Future Science Association applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to articles and other works we publish. Authors of articles published in The Future journals retain copyright on their articles, except for any third-party images and other materials added by Innovative Scientific Information and Services network, which are subject to copyright of their respective owners. If you submit your paper for publication by Innovative Scientific Information and Services network, you agree to have the CC BY license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any urpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom in re-use and also ensures that published content can be mined without barriers for the needs of research.
Corrections to published articles. If necessary, corrections of significant errors in published articles will be published in a later issue of the Journal. Within two months after publication, authors are requested to bring any errors to the attention of the managing editor.
Publication Ethics
FUTURE ASSOCIATION is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional ethical codes, such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, bogus claims of authorship, should be taken very seriously by the editors with zero tolerance.
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitted paper, or any translation of it, must neither be published, nor be submitted for publication elsewhere. Violations of these rules will normally result in an immediate rejection of the submission without further review.
When a new submission is received, a couple of checks will be done at the publisher's office:
Plagiarism
Papers submitted to FUTURE ASSOCIATION must contain original material. An Initial Plagiarism Check is carried out for every manuscript submitted to FUTURE ASSOCIATION . The check starts with a Google search which is built into FUTURE ASSOCIATION 's Paper Submission and Manuscript Tracking System.
FUTURE ASSOCIATION is a member of CrossCheck and has added all its papers to the CrossCheck database. In this way, also other publishers can compare their manuscripts with FUTURE ASSOCIATION 's papers. CrossCheck is used through the web-based iThenticate system by uploading a document and running a similarity check against the CrossCheck database and the Internet. The check provides a "Similarity Index" which is the percentage of the manuscript matching other sources. iThenticate does not determine whether a manuscript contains plagiarism. Therefore, manuscripts with a high "Similarity Index" are examined if the other matching sources have been properly cited.
Data Fabrication and Falsification
Data Fabrication concerns the making up of research findings. Data Falsification means manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Generally, if an author’s figures are questionable, it is suggested to request the original data from the authors.
FUTURE ASSOCIATION follows the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and follows the COPE Flowcharts for Resolving Cases of Suspected Misconduct.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors
Authors should be aware of a possible Conflict of Interest. In such a case authors can still take responsibility for the accuracy of their paper, but must inform the reader with an appropriate statement in the Acknowledgements.
Conflicts include the following:
Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.
Peer-Reviewers
Reviewers should be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have conflicts of interest that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they’re reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.
Editors and Journal Staff
Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to their own commitments and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.
Individual libraries and academic institutes (single and multi-site) and consortia can subscribe to the entire package, a subject subset, or a customized selection tailored to meet their needs. We offer free subscriptions for our online and printed manuscripts. Send an email To request a free subscription, send an email to info@futurejournals.org. The sales team will contact you within 24 hours to complete your subscription process.
Privacy Policy
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Who are we?
Future Journals is an award-winning open science platform and leading open-access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make science open, so that all may live healthy lives on a healthy planet. More than ever, science and technology are needed to engineer solutions to move us towards a sustainable society. To do this we seek to engage with the world’s research community to serve each researcher as best we can. Being able to understand your research interests, speciality and publications helps us in this task.
This Privacy Policy describes how we ensure that you, our users and researchers around the world, understand what Personal Data we collect, how we use it and under what conditions we entrust it to third parties, and it explains the choices you have.
1.2 Matters covered by this Policy
This Privacy Policy is provided by Future Journals Media SA (“Future Journals”, “we”, “us”). We publish our own journals (referred to here as Future Journals Journals) and journals owned by third parties (referred to here as Hosted Journals). When we refer to Journals, we include both Future Journals Journals and Hosted Journals. We are responsible for the processing of personal data (the data controller) for the purposes of data protection legislation, except to the extent we are processing personal data on behalf of Hosted Journals, in which capacity we are a data processor.
In this Privacy Policy, Websites (with a capitalized W) refers to all websites owned or managed by Future Journals, including those of Hosted Journals.
This Privacy Policy applies to Personal Data collected by Future Journals, for itself and for Hosted Journals, of registered users, of visitors to the Websites, and of other individuals with whom we interact.
2.0 Definitions
These terms are used in this Privacy Policy:
Personal Data: means any information relating to a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, through that information.
Processing: means any operation which is performed on personal data, such as collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, disclosure, adaptation, alteration, deletion or any kind of disclosure or other use.
3.0 Information we collect and how we collect it
3.1 Information you give us or authorize us to receive from third parties
Registration with Future Journals or a Hosted Journal is effected through Loop, Future Journals’ open research network.
To use certain features of the Future Journals platform (including for Hosted Journals), users must register with Future Journals.
When you create a Future Journals account, you provide us with Personal Data, including full name, email address, affiliation, your email choices, and a password. You also have the option to include certain additional information about yourself in your Future Journals account, such as a brief bio, your publications, secondary email address, profile picture.
You may also choose to connect, via your Future Journals account, with other registered users. Future Journals stores this information as part of its networking service. Your connections are visible to Future Journals and, unless you have opted not to make this public, to other Future Journals registered users. This service enables you to be kept up to date with new publications in your areas of interest and to connect with colleagues.
You may register with Future Journals via your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profile. We will store the name, profile picture and email address from that external profile. We do not ask for or collect any additional information from those platforms, and we do not transfer any information to them as part of the registration process. The external party will know that you are registering with Future Journals. Its use of that information is governed by its own privacy policy.
You can, if you wish, link your ORCiD profile with your Future Journals account. If you choose to do this we will add your ORCiD and your ORCiD-listed publications to your Future Journals account.
If you, as a Future Journals registered user, undertake an activity with a Journal, such as submitting a manuscript, co-authoring or reviewing an article, or becoming an editor, your contributions will be linked to your Future Journals account. This maximises the impact of your professional achievements and credits you for your contributions.
We do not collect or store any payment information such as credit card numbers. We keep a record of the invoices, which do not include any sensitive payment information. We use an industry–approved secure third-party payment system to facilitate payments on our website.
3.2 We collect information when you visit the Websites
This information includes:
3.3 Information from Cookies and other Tracking Technologies
We and our analytics service providers use cookies or similar technologies to:
Cookies do not identify you, but we may link your IP address to a cookie on your browser.
As of 21 January 2021, through the cookie banner on the Websites you will be able to either enable or disable the targeting, functional and performance cookies.
3.4 Information collected from publications, conference activities and other public sources.
We collect publicly available information about researchers from subscription services, publications, articles, and conferences. We receive suggestions for potential contributors from our editors who are thought leaders in their areas of academic expertise.
We only collect information relevant to professional research activities, such as name, institutional affiliation, contact details, publications, academic activities and specialisation(s), editorships and awards.
This enables us to provide researchers with high-quality publishing services, such as identifying the most suited expert reviewers for articles or building world-class editorial boards.
3.5 Information collected from the Hosted Journals’ own managers.
If you manage a Hosted Journal for its owner, we may collect your full name, email addresses and role for the purpose of managing our publishing relationship.
4.0 What do we do with the information we collect?
We use the information we collect for the purposes described below.
We combine the information obtained from different sources so that we can propose opportunities which are relevant to each user’s research activities, interests and qualifications. While some of this process is automated, decisions are not.
4.1 Grounds for processing personal data.
We may collect and process your Personal Data based on:
5.1 Your account Privacy Settings
If you are a registered user, you decide how much information is displayed on your Future Journals profile and whether to keep the profile private or public. Additionally, you can decide how journals you registered with will be using your information.
You should review your Personal Data and your privacy settings regularly. To do that, go to the privacy settings in your Future Journals account.
5.2 Your Rights
In addition to the privacy settings in your Future Journals account, you also have the right to:
If you are a registered user, you should regularly check your registration information to ensure it is up to date and, to the extent you wish, complete.
6.0 How we protect your information
Future Journals takes a variety of technical, physical, organizational and administrative measures to provide an appropriate level of protection for your information against accidental, unlawful or unauthorized access, loss, destruction, alteration, disclosure or use.
We define access rights to information and we use technology to limit access to those who are authorized. We ensure that our servers have adequate security. We control physical access to our premises. We have in place, and we apply, an IT and data security policy. We work to ensure that our contractors have in place appropriate security measures and process data in accordance with applicable laws.
6.1 Your responsibility for securing your Future Journals account and Personal Data
Your access to some of our services and content may be password protected. You share the responsibility of maintaining the security of your information. You will be responsible for any action, activities, and access to the Websites and platform that were taken through your username and password, and which occur before you notify us of their loss or having been compromised. Please follow best practices to help keep your information secure, such as:
8.2 How long we keep your information
We keep your Personal Data to enable your continued use of our platform and publishing services, and for as long as it is required in order to fulfill the relevant purposes described in this Privacy Policy, to comply with our obligations as a scholarly publisher or as may be required by law.
9.0 Age limits and children
Future Journals is for professional researchers and those interested in science, and is for people aged 18 and over. People under the age of 18 should not register with Future Journals.
Where individuals aged less than 18 are involved in Future Journals for Young Minds, Future Journals only communicates with them via parents, guardians, teachers or science mentors.
Upon the explicit consent of the child’s parents or guardians Future Journals collects only the first name, the age and the avatar picture of the young reviewer. This data is solely used to acknowledge the young reviewer’s contributions to the review of the article when it is published on the Future Journals for Young Minds website.