Statement of Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology 

All submitted manuscripts must comply to Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology policies as described. In all instances, Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology closely follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles of publication ethics laid out in its core practices documents. Their advice includes support on handling issues such as: conflicts of interest, authorship and contributorship issues and disputes, misconduct allegations and data issues, overlap and plagiarism, and peer review integrity.

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology Editorial Boards are independent, and the publisher will not interfere with editorial decision making. Where ethical or legal concerns are present, a decision may be changed; acceptance of a manuscript may be rescinded should an ethical issue or conflict with policies be identified. Manuscripts that do not conform to Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology ethical policies may be withdrawn from submission by the publisher.

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology performs checks on all manuscripts to confirm that they conform with the Publication Ethics Guidelines. Some of the checks described are performed manually by the Journal Editorial Office teams. Where potential issues are flagged, these are confirmed by a human decision maker. Where a manuscript does not conform to policies or is flagged upon check, in many cases, an Academic Editor is consulted.

Publication Ethics Statement

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology fully adhere to COPE Core Practices and to its Guidelines.

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology uphold a rigorous double blind peer-review process together with clear ethical policies and standards to support the addition of high-quality scientific studies to the field of scholarly publication. Where we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking necessary action to maintain the integrity of the literature and ensure the safety of research participants.

Submitted manuscripts should conform with Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology editorial policies and ethical policies as outlined on this webpage and Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology Instructions for Authors. In addition, submissions should adhere to individual journal guidelines.

Principles:

• Prevention—early detection and flagging of potential ethics issues via automated and manual checks of peer review and manuscript.
• Neutrality—to be fair and objective, making assessments to correct the literature where necessary.
• Transparency—keeping all parties informed when possible and appropriate, and providing the time for them to respond.
• Consistency—ensuring standard processes are followed for the investigation of issues and applicability of policies, and principles and flowcharts of COPE are upheld.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors

Authors submitting to Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology must ensure that their manuscripts are ethically sound and meet industry-recognized standards that are reflected in Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology  policies.

Authors who submit their manuscripts to Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology must:

• Accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
• Uphold accurate authorship, by including all and only those who qualify for authorship and clearly stating their contribution.
• Disclose any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest at submission.
• Present their data and methods with attention to detail. Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the manuscript so that other researchers can replicate their work. Raw data must be made publicly available unless there is a compelling reason otherwise (e.g., patient confidentiality).
• Be aware that simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not permitted.
• Original research results must be novel and not previously published, and any translations must abide by our policy on translations.
• Obtain permission to publish from the copyright holder for any previously published content (including quotations, figures or tables).
• Communicate errors and inaccuracies found after publication promptly.

This list is not exhaustive, and authors should be aware of local regulations and accepted norms within academic publishing.

Authorship

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which state that in order to qualify for authorship of a manuscript, authors must meet all four criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments. More detailed guidance on authorship is given by ICMJE.

Different disciplines adopt their own criteria, for example, the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) guidelines are well-known in biomedical fields, the APA (American Psychological Association) guidelines are used in Psychology, the EuChemS (European Chemical Society) guidelines are adopted in Chemistry, whereas in the arts, humanities and social sciences, publications by single authors are more common. However, the minimum recognized requirements for authorship are making a substantial contribution to the research and being accountable for the work undertaken (COPE Discussion document: authorship).

Any change to the author list during the editorial process or after publication should be approved by all authors, including any who have been removed. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology.

Author Contributions

For complete transparency, all submitted manuscripts should include an author contributorship statement that specifies the work of each author. For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided.

Please refer to CRediT taxonomy for an explanation of terms. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.

The corresponding author should act as a point of contact between the editor and the other authors, keep co-authors informed, and involve them in major decisions about the publication.

Joint first authors can be indicated by the inclusion of the statement “X and X contributed equally to this paper” in the manuscript. The roles of the equal authors should also be adequately disclosed in the contributorship statement.

For review articles, where individual statements are less applicable, a statement should be included that clarifies who was responsible for the ideation, who performed the literature search and/or data analysis, and who drafted and revised the work.

For articles that are principally based a student’s dissertation or thesis, Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology recommends that the student is listed as principal author.

Changes to Authorship

Authors are expected to carefully consider authorship before manuscript submission. Any change to the author list should be made during the editorial process, before manuscript acceptance. Authorship changes, including any addition, removal, or rearrangement of author names will require the approval of all authors including any to be removed. To request any change in authorship, the journal must receive a completed authorship change form that includes the signatures of all authors, and provides a reason for the change. Any changes to authorship requested after manuscript acceptance will result in a delay in publication. If the manuscript has already been published, requests for a change in authorship will be evaluated and require the publication of a Correction. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology.

Authorship Disputes

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines when it comes to resolving authorship disputes that may occur either during processing or post-publication. Here, COPE guidelines clearly state that Journals are not in a position to adjudicate on appropriate authorship contributions (https:/publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/authorship) and that disputed authorship is not usually grounds for retraction when “there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings” (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines).

In situations where disputes cannot be settled by the effected parties, Journals will reach out to an appropriate Institution or Governing Body for final adjudication. Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology reserves the right to amend authorship lists in line with Institution or Governing Body recommendations.

Citation Policies

Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.

Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.

Research Data Policies

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology is committed to supporting open scientific exchange and enabling our authors to achieve best practices in sharing and archiving research data. We encourage all authors of articles published in Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology to share their research data including, but not limited to protocols, analytic methods, raw data, processed data, code, software, algorithms, and study material. The data should be characterized by FAIR Principles – findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – adding credit, assignable, quality, so that other researchers can locate and use the data.

We recommend that data and code should be deposited in a trusted repository that will allow for maximum reuse (see the Data Preservation section below). If this is not possible, authors are encouraged to share the specific reason in the Data Availability Statement and make this material available upon request to interested researchers. In addition, research materials necessary to enable the reproduction of an experiment should be indicated in the Materials and Methods section. Individual journal guidelines can be found at the journal ‘Instructions for Authors’ page. Data sharing policies concern the minimal dataset that supports the central findings of a published study. Generated data should be publicly available and cited in accordance with journal guidelines.

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology data policies are informed by TOP Guidelines.

Where ethical, legal, or privacy issues are present, data should not be shared. The authors should clarify the availability status of the data upon submission and make any limitations or exceptions clear in the Data Availability Statement. Authors should ensure that the data shared is in accordance with consent provided by participants on the use of confidential data. Authors should ensure that the publication of such data does not compromise the anonymity of the participants or breach local data protection laws.

In situations where access is restricted to protect confidential or proprietary information, authors will be requested to clearly explain the restrictions on the dataset and make the data available upon request, with permission for the purposes of peer review.

Complaints

Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology takes seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication. The Editorial Board is committed to correcting the papers when needed and following through on requests from institutional investigations. Any complaints concerning the review process and/or work with the editors of an issue, as well as complaints concerning the post-publication of an article (1. appeals of editorial decisions by the authors, and 2. complaints about
publication ethics, errors, or scholarly misconduct) should be addressed to bull-st@upg-ploiesti.ro).

Authors’ complaints about articles which were proved to be plagiarized are ignored, as well as those regarding articles which do not engage with the relevant CFP’s thematic issue and have therefore been automatically rejected.

Complaints from readers who may respond to published articles are carefully considered and a reply will be sent to readers. Please use the email provided on the site for sending complaints (bull-st@upg-ploiesti.ro). In case readers announce the editors about necessary corrections, plagiarism, publications ethics that the editors were not aware of, the editors take further action (see Corrections and Retraction underneath).

According to both Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology policies and guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Editorial Board of Romanian Journal of Petroleum & Gas Technology has mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication in case there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable (untrue or the result of fabrication of data/falsification/manipulation); in case plagiarism was detected after publication; in case redundant publication of material has been discovered; in case of reports (that prove true) about unethical research; in case the peer review process has been compromised in any way; in case the author(s) failed to disclose a major conflict of interest that was hidden from the editor(s) and the reviewers.

Correction

In case only short corrections are needed, the article will be modified by the author, approved by the editor and republished in the online form, with mention of the date of correction in the article. Correction in the printed issue is no longer possible, but a Note regarding the respective correction will appear in the next printed issue.

Retraction

In case of retraction, the article will be withdrawn from the site and the mention ‘Retracted’ will appear instead. In the printed issue of the next volume a Note will specify that the respective article was retracted.