GMPC-Policy on Complaints

GMPC journals handle any complaints following the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) guidelines. GMPC journals consider all types of complaints concerning alleged ethics violations. Please fill in the Contact Form and send it to our complaints department when raising complaints or comments.appeal-complaints@akademia.gmpc.de
For inquiries, feedback, or unclarity, GMPC- journals recommend contacting the corresponding author first to get an answer before contacting the GMPC-editorial office. The editorial office may be contacted if the readers do not get an answer or the issues are not handled. The GMPC-editorial office will communicate Editors-in-Chief or editorial advisory board to identify who will review the complaints.
Once the GMPC journals receive the complaint, a threshold that will be met before conducting the additional investigation will be identified. Criticisms, personal comments, or differences in professional opinion will not be considered. However, the complainant will be informed of the reason(s) for the insufficiency to be considered.
All anonymous complaints or complaints related to scientific validity, ethical or legal aspects of either published articles or their review and handling process will be seriously checked as soon as possible where appropriate.
In case of ethical concerns, the Editor-in-Chief or Advisory Board will support the editorial office in taking the final decisions according to the COPE-guidelines. Other persons and organizations, such as experts in the field, legal advisors, or university authorities, may be consulted when necessary. All complaints are considered and investigated, even anonymous complaints; however, criticisms and personal comments will not be considered. Upon request from the complainant, complaints will be handled confidentially. The complainant will be notified once a final decision is made or an update is published.

Updating published manuscripts

All minor errors that do not affect the meaning, e.g., spelling, punctuation, spacing, and/or metadata errors such as titles, authors' names, and contact, maybe not be considered by GMPC-journals.
Corrigendum: Corrections of metadata errors,ethical and scientific issues are considered major or basic errors that will be completed and republished with a Correction notice. Examples of the major or basic errors are: i) all errors affect the scientific and scholarly interpretation of the work but do not affect the final decision, such as an error in data or interpretation, ii) errors in scientifically relevant formatting, e.g., errors in figures and tables, iii) removing or adding text or paragraphs within the manuscript, author from the manuscript authors, an entire affiliation, an entire reference, an entire section from the back matter, e.g., funding, author contributions, or acknowledgments, and iv) modification of the arrangement of authors in the authorship list. Once the editorial office has approved the requested update, the manuscript will be revised and republished on our website, accompanied by a publication statement "Corrigendum". This correction notice will be published in the most current issue of the journal as a separate publication that links to the updated paper.
Despite the change in the author's name being a major correction, GMPC is aware that in some cases, the changes in the names are a sensitive and private issue because they may be related to gender identity, religious conversion, marriage, or divorce. Therefore, the Correction note will not be published to protect the author's privacy. In this case, authors should contact the editorial office and request to change their names.
Retractions: GMPC follows the recommendations of the COPE for the retraction of published articles. All cases that are mentioned in the COPE- guidelines will be considered. We recommend authors read the guidelines for more detail. Published articles, for example, that threaten the integrity of scientific records, e.g., contain inadvertent errors, data fabrication, a high percentage of plagiarism, serious ethical breaches, or other reasons, will be retracted partially or completely. Retracted articles are amended and published with a "Retracted" watermark and a retraction statement that will also be published in the current issue. Partial retractions might be published in cases where results are only partially wrong. The original article will still be available on the journal's website but should not be cited. In exceptional cases, the published article will be deleted from the GMPC website and related indexing databases if it constitutes an illegal act or is likely to result in significant harm if still online.

Last updated: 15-Feb-2023