TU Delft OPEN Publishing Policies

1. Editorial Policies

1.1. Author and Contributor statement

TU Delft OPEN Publishing follows the Contributor Roles Taxonomy for authorship (CRediT). In addition to CRediT TU Delft OPEN Publishing follows the COPE authorship guidelines.

Any changes in authorship and Contributorship before and after publication should be agreed by all authors and contributors. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining confirmation and for providing evidence with an explanation.

The name and the affiliation of the authors should be clearly defined. 

Background

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) was developed to reward and recognise transparently research contributions, to reduce authors dispute and to stimulate collaboration. This initiative came to light after a 2012 workshop between members of the academic, publishing, and funder communities. See more details here https://credit.niso.org

Benefits

For authors, CRediT statement helps to:

• Increase the transparency of research work
• Increase authors’ visibility and recognition in research participation and contribution
• Shift the focus of ordering of authors to specific research contributions

For Journals/Books/Textbooks/Series, CRediT statement provides:

• Advocacy of open science
• More insights into research activities and management
• Facilitation of research integrity by explicitly identifying research contribution

Implementation

• The submitting/corresponding author provides an Author/Contributor Statement at submission
• All contributors should be listed before the acknowledgment section and according to the table below. Please note in the case of double-blind peer review the statement should be hidden until acceptance
• All Author Contribution and all types of contribution should be described

Not every contributor is an author. The corresponding author of the publication is responsible for any question regarding the Author/Contributor Statement.  

                                                            Table 1 Contributor taxonomy

1.2. Processing charges

At the TU Delft OPEN Publishing there are no book- or article processing charges for institutional author(s). 
If there are specific requests like personalized design for a book cover, there may be a small cost involved. The author will be responsible for covering these expenses, with their approval.

1.3. Open Access Policy

All material published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing is licensed under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 by default. We follow the TU Delft Open Access Policy and Guidelines.

• CC -BY 4.0 licence. The license means that anyone is free to share (to copy, distribute, and transmit the work), to remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions:
  • The original authors must be given credit.
  • For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission.
  • Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

Note that publishing under other CC licenses is allowed upon request.
For enquiries contact us.

1.4. Copyright Policy

The copyright on academic and professional publications (dissertations, scientific articles, articles in professional journals) produced while in the employment of TU Delft is the property of the author.

Copyright on teaching materials produced by you as a teacher of TU Delft is owned by the employer and can therefore be used as such for education and research purposes, unless other arrangements have been made. Although the exploitation rights of teaching materials may be vested with TU Delft, you always keep your moral rights, for example the right to be cited as the author of the publication.

More about copyright here.

1.5. Royalties and, other author and reviewer incentives

TU Delft OPEN Publishing has a clear policy regarding the remuneration of its authors. As a non-for-profit publisher and service provider, we refrain from any form of royalties for authors.
For that reason there are no financial rewards for authors publishing via TU Delft OPEN.

1.6. Article Types

The editorial board of each journal and publication is responsible for defining which type of articles is accepted. TU Delft OPEN Publishing supports the following article types.

1.6.1. Registered Reports

Registered Reports are a form of empirical article in which the methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and reviewed prior to research being conducted. This format of article seeks to neutralise a variety of inappropriate research practices, including inadequate statistical power, selective reporting of results, and publication bias.

The review process for Registered Reports is divided into two stages. In Stage 1, reviewers assess study proposals before data is collected. In Stage 2, reviewers consider the full study, including results and interpretation. See review workflow in figure 2.

Go to Registered Reports Guidelines for detailed information about authors and reviewers' guidelines, checklist, workflows and templates.

1.6.2. Conference papers

To be continued...

1.6.3. Media

To be continued...

1.7. Similarity check

TU Delft authors should expect their work to undergo a similarity analysis at any stage of the review process or at submission or before acceptance.

1.8. Research data

This policy is based on Hrynaszkiewicz, I, Simons, N, Hussain, A, Grant, R and Goudie, S. 2020. Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers. Data Science Journal, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-005

TU Delft OPEN Publishing requires data access statement, data sharing and data citation and data registration; and encourages data peer review, data licensing, data management plans and data format.

Quick links:
How to prepare your data for publication
Data Frequently Ask Questions

Read more

1.8.1. Policy summary for authors

By publishing with TU Delft OPEN Publishing authors are required to make research data accessible to editors and reviewers, and to readers. For all research data deposition in repositories is required. For all papers, books, textbooks and any other outputs the decision to publish will be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.

1.8.2. Policy summary for Editors

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN, will require data sharing in repositories for all research data. Journals, books, textbooks and any other research outputs will ensure that its policy on data sharing is adhered to including ensuring reviewers and readers can access research data for all papers, if they wish to. The decision to publish will be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.

1.8.2. Policy summary for Editors 1.8.3. Definitions

Research data

 This policy applies to the research data that would be required to verify the results of research reported in articles published in the journal. Research data include data produced by the authors (“primary data”) and data from other sources that are analysed by authors in their study (“secondary data”). Research data includes any recorded factual material that are used to produce the results in digital and non-digital form. This includes tabular data, code, images, audio, documents, video, maps, raw and/or processed data.

Exceptions

Research data that are not required to verify the results reported in articles are not covered by this policy. This policy does not require public sharing of quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant (“personal data”) unless participants have consented to data release. The policy also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species. Personal or sensitive data must be shared in a secure or controlled access way, in agreement with the Editors. Methods for sharing sensitive or personal data include:

• Deposition of research data in an approved controlled access repository and sharing metadata publicly about the research data
• Anonymisation or deidentification of data before public sharing

In these cases, the procedures and conditions for accessing your research data must be included in your manuscript.

Embargoes on data sharing are not permitted.

Supplementary materials

Sharing research data as supplementary information files is not permitted. The journal will require authors to deposit these in an approved repository as a condition of publication.

Data repositories

Research data must be shared via data repositories. TU Delft researchers can use 4TU.ResearchData which is a trusted data repository, or another trusted data repository of their choice. The journal will require authors to deposit supporting research data in a trusted data repository as a condition of publication

Data citation

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN Publishing, requires authors to cite any publicly accessible research data in their reference list and will verify this as a condition of publication. References to datasets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style.

Data licensing

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN, encourages research data to be made accessible under open licences that permit reuse freely. The publisher, TU Delft OPEN, does not enforce particular licenses for research data, where research data are deposited in third party repositories. The publisher of the journal does not claim copyright in research data.

Support

Questions related to this policy should be sent to researchsupport@tudelft.nl 

Data Access statements

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN Publishing, requires authors to include in any articles that report results derived from research data to include a Data Access Statement (DAS). The provision of a Data availability statement that is compatible with the journal’s research data policy will be verified as a condition of publication. DAS must include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly accessible, a persistent link to a metadata record or landing page for the data should be provided. Any conditions for accessing the data must be stated in the manuscript.
DAS must take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data):        

• The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]·
• The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available because [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available [CONDITIONS FOR OBTAINING ACCESS]·       
• Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available at <link>

Data formats and standards

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN, encourages authors to share research data using data and metadata formats and standards recognised by their research community. Please see FAIR sharing (https://fairsharing.org) for more information on established data sharing formats and standards. The journal prefers research data to be shared in open file formats – those that do not require proprietary software to access - where possible. For example, tabular data should be shared as CSV files rather than XLS files.

Mandatory data sharing (all papers)

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN,  requires that all research data must be available in public repositories if they support a publication. Research Data covered by the “Definition of exceptions” are excluded.

Research data and peer review

Peer reviewers are encouraged to consider a manuscript’s Data Availability Statement (DAS), where applicable. They should consider if the authors have complied with the journal’s policy on the accessibility of research data, and whether reasonable effort has been made to make the data that support the findings of the study available for replication or reuse by other researchers. For the Data Access Statement, reviewers should consider:

• Has an appropriate DAS been provided?
• Is it clear how a reader can access the data?
• Where links are provided in the DAS, are they working/valid?
• Where data access is restricted, are the access controls warranted and appropriate?
• Where data are described as being included with the manuscript and/or supplementary information files, is this accurate?

For the data files, where available, reviewers should consider:

• Are the data in the most appropriate repository?
• Were the data produced in a rigorous and methodologically sound manner?
• Are data and any metadata consistent with file format and reporting standards of the research community?
• Are the data files deposited by the authors complete and do they match the descriptions in the manuscript?
• Do they contain personally identifiable, sensitive or inappropriate information? Optional

Data Management Plans

The publisher, TU Delft OPEN, encourages authors to prepare Data Management Plans before conducting their research and encourages authors to make those plans available to editors, reviewers and readers who wish to assess them.

1.9. Photographs, drawings or illustrations

You are required to seek written and traceable permission from the legal owners before using their illustrations in your publication. You should also appropriately identify the legal owners to be credited or acknowledged. In case you failed to identify or reach the legal owners you should state in your publication that you made all effort possible to do so.

Please note the Publisher is not liable for any copyright infringement.

1.10. Branding

TU Delft OPEN Publishing logo cannot be modified or alter in any ways and use for commercial purposes as it is copyrighted as an original work. The logo exists in colour and in black and white to fit all backgrounds. Request to make use of the logo should be addressed to library@tudelft.nl

1.11. Archiving

TU Delft OPEN Publishing content will be stored in the Global LOCKSS network in order to secure a permanent archive for the platforms content.
Authors are allowed to deposit a Submitted version, an Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript) and a Published version (Version of record) of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice.
TU Delft OPEN Publishing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. We work in partnership with organizations as well as maintaining our own digital archive.

1.12. Research Software Policy

• facilitates best-practices on research software management and sharing, irrespective of whether the code is proprietary or open source.
• emphasises the value of research software as a standalone research output and facilitates proper recognition of the contribution of TU Delft researchers to software.
• sets out some high-level requirements for how software should be managed, the responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved in software development and describes the global workflows that facilitate sharing software openly.

The TU Delft Research Software Policy can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/4629662#.YUMEhPkzaUk

This policy is accompanied by the document “TU Delft Guidelines on Research Software: Licensing, Registration and Commercialisation” (http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4629635). The guidelines provide a more detailed description of the workflows involved when sharing software under an open or proprietary licence, elaborate on relevant considerations and provide additional references.

2. Review policy

TU Delft OPEN Publishing follows the international ethics guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As such, the board of TU Delft OPEN Publishing and affiliated Editors adhere to the COPE ‘Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’ and the ‘Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers’. 

All material published with TU Delft OPEN Publishing has transparent ways of review in place, which are displayed on the website. Furthermore, the editorial and review policies follow the principles of transparency as described in the ‘Declaration on transparent editorial policies for academic journals’. 

TU Delft OPEN Publishing recognizes that different products require different, i.e. specific tailor-made forms of review.

TU Delft OPEN Publishing considers both traditional and novel (open) peer review processes including:

• A traditional single-blind or double-blind peer review by reviewers that are appointed by the editor-in-chief.
• An open review applicable to different publication stages:
  • before submission; also the term FEEDBACK is applicable
  • during submission and review; the term PEER REVIEW is applicable,
  • post-publication; the term COMMENTS is applicable. 
    
    

TRADITIONAL Peer Review is:

• Anonymous, single-blind review (reviewer unknown to the author), double-blind review (both author and reviewer unknown to each other).
• Selective, with reviewers selected by editors;
• Confidential, with neither the review process nor the reviews themselves made public

OPEN Review knows:

• Open identities - Authors and reviewers aware of each other’s identity.
• Open interaction - Direct discussion between author(s)/reviewers, and/or reviewers.
• Open reports - Review reports published alongside relevant article.
• Open participation - Wider community able to contribute to review process.

3. Publications Ethics

TU Delft OPEN Publishing, as part of TU Delft, follows the TU Delft Code of Conduct and its Integrity Policy. As a university publisher, it has its own underlying publication procedure and also adheres to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The stakeholders of TU Delft OPEN Publishing agree to adhere to the TU Delft Code of Conduct, its Integrity Policy, the publication procedure of TU Delft OPEN Publishing, and the Guidelines of COPE which are partly described below.
 

Integrity policy:

• TU Delft OPEN Publishing follows the Integrity Policy of TU Delft which sees to ethics and integrity.
• According to the TU Delft Integrity Statement in the TU Delft Code of Conduct all people involved in research, teaching and innovation at TU Delft, must maintain the highest standards of academic integrity. This means that all must act upon the leading principles and the standards of the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Non-compliance with these standards (may) lead to measures and sanctions.  
• The TU Delft Committee on Research Integrity (CWI) assesses complaints on alleged violations of these research integrity standards and advises the Executive Board (CvB) in this respect: a provisional opinion by the CvB on alleged research misconduct may eventually lead to a publication retraction, a ban from TU Delft OPEN Publishing and a report to affiliated institutions. For queries: integrity@tudelft.nl
• When submitting your work to TU Delft OPEN Publishing it must meet the following requirements in case it sees to human research objects, medical care or device, or animals. According to the TU Delft Regulations on Human Trials (2016), approval for human research is mandatory for all research involving data obtained from human research objects, and is provided by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). If you conduct an experiment which involves medical care or device, you must seek approval form a certified medical ethics committee. For queries: hrec@tudelft.nl 
  For experiments involving animals, please contact: ivd@tudelft.nl 
   

Similarity check

A similarity check is part of the TU Delft OPEN Publishing standard publication procedure. Therefore, authors submitting their work to TU Delft OPEN Publishing should expect their work to go through a similarity analysis at any stage of the publishing workflow. 

The Plagiarism Support team of the TU Delft Library uses the tool iThenticate to create a Similarity Report of all publication submitted to TU Delft OPEN Publishing.

The editor and publisher carefully analyse reports displaying a similarity above 30%:

• In the case of negligence or poor citation authors will be referred to a guide in order prevent or to reduce similarity. After modification the manuscript will go again through a similarity check
• In other cases, authors will be required to provide an explanation and to revise the manuscript in order to reduce the similarity. After revision the manuscript will once more go through a similarity check. If the similarity still remains above the threshold, your manuscript might be rejected at the discretion of the editor

Please note that we check for AI-generated content. The manuscript will be rejected unless using AI-generated tool is part of the work published.   

Questions regarding the above can be addressed to plagiarism-lib@tudelft.nl

Use of AI

The use of AI technologies in writing/summarising is gaining popularity and is expanding. When used responsibly and appropriately in research, it can facilitate innovation. However, authors/editors remain fully responsible and accountable for the quality and content of their manuscripts. With this in mind and with reference to the COPE Position Statement of 13 February 2023, authors are required not to list AI tools as a co-author because these tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work, and they need to be transparent in disclosing in the materials and methods of the manuscript how the AI tool was used and which tool was used (such as ChatGPT and other generative (language-based) AI tools for generation of images, etc.) in the writing of their manuscripts. If applicable, disclosure needs to take place at the bottom of the References section, in the Acknowledgements section, and separately in the cover letter submitted before the review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments, including the COPE position statement.

Review policy:

TU DELFT OPEN Publishing accepts all type of review as long as the processes are transparent and adhere to the COPE policy. Editors and reviewers are encouraged to join COPE individually and agree to declare any conflict of interest (see below).

Editors of journals and books may also contribute to the published content, but a rigorous review workflow is implemented to ensure the integrity and quality of the review process. If a member of the editorial board is listed as a (co)author, they will not be involved in the review process and will not access the reviewers' identity in the case of anonymous, single-blind or double-blind reviews. In instances where the editor-in-chief is a (co)author, the responsibility of selecting the editor who will handle the paper will fall on the (co)editor-in-chief or another editor to maintain a fair and unbiased review process. To ensure transparency, it is important to inform readers on the journal homepage that a fair review process was followed for all published content.

A short guide to ethical editing for new editors | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

Complaints and appeals:

Complaints
Complaints such as misconduct, authorship dispute or suspected conflict of interest should be addressed to the publisher (publishing-lib@tudelft.nl)  or the editorial board.

Author appeal 
If an author wishes to appeal an editorial decision, the author may contact the editor in chief of the journal, book, textbook, or proceedings directly. It is important to stress that their appeal decisions are final. This means that conversations and/or correspondence in respect of discussing or negotiating on the final decision will be without effect and can be ignored.  

Conflict of interest:

A conflict of interest (COI) in publishing happens when anyone involved in the publishing process has a personal, financial, or professional interest that could interfere with an objective and impartial evaluation of the manuscript or the publication process.

All COI should be handled as follow by the editorial board in first instance then the publisher:

• Disclosure: Anyone (editors, reviewers, authors and any other relevant parties) involved in the publishing process should disclose any potential conflicts of interest they may have
• Evaluation: After disclosing the potential COI, it needs to be examined to determine how important it is and its possible impact on the publication process.
• Management: An identified COI requires appropriate steps. Those steps may include stepping back from certain duties or decisions, removal from the publication process, or take other actions to reduce the conflict.
• Transparency: Any identified conflicts of interest should be transparently disclosed to relevant parties, including readers, authors, and reviewers.
• COI can be mentioned after the section Acknowledgment of the publication

Handling competing interests | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics
 

Publication notices and changes

Published content is a permanent part of the academic record. Therefore, any changes made to the published content must be accompanied by a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original content.

Publication notices include errors introduced by the journal (erratum), an author error (corrigendum), adding a (small) document to a published work to provide additional information (addendum), and retraction.

Journals and books editors and the publisher handle together the publication notices which follow the following steps:

• Reviewing the proposed changes to the published content to determine if they are necessary and appropriate.
• Preparing a post-publication notice that accurately reflects the changes made to the content.
• Linking the post-publication notice to the original content in a clear and prominent manner.
• Distributing the updated content and the post-publication notice to relevant parties, including subscribers, indexers, and other databases.
• Monitoring the impact of the changes on the academic record and making any necessary further updates or corrections.

Authorship:

All co-authors must agree to submit the work to a specific journal or publisher. For authors dispute see the Complaints and Appeals section.

How to add extra authors before publication:

• All co-authors must agree to add new (co)authors to the publication
• Agreement must be collected and sent to the editor with an explanation

How to add extra authors after publication: Publication Notices and Changes section for procedure.
 

Guest editors/ Special Issues

TU Delft OPEN Publishing requires an agreement between the guest editor and the journal or the book series editor where its role is clearly defined.  Guest editors are subject to the same rules as editors of the journal of books; and adhere to TU Delft OPEN Publishing policies.

Note

A number of industry organizations publish comprehensive guidelines and advice that can be readily adopted by any publisher. Such notable organizations include:

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) 
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
• Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT)

Guidelines for what a Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement should adhere to (PEMS)

4. Code of conduct

TU Delft OPEN Publishing follows the TU Delft Code of conduct which includes scientific and academic integrity, and good research practices. We expect all users of the community-driven platform and all authors and reviewers to adhere to the above code of conduct. Failing to follow those conduct will result in sanctions after transparent investigations

TU Delft follows the Ethics as adopt by authors, editors, and publishers. These guidelines are developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

5. Disclaimer

 The opinions expressed in our published works are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views opinions of TU Delft OPEN Publishing

The responsibility for the content provided in any of our journals and books are exclusively of the author(s) concerned. TU Delft Open Publishing and editors of any of our journals are not responsible for errors in the contents or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in it. The opinions expressed in the research papers/articles in the journals and books do not necessarily represent the views of TU Delft OPEN publishing and the editor of the concerned journal .

We follow open access publishing policy, in which author(s) are the sole owners of the copyright of the content published, for any omissions, copyright violation author(s) of the concerned article are only responsible. Our responsibility is limited only to removal of the concerned article from the journal once the query is raised.