HINEF is committed to peer-review integrity. We want to check the originality of material. Authors submitting to HINEF should be aware that their manuscripts may be submitted to plagiarism detector/plagiarism screening during the peer-review or production processes. In addition, authors are also strongly advised to uphold the integrity of their works in relation to conflicts of interest, falsification, and fabrication of data, plagiarism, unethical experimentation, inadequate subject consent, and authorship disputes.

Ethical guidelines for authors

We expect authors to adhere to the following ethical guidelines:

1. All authors must ensure that their articles are their own original works, which do not infringe the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity and cannot be construed as plagiarizing any other published work, including their own previously published works.
2. All authors named in the article are equally held accountable for the content of a submitted manuscript or published article.
3. The corresponding author must ensure all co-authors consent to publication and to being named as a co-author.
4. All persons who have made significant scientific or literary contributions to the work reported should be named as co-authors.
5. Authors must not submit a manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously.
6. Authors should not submit previously published works, nor works which are based in terms of substance on previously published works, either in part or as a whole.
7. Authors must appropriately cite all relevant publications. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, can be used or reported in the author's work only when fully cited, and with the permission of that third party.
8. Authors must avoid making defamatory statements in submitted articles which could be construed as impugning any person's reputation.
9. Authors must declare any potential conflict of interest – be it professional or financial – which could be held to arise with respect to their articles.

Plagiarism

HINEF consider plagiarism as a serious offense and will blacklist authors who knowingly cite or use material from other published works without proper acknowledgment.

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest can occur when an author or an author's employer or sponsor has a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them, that could influence the author's research. Potential conflicts of interest in relation to the submitted manuscript include but are not limited to consultancies, employment, grants, fees and honoraria, patents, royalties, stock or share ownership. Full disclosure by the author is required at the point of submission and the editor will use this information to inform editorial decisions. If necessary, authors could be asked to describe any potential conflicts of interest in a covering letter. A decision may be made by the editor or peer reviewers not to publish on the basis of any declared conflict.

Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers

Peer reviewers are asked to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical guidelines for HINEF articles they have agreed to review:

1. Reviewers must give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
2. Reviewers must keep the peer review process confidential; information or correspondence about a manuscript should not be shared with anyone outside of the peer review process.
3. Reviewers should provide a constructive, comprehensive, evidenced, and appropriately substantial peer review report.
4. Reviewers should make all reasonable effort to submit their report and recommendation in a timely manner, informing the editor if this is not possible.
5. Reviewers should inform the editor of any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published papers or submitted manuscripts of which they are aware.

Ethical guidelines for editors

All editors are asked to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical guidelines for HINEF articles that seem worthy of peer review. Editors should give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s). Editors must keep the peer review process confidential; information or correspondence about a manuscript should not be shared with anyone outside of the peer review process. Editors may reject a submitted manuscript without resort to formal peer review if they consider the manuscript inappropriate for the journal and outside its scope. Editors should make all reasonable effort to process submitted manuscripts in an efficient and timely manner. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that the main substance or conclusions of an article published in HINEF are erroneous, the editor should facilitate publication of an appropriate erratum. Any data or analysis presented in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an editor's own research except with the consent of the author.