The Ethical Statements of the Journal of Economics, Finance and Sustainability (EFS) are based on the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at www.publicationethics.org. EFS follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines and Core Practices for Journal Editors and aims to adhere to the Best Practice Principles. As a strong scientific community (publisher, editors, authors and reviewers), EFS is obliged to comply with these ethical principles.
PUBLISHER RESPONSIBILITIES
The Journal of Economics, Finance and Sustainability is an independent, non-profit, self-published academic journal. "The Journal of Economics, Finance and Sustainability" "EFS" is hereinafter referred to as the "Publisher".
The publisher must develop policies and design the journal's website in accordance with COPE's Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scientific Publishing.
The publisher agrees that all accepted manuscripts are published open access under the CC BY license, with no article submission, processing, and/or publication fees.
The publisher agrees to work with editors, editorial board members, and editorial assistants to periodically determine journal policies consistent with COPE, and will follow these policies.
The publisher guarantees editorial independence, while respecting the peer review process and refraining from involvement in editorial decisions.
The publisher guarantees timely publication of volumes and issues.
The publisher declares that it will remain neutral regarding jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations in published maps.
The publisher maintains guidelines and policies for research ethics, consent, including confidentiality, and legal requirements for human and animal research.
The publisher enforces the rules of engagement between the publisher, editors, and third parties in any contract, protects intellectual property and copyright, respects confidentiality, and promotes editorial independence.
The publisher undertakes to ensure that no sponsor, even if they financially support the publisher, will be involved in decisions regarding the journal's editorial policies.
The publisher undertakes to comply with the journal's editorial policies, particularly in terms of transparency and integrity (e.g., research funding, conflicts of interest, and reporting standards).
The publisher undertakes to comply with the journal's editorial policies, particularly in terms of appeals and complaints.
The publisher undertakes to protect the integrity of scientific work.
The publisher undertakes to assist third parties (grantors, institutions, etc.) responsible for the investigation of suspected research and publication misconduct and, where possible, to facilitate the resolution of such cases.
The publisher undertakes to publish clarifications, corrections, and retractions in accordance with the decisions of the editorial board.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS
The editors of the Journal of Economics, Finance, and Sustainability (EFS) are independent, and decisions regarding the editorial review process are not determined by any third-party agency or government policies.
EFS editors are responsible for the peer review process of articles and make the final decision on which articles will be published based on the comments of the reviewers and editorial board members.
EFS editors conduct editorial review of submitted articles based solely on their scientific merit, regardless of the author's gender, age, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, political views, and institutional affiliation.
EFS editors are responsible for implementing and enforcing the journal's publication policies.
EFS editors form a committee of editorial board members to manage the process in cases of copyright infringement, plagiarism, slander, etc.
EFS editors, editorial board members, and editorial assistants cannot disclose any information about the submitted manuscript to anyone other than the relevant author and publisher.
The EFS editor-in-chief has full authority to publish the journal content in a timely manner regarding accepted manuscripts.
EFS editors are responsible for assigning manuscripts to referees with expertise in relevant research areas.
EFS editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed by at least two referees whose research is relevant to the submitted manuscript. If the decision is not final, EFS editors assign a third reviewer to reach a final decision.
EFS editors, editorial board members, and editorial assistants may not use unpublished material and information in submitted manuscripts for their own research purposes without the written permission of the authors.
EFS editors may not use privileged information or ideas obtained from the processing of articles for personal gain and are obliged to keep them confidential.
EFS editors refrain from editing manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest arising from competition, collaboration or other relationships with any author, company or their affiliates; instead, they must ask another member of the editorial board to edit the manuscript.
EFS editors require all contributors to published manuscripts to disclose any relevant conflicting interests and to publish corrections if a conflict of interest arises after publication. If necessary, other appropriate action, such as a retraction or statement of concern, will be taken.
EFS editors protect the integrity of published articles by correcting and retracting when ethical concerns arise regarding a submitted or published article.
EFS editors are responsible for monitoring referee and editorial misconduct. When ethical complaints are made regarding submitted or published articles, EFS editors must take action in accordance with the journal's policies.
EFS editors will investigate any reported unethical publishing activity, even if it occurs years after publication. If there is a legitimate reason for the unethical violation, it will be published in the journal, with retraction or correction rules applied.
EFS editors follow the COPE Flowcharts when dealing with suspected cases of misconduct.
EFS editors, editorial board members, and editorial assistants may submit original manuscripts to EFS, but they should be aware that they will not be involved in peer review and editorial decision-making for their own manuscripts. In this case, the publisher selects a guest editor to independently conduct peer review and editorial decision-making for the manuscripts of EFS editors, editorial board members, and editorial assistants. The publisher makes clear to readers (for example, through a footnote or endnote in the article or on the journal website) how EFS staff will conduct the manuscripts. EFS follows the COPE Guidelines when it encounters disagreements.
REVIEWER RESPONSIBILITIES
Peer review is the process used to assess the quality of manuscripts before publication. Therefore, independent researchers whose research interests are relevant to the submitted article should evaluate the articles for validity, originality and importance to help the editors decide whether the article should be published in EFS.
EFS reviewers should accept that all articles are reviewed impartially based on their scientific content, regardless of the author's gender, age, sexual orientation, race, citizenship, ethnicity, religion, political views and institutional affiliation.
EFS reviewers are expected to inform the responsible editor if any conflict of interest arises in order to reject the review request for the assigned article.
EFS reviewers must acknowledge that they are constructive and objective in their reviews, and must avoid being hostile or inflammatory, and making defamatory or derogatory personal comments.
EFS reviewers must acknowledge that they have reviewed manuscripts in a timely manner that fall within their research expertise.
EFS reviewers may not use privileged information or ideas gained from reviewed manuscripts for their own personal advantage/disadvantage or to discredit others.
EFS reviewers must acknowledge that all information regarding manuscripts is kept confidential.
EFS reviewers must acknowledge that the detailed review report should be shared confidentially with EFS editors through the journal management system.
EFS reviewers can indicate the following four decisions for submitted articles:
Accept for Publication
Revisions Required (Accept with minor revisions: Revisions will be reviewed by editors)
Resubmit for Review (Major revisions: Will be reviewed for a second round)
Reject (Not recommended for publication)
Submit (Not in the journal's scope: Reject)
A third or fourth reviewer may be appointed at the discretion of the reviewers. In such a case, the same review process will be followed.
AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES
Anyone who meets the EFS criteria for authorship must be listed as an author. EFS expects all authors to take public responsibility for the content of articles submitted to EFS. All authors' contributions must be disclosed in the "Acknowledgements" section of the article. All authors must be contacted via email at the time of submission to ensure that they are aware of and approve the submission, content, and authorship of the article.
Authors must confirm that submitted manuscripts are not plagiarized, unpublished, original, and have not been submitted elsewhere.
Authors must confirm that they take full responsibility for plagiarism, copyright infringement, or other violations. Therefore, if their manuscripts contain copyrighted material belonging to third parties, copyrighted tables, figures, figures, or quotes or other works published elsewhere, they must obtain permission or approval and declare it clearly to the editorial board in a cover letter at the time of submission.
Authors must have obtained approval and ethical approval and must comply with ethical regulations if their research involves human and animal subjects, and must declare how they apply ethical principles in a footnote or in the methods section.
Authors must clearly declare any potential conflict of interest for each author.
Authors must present their completed/written manuscripts honestly, openly, and without falsification, fabrication, or inappropriate data manipulation. Authors must clearly present their research methods so that researchers can verify the results and not make false or deliberately misleading statements that lead to unethical behavior.
Authors may be asked to provide raw data for editorial review and, in any case, should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable period after publication.
Authors should only submit manuscripts that are ethically and responsibly prepared and that comply with the journal's publication policies and scope.
Authors should acknowledge that sources such as data/support/funding were used in the development of the manuscript. These sources may be defined as Grant Makers, Foundations or institutions that provided ideas and expertise that substantially supported the research.
Authors should acknowledge that they must inform the EFS editors if they discover any errors or inaccuracies in their manuscript after it has been published.
Authors should submit their manuscripts to only one journal at a time. Authors should be aware that submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at a time constitutes unethical publication behavior and is unacceptable.
Authorship and Contributions
The roles of all authors should be defined in the "Declaration" section of the manuscript and should be contacted at the time of submission to ensure that they are aware of and approve the submission, its content and authorship.
The order of authors should be based on their contributions to the article. Authorship should not be ranked according to academic position or other indicators of power. All contributing authors should be credited in the order of their contribution to the writing process.
Anyone who contributes to the production of an intellectual output is entitled to be listed as an author. “Ghost” authorship should not be permitted, and it is unacceptable to list as authors individuals who have not directly contributed to the research or its written output.
The status and institutional affiliation of all authors should be made visible in their research and output.
Authors have a fundamental obligation to acknowledge and cite all external sources, financial or in-kind, such as organizations or sponsors, who have contributed directly or indirectly to the research.
Authors should disclose the publication history of articles or books they submit for publication. An existing article or a book is significantly similar in content and format to a previously published article, this should be noted and the location of the previous publication should be indicated.
When the Journal of Economics, Finance and Sustainability (EFS) encounters disagreements among its authors, the EFS follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)—click here and here to view.
December 30, 2025
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