Physics Access
Complaints Process
The authors are welcome to complain and ask explanation if they perceive any misconduct in any applicable policies and ethical guidelines. The authors can raise their complaints by sending an e-mail to editor-in-chief@physicsaccess.com or support@physicsaccess.com.
Complaints Categorization
An author or any other scholar may submit their complaints about any issues related to:
- Plagiarism
- Copyright violation
- Text Recycling
- Duplicate Submission
- Duplicate Information Published in Translation
- Deceiving in research results or wrong research results
- Unrevealed conflicts of interest
- Bias in the review process
- The peer-review comments are unsatisfactorily
- Authorship issues
- Policy for Dealing with Complaints
Once a complaint is received, an acknowledgement is sent to the complainant with the assurance that appropriate action will be taken on the complaint within three working days excluding the complaint receiving date.
The investigation process is initiated by the journal handling team according to the directions of the editor-in-chief. After the investigation is over, a meeting is held with a complete report on the complaint. The decision is taken and the same is forwarded to the concerned scholar through their submitted email ID.
We consider complaints as an opportunity to improve our existing manuscript processing policy.
Authorship Complaints
Every author of a contribution must be credited as such. It is equally as important that a person not be named as an author when he or she is not.
According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, “How to spot authorship problems” in 2008, key indicators of potential authorship issues include: an unusually long or short author list, discrepancies between the manuscript language and the cover letter, authors listed who appear not to be experts in the research area, a lack of clarity regarding individual contributions, and situations where the corresponding author seems unable to adequately respond to reviewer comments; essentially, any situation where the authorship attribution does not seem to align with the expected level of contribution to the research.
Key points about identifying authorship problems:
- Guest authorship: Including individuals on the author list who did not make significant contributions to the research (e.g., a senior researcher added to enhance credibility without actively participating).
- Ghost authorship: Excluding individuals who made substantial contributions to the research from the author list (e.g., a researcher employed by a pharmaceutical company who conducted the study but is not listed as an author).
- Gift authorship: Giving authorship to someone who did not contribute significantly to the research, often as a courtesy or to gain favour.
- Unclear contribution breakdown: When the roles of each author in the research are not clearly defined or articulated within the manuscript.
- Author changes during revision: Adding or removing authors without proper justification or explanation during the peer review process.
