Communications in Combinatorics and Optimization is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices. The ethical policy of communications in Combinatorics and Optimization follows the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. It is also guided by the core practices and policies outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Research results
Fake or selective reporting of data with the purpose of cheating or deception is unethical. The applied research results should be documented and protected to permit analysis and reexamination. The associate data should be stored in a repository and appropriately be referred to in the research results report. Data should be accessible for a reasonable period of time; exceptions may be applicable in certain cases to keep privacy or for similar reasons.
Authorship
Significant contributors should be mentioned as authors, and others could be acknowledged. Articles should contain a full list of the current institutional affiliations of all authors, both academic and corporate, unless the author is not affiliated with a research or academic institution.
Competing interests
All authors, referees, and editors must report any conflicting or competing interests relating to a presented article.
Peer Review
We are committed to promptly evaluating and publishing fully accepted papers in Communications in Combinatorics and Optimization. To promote a high-quality publication, all submissions undergo a strict review process. Factors of the peer review process are as follows:
Plagiarism
Replicating text from other documents (including websites) without properly referring to the source (plagiarism) or producing many papers with almost the same authors' content (self-plagiarism) is not permitted. Submitting the same manuscript to several journals at the same time is dishonesty. Exceptions are the review articles and basic definitions and properties that are considered as the main part of the literature. The main contents and results of the manuscript should be the result of the authors' contribution only. Others publications that had any influence on the authors' work should be cited.
Communication in Combinatorics and Optimization is a member of iThenticate, and the iThenticate plagiarism software checker checks all submissions to CCO before being processed for peer review. Plagiarism is not accepted, and if it is discovered post-publication, measures will be taken according the guidlines outlined in the Corrections and Retractions section.
Duplicate submission
Simultaneous submissions of the same manuscript to several journals is an act of dishonesty. If discovered at ant stage that a manuscript has been simultaneously submitted to several journals, the processing of that manuscript will be removed without any further processing action.
Corrections and retractions
All authors should inform and cooperate with journal editors to provide prompt retractions or corrections in published works.
The main responsible identity for handling research misconduct is those the researchers are affiliated with. If any misconduct is detected, we will seek advice from the referees and the Editorial Board. We will resolve the matter with appropriate corrections in the printed and online versions if there is evidence.
Minor misdemeanors may not lead to formal examinations, but as just impairments should be removed or rectified by mentors.
How to raise a concern
We aim to abide by the standards guided by the core practices and policies outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Anyone who thinks that research published by Communications in Combinatorics and optimization has not been carried out in line with these principles should submit their concerns with the managing editor or email comb-opt@azaruniv.ac.ir or combandopt@gmail.com. Concerns will be addressed by following COPE guidelines where possible.
We recommend the editorial board and referees to conduct with more details in here and here, respectively.