Licenses and Copyright
The Journal of Road Safety (JRS) published by the Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to articles and other works we publish. Authors retain the copyright in their papers. However, by submitting their work for publication in the JRS, authors agree to have the CC BY license applied to their work. Under this license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse their article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, or even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are appropriately cited. In addition, in submitting your paper for publication in the JRS, authors give their permission to the ACRS to make minor editorial changes to conform to the ACRS in-house style, to print the article in the Journal of Road Safety (ISSN 2652-4260), to send it for indexing, to make the full text of the paper available online (ISSN 2652-4252) through the ACRS and Journal websites, and to promote the paper.
If information or content from other copyrighted works are included (e.g. photos, images, figures, tables, proprietary protocols, code, etc.), the author(s) must a) obtain written permission from the copyright owners to use it and publish it under the CC BY licence, and b) credit the source(s) in the article. If the author does not have owner permission, the material should not be included it in the submitted paper or it can be replaced with other content owned by the author or which they have permission to use. All JRS authors are responsible to ascertain what rights they have to use contents they include in their manuscript.
The ACRS reserves the right to remove any content from any article, whether before or after publication, if concerns are raised about copyright, license, or permissions and the authors are unable to provide documentation confirming that appropriate permissions were obtained for publication of the content in question under a CC BY license.
Repositories
Authors are allowed to deposit their articles in an institutional or other repository. However, if the repository has stated licensing policies, the policies should not be more restrictive than the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Research and Publication Ethics
JRS authors are expected to be aware of, and comply with, best practice in publication ethics including authorship, dual submission, plagiarism, manipulation of figures, competing interests and compliance with policies on research ethics. This includes when reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data.
Human Research Ethics
Human research is research conducted with or about people, or their data or tissue. Human participation in research is therefore to be understood broadly, to include the involvement of human beings through:
• taking part in surveys, interviews or focus groups;
• undergoing psychological, physiological or medical testing or treatment;
• being observed by researchers;
• researchers having access to their personal documents or other materials (e.g. Coronial data, autopsy reports, CT scans, toxicology reports, etc.);
• the collection and use of their body organs, tissues or fluids (e.g. skin, blood, urine, saliva, hair, bones, tumour and other body specimens) or their exhaled breath (e.g. breathalyser tests);
• access to their information (in individually identifiable, re-identifiable or nonidentifiable form) as part of an existing published or unpublished source or database.
Authors must declare that the investigations involving humans were carried out following the rules of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki regarding ethical principles for research involving human subjects https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/. According to point 23 of this declaration, an approval from an ‘independent’ ethics committee should have been obtained before undertaking the research. At a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in the article.
Examples of an ethics/review board statement:
“All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study.
The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee (Review Board) of XXX (Project identification code).”
Publication Ethics
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically.
Authorship must be based on those who have made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study; drafted the article or revised it critically for intellectual contents; and gave final approval of the version to be published. Authors must provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted. To request such a change, the Managing Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all (added and removed) authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.
Reviewers and editors are required to treat manuscripts fairly and in confidence, and to declare any competing interests. Reviewers and editors are asked to notify the JRS if they identify duplicate submissions or publications or any plagiarism during the review process (see section below).
Authors of the Journal of Road Safety (JRS) must adhere to the Guidelines issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors are obliged to promptly notify the Managing Editor and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper when an author discovers significant errors in their own published works. Statements of compliance are required if the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use.
These COPE guidelines include the:
• Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers
• Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
• Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases: guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
• Retraction guidelines
• Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals
• Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations
• Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct
• How to deal with text recycling
• A_Short_Guide_to_Ethical_Editing
• COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
• How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers
• Guidance for Editors
Plagiarism
Authors must write entirely original works, and appropriately and accurately cite the work and/or words of others to ensure originality and avoidance of plagiarism. The manuscript automatically undergoes a duplicate submission check. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected unless rectified by the author(s). If plagiarism is detected after publication, we will issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:
• Directly copying text from other sources without appropriate citation.
• Copying ideas, images, or data from other sources without appropriate citation.
• Reusing text from your own previous publications without appropriate citation (see COPE guidelines on text recycling). Reusing text from the Methods section in the author’s previous publications, with attribution to the source, is acceptable.
• Using an idea from another source with slightly modified language without appropriate citation .
Advertising
Please note that the Journal of Road Safety (JRS) does not accept any article types (https://acrs.org.au/publications/journal-contacts-instructions/) that are deemed to be an advertisement of a product or service. However, we accept advertising in the Journal and sponsorship of the Journal. This assists us with offsetting the Open Access publication costs.
See Advertising section for rates. For more information about advertising or becoming a JRS sponsor, please contact the Managing Editor Dr Chika Sakashita at journaleditor@acrs.org.au
