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Seton Hall University

Publication Ethics Statement

The Lonergan Review fully adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics's (COPE) Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines.

The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure high-quality scientific works in the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of The Lonergan Review take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers in The Lonergan Review must abide by the following:

  • Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
  • Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
  • Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
  • If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken.
  • Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to republish that material.
    • Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.
      • Plagiarism is not acceptable in The Lonergan Review
      • Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.
      • Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.
      • If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may publish a correction or retract the paper. 
    • Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image.
      • Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.
      • If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.
  • Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with The Lonergan Review.