Peer review policy 

Publication of articles in Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) is dependent solely on scientific validity and coherence as judged by our editors and or peer reviewers who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field. CECD acknowledged the effort and suggestions made by its reviewers. 

The editor will first evaluate articles submitted. Although rare, yet it is entirely feasible for an exceptional manuscript accepted at this stage. Those rejected at this stage are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, or are outside the aims and scope of the CECD. Those that meet the minimum criteria are passed on to experts for review.

Type of peer review

The submitted manuscripts will be reviewed with double blind peer review process, who will be asked to evaluate whether the article is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates the already published works, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication.

Review reports

Reviewers are asked to evaluate whether the article:

• Is original by stating the objectives and gap clearly
• Is methodologically sound
• Follows appropriate ethical guidelines
• Has results or findings which presented and support the conclusions
• Correctly references previous relevant work
• Reviewers are not expected to correct or copyedit articles. Language correction is not part of the peer-review process.

Decision

Reviewers advise the editor, who is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject the article. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board. The editor in chief will give the final decision.

Becoming a Reviewer

If you are not currently a reviewer for CECD but would like to be one of the reviewers, please contact us. The benefits of reviewing for CECD include the opportunity to see and evaluate the latest work in the related research area at an early stage, and to be acknowledged in our list of reviewers. You may also be able to cite your work for CECD as part of your professional development requirements.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) is a peer-reviewed e-journal. This statement clarifies ethical behavior of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in CECD, including the author, the editor in chief, the editor, the peer-reviewer and the publisher (Faculty of Engineering Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa). This statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Ethical Guideline for Journal Publication

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed of CECD is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher and the society.

Faculty of Engineering Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa as publisher of CECD takes its duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities. We are committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. In addition, the Faculty of Engineering Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa and Editorial Board will assist in communications with other journals and/or publishers where this is useful and necessary.

Publication decisions

The editor of the CECD is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers must always drive such decisions. The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editors may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play

An editor at any time evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of Objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgment of Sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper 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 Retention

Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Originality and Plagiarism

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

The names and email addresses entered in Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of CECD and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

However, due to the advancement and availability of hacking and data mining techniques found over the Internet, CECD will not be able to guarantee that other parties will not mine our users' email addresses in any possible ways found over the Internet.

Article Submission: 0.00 (USD)

Article Processing Charge: 0.00 (USD)

Fast Processing Charge: 0.00 (USD)

Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) is an open access journal. As an open access journal with no subscription charges, a fee is payable by the author or research funder to cover the costs associated with publication. This ensures your article will be immediately and permanently free to access by everyone. 

Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) editorial board recognizes that plagiarism is not acceptable and therefore establishes the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) upon identification of plagiarism/similarities in articles submitted for publication in CECD. CECD will use Turnitin's originality checking software as the tool in detecting similarities of texts in article manuscripts and the final version articles ready for publication. A maximum of 25% of similarities is allowed for the submitted papers. Should we find more than 25% of the similarity index, the article will be returned to the author for correction and resubmission.

Definition:

Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Policy:

Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.

Any text of an amount exceeding fair use standards (herein defined as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof) or any graphic material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s) and also requires identification of the source; e.g., previous publication.

When plagiarism is identified, the Editor in Chief responsible for the review of this paper and will agree on measures according to the extent of plagiarism detected in the paper in agreement with the following guidelines:

Level of Plagiarism

Minor:

A short section of another article is plagiarized without any significant data or idea taken from the other paper

Action: A warning is given to the authors and a request to change the text and properly cite the original article is made

Intermediate: A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized without proper citation to the original paper

Action: The submitted article is rejected and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for one year

Severe: A significant portion of a paper is plagiarized that involves reproducing original results or ideas presented in another publication

Action: The paper is rejected and the authors are forbidden to submit further articles for five years.

It is understood that all authors are responsible for the content of their submitted paper as they all read and understand CECD's Copyright and Licensing Terms. If a penalty is imposed for plagiarism, all authors will be subject to the same penalty.

If the second case of plagiarism by the same author(s) is identified, a decision on the measures to be enforced will be made by the Editorial board (Editor-in-Chief, and Editorial members) with the Chair of the Editor in Chief. The author(s) might be forbidden to submit further articles forever.

This policy applies also to material reproduced from another publication by the same author(s). If an author uses text or figures that have previously been published, the corresponding paragraphs or figures should be identified and the previous publication referenced. It is understood that in the case of a review paper or a paper of a tutorial nature much of the material was previously published.

The author should identify the source of the previously published material and obtain permission from the original author and the publisher. If an author submits a manuscript to CECD with significant overlap with a manuscript submitted to another journal simultaneously, and this overlap is discovered during the review process or after the publications of both papers, the editor of the other journal is notified and the case is treated as a severe plagiarism case. Significant overlap means the use of identical or almost identical figures and identical or slightly modified text for one-half or more of the paper. For self-plagiarism of less than one-half of the paper but more than one-tenth of the paper, the case shall be treated as intermediate plagiarism. If self-plagiarism is confined to the methods section, the case shall be considered as minor plagiarism.

If an author uses some of his previously published material to clarify the presentation of new results, the previously published material shall be identified and the difference to the present publication shall be mentioned. Permission to republish must be obtained from the copyright holder. In the case of a manuscript that was originally published in conference proceedings and then is submitted for publication in CECD either in identical or in expanded form, the authors must identify the name of the conference proceedings and the date of the publication and obtain permission to republish from the copyright holder. The editor may decide not to accept this paper for publication.

However, an author shall be permitted to use material from an unpublished presentation, including visual displays, in a subsequent journal publication. In the case of a publication being submitted, that was originally published in another language, the title, date, and journal of the original publication must be identified by the authors, and the copyright must be obtained. The editor may accept such a translated publication to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. The editor may select a specific paper that had been published (e.g. a “historic” paper) for republication in order to provide a better perspective of a series of papers published in one issue of CECD. This republication shall be clearly identified as such and the date and journal of the original publication shall be given, and the permission of the author(s) and the publisher shall be obtained.

The CECD layout editor for the Journal is responsible for maintaining the list of authors subjected to penalties and will check that no authors of a submitted paper are on this list. If a banned author is identified, the layout editor will inform the Editor-in-Chief who will take appropriate measures. This policy will be posted on the website with the instructions for submitting a manuscript, and a copy will be sent to the authors with the confirmation email upon initial receipt of their original manuscript.

Authors are discouraged from withdrawing submitted manuscripts after it is in the publication process (review, copyedit, layout, etc.,). During the time, Civil Engineering for Community Development (CECD) had spent valuable resources besides time spent in the process. Should under any circumstances that the author(s) still request for a withdrawal, author(s) should pay back every effort put into the manuscript processes at an amount of US $10 or IDR 100.000. Paid upon official request from the author(s) in an email sent to CECD's editor using the same email address used in correspondence.

CECD's editors shall consider retracting a publication if:

• they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)
• the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication)
• it constitutes plagiarism
• it reports unethical research  

CECD's editors shall consider issuing an expression of concern if:

• they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
• there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
• they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
• an investigation is underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time

CECD's editors shall consider issuing a correction if:

• a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error)
• the author/contributor list is incorrect (i.e. a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included)

The mechanism follows the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines.pdf. For your convenience, the same document is shown below.

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