MSP

All our journ­als are peer re­viewed single-an­onym­ous, un­der the guid­ance of our in­de­pend­ent ed­it­or­i­al boards. MSP and our ed­it­ors cham­pi­on free­dom of ex­pres­sion and aim to main­tain the in­teg­rity of the aca­dem­ic re­cord. Our highly qual­i­fied ed­it­or­i­al boards aim to en­sure the ac­cur­acy, com­plete­ness and ori­gin­al­ity of every pub­lished art­icle, and strive for a fair and ef­fi­cient de­cision pro­cess. Our ed­it­ors are ul­ti­mately ac­count­able for all pub­lic­a­tion de­cisions in their journ­als, and aim to con­stantly im­prove them.

MSP fosters ed­it­or­i­al in­de­pend­ence. Busi­ness needs and com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions are nev­er al­lowed to com­prom­ise in­tel­lec­tu­al and eth­ic­al stand­ards.

The pur­pose of our pub­lic­a­tions is the ad­vance­ment of sci­ence. The de­cision to ac­cept or re­ject a sub­mis­sion is based only on the ed­it­ors’ eval­u­ation of an art­icle’s im­port­ance, ori­gin­al­ity and clar­ity, with the help of peer-re­view re­ports, and without re­gard to au­thors’ na­tion­al­ity, coun­try of res­id­ence, in­sti­tu­tion­al af­fil­i­ation, gender, eth­nic ori­gin, re­li­gion, or polit­ic­al views.

Er­rors and in­ac­cur­ate or mis­lead­ing state­ments are cor­rec­ted promptly and with due prom­in­ence. MSP re­serves the right to res­cind ac­cept­ances and re­tract pub­lished pa­pers in ex­cep­tion­al cases, in­clud­ing but not lim­ited to pla­gi­ar­ism and oth­er un­eth­ic­al be­ha­vi­or. Re­trac­tions will be clearly in­dic­ated at the same loc­a­tion where the pa­per was elec­tron­ic­ally pub­lished, or an equi­val­ent one.

We con­demn pla­gi­ar­ism, and be­lieve that au­thors are en­titled to re­ceive cred­it for their own in­tel­lec­tu­al cre­ation.

The journ­al ed­it­ors and MSP will take de­cis­ive ac­tion in cases of pla­gi­ar­ism. Clear-cut cases of pla­gi­ar­ized con­tent will lead to prompt re­jec­tion; if the pa­per has been pub­lished it will be re­trac­ted and re­placed on­line by a no­tice of re­trac­tion. Fur­ther ac­tions may fol­low, in­clud­ing con­tact­ing the au­thor's in­sti­tu­tion, as out­lined in the Com­mit­tee on Pub­lic­a­tion Eth­ics (COPE) guidelines.

Copy­ing ma­ter­i­al that is not cru­cial to the con­tent or con­clu­sions of a pa­per, such as parts of the in­tro­duc­tion, also con­sti­tutes pla­gi­ar­ism and will pre­vent a pa­per from be­ing pub­lished as sub­mit­ted. The pa­per may be re­jec­ted, or, at the dis­cre­tion of the ed­it­or, the au­thor may be re­quired to re­write, re­move, or quote with at­tri­bu­tion any copied ma­ter­i­al.

Ex­tens­ive copy­ing from one’s own works is sim­il­arly dis­cour­aged, ex­cept to the ex­tent ne­ces­sary to help the read­er. Pub­lish­ing the same ma­ter­i­al in mul­tiple ven­ues is not good for the aca­dem­ic com­munity.

For all oth­er is­sues, we will con­sult the COPE core prac­tices.