Policy on Publishing Integrity

The Italian Physical Society (SIF - Società Italiana di Fisica), founded in 1897, is a non-profit association with the aim to promote, favour and protect the progress of Physics in Italy and worldwide. In the process of disseminating knowledge and allowing scientific advancement, publication of results has a fundamental role. In line with its philosophy, SIF is committed as publisher to the highest standards of publishing integrity and expects that all parts involved in the publication process follow the highest level of professional ethics and standards.

Articles published in SIF journals are subjected to rigorous peer review. The editorial boards of the journals are made of specialists that have a high reputation in their respective communities. They are assigned the papers and choose reviewers who are requested to provide objective and constructive comments aimed, whenever possible, at improving the work. Reviewers and editors must also disclose any conflict of interest and avoid cases in which they cannot provide an unbiased evaluation, and to report immediately any suspiction of duplicate publication, fabrication of data or plagiarism. Information obtained in the peer review process are considered privileged and kept confidential and cannot be used for competitive gain.

Authors are expected to pursue objectiveness and rigour in all aspects of their work. Corresponding authors are required to ensure that all contributors to the work are listed as authors and are aware of the paper, from submission through publication. Authorship should be limited to those who contributed significantly to the conception, design, execution or analysis of the study, participated in drafting, reviewing, and/or revising the manuscript for intellectual content and approved the version to be published. Other individuals who contributed to the study should be acknowledged but not listed as authors. Also, the sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed/acknowledged in the manuscript.

Proper acknowledgment should be always attributed to previous work used in the research project. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work, and must obtain permission to re-use any previously published materials from the original publisher and include in the manuscript appropriate credit lines for all previously published material. Re-used material should be clearly identified even when it was previously published by the authors themselves. Plagiarism, i.e. reproducing text or other materials from other papers without including the necessary credits, constitutes highly unethical scientific behaviour and is never acceptable. Submitting the same or substantially similar work simultaneously to more than one journal is also unethical and unacceptable. Reporting manipulated or fabricated research data is the most extreme cases of misconduct in scientific publishing.

All measures are taken in order to identify such occurrences previous to publication. In the contrary case, should a published paper result to have infringed one or more of the above, a retraction note is immediately published online and the author and other relevant people informed accordingly.

SIF adheres to the principles of The Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) on how to deal with acts of misconduct. Resources and guidelines for editors, reviewers, and authors are available on the COPE website.

SIF reserves the right to refuse submissions from authors who are abusive to staff, referees or editors.