief is notified by any party other than the author that the published paper contains an obvious error, the author should write a retraction or make the correction based on the medium of publication.

The Code draws heavily from the following on-line sources, which are recommended reading on ethical guidelines:

• COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011. Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors. Accessed February, 2014.
• Ethical-Guidelines-2011Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, 2011. Accessed February, 2014.