Authors responsibilities
Authors warrant that their manuscripts are their original works, that they have not been published before, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from further consideration. The work that has already been published elsewhere cannot be reprinted in the Buildings Materials and Structures.
Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties.
Authors must make sure that their author team listed in the manuscript includes all and only those authors who have significantly contributed to the submitted manuscript. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.
It is the responsibility of the authors to specify the title and code label of the research project within which the work was created, as well as the full title of the funding institution. In case a submitted manuscript has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the conference shall be provided in the same place.
Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Parts of the manuscript, including text, equations, pictures and tables that are taken verbatim from other works must be clearly marked, e.g. by quotation marks accompanied by their location in the original document (page number), or, if more extensive, given in a separate paragraph.
Full references of each quotation (in-text citation) must be listed in the separate section (Literature or References) in a uniform manner, according to the citation style used by the journal. References section should list only quoted/cited, and not all sources used for the preparation of a manuscript.
When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief (or publisher) and cooperate with him/her to retract or correct the paper.
Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.
By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policies of Building Materials and Structures
Editorial responsibilities
The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal will be published. Only in case where the Editor-in-Chief is an author of a submitted manuscript the decision is made by the Editorial Board. The decisions are made based exclusively on the manuscript’s merit. They must be free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias. When making decisions Editorial Board is also guided by the editorial policy and legal provisions relating to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Members of the Editorial Board including the Editor-in-Chief must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. Members who feel they might be perceived as being involved in such a conflict do not participate in the decision process for a particular manuscript.
The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential. Information and ideas contained in unpublished materials must not be used for personal gain without the written consent of the authors.
Editors and the editorial staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the authors/reviewers remain anonymous during and after the evaluation process in accordance with the type of reviewing in use.
The Editorial Board is obliged to assist reviewers with additional information on the manuscript, including the results of checking manuscript for plagiarism.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
Reviewers are required to provide the qualified and timely assessment of the scholarly merits of the manuscript. The reviewer takes special care of the real contribution and originality of the manuscript. The review must be fully objective. The judgment of the reviewers must be clear and substantiated by arguments.
The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus. The review has a standard format. It is submitted through the online journal management system where it is stored permanently.
The reviewer must not be in a conflict of interest with the authors or funders of research. If such a conflict exists, the reviewer is obliged to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief. The reviewer shall not accept for reviewing papers beyond the field of his/her full competence.
Reviewers should alert the Editor-in-Chief to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been considered in the manuscript. They may recommend specific references for citation, but shall not require to cite papers published in Building Materials and Structures, or their own papers, unless it is justified.
The reviewers are expected to improve the quality of the manuscript through their suggestions. If they recommend correction of the manuscript prior to publication, they are obliged to specify the manner in which this can be achieved.
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.
Dealing with unethical behavior
Anyone may inform Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary credible information/evidence to start an investigation.
- Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation.
- During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in the process.
- The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
- If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.
Minor misconduct (with no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal, for example, when it comes to misunderstanding or wrong application of publishing standards) will be dealt directly with authors and reviewers without involving any other parties. Outcomes include:
- Sending a warning letter to authors and/or reviewers.
- Publishing correction of a paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list.
- Publishing an erratum, e.g. if the error was made by editorial staff.
In the case of major misconduct Editorial Board may adopt different measures:
- Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
- Informing officially the author’s/reviewer’s affiliating institution.
- The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy.
- A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
- Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.
The above actions may be taken separately or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the case relevant expert organizations, bodies, or individuals may be consulted.
When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Plagiarism prevention
Building Materials and Structures does not publish plagiarized papers. The Editorial Board has adopted the stance that plagiarism, where someone assumes another’s ideas, words, or other creative expression as one’s own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.
Plagiarism includes the following:
- Verbatim (word for word), or almost verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author’s work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks) in a way described under Authors responsibilities;
- Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else’s paper without properly citing the source or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.
Any manuscript which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under Retraction Policy.
To prevent plagiarism the manuscripts are submitted to a plagiarism detection process using iThenticate/CrossRef within SCIndeks Assistant. The results obtained are verified by the Editorial Board in accordance with the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Conflict of interest
Corresponding authors, on behalf of all the authors of a submission, must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. All authors, including those without competing interests to declare, should provide the relevant information to the corresponding author (which, where relevant, may specify they have nothing to declare).
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In the preparation of manuscripts for publication in Building Materials and Structures, AI tools may be used exclusively for the creation of AI-assisted, but not AI-generated content.
AI tools must not be used as a substitute for human critical thinking, scholarly judgment, or professional expertise. Artificial intelligence technologies must always be applied under direct human supervision and control. All intellectual content — including ideas, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions — must be exclusively the work of the authors.
Under no circumstances may an AI tool be listed as an author or co-author, nor may it be cited as the author of a referenced work.
The use of AI tools is permitted only for limited linguistic and technical purposes, including:
- grammar and spelling corrections;
- stylistic refinement of text previously written by the authors;
- assistance with formatting (tables, figures, charts, etc.);
- technical assistance, such as code debugging.
Failure to disclose the use of AI tools in a manuscript constitutes a breach of publication ethics and, if confirmed, may result in rejection of the manuscript and the application of measures in accordance with the guidelines of relevant ethical bodies (e.g., COPE).
It is not permitted to use AI tools for:
- generating substantial portions of the manuscript, particularly ideas, data, results, images, tables, or similar content;
- modifying scientific arguments or interpretations;
- altering data or generating references;
- submitting a manuscript that is not the result of the authors’ own scholarly work.
In all cases, authors bear full responsibility for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of their work.
The use of AI tools in the research process underlying the manuscript is not prohibited, provided that such use is scientifically justified and described in detail in the Methods section or an equivalent part of the manuscript. A detailed description must include the name of the AI tool, the provider, the date of access, the prompt(s) used, and the purpose of use.
Members of the editorial board and reviewers are likewise required to adhere to ethical principles concerning the use of AI tools. AI may be used only as support for work based on their own expertise. Editorial recommendations and decisions must not be delegated to AI systems. Submitted manuscripts may be entered only into internal, secure, contractually protected AI systems.
Retraction policy
Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article.
Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.
The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as “Retraction”. In SCIndeks, as the journals’ primary full-text database, a two-way communication (HTML link) between the original work and the retraction is established. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted”.
Retractions are published according to the requirements of COPE operationalized by CEON/CEES as the journal indexer and aggregator.