Publishing Ethics

Contemporary Visual Culture and Art upholds the COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. By embedding clear policies on authorship, conflict of interest, peer review, data availability, and ethical oversight, the journal ensures integrity, fairness, and public trust in the dissemination of visual‑culture and art research. All participants—editors, authors, and reviewers—must adhere to these standards to prevent misconduct, support reproducibility, and maintain the highest level of scholarly rigor.

For Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining academic integrity throughout the editorial and peer review process. They must:

Make impartial decisions based solely on scholarly merit and relevance to visual‑culture and contemporary art, without regard to author identity or affiliation.
Ensure rigorous double‑blind peer review, preserving anonymity between authors and reviewers to guarantee unbiased evaluation.
Avoid conflicts of interest by recusing themselves from handling any manuscript in which they have a personal, financial, or institutional stake, and transferring it to an unbiased colleague.
Uphold transparency in all ethical matters; if allegations of misconduct arise, they will promptly initiate an investigation according to COPE flowcharts and, where appropriate, publish corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern.

For Authors

Authors must:

Submit only original work that has not been published or is under consideration elsewhere.
Clearly assign authorship, ensuring every listed author has made a substantial contribution and agrees to be accountable for the content. Ghost or guest authorship is prohibited.
Disclose all potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, that might influence the research or its interpretation.
Obtain proper ethical approval for studies involving human participants (e.g., interviews, surveys, visual anthropology) or animal subjects, and include ethics‑committee reference numbers.
Avoid plagiarism and data manipulation, including self‑plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image alteration, and duplicate submission.

For Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to:

Maintain confidentiality of all manuscript materials and refrain from using them for personal advantage.
Provide objective, constructive, and timely feedback that focuses on strengthening the scholarly quality of the work.
Disclose any conflicts of interest—personal, financial, or scholarly—and recuse themselves if impartial review is compromised.
Report suspected ethical issues, such as plagiarism, data falsification, or missing ethics approval, immediately to the editorial office.

Misconduct and Oversight

Any allegation of research or publication misconduct—plagiarism, data fabrication, authorship disputes, or other unethical practices—will be taken seriously and investigated in accordance with COPE guidelines. Confirmed breaches may result in corrections, retractions, bans on future submissions, and public notices of concern. All retraction or correction notices will be clearly linked to the original article and made freely accessible.

Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit underlying data, image files, and analysis code in recognized public repositories and include a data‑availability statement in their manuscript. If ethical, legal, or privacy constraints prevent full data sharing, authors must explain these limitations and agree to provide data to qualified researchers upon reasonable request.