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Author Instructions

the importance of prospective trial registration, if there is an exception to this policy, trials must be registered and the
authors should indicate in the publication when registration was completed and why it was delayed. Editors should publish
a statement indicating why an exception was allowed. Please note such exceptions should be rare, and authors failing to
prospectively register a trial risk its inadmissibility to Soft Science.
Authors who are not sure whether they need trial registration may refer to ICMJE FAQs for further information.
3.2 Research Involving Animals
Experimental research on animals should be approved by appropriate ethics committees and must comply with institutional,
national, or international guidelines. Soft Science encourages authors to comply with the AALAS Guidelines, the ARRIVE
Guidelines, and the ICLAS Guidelines and obtain prior approval from relevant ethics committee. Manuscripts must include
a declaration statement of Ethical Approval and Consent to Participate indicating that the study has been approved by
relevant ethical committee and the whole research process complies with ethical guidelines. If a study has been granted an
exemption from requiring ethics approval, the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons
for the exemption should be detailed. Editors will take account of animal welfare issues and reserve the right to reject a
manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal
research.

3.3 Publication Ethics Statement
Soft Science fully adheres to the Code of Conduct and the Best Practice Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics
(COPE).
The Editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to
guarantee to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data
falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The Editors of Soft Science take
such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with zero tolerance policy.
Authors wishing to publish their papers in Soft Science must abide to the following:
• The author(s) must disclose any possibility of a conflict of interest in the paper prior to submission.
• The authors should declare that there is no academic misconduct in their manuscript in the cover letter.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their
findings.
• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the manuscript so that other researchers
can replicate the work.
• Authors should provide raw data if referees and the Editors of the journal request.
• Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
• Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already
published in another language will not be accepted).
• The manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published
figures or images, please get the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
• Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.
• Plagiarism is not acceptable in OAE journals.
Plagiarism involves the inclusion of large sections of unaltered or minimally altered text from an existing source without
appropriate and unambiguous attribution, and/or an attempt to misattribute original authorship regarding ideas or results,
and copying text, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the source.
As to reusing the text that is copied from another source, it must be between quotation marks and the source must be cited.
If a study’s design or the manuscript’s structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be
cited explicitly.
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.
Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results so that the
findings are not accurately represented in the research record.
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: introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image;
grouping of images that should be presented separately, or 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 publish a Correction or retract the
paper.
OAE reserves the right to contact the authors’ institution(s) to investigate possible publication misconduct if the Editors find
conclusive evidence of misconduct before or after publication. OAE has a partnership with iThenticate, which is the most
trusted similarity checker. It is used to analyze received manuscripts to avoid plagiarism to the greatest extent possible.
When plagiarism becomes evident after publication, we will retract the original publication or require modifications,
depending on the degree of plagiarism, context within the published article, and its impact on the overall integrity of the
published study. Journal Editors will act under the relevant COPE guidelines.

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