Sicurezza Terrorismo e Società – Security Terrorism and Society (STS) is committed to upholding ethical standards in its publication of articles of the highest quality and, to this end, is inspired by  COPE’s Code of Conduct guidelines (cf. https://publicationethics.org/), and in particular the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Core Practices for Journal Publishers.

We select below some key points, but you should refer to the three documents listed above for full details.

Authors responsibilities

• STS expects that authors will present original material that reveals the contribution of their research to enriching the scientific literature.
• Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original work, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work presented in the manuscript should also be cited.
• Authors should not submit the same article simultaneously for publication elsewhere and should be aware that inclusion in an article of plagiarised text, fraudulent data or knowingly inaccurate statements is never acceptable.
• The editors will check articles to prevent plagiarism or fraudulent data.
• The editors reserve the right to publish corrections and, in extreme cases, to delete from the journal’s archive material that violates these standards.

Peer-review process

• STS employs the system of double-blind peer review in order to ensure as far as possible that submitted articles should be considered for publication without bias (cf. https://www.sicurezzaterrorismosocieta.it/double-blind-peer-review-evaluation-process/?lang=en ).
• Reviewers will avoid bias or favoritism based on the origin of the article, gender, race, national origin, ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, or age of the authors.
• Reviewers are expected to provide reviews that are constructive and impartial, devoid of any hostile, inflammatory, libelous, unfair or unnecessarily derogatory comments. They should refrain from using research or information contained in unpublished articles for any purpose, including for personal gain or for the advantage or disadvantage of any other person or organisation.

Editors

• The editors of STS are required to decide whether to accept or reject articles based solely on their scholarly merit, acting without bias or favoritism of the kinds mentioned above.
• Editors should guide authors and reviewers given their responsibilities, oversee their performance of those responsibilities, and preserve the confidentiality of unpublished articles and the anonymity of peer reviewers.
• Editors or reviewers will withdraw from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Allegations of misconduct

• The Editors will respond with care and rigor to allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication.
• The Editors will follow the COPE Flowcharts when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct. If on the investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or, other notice as may be appropriate, will be published in the journal.

Plagiarism check

• Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. The editor board determined that all manuscripts submitted must be free from plagiarism. All manuscripts will be checked for their originality and the percentage of their similarity before the review process is carried out.  The manuscripts with a percentage of similarity content below or equivalent to 20% will be forwarded for processing by the reviewers. The manuscripts that have a percentage of content similarity above 20% will be rejected. The editors check the plagiarism detection of the articles in this journal using Zero Plagio software, the official checker of the Catholic University.

Author fees

• No fees or charges are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal.