PatternIQ Mining (PIQM) is committed to high standards of publication ethics. The journal follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. This statement sets out what is expected of everyone involved in publishing an article in the journal: authors, editors, reviewers and the publisher.
Duties of authors
- Submit original work that has not been published before and is not under consideration elsewhere. Earlier versions made public as a preprint or thesis must be disclosed.
- Present results honestly, without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate manipulation of data or images. Keep the underlying data and provide it to the editors on request.
- Acknowledge all sources and cite the work of others accurately. See the Plagiarism Policy.
- List as authors all those, and only those, who meet the authorship criteria.
- Declare funding and any conflict of interest.
- Obtain ethics approval and informed consent where the research involves human participants, personal data or animals, and state this in the manuscript. See Research Data and Ethics Approval.
- Disclose the use of generative AI tools as required by the policy on the Use of AI and AI-Assisted Tools.
- Tell the editor promptly if a significant error is found in a published article, and cooperate in correcting or retracting it.
Duties of editors
- Evaluate manuscripts fairly and on their scholarly merit alone, without regard to the authors' nationality, gender, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs or institutional affiliation.
- Keep submissions, reviewer identities and reviewer reports confidential.
- Select reviewers with suitable expertise and without conflicts of interest, and ensure that every research article is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers.
- Take no part in decisions on manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest, including their own submissions.
- Act on credible concerns about a submitted or published article, following the relevant COPE guidance.
- Publish corrections, expressions of concern and retractions when they are needed.
Duties of reviewers
- Review objectively, constructively and on time.
- Keep manuscripts confidential and declare any conflict of interest.
- Alert the editor to suspected misconduct.
Full guidance is given in the Reviewer Guidelines.
Duties of the publisher
- Respect the independence of editorial decisions. See Ownership and Management.
- Keep published content openly and permanently accessible. See the Digital Archiving and Self-Archiving Policy.
- Support the editors in investigating concerns and in publishing corrections and retractions.
Practices the journal does not accept
- Fabrication or falsification of data, results or images
- Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism and undisclosed text recycling
- Duplicate or redundant publication, and simultaneous submission to more than one journal
- Gift, guest or ghost authorship, and the sale or purchase of authorship
- Citation manipulation, including coercive or excessive self-citation
- Manipulation of the peer review process, such as suggesting fake reviewers
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest
- Research carried out without the required ethics approval or consent
Handling allegations of misconduct
Allegations about a submitted manuscript or a published article are examined by the Editor-in-Chief, following the COPE flowcharts for the type of case concerned. The people concerned are given the opportunity to respond. Depending on the outcome, the journal may:
- ask the authors for an explanation, the original data or documentation;
- reject the manuscript;
- publish a correction, an expression of concern or a retraction (see Corrections and Retractions);
- inform the authors' institution or funder;
- decline future submissions from the authors for a stated period.
Allegations are handled in confidence. Anonymous reports are considered when they contain enough detail to be assessed.
Reporting a concern
Concerns about any article or about the conduct of the journal can be sent to editor.piqm@gmail.com. See also Complaints and Appeals.