Publications Ethics and Best Practice

Virtual Archaeology Review makes a commitment to the academic community by ensuring the ethics and quality of its published articles. As a benchmark, our journal uses the Code of Conduct and Good Practices which, for scientific journals, defined for editors and publishers of peer reviewed journals by the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE): http://publicationethics.org/. It guarantees simultaneously an appropriate answer to the readers and authors’ needs, guaranteeing the quality of the published, protecting and respecting the content of the articles as well as the integrity of them. The Editorial Board is committed to publish corrections, aclarations, retractions and apologies as far as it is necessary.

Virtual Archaeology Review has a policy to publish articles based on artefacts from legitimate sources only.

Our journal thereby guarantees an appropriate response to the needs of readers and authors, ensuring the quality of the published work, protecting and respecting the content and integrity of the articles. The Editorial Board will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies in case it is necessary.

In compliance with these best practices, Virtual Archaeology Review has published the arbitration system that is followed for the selection of articles as well as the evaluation criteria to be applied by the anonymous, external peer reviewers. Virtual Archaeology Review keeps these criteria current, based solely on the scientific importance, the originality, clarity and relevance of the presented article. Our journal guarantees the confidentiality of the evaluation process at any time: the anonymity of both the reviewers and the authors; the reviewed content; the score and comments reported by the reviewers and any other communication issued by the editorial, advisory and scientific boards, in case it proceed.

Equally, the strictest confidentiality applies to possible clarifications, claims or complaints that any author may wish to refer to the journal’s committees or the article reviewers.

Virtual Archaeology Review declares its commitment to respect the integrity of the work already published. For this reason, plagiarism is strictly prohibited and texts that are identified as being plagiarised, or having fraudulent content, will be eliminated or not published in the Virtual Archaeology Review. To verify originality of the article, papers will be revised by the detection service Similitary Check.

In accepting the terms and conditions expressed by our journal, authors guarantee that the article and the materials associated with it are original and do not infringe copyright. The authors will also have to warrant that, in the case of joint authorship, there has been full consensus by all authors that the article has not been submitted to, or published previously (except in the form of an abstract, short paper, part of a published lecture, academic thesis or diploma thesis), in any other media.