PPAM journal is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional ethical codes, such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, bogus claims of authorship, would be taken very seriously by the editors with zero tolerance.

The ethical policy of PPAM is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of PPAM Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with PPAM. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please read below:

Duties of Authors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)

Policies on authorship and contributorship:

Only persons who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content including: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but in the "Acknowledgements" should be after their written permission. to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate coauthors are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Authors should at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript) disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number, if any).

Reporting standard: The authors are committed to report their findings completely and to be especially careful in presenting the findings and their interpretation. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Data access and sharing: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism: All data and statements in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrications, or omission of significant material. 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, they have been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from "passing off" another's paper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Multiple, Duplicate, Redundant or Concurrent Submission/Publication: Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Peer Review: Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to the editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of "Need Revision", authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

Acknowledgement: The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research. Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as reviewing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.

Fundamental Errors in Works: When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the article or provide evidence to the journal editors of its correctness.

 

Duties of Editors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

Publication Decisions: The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are expert in the field. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for making the decision to accept or reject the submitted manuscripts to the journal, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making the final decision.

Fair Review: Editors should give fair consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to country, race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s). Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of this journal. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.

Confidentiality: The editors will ensure that systems are in place to ensure the confidentiality and protection from misuse of material submitted to the journal while under review and the protection of authors’ and reviewers’ identities and will themselves take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of authors’ and reviewers’ identities.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The editors should ensure that the submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, as appropriate. The editors should excuse themselves from considering a manuscript in which they have a real or potential conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, financial or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript. In such circumstance, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Involvement and Cooperation in Investigations: Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. The editors follow the COPE Flowcharts when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct. If, on investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.

 

Duties of Reviewers

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

Fair Reviews: Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of scientific endeavor. Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly and professionally. They should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers must provide substantiated and fair reviews to assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

Right of Refusal: Any selected reviewer who feels that is not qualified to review the assigned manuscript or unable to provide a prompt review, should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process. If they know any other expert reviewer(s) they may suggest them to the Editor-in-Chief via dedicated email/comments section in Reviewer Dashboard. Furthermore, reviewers should refuse to review manuscripts where they have provided written comments on the manuscript or an earlier version to the Author, and, in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, financial, institutional, personal, or other relationships or connections with any of the companies, institutions, or people connected to the manuscript.

Confidentiality: Information regarding the manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Editor-in-Chief, nor discuss any information from the manuscript without permission. This applies also to the invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Conflict of Interest: Any invited reviewer who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review, so that alternative reviewers can be invited.

Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to the invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

 

Duties of the Publisher

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code%20of%20conduct%20for%20publishers%20FINAL_1_0.pdf)

Handling of Unethical Publishing Behavior: In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

Access to Journal Content: The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining their own digital archive.

Publisher Business Model: "Semnan University" as the publisher supports the journal for each published issue by paying a defined budget according to its published annual rank in Portal of Scientific Journals of Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology for costs including those pertaining to setup and maintenance of the publication infrastructure, routine operation of the Journal, processing of manuscripts through peer-reviews, editing, publishing, maintaining the scholarly record, and archiving.

 

Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Misconduct

Publisher and editor of the journal take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work.  The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

Journal’s policy on intellectual property

All intellectual property policies, including copyright and publishing licenses, are described below:

- License terms

All content of the Journal is published with open access under the License of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)  . All authors are given the option to make articles available under the terms of the license (CC-BY 4.0).

The workings of the Creative Commons CC BY License, as stated on the Creative Commons website, is defined as below:

"This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most compatible of licenses for maximum publication and use of licensed materials." 

- Copyright Policy

In this journal, copyright in any article published by the Journal of Progress in Physics of Applied Materials  under license (CC-BY 4.0) is retained by the author(s). But, allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, distribute, and copy as long as the original authors and source are cited properly. The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights. The author has complete control over the work (e.g., retains the right to reuse, distribute, republish, etc.).

Note: Copyright © the Author from Vol 2 No 2 (2022). 

Article Processing Charge (APCs)

- There are no author charges (commonly known as APCs) and all accepted papers are published in the journal without any publication fee.

- No fee is charged to any reader for downloading articles and reviews for their own scholarly use.

Policy on complaints and appeals

If the authors disagree with the editorial decision on their manuscripts, they have a right to appeal. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the Progress in Physics of Applied Materials. In such cases the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial and peer reviewers' comments and gives his/her decision for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief may, if so required, send the manuscript to a new handling editor for a fresh editorial review and to new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.

How to Make a Complaint against the Staff of Journal, Editorial Board or Publisher

The procedure to make a complaint is easy. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail. Please email to: ppam@semnan.ac.ir

All complaints will be acknowledged within three working days.

policies on data sharing and reproducibility
Authors may archive the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication.

Post-Publication Discussions

This journal allows debate post publication on journal’s site, through "Send letter to the editor. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication depends on the content of the received comment and must the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors.

Correction and retraction policy

The corrections must be made by the author during the revision step.

For Adding or Removing  a new author to manuscript should be requested from the corresponding author and all authors must signature it.

 Please bear in mind that:

Adding or Removing  a new author to manuscript is possible before acceptance and publication.

Adding or Removing a new author to manuscript is impossible after acceptance and publication.

Deceased Authors:

The policies of PPAM in the case of deceased authors are as follows:

Before acceptance of the manuscripts The name of the deceased author can be removed from the manuscript according to the agreement of all of the authors. This decision is depended on the contribution of the deceased author and the final decision needs the approval of the editor of PPAM.

If the deceased author is the corresponding of the submitted manuscript, it is necessary to change the corresponding author. The new corresponding author must be selected with the consent of all authors.

After acceptance of the manuscripts removing or adding the name of the deceased author is not possible.

The authors can change the deceased corresponding author after acceptance. The new corresponding author must be selected with the consent of all authors.

It should be noted that the name of the deceased author should be mentioned in the footnote of the paper.

 

This Journal retracts a publication if:

• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation)
• It constitutes plagiarism
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorisation for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy)
• It reports unethical research
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (aka, conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.