Publication Ethics Statement
Peer review process
Open Access statement
Licensing terms
Publication fees
Data and Software availability
Plagiarism policy
Publication Ethics Statement
Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling (SESMO) and its Publisher, iEMSs, is committed to following the highest standards concerning publication ethics. Our code of conduct and processes are based on the Core Practices and Guidelines developed by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics; https://publicationethics.org/) for editors and publishers. SESMO’s policies on peer review, open access, licensing, data and software availability, and plagiarism are outlined below.
Peer review process
To ensure the quality of papers published by the journal, submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed before acceptance. All submissions will first be assessed by an Editor to determine whether it is within the scope of the journal. The submission will then undergo a rigour peer review process involving two or more expert scientists. Editorial decisions are made on the basis of referees' reports, and Editors may seek additional reviews or advice from editorial board members.
Open Access statement
SESMO is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) definition of open access.
Licensing terms
Published articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) as described at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
The copyright of the article is held by the authors, who are free to disseminate it as they wish. Submission of the manuscript implies that the authors grant SESMO an non-exclusive license to publish and distribute the article, and acknowledge SESMO as the original publisher.
Publication fees
This journal does not charge any submission, article processing or publication fees. SESMO is a not-for-profit, open-access only journal owned by the scientific community. We strive towards attracting high quality submissions without incurring any article processing fees for authors. Instead journal costs are covered by institutional support from the International Environmental Modelling & Software Society (iEMSs) and other academic societies and donors, as well as the volunteer work of editors and reviewers. With our continued growth, we do need more resources in the future. You can support our community by becoming a member of iEMSs at www.iemss.org.
Data and Software availability
SESMO requires authors to make model code and data underlying the findings described in their manuscript available under an appropriate Open Source license. When submitting a manuscript online, authors must provide a Code Availability Statement describing compliance with SESMO's policy. If the article is accepted for publication, the code availability statement will be published as part of the final article.
It is understood that there can be restrictions to data availability used for the model, for example due to privacy concerns. In those cases, researchers are encouraged to create a synthetic dataset that can be used to run the model that is shared publicly, understanding that such a version will not reproduce the published results. Methods acceptable to SESMO with respect to code sharing are listed below. If authors use model software developed by somebody else, this source must be credited as appropriate. SESMO has a strong commitment for open science but if you have concerns about this requirement feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief.
Software sharing methods
We distinguish between archives and version control systems. Archives provide reasonable guarantees of permanence with respect to storage, accessibility, and discoverability of deposited artifacts (such a providing DOIs). A reference to a version control system's repository is not desirable as they do not have an explicit mission to serve as a permanent archive.
The Code Availability Statement must specify that model code and dependent data are deposited publicly and list the name(s) of archives along with digital object identifiers or URLs for the relevant deposits.
Acceptable Public Archives include (highly recommended): CoMSES Model Library - Open Science Framework - Zenodo - Figshare
Acceptable Public Repositories include (acceptable): Github - Bitbucket - Sourceforge - OpenGMS - Netlogo commons
Data sharing methods
SESMO requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in the manuscript fully available. In contrast to the code availability statement, we do not refer to data collected for the model, but to data on the model use, participatory modeling process or similar activities and used in the manuscript to support the findings. When submitting a manuscript online, authors must provide a Data Availability Statement describing compliance with SESMO's policy. If the article is accepted for publication, the data availability statement will be published as part of the final article.
There are various public archives to share the data, including: Open Science Framework - Zenodo - Figshare
Plagiarism policy
Plagiarism refers to intentional copying of someone else's prior ideas or text without attribution to the original source. This can include self-plagiarism, where the author reuses a large part of his/her own previously published work without providing appropriate references. Each submission will be screened using a plagiarism software. If suspected plagiarism is detected, the journal will conduct an investigation and the authors will be asked to respond. Depending on the extent of plagiarism and misconduct, the submitted manuscript may be outright rejected and the author's institute may be contacted. If plagiarism is found after publication, the paper may be retracted.