Environment and Social Psychology

Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. is committed to maintaining academic integrity and quality, we make policies for the correction and retraction of articles published. If authors find an error or inaccuracy in an article published in our journals, or need to retract an article, please refer to the following policies:

• Correction
• Withdrawal policy
• Expression of Concern

Correction 

If authors discover any errors or need to make changes to an article before/after publication, authors should notify our editorial department as soon as possible. We will communicate with the author to ensure that corrections are made in a timely manner and that the least disruption to the manuscript is maintained as possible. Corrections should cover corrections limited to substantive, factual errors. We will not approve corrections that involve only the author's opinion or inference.

• We will clearly mark corrections in the article, and send the corrected version to the authors for confirmation and publish without error (to ensure that readers get the correct information).
• Our editorial department will update the metadata of the article.

*All major errors will be accompanied by a separate correction notice, and Environment and Social Psychology will: publish a separate correction notice that links back electronically to the corrected version. Conversely, minor errors that do not affect the reliability of the academic content or the reader’s understanding of the academic content will no longer be notified separately for correction. We will add a footnote to the article to inform readers that the article has been corrected.

For authors who wish to correct their names in their published work, please see our Authorship Changes.

Withdrawal policy

The editors of Arts and Science Press are responsible for ensuring the academic integrity of the articles published in the journal. Therefore, in cases of misconduct, the journal editorial department will retract articles when necessary.

Article withdrawal

Considering the amount of time spent by editors and reviewers on handling the manuscript, we have formulated the policy for authors to withdraw requests, as follows:

Once the manuscript is submitted to a journal, it represents that the author has carefully decided to publish the manuscript in our journal. If the author needs to withdraw the article submitted to the journal but not published for any reason, the author needs to submit a formal request to the editorial department of the journal:

• Withdrawal requests must be submitted to the journal editorial department by the first or corresponding author of the article, with a full and detailed withdrawal statement. Also, the author submitting the request will need to obtain written consent from all co-authors.
• If the article is already in the peer review or publication process, the author will need to provide more specific reasons for the withdrawal and bear all costs incurred as a result.
• Only valid and reasonable reasons for withdrawal will be considered, and the decision to withdraw a submission will ultimately rest with the managing editor or editor-in-chief.

Article retraction

Regarding published articles, retractions will be considered by the author or editor in the following cases, but not limited to:

• There are substantive errors, ethical violations, duplicate publications, or other violations   of academic integrity, morality, ethics, laws and regulations.
• The credibility and readability of the article have been seriously compromised.
• The author has not taken appropriate action to correct the error or problem.

We hope that the policy will provide better safeguards for authors and readers to ensure the quality and reliability of scholarly journals. Article retraction decisions will be made by the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by several library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Arts and Science Press:

• Publish a separate retraction statement titled "Retraction: [Article Title]" that will link to the retracted article.
• Add a "retracted" watermark to the published version of the record for the article. The record will be kept in our journal's database, along with the reason and date of the retraction, to ensure data transparency and integrity.

Authors should note that if their accepted papers or articles in the publication are retracted for academic misconduct and ethical violations in research and publication, the article processing fee paid will not be refunded.

The policy is not exhaustive, and the decision to retract a retraction publication will be made at the discretion of the managing editor to safeguard the journal's academic reputation and publication standards.

Circumstances under which an article may be deleted

In rare cases, Environment and Social Psychology may need to remove articles from the online platforms. This will only be considered in the following cases:

-The article is defamatory, violates the privacy of others or other legal rights;

-Violation of a certain professional ethics or other illegal circumstances.

Expression of Concern

Environment and Social Psychology will consider concern detailing the focus and ongoing actions, if:

-Inconclusive evidence of author research or publication misconduct

-The results of this publication have not been completed and due to various complexities, the investigation will not be completed for a considerable period of time

All corrections, retractions, and concerns are freely accessible at the time of publication.

Errata

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication. Any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, etc., please contact the journal editor. Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. will only instigate a corrigendum to a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of papers with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to our editors at editorial_office@as-pub.com, explaining the reason(s) of submission withdrawal. Consents of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission would eventually rest with the editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review or is under peer-review compared to withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in the editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. He/she would be required to pay a penalty fee (USD 200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant error or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval of submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including the newly accepted papers and Articles in Press.

Withdrawal of accepted papers and Articles in Press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons of withdrawing accepted papers and Articles in Press are similar to those of retracting a published article, i.e., academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breached intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to our attention, the editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation; any accepted papers or Articles in Press subject to investigation at this stage will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A Panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or Article in Press will be marked for withdrawal, and a notification email regarding the Panel’s Decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the Panel’s Decision will have to be made to the Publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

Authors should note that any amounts of paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if their accepted papers or Articles in Press are withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication.

Preprint Policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to community preprint servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint before or in parallel with the formal submission to Environment and Social Psychology. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Nonetheless, authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g., in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

This policy applies to original research papers only. This journal  reserves the right not to consider for publication or publish material that has been formally published in digital media that shall not be construed as preprint servers.

We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list, where appropriate.