Nodes is guided by the principles of the guidelines regarding ethics in scientific publishing (Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors) outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Editors, Authors, members of the Scientific Committee, members of the Editorial Board, publisher, and anonymous reviewers share and commit to these principles.
1. Accountability and responsibility for journal content
The journal’s editors take responsibility for all manuscripts published on Nodes. They strive to grant both scientific and editorial quality by peer review and careful editing. The journal maintains the integrity of the published record and grants long time preservation of all published contents.
Responsibility for the decision to publish or not to publish articles submitted to Nodes rests with the editors and the Editorial Board, who may also call in the Scientific Committee. Nodes is bound by the requirements of applicable laws regarding copyright infringement, plagiarism, and defamation. Nodes Editorial Board evaluates articles proposed for publication solely on the basis of their scholarly content, without discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, citizenship, political, academic, and scientific orientation of the authors. Nodes Editorial Board reserves the right to accept or reject a text for publication basing its decisions solely on the criteria of scientific interest, originality, clarity of the text, importance and validity of the research, and its coherence with the journal’s topics of interest. In making its decisions, Nodes Editorial Board is supported by at least two reviewers chosen from scholars and experts outside the Scientific Committee and the Editorial Board, according to a single or double-blind peer review procedure. The peer review procedure must be impartial and free from bias of any kind. All stages of the review process are aimed at ensuring the impartiality of the final decision and ensuring that submitted materials remain confidential throughout the course of the evaluation process. Nodes accepts well-founded criticism about published work, welcomes publications that challenge previously published work, and makes itself available to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions from authors, to whom Nodes provides an opportunity to respond to criticism or challenge. The Editor, the members of the Scientific Committee and the Editorial Board ensure strict confidentiality throughout the editorial process by not revealing information about proposed articles to any person other than author, peer reviewers and the publisher. They also agree not to use in their own research the contents of an unpublished article proposed for publication without the author’s written consent.
2. Editorial independence and integrity
2.1 Independence of editorial decisions from commercial interests
Nodes editors make their decisions about proposals submitted to the journal and published works on academic merit alone and take full responsibility for their decisions.
Nodes embraces an open access policy and has no commercial interest, so the journal’s editorial processes and editors’ decisions are independent of any commercial consideration.
2.2 Editors’ relationship to the journal publisher
Nodes editors and scientific committee work on a volunteer basis. Numero Cromatico is a non-for-profit association which has an artistic and scientific research and teaching mission and does not interfere with Nodes editors and scientific committee’s freedom of choice and activities, as long as their work is coherent with the mission of the journal.
2.3 Journal metrics and decision-making
Nodes editors and scientific committee do not attempt to influence the journal’s ranking by artificially increasing any journal metric. In particular, they strive to ensure that submitted papers are reviewed on purely scholarly grounds and that authors are not pressured to cite specific publications for non-scholarly reasons.
3. Editorial confidentiality
3.1 Authors’ material
Nodes selects papers to be published through peer review. Peer reviewers are chosen by editors, who strive to protect the confidentiality of authors’ material and remind reviewers to do so as well. Submitted papers are never shared with editors of other journals, unless with the authors’ agreement or in cases of alleged misconduct. Editors do not give any indication of a paper’s status with the journal to anyone other than the authors. Manuscript submissions are to be done by emailing Nodes Editorial Board and remain private. In the case of a misconduct investigation, it may be necessary to disclose material to third parties (e.g., an institutional investigation committee or other editors).
3.2 Reviewers
Nodes selects papers to be published through peer review. Therefore, reviewers’ identities are always protected, unless an alleged or suspected reviewer’s misconduct compels the journal to disclose the reviewer’s name to a third party.
Reviewers (or peer reviewers) assist the Editor and Editorial Board in editorial decisions and may indicate corrections and expedients to the author to improve the manuscript. A selected reviewer who does not feel qualified to review the text assigned to him/her, or who is unable to perform the refereeing within the required time-frame, notifies the Editors or Editorial Board of his/her decision by resigning. The texts received are confidential and as such are not shared or discussed with anyone not authorised in advance by the Editors. Refereeing must be done with the utmost objectivity and without criticising or personally offending the authors. Reviewers must express their opinions clearly and with the support of clear and documented arguments. Peer reviewers undertake to indicate precisely the bibliographical references of key works that may have been overlooked by the author. Reviewers must call the attention of the Editors and Editorial Board if they detect substantial similarities or coincidences between the text under review and any other material found in any type of publication. Reviewers must refuse to referee texts in respect of which, or whose authors, there may be a conflict of interest arising from competition, collaboration or other connection with the authors, companies or entities related to the subject of the manuscript.
4. Authors’ Responsibilities
Authors undertake to make the sources or data on which the research is based available so that they can be retained for a reasonable period of time after publication and possibly be made accessible to others who wish to use the work. Authors undertake to ensure the originality of the proposed texts and to report the bibliographic sources used by correctly and accurately indicating the works or parts of works of other authors cited in their texts. Authors agree not to publish the same text in more than one journal. The authorship of the work must be correctly attributed, and all those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, organisation, implementation, and reworking of the research underlying the article must be indicated as co-authors. In the case of contributions written by several hands, the author submitting the text to the journal is required to declare that he/she has correctly indicated the names of all other co-authors, that he/she has obtained their approval of the final version of the article and their consent to publication in the journal. All authors must indicate in their manuscript any conflict of interest that could be interpreted to influence the results or interpretation of their work. All sources of financial support for the project must be indicated. Authors who notice the presence of a significant error or inaccuracy in their published text agree to promptly notify the editors or publisher and work with them to withdraw or correct the text.
General editorial policies
5. Encourage maximum transparency and good publishing ethics
Nodes aims at granting authors, readers, reviewers, and all other parties involved maximum transparency and complete and honest reporting about its work.
5.1 Authorship and responsibility
All signing authors of works published on Nodes take responsibility for the conduct and validity of their research and for what is written in their contributions. Authors acknowledge that all contents are published by Numero Cromatico Editore. Should any authorship dispute arise, it will be resolved at the appropriate institutional level or through other appropriate independent bodies. Nodes editors will then act on the findings, for example, by correcting authorship in published works.
5.2 Conflicts of interest and role of the funding source
Authors are required to declare any relevant financial or non-financial conflict of interest when they submit their papers for publication on Nodes Journal of Art and Neuroscience. Declarations of conflicting interests are published alongside the paper so that readers are informed about them.
5.3 Authors’ publishing ethics
Nodes editors work to ensure that all published papers make a substantial new contribution to their field.
6. Responding to criticisms and concerns
Nodes welcomes and encourages criticism and debate.
6.1 Ensuring integrity of the published record – corrections
When genuine errors in works published on Nodes are pointed out by readers, authors, or editors, which do not render the work invalid, a correction (or erratum) will be published on the website of the journal and on the following issue of the journal. The paper will be corrected with a date of correction. If the error renders the work or substantial parts of it invalid, the paper will be retracted with an explanation as to the reason for retraction (i.e., honest error), with the same aforementioned method.
6.2 Ensuring the integrity of the published record – suspected research or publication misconduct
If serious concerns are raised by readers, reviewers, or others, about the conduct, validity, or reporting of works published on Nodes Journal of Art and Neuroscience, the editors of the journal will initially contact the authors and allow them to respond to the concerns. If that response is unsatisfactory, editors will take the matter to the appropriate institutional level. The editors of Nodes will also do their best to respond to findings from research integrity organisations that indicate misconduct relating to works published on Nodes Journal of Art and Neuroscience. Editors can themselves decide to retract a paper if they are convinced that serious misconduct has happened, even if an investigation by an institution or national body does not recommend it. Editors will respond to all allegations or suspicions of research or publication misconduct raised by readers, reviewers, or other editors. In general, they acknowledge collective responsibility for the research record of the journal and will act whenever they become aware of potential misconduct if at all possible.
6.3 Encourage scholarly debate
Nodes welcomes readers’ criticisms to works published by the journal and will consider publishing them to foster scientific debate, as long as they are proposed in a timely manner. The authors of the original works will be given the opportunity to reply to further promote the debate. Any criticism that raises the possibility of misconduct will be further investigated even if it is received a long time after publication.
7. Ensuring a fair and appropriate peer review process
Nodes editors and editorial committee organize and use peer review fairly and wisely. The peer review processes is clearly explained in the information for authors’ page on the journal’s website, where it is also indicated which parts of the journal are peer reviewed.
7.1 Decision whether to review
Nodes editors may reject a paper without peer review when it is deemed unsuitable for the journal’s readers or is of poor quality. This decision is made in a fair and unbiased way and the criteria used to make this decision are made explicit to the author. The decision not to send a paper for peer reviewing is only based on the academic content of the paper, and it is not influenced by the nature of the authors or their host institution.
7.2 Interaction with peer reviewers
Nodes editors use appropriate peer reviewers for papers that are considered for publication by selecting people with sufficient expertise and avoiding those with conflicts of interest. Nodes editors ensure that reviews are received in a timely manner. Peer reviewers are told what is expected of them and are informed about any changes in editorial policies. Peer reviewers are asked to assess research and publication ethics issues (i.e., whether they think the research was done and reported ethically, or if they have any suspicion of plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or redundant publication). Nodes editors have a policy to request a formal conflict of interest declaration from peer reviewers and ask peer reviewers to inform them about any such conflict of interest as soon as possible so that they can make a decision on whether an unbiased review is possible. Certain conflicts of interest may disqualify a peer reviewer.
Nodes editors stress confidentiality of the material to peer reviewers.
7.3 Reviewer misconduct
Nodes editors take reviewer misconduct seriously and pursue any allegation of breach of confidentiality, non-declaration of conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), inappropriate use of confidential material, or delay of peer review for competitive advantage. Allegations of serious reviewer misconduct, such as plagiarism, are taken to the institutional level.
7.4 Interaction with authors
Nodes editors make it clear to authors that the role of the peer reviewer is to provide recommendations on acceptance or rejection. Correspondence from editors is usually with the corresponding author, who have the responsibility to involve co-authors at all stages. Nodes editors communicate with all authors at first submission and at final acceptance stage to ensure all authors are aware of the submission and have approved the publication. Normally, Nodes editors pass on all peer reviewers comments in their entirety. However, in exceptional cases, it may be necessary to exclude parts of a review, if it, for example, contains libelous or offensive remarks.
Nodes editors guarantee that such editorial discretion is not inappropriately used to suppress inconvenient comments. Should there be good reasons to involve additional reviewers at a later stage in the process, it will be communicated to authors. The final editorial decision and reasons for this will be communicated to authors and reviewers. If a paper is rejected, Nodes editors welcome appeals from authors. Editors, however, are not obliged to overturn their decision.
8. Editorial decision-making
Nodes editors guarantee that decisions on publications are as fair and unbiased as possible.
8.1 Editorial and journal processes
All editorial processes are made clear in the information for authors on the journal’s webpage, where it is stated what is expected of authors, which types of papers are published, and how papers are handled by the journal. All editors are fully familiar with the journal policies, aim, and scope. The final responsibility for all decisions rests with the managing editor.
8.2 Editorial conflicts of interest
Nodes editors and scientific committee are not involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest, for example if they work or have worked in the same institution and collaborated with the authors, if they own stock in a particular company, or if they have a personal relationship with the authors. Nodes has a process in place to handle papers submitted by editors or editorial board members to ensure unbiased and independent handling of such papers. This process is stated in the information for authors.