Publication Ethics

The Journal of Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS) is committed to publishing and widely disseminating high-quality content. The editorial operations of the TFSS must be governed by rigorous ethical standards that are both transparent and fair. We recognize that the scholarly publishing ecosystem is complex and includes editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers. Our expectation is that all involved have a shared understanding and acceptance of the journal’s policies on publication ethics and malpractice. Our policies are closely aligned with COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Core Practices document, which can be accessed at: COPE Core Practices.

By submitting an article to the Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS), you agree to comply with the following publication ethics and malpractice statement.

Agreement upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editors, the peer reviewers and the publisher.

(The following ethic statements are based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors).

Publication decision
Fair play
Confidentiality
Disclosure and Conflicts of interest
Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decision
Promptness
Confidentiality
Standards of Objectivity
Acknowledgment of Source
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Some of the Items in "COP-approved" File for Reviewers

A person asked to accept the task of refereeing a paper may feel that there is a potential personal or professional conflict of interest, for example, when he or she is asked to referee a manuscript from a recent student, collaborator, or colleague. In such cases, the potential referee should discuss with the editor any possible conflicts of interest, and continue to act only with the agreement of the editor.
A referee who suspects any element of plagiarism in a manuscript under consideration, or any other unethical behaviour, should quickly report these concerns to the editor.

"Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers"

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards
Originality and Plagiarism
Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication
Acknowledgment of Sources
Authorship of the Paper
Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Fundamental errors in published works

Authors of contributions and studies research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her published work, it is the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Authorship Criteria

Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to be allowed to take public responsibility for suitable portions of the content. To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following conditions:

Making a substantial contribution to the work;
Being accountable for the work and its published form;
Conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
Either drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

Some of the Items in "COP-approved" File for Authors

Publication of mathematical results as one’s own when the author has learned of the results from others, for example through published material, lectures, conversation, or earlier informal publication, constitutes plagiarism: this is a form of theft, is unethical, and constitutes serious misconduct.
Each co-author should have contributed significantly to the research reported in any published work, and each person who contributed significantly to the relevant research should be named as a co-author. Further, all named authors should accept joint responsibility for any submitted manuscript and final publication. It is misconduct for one author to submit and to publish joint research without the consent of his or her named co-authors.
In mathematics simultaneous or concurrent submission of a manuscript describing the same research to more than one publication constitutes misconduct. Similarly, in mathematics the publication of the same research in more than one journal or outlet without appropriate acknowledgement and citation constitutes misconduct.
Translations of published or unpublished works should always fully acknowledge the source of the work.
It is unethical to include inappropriate citations of one’s own work or of the work of particular colleagues or of articles in journals with which the author has a connection.

Data Availability

Data availability statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released. The data used to support the findings of study should be available from the corresponding author upon request.

Duties of the Publisher

It is firmly understood to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the process of publishing including authors, the editorial board, the peer reviewer, the publisher, and the Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems.

Some of the Items in "COP-approved" File for Journals and Editors

Journals should respond to an author’s complaints with respect and due process.
In particular, an editor or publisher should acknowledge receipt of a manuscript. A publisher should ensure that the progress of consideration of a submitted manuscript is monitored, and seek diligently to avoid excessive delays in either the refereeing of a paper or the decision process. The publisher must obtain consent to publish either from one author acting on behalf of all authors, or from all authors.
The date of submission of, and the date of any significant changes to, a manuscript should be published; this is important, in particular, in cases of disputes concerning priority.
The editors should inform potential authors of decisions taken in a courteous and timely manner, always passing on constructive criticism and information provided by the referees.
In rare cases, the editors may become convinced that parts of a work that they have published have been plagiarised from another source. In these cases, the editors should request the authors to submit for publication a substantial retraction; if this is not forthcoming, the editors themselves should publish a statement giving details of the plagiarism involved.
Nevertheless, final responsibility for the published work lies with the authors.

"Guidelines for Editors"

The Principles of Transparency

Possible Research Misconducts and Plagiarism

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made-up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.

Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publication

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by one journal should not be submitted to other publications while the manuscript is under review. For the publication of creative works, the journal may make exceptions to the previously published rule; please consult the editor.

Citation Manipulation

Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.

Simultaneous Submission:

Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.

Archiving

The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to journal's content (https://tfss.journals.iau.ir/) is clearly indicated.
This policy sets out the ways in which the authors of TFSS can archive copies of their work on their own web pages, corporate web pages, and various other subject repositories.
TFSS is an open access license, articles can be made available immediately according to the terms of their specific Creative Common license. If an author has published an article under an Open Access license, TFSS would encourage author to share the Version of Record on publication as opposed to the Accepted Manuscript.
Authors may also reuse the Abstract and Citation information (e.g. Title, Author name, Publication dates) of their article anywhere at any time including social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs and Twitter, providing that where possible a link is included back to the article on the TFSS site. Preferably the link should be, or include, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which can be found in the Citation information about the article online.
The accepted version may be placed on: the author's personal website and/or the author's company/institutional repository or archive. Self-archiving of the submitted version is not subject to an embargo period.
TFSS is now formally archived at the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI).

Peer-Review

The Journal of “Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS)” follows a Single-Blind peer-review in which the authors do not know the reviewers. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (https://tfss.journals.iau.ir/journal/process).

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by TFSS Journal as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with TFSS are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (iThenticate). Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The authors are expected to check their manuscript for plagiarism before submission.

The article registration will inform all authors by sending an e-mail to the Journal of “Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS)” website. It is evident that inserting the author’s name in the article is considered as his/her main role in writing the essay if the essay authors have no role in writing the essay and their name has not been mentioned. It is necessary to inform the received information by e-mail immediately. All the authors of the article are responsible for the origin of the work. All assessment rights for plagiarism checking in the journal are reserved.

If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the submission can be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication we reserve the right, as necessary, to issue a correction or retract the article. We reserve the right to notify the institutions of authors about the plagiarism that was found before or after publication.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts submitted to journals are privileged communications that are authors’ private, confidential property, and authors may be harmed by premature disclosure of any or all of a manuscript’s details.
Editors therefore must not share information about manuscripts, including whether they have been received and are under review, their content and status in the review process, criticism by reviewers, and their ultimate fate, to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. TFSS has some policies on confidentiality as follows.
Editors should not publish or publicize peer reviewers’ comments without the permission of the reviewer and author.
Confidentiality may have to be breached if dishonesty or fraud is alleged, but editors should notify authors or reviewers if they intend to do so and confidentiality must otherwise be honored.

Publishing Schedule

TFSS is published two issues per year (semiannual). Every year, two issues are published online in May and November, and at least 12 articles are published in each issue.

All the content from the beginning to the end will be available for ever on TFSS exclusive website (https://tfss.journals.iau.ir/).

Advertising

The policy of TFSS is that it does not have advertisements.

Copyright and Open Access Policies

The Journal of “Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS)” provides immediate open access to its content. “By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
It is our mission to support a greater global exchange of knowledge by making the research published in this journal open to the public and reusable under the terms of a Creative Commons (CC-By 4.0) license. Furthermore, we encourage authors to post their pre-publication manuscripts in institutional repositories or on their websites before and during the submission process and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. This journal is a fully open-access journal, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.

Complaints and Appeals Policy

We welcome genuine appeals to editor decisions. However, you will need to provide strong evidence or new /WebUsers/information in response to the editor’s and reviewers’ comments. The final decisions of the Editorial Board are based on the opinions of the reviewers and their unbiased judgment and are therefore usually irrevocable. However, if you have a complaint about the final decision of the publication and think that there is a case for appeal, follow the following process:

Provide your reasonable and acceptable reasons and explain why you do not agree with this decision.
Provide any information or new data that you want to be considered in the review process to the editors of the publication.
If you think there was a conflict of interest in the arbitration process, provide your evidence.

only one appeal per article will be accepted. After receiving the appeal, the editors may involve the referees and editors who have evaluated the manuscript. The decisions of the editors and editorial board regarding appeals are final and may include rejection of the manuscript, request for further peer review, or request to submit a revised version of the manuscript.

Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct

A committee consisting of the editor-in-chief and editorial board members, as determined by the editor-in-chief, who has specific expertise in the area being investigated, will investigate misconduct allegations. The suitable actions were taken based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The Journal of “Transactions on Fuzzy Sets and Systems (TFSS)” follows the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and abides by its Code of Conduct in dealing with potential cases of misconduct.

Important: We kindly recommend the authors, reviewers, editors and all those who have a share in publishing an article to read the "Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement".

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