Ethics and Publication Policies

Waterlines: Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards in publishing. The journal follows guidelines issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and applicable sector-specific principles. All authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to adhere to the following ethical standards and policies.

1. Research Ethics

• Research involving human participants must receive approval from a recognized Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee.
• Authors must confirm that informed consent has been obtained from all human subjects, including consent for publication if individuals can be identified.
• When research involves vulnerable populations (e.g., children, refugees, marginalized communities), ethical safeguards must be clearly described.
• Authors must comply with international standards such as the Declaration of Helsinki and local laws applicable to their research.

2. Plagiarism and Originality

• All submissions must be the original work of the authors and not published or under consideration elsewhere.
• Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, is strictly prohibited and will lead to rejection or retraction of the article.
• Manuscripts are subject to similarity checks using plagiarism detection software.

3. Authorship and Contributions

• Only individuals who have made significant intellectual contributions to the work should be listed as authors.
• Author contributions should be clearly defined using the CRediT taxonomy (e.g., conceptualization, methodology, writing).
• Changes to authorship (addition, removal, or reordering) must be approved by all authors and justified in writing.

4. Conflict of Interest Disclosure

• Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, or personal relationships that may influence their work.
• Reviewers and editors must declare potential conflicts and recuse themselves when a conflict exists.

5. Data Sharing and Transparency

• Authors are encouraged to make data and supplementary material publicly available in open repositories (e.g., Zenodo, Figshare).
• Data availability statements should be included in the manuscript indicating where data can be accessed or reasons for non-availability.
• Replication data, models, or tools developed as part of the study should be documented clearly for reproducibility.

6. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Authors must disclose any use of AI tools (e.g., for text generation, image analysis, or statistical computation) during manuscript preparation.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and authors are fully responsible for all content generated by such tools.

7. Peer Review Process

• Waterlines uses a double-blind peer review process to ensure impartiality and quality.
• Reviewers must maintain confidentiality and provide objective, constructive feedback.
• Authors are expected to respond to reviewer comments in a timely and professional manner.

8. Retraction, Corrections, and Misconduct

• Articles may be retracted if they are found to contain ethical violations, plagiarism, or falsified data.
• Minor corrections will be issued as errata; significant post-publication changes will be documented with a corrigendum or retraction notice.
• Allegations of misconduct will be investigated following COPE’s flowcharts and procedures.

9. Open Access and Licensing

• All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
• This allows free distribution, reuse, and adaptation of the content with appropriate credit to the authors.
• Authors retain copyright of their work.

10. Archiving and Preservation Policy

• The journal content is preserved via digital archiving platforms to ensure long-term access.
• Persistent identifiers (DOIs) are assigned to all published articles for reliable citation and linking.

11. Editorial Independence

• Editorial decisions are made based solely on academic merit and relevance to the journal's scope.
• The editorial board operates independently from the publisher, sponsors, or institutional affiliations.

12. Compliance with International Guidelines

• The journal aligns with COPE, ICMJE, and WAME principles of best editorial practices.
• Authors and reviewers are encouraged to consult these guidelines when preparing or evaluating manuscripts.