Publications Ethics

Ethical Guidelines

Landscape Online continuously evaluates and improves all processes in compliance to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the ethical guidelines as recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authorship

To be named as author, people need to contribute substantially to the writing of a manuscript or to the research presented. During submission we ask authors to clarify roles and contributions of the different co-authors.
Relating to CRediT and in accordance to the ICMJE authors should have a) substantially contributed to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND b) drafted or revised the work critically for important intellectual content; AND c) give final approval of the version to be published; AND d) agree 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.
Changes to the author list after submission have to be discussed with the responsible editor and are only permitted in exceptional cases, for example when additional work was required during the revision of the manuscript. All co-authors have to agree to the change. 

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) 

Attributing authorship to an LLM, such as ChatGPT, does not align with our authorship criteria. However, we acknowledge the value and utility of LLMs in the research process. To address this, we recommend that authors who use LLMs in their research properly document this in the Methods section of their manuscripts. By documenting the use of LLMs in the Methods section, authors can provide transparency about their research methods and acknowledge the role of LLMs in generating or assisting with the research findings. This ensures that readers and reviewers are aware of the tools and techniques employed in the research process, promoting the integrity and reproducibility of the work.

Self-Citation

We ask authors to be cautious about self citations. Previous publications should be cited where appropriate but excessive self-citation should be avoided. In particular in cases of excessive self-citations editors may ask to delete individual self-citations in case they are not considered as relevant and substantial. 

For more information please be also aware on the ethical guidelines as recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as well as the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.