EDITORIAL POLICY

FOCUS AND SCOPE

Journal of Sustainable Technologies and Materials (JST&M) is an international, cross-disciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal that provides a platform for the open scientific exchange of research findings and developments in the fields of:

• Environmental Science and Engineering;
• Technologies for Achieving Environmental Sustainability;
• Advanced Materials for Sustainable Applications;
• Materials Recovery and Recycling;
• Renewable Energy;
• Recycle/reuse Material and Energy;
• Sustainability of Metal-producing Industries, with a particular emphasis on materials recovery, reuse, and recycling;
• Optimization of Metallurgical Processes, including utilization, treatment, and management of metallurgically generated residues;
• All aspects of research, development, production, and use of sustainable non-metallic building materials.

Authors from universities, research centers, and industry are invited to submit papers and take part in future issues of this publication.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

JST&M uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are kept hidden from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. A submitted manuscript is initially considered by a section editor. At this stage, the manuscript may be rejected without peer review if it falls outside the scope of the journal, the work is of poor scientific quality, or the novelty of the work falls below that required for the journal.

Section editors are responsible for the reviewer selection for submitted manuscripts, and reviewers are selected based on their competence and previous experience in reviewing papers for JST&M. Manuscripts that reach minimum quality criteria, follow the scope and aims of the Journal and fulfill the Editorial policies, are sent to two independent reviewers for evaluation. Depending on the feedback from reviewers and the Editors’ judgment, a decision is given on the manuscript. It can be rejected, or accepted with or without minor/major revisions. After the authors revise their manuscripts according to the reviewers’ suggestions, they are sent back to the original reviewers. Feedback from the second round of reviews is processed in the same way. The manuscript may be rejected if the suggested corrections are not implemented. The average time from submission to the first decision is up to 4 weeks. Authors are encouraged to suggest up to three reviewers who do not have a competing interest. All recommendations are considered, but it is at the Editor's discretion their choice of reviewers. If authors would prefer a specific person not to be a reviewer, this should be announced.

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE

JST&M is committed to ensuring and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process, whereby such values also rely on editors, reviewers, contributors, and authors who are expected to behave ethically. The standards are based on the „Committee on Publication Ethics“ (COPE) code of conduct and provide guidelines for best practices to meet these requirements. Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author's work without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work are all unacceptable practices. Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with under the COPE guidelines.

AUTHORS RESPONSIBILITIES

• The authors are responsible for the contents of their submissions, and the validity of the experimental results and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.
• Manuscripts are the original authors' work. They were not been published before nor they are under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by JST&M.
• Manuscripts are written with ethical standards in mind, and they do not contain unfounded or unlawful statements, or plagiarism and do not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any compensation claims.
• Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript.
• Authors wishing to include figures or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
• Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors.
• By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policy of JST&M.

REVIEWERS RESPONSIBILITIES

• To review all submissions objectively, fairly, and professionally, and should maintain the confidentiality of the peer-review process.
• To abide by guidelines set by the journal for the scope, content, and quality of review and comply with the journal publication policy by JST&M.
• To avoid giving comments or statements that are offensive, libelous, or discourteous.
• To follow the deadline given to review an assigned manuscript.
• To express their opinions and address points of improvement with supporting arguments.
• To declare their relationships and activities that might bias their evaluation of a manuscript and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict exists.

EDITORS' RESPONSIBILITIES

• Editors are responsible for monitoring and ensuring the fairness, timeliness, and confidentiality of the peer-review editorial process
• Editors should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without any bias towards race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
• Editors should avoid situations of real or perceived conflicts of interest.
• Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an editor’s own research except with the consent of the author.

 CHANGES TO AUTHORSHIP

Authorship can be changed only before a manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author must send to the Editor a request with written confirmation of all the authors. 

PLAGIARISM

By submitting their manuscript to JST&M, authors state that their work is original and that it has not been previously published. They also declare that data, findings, and materials taken from other sources are properly documented and cited, that their work does not violate privacy rights and intellectual property rights and that the data is true and not manipulated. Plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author's work, in whole or in part without proper citation, is not tolerated. Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and authors will be permanently or temporarily forbidden to publish in the journal. All allegations of plagiarism are investigated thoroughly and under COPE guidelines detailed here.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

Our Copyright Policy aims to guarantee that original material is published while at the same time giving significant freedom to our authors. JST&M upholds a very flexible copyright policy meaning that there is no copyright transfer to the publisher and authors hold exclusive copyright to their work. Authors grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after acceptance, as it can lead to productive exchanges and earlier and greater citation of published work. Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. To reproduce any third-party material, including tables, figures, or images, in an article authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and be compliant with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. It is the authors' responsibility to provide evidence of such permissions to the editors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Conflict of interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

JST&M is an open-access publication, and all papers are available on the internet to all users immediately upon publication. All content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author as long as they cite the source.

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

JST&M will be published semiannually, One Volume, 2 Issues per year.

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

Authors may self-archive versions of their work on their web pages, on institutional web pages, and in other repositories, at any time after publication.

MATERIAL DISCLAIMER

The opinions expressed in JST&M are those of the authors and contributors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the Editors, the Editorial Board, the Faculty of Metallurgy and Technology, the University of Zenica, or the organization to which the authors are affiliated. The Editor assumes no responsibility whatsoever, direct or implied, for the contents of the papers and the consequences arising from misinterpretation or unawareness of the requirements for publication or any damages suffered by co-authors from actions or inactions of their corresponding author.

PRIVACY STATEMENT

By using the JST&M, you consent to such collection, use, and sharing of your information and Personal Data and agree to the terms of this Privacy Statement. We respect your concerns regarding privacy on the Internet and we prepared the Statement that outlines our efforts to protect your privacy, what kind of your data we collect and what we will do with the collected data. JST&M may collect and use personal information that is necessary for the processing and publication of manuscripts submitted to us. By using our site, you accept that such data will be collected and stored in our databases. By personal information, we mean names, affiliations, and contact details; including postal addresses, emails, phone numbers, and fax numbers. Any personal information received by JST&M will only be used to process and publish your manuscript.