Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submissions meet accepted standards of academic integrity, research transparency, and responsible scholarly communication.

Originality, Attribution, and Plagiarism

Manuscripts must present original scholarly contributions and must not contain plagiarism, fabricated findings, falsified data, or misleading representations of research. Authors must appropriately acknowledge and cite the work, ideas, data, methods, and intellectual contributions of others.

Submissions are subject to originality and similarity assessment, including the use of plagiarism-detection software where applicable. Similarity reports are evaluated in context and do not independently determine whether plagiarism or other misconduct has occurred.

Multiple Submission and Redundant Publication

Manuscripts submitted to CSGS must not be under simultaneous consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose any previous dissemination, publication, or substantial overlap involving the submitted work, including relevant preprints, conference proceedings, and related manuscripts.

Prior dissemination does not automatically constitute redundant publication. Its acceptability is determined in accordance with the journal's applicable submission and publication policies. Undisclosed duplicate publication, inappropriate text recycling, and misleading reuse of previously published findings are prohibited.

Data Integrity, Transparency, and Reproducibility

Authors must report their research methods, data sources, analytical procedures, and findings accurately and transparently. Research involving climate models, environmental observations, simulations, or statistical analyses should provide sufficient methodological information to permit appropriate scholarly evaluation.

Where relevant, authors should disclose modeling assumptions, uncertainty estimates, limitations, data-processing procedures, and the availability of underlying data or code. Authors are expected to retain supporting research materials for reasonable verification requests, subject to legal, ethical, contractual, and confidentiality restrictions.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must reflect substantial intellectual contributions to the research and manuscript. All listed authors must have approved the submitted version, agreed to their authorship, and accepted appropriate responsibility for the integrity of their contributions.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately, with permission where necessary. Guest authorship, gift authorship, ghost authorship, and the deliberate exclusion of qualifying contributors are unacceptable.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified and reviewed by the editorial office. Such changes ordinarily require written agreement from all affected authors.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose relevant financial, institutional, professional, and personal relationships that could reasonably influence, or be perceived to influence, their research. Funding sources and the role of funders in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or publication decisions must be identified where applicable.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining the independence, fairness, confidentiality, and scholarly quality of the editorial process.

• Editorial independence: Make publication decisions without inappropriate commercial, political, institutional, or personal influence.
• Fair evaluation: Assess manuscripts according to academic merit, originality, methodological quality, relevance to the journal's scope, and ethical compliance.
• Confidentiality: Protect manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial communications, and other confidential information obtained during the editorial process.
• Conflict management: Declare relevant conflicts of interest and withdraw from editorial handling when impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Peer-review integrity: Select appropriately qualified reviewers, consider their reports critically, and prevent manipulation or inappropriate interference in the review process.
• Ethical oversight: Respond appropriately to credible allegations of misconduct, significant errors, ethical complaints, and post-publication concerns.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Peer reviewers contribute to the quality and integrity of scholarly publishing by providing independent, evidence-based assessments of submitted manuscripts.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, and timely evaluations based on relevant disciplinary expertise.
• Maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, research data, and editorial communications.
• Disclose conflicts of interest that could compromise independent judgment and decline assignments where impartiality cannot be maintained.
• Identify significant methodological weaknesses, unsupported conclusions, and relevant scholarly literature that may have been overlooked.
• Notify the handling editor of suspected plagiarism, data manipulation, duplicate publication, or other potential research-integrity concerns.
• Refrain from using unpublished manuscript content, data, or ideas for personal research or professional advantage.

Research Ethics and Human or Animal Subjects

Research involving human participants, identifiable personal information, or animals must comply with applicable legal requirements, institutional regulations, and internationally recognized ethical principles relevant to the study.

Human Participant Research

Where ethical review is required, authors must identify the responsible Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent ethics committee and provide relevant approval details. If a study received an exemption, the basis for that exemption should be stated.

Authors must obtain and report informed consent where required, protect participant confidentiality, and ensure that personal information is processed and reported in accordance with applicable privacy and data-protection requirements.

Animal Research

Studies involving animals must comply with applicable animal welfare regulations and relevant institutional ethical-review requirements. Authors should report approval or exemption information where applicable and describe measures taken to minimize unnecessary harm.

Environmental and Field Research

Environmental and ecological research should comply with applicable fieldwork permits, sampling regulations, protected-area requirements, and relevant biodiversity or resource-access rules. Where research involves Indigenous communities or local knowledge, authors should appropriately address consent, community engagement, attribution, and applicable ethical requirements.

Misconduct Reporting and Investigation Procedures

CSGS takes credible allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously. Potential concerns may include plagiarism, fabricated or falsified research, unethical research practices, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and other conduct that could undermine scholarly integrity.

Suspected misconduct is assessed using procedures informed by relevant COPE guidance and flowcharts, taking into account the nature of the concern, the available evidence, and the responsibilities of the journal and relevant research institutions.

Reporting an Integrity Concern

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other concerned parties may report suspected ethical violations or publication-integrity issues to the journal's editorial office through its published contact channels.

A report should identify the relevant manuscript or published article, describe the concern clearly, and provide supporting evidence or references where reasonably available. Reports should be made in good faith and should distinguish documented facts from allegations or interpretations.

Assessment and Resolution

Depending on the circumstances, potential actions may include:

• Requests for clarification, documentation, or correction.
• Suspension of editorial consideration while relevant concerns are assessed.
• Rejection of manuscripts when serious integrity concerns remain unresolved.
• Publication of corrections or expressions of concern.
• Retraction of published articles when justified by the evidence.
• Notification of relevant institutions or competent authorities where appropriate.

Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

CSGS is committed to maintaining the accuracy, reliability, and transparency of the published scholarly record. When significant errors or integrity concerns are identified after publication, the journal considers the appropriate editorial response in accordance with the nature of the issue and applicable publication-ethics guidance.

Post-publication notices should be clearly identified, publicly accessible, and appropriately linked to the original article. Retracted articles ordinarily remain part of the scholarly record with prominent retraction labeling, except where removal is legally required or necessary to prevent serious harm.

Appeals and Complaints

Authors may submit a written appeal against an editorial decision where they believe that a substantive error, procedural irregularity, conflict of interest, or significant misunderstanding affected the assessment of their manuscript.

An appeal should identify the manuscript, explain the grounds for reconsideration, and provide relevant supporting information. Disagreement with a negative editorial decision, without substantive justification, does not in itself establish grounds for reversal.

Appeals are reviewed impartially by the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriately qualified independent editor where a conflict exists. The journal may seek additional expert advice when necessary. An appeal does not guarantee reconsideration through external peer review or a change in the original decision.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, reviewer behavior, confidentiality, publication ethics, or other aspects of the journal's operations may be submitted through the editorial office's published contact channels. Complaints should be assessed proportionately and independently of individuals directly implicated in the matter.

Artificial Intelligence Use and Research Integrity

CSGS recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies are increasingly used in scientific research, data analysis, computational modeling, and academic writing. Their use must remain consistent with principles of transparency, accountability, research integrity, and responsible scholarly communication.

Disclosure of AI-Assisted Work

Authors must disclose the substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools in manuscript preparation, text generation, data analysis, image production, or other material aspects of the research and reporting process.

Disclosures should identify the tools used, describe their relevant functions, and explain how AI-assisted outputs were incorporated into the research or manuscript. Where applicable, this information should be provided in the methods, acknowledgments, or a dedicated AI-use declaration.

Authorship and Accountability

AI systems and AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for the accuracy, originality, ethical compliance, or integrity of scholarly work.

Human authors remain fully responsible for all submitted content, including AI-assisted material. Authors must critically verify factual claims, references, citations, analytical results, and generated content before submission.

Research Data and Generated Content

AI-generated or AI-modified data, images, figures, or analytical outputs must not be represented misleadingly as unmodified empirical observations. The use of AI must not result in fabricated evidence, manipulated findings, unsupported conclusions, or deceptive representations of research.

Where AI is used for climate modeling, environmental prediction, statistical estimation, or computational analysis, authors should provide sufficient methodological details to permit evaluation of the model, its inputs, validation procedures, uncertainty, and limitations.

AI Use in Peer Review

Editors and reviewers must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Unpublished manuscripts, reviewer reports, or confidential editorial materials must not be uploaded to external AI services without appropriate authorization and safeguards consistent with the journal's confidentiality obligations.

Publisher Responsibilities

Panorama Scholarly Group (PSG), as the publisher of CSGS, is responsible for providing the administrative, production, and technical infrastructure necessary to support responsible academic publishing while respecting the editorial independence of the journal.

The publisher's responsibilities include:

• Supporting independent editorial decision-making and the consistent application of the journal's published policies.
• Maintaining the journal's digital publishing infrastructure and supporting accessible dissemination of published research.
• Supporting transparent communication of publication policies, applicable charges, and author responsibilities.
• Cooperating with the editorial leadership in addressing publication-integrity concerns, corrections, retractions, and relevant ethical complaints.
• Supporting long-term access and digital preservation in accordance with the journal's published archiving and preservation arrangements.
• Promoting responsible open-access publishing and the accurate maintenance of the scholarly publication record.