Conflicts and Ethics

Conflict of interest/Competing interests

The Forests Monitor expects authors, reviewers, editors, and readers to conduct themselves with the highest level of professional ethics and standards.

At the end of submitted manuscript, authors must include a “Conflict of interest” section, listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest.”

A peer review is an essential component of the scientific process. It should be an objective evaluation of the facts presented in the manuscript. Any personal criticism is unwarranted and inappropriate. You should be able to support your judgment of the article in such a way that the Editors and authors will be able to incorporate your feedback to improve the article. Any relevant published work that has been omitted should be pointed out.

Reviewers and editors are expected to provide a bias-free evaluation of the work under consideration. Any personal interest or relationship that could potentially affect the review should be declared before agreeing to review the manuscript. If a competing interest exists editors and reviewers will be excluded from the peer review process.

Reviewers should call the Editor’s attention to any irregularities in the manuscript, including suspected plagiarism of text or figures, or any other type of suspected scientific misconduct.

Reviewers should treat the manuscript as a confidential document. It should not be shown to others, or its contents disseminated in any way before publication.

The editors may always ask for further information relating to competing interests. Please contact the journal at [email protected] if you think you may have a competing interest. FM handles competing interests by following COPE guidelines (link) and ongoing debate on this subject.

Publication Ethics

Forests Monitor expects authors, reviewers, editors, and readers to conduct themselves with the highest level of professional ethics and standards.

Authors must make clear any personal interest or relationship that could potentially be affected by the publication of their manuscript. All sources of funding should be disclosed in the Acknowledgments section. 

Forests Monitor adheres to COPE guidelines for AI use (link), which require authors to disclose the usage and specific AI tools transparently in the Methods and Data section. Authors remain fully responsible for all manuscript content, including AI-generated sections, and are accountable for any ethical breaches.

Your article should present a clear and concise account of the research performed, as well as an objective discussion of the results and their significance. The article should have sufficient details and/or references to publicly available information such that a reader could reasonably expect to reproduce the experiment.

Authorship should be limited to those who were directly responsible for a significant portion of the research or writing. This includes the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of results. All persons who provided such input should be given the opportunity to be listed as an author, and no one who was not involved in these ways should be given credit as an author. Individuals who have contributed in ways other than those given above, e.g., by providing funding, may be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section.

All authors should be given the chance to review the manuscript before submission. FM expects the names of all authors and their current email addresses to be provided upon submission of an article to OJS. Failure to do so will delay, and in some cases prevent, publication.

It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure the manuscript is accurate and complete. Any error discovered in a published article should be immediately brought to the attention of the journal.

The work of other researchers should be properly acknowledged. In most cases, this involves citing previous publications. Private correspondence or discussion should not be reported without the express permission of the party involved. Authors must provide proof that permission has been obtained to reuse figures that have been previously published, and proper attribution should be included in the text of the manuscript.

FM considers plagiarism—the use of previously published or openly accessible material without citation or permission for use—including self-plagiarism, to be unethical scientific behavior. Manuscripts that contain plagiarized text or figures will not be accepted. We use Plagiarism Checker powered by Grammarly and Artificial Intelligence content detector software to check the originality of manuscripts. For more information on Plagiarism Checker, visit their website (link).

The editors reserve the right to reject or delete articles for which irrefutable evidence of unauthorized copying becomes known to them.

FM also considers the concurrent submission of a manuscript to different journals to be unethical scientific behaviour.

Research misconduct

In the Forests Monitor, the misconduct refers to fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. The research misconduct, as defined by the Office of Research Integrity, may include:

(a) Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

(b) Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

(c) Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. This also applies to the use of artificial intelligence, which must be appropriately disclosed in the Methods and Data section (refer to COPE guidelines for AI use (link). 

(d) Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion.”

Addressing research misconduct

FM takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct. Our Editors evaluate each potential research misconduct on case-by-case basis and follow the it may be necessary for the Editors to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s) in cases of suspected misconduct relating either to research or publication. The Journal may also seek advice from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and discuss anonymised cases in the COPE Forum.

In cases of proven research misconduct involving published articles, or where the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted.

The peer-review process helps Editors to investigate of possible research misconduct and verify that submitted to FM research is characterized by research integrity, while also ensuring confidentiality, fairness, and prompt attention, maintaining public trust in the research results. FM uses Plagiarism Checker powered by Grammarly and Artificial Intelligence content detector software to perform the manuscript originality check.

If reviewers suspect plagiarism, fraud, or any other type of scientific misconduct, please let the Editor know. Please provide as much detail as possible in these cases, e.g., citations of previously published material.

Complaints process

Anyone with a concern or complaint should contact the Journal at [email protected] and provide details of their complaint.

Authors may complain on the editorial decision to one of the Editor who is not leading the manuscript. Authors must present detailed justification why they do not agree with Journal decision on their manuscripts.