GFT&M is owned and published by the Italian Geological Society (SGI) and Geological Survey of Italy (ISPRA), Rome, Italy.
GFT&M is under the scientific control of Editorial Board whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal's scope. Some executive roles of the Editorial Board members are delegated to the Editor-in-Chief who is well-known in the journal's scope.
Copyright is shared by the Italian Geological Society (SGI) and the Geological Survey of Italy (ISPRA) and with authors of individual contributions although articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors will transfer copyright of their work to the journal after final acceptance of the manuscript for publication. Individual authors may use a single figure and/or a table and/or a brief paragraph of text in a subsequent work, provided this work be of a scientific nature, and intended for use in a learned journal, book or other peer reviewed publication. Copies of this article and maps may be reproduced in unlimited numbers for use in a classroom, to further education and science.
It is a general principle of scholarly communication that the Editors of a learned journal are solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision, the Editor in Chief (EiC) is guided by policies of the journal's Editorial Board (EB) and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Anonymous Peer Reviewing is the adopted method for the scientific evaluation of the submitted manuscript.
The EB may decide for rejection upon submission if the manuscript does not match the main topics defined by the subject category to which the journal belongs (see JCR by Thomson Reuters), the corresponding author has not accepted to explicitly declare the originality of the manuscript, it is shown that manuscript is either a duplicates of significant parts of already published papers.
An outcome of this principle is the importance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles and maps that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as far as is possible. However, very occasionally circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances.
This policy has been designed to address these concerns and to take into account current best practice in the scholarly and library communities. As standards evolve and change, we will revisit this issue and welcome the input of scholarly and library communities. We believe these issues require international standards and we will be active in lobbying various information bodies to establish international standards and best practices that the publishing scientific societies can adopt.
Used for articles in Press that represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be "Withdrawn" from GeoScienceWorld. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Editorial policy.
Breaches of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like, are sanctioned by the Italian Geological Society.
One of the conditions of submission of a manuscript for publication through the https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijg is that authors declare explicitly that the manuscript is NOT UNDER CONSIDERATION for publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. A retraction will be used to correct these events.
The retraction of an article by its authors or the Editorial Board under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction also by the Italian Geological Society.
In the case of a request of retraction signed by the authors for duplication due to a submission error, a retraction note titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the authors is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list. In the electronic version the notice will appear in place of the link to the original article, and the DOI is renominated as "article retraction action". The manuscript would not be anymore available on-line.
In the case of a request of retraction signed by the Editorial Board for breaches of the professional ethical codes a retraction note titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the Editorial Board is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list. In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article and to the duplicate article.
The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to both article itself.
The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is "retracted." The HTML version of the document is removed.
The Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors are responsible for the examination and review of articles submitted by authors to the GFT&M. If the process is not straightforward as for most cases, ethical issues can arise during the reviewing process or after publication in case of complaints. Relating directly to the specific contents of the journal, the most commons issues may concern plagiarism, submission of non-original results without accurate citing, allegations about authorship of contributions, double/duplicate submissions.
Precise rules concerning some of the most common of these situations are described in detail in previous chapters. For other cases, we refer to international standards for scientific publication (Committee On Publication Ethics; www. publicationethics.org).
In addition to the guidelines, authors are warmly invited to consider the following suggestions for the preparation of manuscripts, following international standards for scientific publication (Committee On Publication Ethics; www. publicationethics.org). The main points of attention are summarized as follows.
The object of the presented papers must be clearly and accurately written, including methods, assumptions as well as their uncertainty. Objective discussions of their significance and alternative interpretations are also recommended.
Provide a detailed list of references to published and available information with particular attention to previous papers which are of primary importance for the understanding the present work. Information from private should be reported only with explicit permission.
Avoid plagiarism in any form, including autoplagiarism, providing appropriate citation of previous data and ideas. In the case of reuse of previously published text, figures, or tables, ensure to be officially authorized from the author and copyright holder. Authors are invited to consult carefully the rules established by the present journal (see chapter 3 of Journal Policy).
Personal criticisms must be always avoided in the works.
Any changes to the text after acceptance must be always communicated to the editor.
Include as coauthors only those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work; the order of authorship will be determined according to their own contribution. Author and all coauthors share responsibility for the quality and integrity of the submitted and published manuscript.
Avoid any potential conflict of interest for authors resulting from the published manuscript or from the research.
Acknowledgments must contain the complete list of used grants, data sources and all kinds of supporting facilities.
The corresponding author will ensure that all coauthors are fully aware of the submitted contents and review process up to the publication of the work.
GFT&M depends on a peer review process ensuring the scientific quality originality and integrity of published works. The entire process depends on the participation of the community and on the ethical and responsible behaviour of the involved reviewers. They are expected to strictly follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (Committee On Publication Ethics; www. publicationethics.org).