CJBES is committed to maintaining the highest standards of Code of Conduct and to supporting ethical research practices. CJBES adheres to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers. We encourage journal article reviewers to refer the ‘COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers’ as may be appropriate. We take publication ethics very seriously.

Defamation
While trying to promote freedom of expression wherever possible, CJBES aims to avoid publishing anything that harms the reputation of an individual, business, group, or organization unless it can be proven to be true. We take all possible measures to ensure that published work is free of anything slanderous, or defamatory. CJBES is committed to transparency in areas of potential conflict of interest.

Fair editing and peer review

CJBES encourages all participants in the publishing process to adhere to established principles of ethical publishing. This extends from authors to journal editors, reviewers, journal editorial and publishing staff.

Editorial independence
Editors have full editorial independence. Peer review and reviewer conduct CJBES supports and refers its editors to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. CJBES does support a double-blind peer review system. Manuscripts are reviewed by two independent experts in the relevant area. The reviewers make a scientific assessment and a recommendation to the editors. Reviewers remain unknown to authors.

Confidentiality
Unless otherwise specified, CJBES expects editors and reviewers to handle all submissions in confidence. If a reviewer wishes to delegate the review or seek the opinion of a colleague on a specific aspect of the paper, they are expected to clear this with the editor in the first instance.

Plagiarism

CJBES takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice.

Submitted articles are checked with duplication-checking software such as TurnItIn.

Our journal CJBES has applied to be a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)