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Publishing Ethics

INDUSTRICS

Publishing Ethics

Integrity is a condition of publication at INDUSTRICS, not an aspiration. The journal follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in every case it handles, applies the same standards to its own editors as to authors and reviewers, and preserves the scholarly record rather than quietly amending it. This page states the rules; the peer review and governance policies state who enforces them.

Authorship

• An author is someone who made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work, took part in drafting or critically revising it, approved the submitted version, and accepts accountability for its accuracy and integrity. All four conditions apply. In applied work, design of experiments, construction and commissioning of test rigs, instrumentation, and the engineering analysis of results all count as substantive contributions; supplying funding, equipment or facilities does not.
• Everyone who meets the criteria must be listed, and no one who does not. Gift, guest and ghost authorship are misconduct — including the practice of adding a senior manager or a customer contact as a courtesy, and the practice of omitting an engineer whose work the paper reports.
• Where a company's communications, marketing or technical-writing staff drafted or substantially edited the manuscript, that contribution is declared, whether or not those individuals qualify as authors.
• Changes to the author list after submission require the written consent of every author, including any being removed, together with the reason. The journal does not arbitrate authorship disputes and refers them to the authors' institutions or employers.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot be authors: authorship carries accountability, and accountability cannot be delegated to software. Each article states individual contributions using the CRediT taxonomy.

Originality and prior publication

Submissions must be original, not published previously and not under consideration elsewhere; parallel submission is grounds for rejection at any stage. Posting a preprint is not prior publication. A technical report, white paper, conference presentation or internal company document is not prior publication either, provided it is disclosed at submission and the manuscript makes a substantive addition to it — but presenting such material as new without disclosure is redundant publication. So is dividing one study into minimal publishable fragments, and republishing the same trial under a different product designation. All submissions are screened for text similarity; plagiarism, including unquoted reuse of the authors' own published text, leads to rejection or retraction whenever it is found.

Data, measurement and reporting

Fabrication and falsification are the gravest forms of misconduct and lead to retraction and referral to the authors' institution or employer. In applied research they take forms that a general statement of principle can miss, and the journal names them:

• Selective test conditions. Reporting the runs, batches, duty cycles or ambient conditions under which a technology performed well, while omitting those under which it did not, without stating that a selection was made and why.
• A weakened baseline. Comparing a new method against a poorly configured, obsolete or deliberately unfavourable implementation of current practice. The comparison must be one a competent engineer would accept as fair, and the configuration of the baseline must be reported.
• Overstated maturity. Describing simulation or laboratory results in the language of deployment. Every claim must be pegged to the stage at which the evidence was actually obtained.
• Undeclared post-processing. Filtering, smoothing, outlier removal, gain correction and calibration adjustments are legitimate and must be described; applying them silently is falsification.
• Missing uncertainty. Measurements are reported with their uncertainty, sample size and test conditions. A performance figure without them is not a result.

Image adjustments — micrographs, thermographs, radiographs, inspection images — are acceptable only when applied to the entire image and disclosed; no feature may be added, removed, moved, obscured or selectively enhanced. Original unprocessed images and raw measurement data must be retained and supplied on editorial request. Where data cannot be shared, the reasons and the terms are those set out in the peer review policy.

Funding, sponsorship and competing interests

Authors declare all sources of funding and every financial or non-financial interest that could reasonably be seen to influence the work: employment, consultancy, equity, patents filed or pending, paid expert testimony, and equipment, materials or facilities supplied without charge. Where a study evaluates a technology made or sold by an author's employer or sponsor, that relationship is declared at submission, shown to reviewers, and published with the article.

Sponsored research is welcome; a sponsored study in which the sponsor controlled what could be published is not. By submitting, the corresponding author confirms that the authors had the freedom to report results unfavourable to the sponsor, and that no agreement permits a sponsor to suppress, delay beyond a stated review period, or alter the findings. Where such an agreement exists, the manuscript is declined, whatever its results.

Safety, compliance and responsible disclosure

• Work involving hazardous materials, energy sources, pressure systems or machinery must state the safety framework under which it was carried out and the approvals obtained. Manuscripts whose described procedure would be unsafe to repeat as written are declined until corrected.
• Where a study identifies a defect, failure mode or vulnerability in equipment or software in service, the manufacturer or operator must have been notified and given a reasonable opportunity to respond before publication. The journal will not delay publication indefinitely at a manufacturer's request, but it will not publish a hazard that has never been reported to the party able to act on it.
• Personnel appearing in photographs or video, and installations identifiable from images or process descriptions, require the consent of the individuals and the permission of the owner respectively.
• Work involving human participants — operator studies, ergonomics, human-factors trials — requires ethics approval and informed consent, both named in the manuscript.

Generative AI used by authors

Authors may use AI tools as instruments — for language editing, code assistance or analysis — provided the use is disclosed in the manuscript, naming the tool and the purpose. Authors remain fully accountable for everything the tool contributed, including errors and fabricated references. AI-generated images and figures are not permitted, and neither are AI-generated measurement data or simulation results presented as measured: where generative output is itself the object of the research, it is clearly labelled as such.

Handling allegations

1. Concerns about any article or submission may be sent to the editorial office by anyone; reports made in good faith are treated confidentially and bring no reprisal. Anonymous allegations are assessed on the strength of their evidence.
2. The journal first seeks an explanation from the authors, then proceeds under the relevant COPE flowchart. Cases suggesting misconduct are referred to the authors' institution or employer, with which the journal cooperates while reaching its own editorial conclusion.
3. A complaint from a company whose product an article evaluates is treated as evidence to be assessed, not as an instruction. Commercial displeasure is not grounds for correction; a demonstrated error is, whoever demonstrates it.
4. Editors with any conflict stand aside from the case. Outcomes range from correction to retraction to notifying institutions, employers and funders.

Correcting the record

Published articles are never silently altered or removed. These instruments apply to every article the journal has published, regardless of when it appeared or who wrote it — including work by the journal's own editors.