We agree to and follow all the ethical behaviors for publishing, all about authors, editors, peer reviewers, and peer reviewing process stated as the COPE publication ethics.

 

Fake or selective reporting of data with the purpose of cheating or deception is unethical. The applied research results should be documented and protected to permit analysis and reexamination. The associate data should be stored in a repository and appropriately be referred to in the research results report. Data should be accessible for a reasonable period of time; exceptions may be applicable in certain cases to keep privacy or for similar reasons. 

Authorship

Significant contributors should be mentioned as authors, and others could be acknowledged. Articles should contain a full list of the current institutional affiliations of all authors, both academic and corporate, unless the author is not affiliated with a research or academic institution. 

Competing interests

All authors, referees, and editors must report any conflicting or competing interests relating to a presented article. 

Peer Review

We are committed to promptly evaluating and publishing fully accepted papers in Communications in Combinatorics and Optimization. To promote a high-quality publication, all submissions undergo a strict review process. Factors of the peer review process are as follows:

• Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to different journals is considered fraud.
• Only those manuscripts that fall within the scope of the journal will be considered for reviewing.
• Papers will be refereed by at least two specialists recommended by the editorial board. 
• In addition, the editors may look for further reviews. Authors will be notified if such need arises.
• Associate editors make their decisions based on the referees' reports. The journal's Editors-in-Chief makes all final publication decisions based on the associate editor's recommendation. Authors of the papers will be informed promptly of the decisions made.
• All submitted manuscripts are regarded as non-public documents. We also anticipate that all editors and reviewers consider manuscripts as confidential documents.
• Editors and reviewers responsible for the review process should declare conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other connections with any authors and refuse to partake in the process in such cases. Confidential knowledge or ideas acquired through peer review must not be used for any competitive gain.
• This journal uses a double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.
  

Plagiarism

Replicating text from other documents (including websites) without properly referring to the source (plagiarism) or producing many papers with almost the same authors' content (self-plagiarism) is not permitted. Submitting the same manuscript to several journals at the same time is dishonesty. Exceptions are the review articles and basic definitions and properties that are considered as the main part of the literature. The main contents and results of the manuscript should be the result of the authors' contribution only. Others publications that had any influence on the authors' work should be cited.

All accepted papers will be checked by iThenticate against plagiarism. 

Duplicate submission

Simultaneous submissions of the same manuscript to several journals is an act of dishonesty. If discovered at any stage that a manuscript has been simultaneously submitted to several journals, the processing of that manuscript will be removed without any further processing action.

Corrections and retractions

All authors should inform and cooperate with journal editors to provide prompt retractions or corrections in published works.

• The journal will issue retractions if:
• There is obvious evidence that the findings are untrustworthy, either as a consequence of misconduct or honest error (e.g., miscalculation);
• The results have once been published elsewhere without appropriate cross-referencing, license, or explanation;
• The manuscript contains plagiaristic content beyond the standard limits;
• The journal will issue errata if:
• A small part of another reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error);

The main responsible identity for handling research misconduct is those the researchers are affiliated with. If any misconduct is detected, we will seek advice from the referees and the Editorial Board. We will resolve the matter with appropriate corrections in the printed and online versions if there is evidence.

Minor misdemeanors may not lead to formal examinations, but just impairments should be removed or rectified by mentors.

How to raise a concern

We aim to abide by the standards guided by the core practices and policies outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Anyone who thinks that research published by Communications in Combinatorics and Optimization has not been carried out in line with these principles should submit their concerns to the managing editor or email meskaryan@shahroodut.ac.ir. Concerns will be addressed by following COPE guidelines where possible.