Publication Ethics and Malpractice

Proceedings of ICEC - Transparency and ethics statement

Last revised September 2025

  1. Journal management

Evolving Cities Publications (ECP) publishes the Proceedings of the International Conference on Evolving Cities (ProcICEC) with ISSN 2754-5768. ECP is an unincorporated association (https://evolvingcities.org) with Scientific and Management Committees whose members are all recognised experts within the field. Its postal address is: Energy and Climate Change Division, Building 178, Boldrewood Innovation Campus, Southampton, SO16 7QF, UK.

The Editor in Chief is Prof AbuBakr S. Bahaj. The Proceedings will be archived in the British Library and the University of Southampton's eprints repository.

  1. Publication schedule

The Proceedings are published annually, i.e. once per conference cycle.

  1. Licensing and fees

All papers published in the ProcICEC are copyright the authors and licensed CC-BY. Only papers of registered delegates of ICEC are eligible for inclusion in the ProcICEC. No fees are applied additional to the conference registration fee.

  1. Peer review process

Each manuscript submission to ProcICEC is subject to single-blind peer review by a minimum of two independent reviewers. The reviewers are assigned by the ICEC Management Committee, who handle the process throughout, led by the chair of the conference. Reviewers are required to state any competing interests before completing a review. Reviewers, once having accepted the review, can write anonymous comments for the author and separate confidential comments for the editor. They can also upload a marked up copy of the manuscript. They must make an overall recommendation of either (a) Accept; (b) Revisions required (no second round of review); (c) Resubmit for review (another review round required); (d) decline. Where only one reviewer recommends 'decline', the editor may decide to decline, or request a review from a third independent reviewer. All communications between authors and editors, and between editors and reviewers, should be through the submission system at https://publications.evolvingcities.org/submit-to-icec. This ensures traceability.

  1. Authorship and contributions

All authors should make a material contribution to the submission, and the submitting author must declare the specific contribution of each author. Courtesy authorship is strongly discouraged.

  1. Use of Generative AI/LLMs

Authors are fully responsible for the content of their articles. Direct use of generative AI should be restricted to grammar correction and rephrasing of the author’s original work to improve the clarity of text, or refinement of graph presentation in the case of figures. Direct use of Generative AI to create text or figures is not allowed and authors will need to declare that this is the case upon submission. Use of Generative AI in the methodology, e.g. analysis of data, should be declared in comments to editor and the chat history included as an appendix. Where the editors suspect that Generative AI/LLMs have been used to generate content without declaration (for example, if there are portions of excessively wordy text and/or fabricated references), the submission will be rejected.

  1. Anti-plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as presenting another author’s work as if it were your own. It can range from a single sentence to an entire article. It also includes data, text, figures and analysis methodology. All submissions will be checked before progressing to the review stage, using anti-plagiarism solutions. Any submissions where plagiarism is suspected by editors or reviewers should be reported to the Editor-in-chief immediately.  will be declined immediately. ProcICEC may contact the submitter’s institution to alert them to the possible ethical breach. Minor infringements, for example omitting a reference to a non-essential figure copied from a source, will be dealt with during the review and copy-editing stages.

  1. Duplicate (or ‘redundant’) publication

Publishing substantially the same material in more than one article, often in separate journals, is regarded as duplicate publication and is serious breach of publication ethics. Authors are required to confirm that their article has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration. If it is brought to the attention of the editor, the submission will be declined (if still in the pre-publication phase) or retracted (if already published) with a permanent note to the effect on the page attached to the unique URL for the published article.

  1. Post-publication discussion and corrections

For each published article, responses will be accepted for six months after the publication date. Retractions and corrections will be linked on the page attached to the unique URL for the published article.

  1. Ethical oversight

All submissions including research involving humans or animals, or using personal data, are required to state that appropriate ethical review has taken place and approval granted by the appropriate body (a university research ethics committee, for example).

  1. Data and reproducibility

Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary materials for readers to download and reproduce their results. These will be linked on the page attached to the unique URL for the published article.

  1. Competing interests

Authors are required to declare any competing interests during the submission process. This includes any financial or in-kind support offered by organizations or individuals. If undeclared competing interests are bought to the attention of the Editor-in-chief after a paper has been accepted, the paper may either be retracted, or a correction published along with the article, depending on the severity of the breach and its likely impact on the review process. Editors will always strive to invite reviewers who are independent of the authors of papers under review. However, it not always possible to find all the potential links between authors and reviewers in advance. Reviewers should decline to review any paper where there could be any doubt of their independence from the authors. If it is found after publication that a reviewer was not independent, then the paper will normally be retracted, unless at least two other independent reviewers recommended that the paper be accepted.

  1. Allegations of misconduct

There are a large number of potential ethical breaches that can be committed in the process of publication, many of which are listed by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) web site. The most common include:

  • Plagiarism (see section 7)
  • Redundant publication (see section 8)
  • Reviewers suggesting that authors should add multiple references to the reviewer’s work out of proportion to the actual relevance or importance in the field of research. In this case the author should notify the editor (or Editor-in-chief) who will request the reviewer amend the review and if the response is not positive, invite a new reviewer.

If reviewers or authors believe that they have identified a case of misconduct they should immediately notify the Editor-in-chief, who will investigate, and if necessary take action, using the flowcharts produced by COPE as guidance.

  1. Complaints and appeals

If an author believes that an editor has unfairly treated them in respect of the processes described above, they can contact the editor-in-chief confidentially. The editor-in-chief’s decision is final.