Please note that this Code of Conduct is constantly evolving and may differ from the one you read last time (last update: 24/02/2025).
Geodynamica is a community-led Diamond Open Access journal that provides access to research on dynamics and evolution of planetary interiors for everyone worldwide. According to the concept of Diamond Open Access, there are no fees to publish in Geodynamica, and no costs to read articles therein. Geodynamica works to provide an inclusive, equal, and diverse environment for scientific discussion that everyone can engage with and enjoy. To ensure an open and safe scientific environment, all participants should conduct themselves courteously and professionally when engaging with or representing the Geodynamica community. Geodynamica does not accept abuse or intimidation of any form, and swift action will be taken on any reported incident involving the violation of our Code of Conduct.
All individuals interacting with Geodynamica are expected to adhere to the Geodynamica Code of Conduct with individual guidelines for specific roles outlined below.
Unacceptable behaviour, complaints, and consequences
All individuals who interact with Geodynamica are expected to behave professionally and contribute to a constructive, supportive, and inclusive environment.
All communications should be respectful and unacceptable behaviours should be reported to a member of the core or editorial team. Personal criticism is inappropriate. All individuals are reminded that what they consider appropriate may not be acceptable to others. Ignorance is no excuse for unprofessional behaviour.
Harassment, deliberate intimidation, sexist, racist, demeaning, or exclusionary comments or jokes are inappropriate and will not be tolerated.
Plagiarism and fraud of any form will not be tolerated.
The use of Artificial Intelligence is tolerated to marginally improve grammar and writing style but should otherwise not be used. Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement in their manuscript
Anyone requested to stop unacceptable behaviour is expected to immediately cease and desist.
If a prohibited conduct occurs while interacting with Geodynamica (e.g., reviews, replies or discussions), the aggrieved person(s) or witness(es) to the prohibited conduct are encouraged to report this incident to a member from the core or editorial team.
Once notified of unacceptable behaviour or complaints, the editorial team will discuss the details of the case first with the complainee, and then the alleged offender before determining an appropriate course of action.
Actions in response to breaching this Code of Conduct will range from a warning to immediately rejecting a review or manuscript. Geodynamica also reserves the right to prohibit an individual from any future participation, in any form, with the journal.
Authors
Authors of original research articles must present an accurate report of the work as it was carried out, as well as an objective discussion of its significance.
Authorship (see author definitions) should be extended to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of submitted work. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all individuals who deserve authorship are listed as co-authors. An author contribution statement must be included in the manuscript, or added as a separate file (if selecting double-blind peer-review); this information will be added to any published manuscript. See “Authorship definitions” for more information on the responsibility and contributions of different types of authors.
All authors must approve the submission of the initial manuscript and the publication of its final version.
Submitting the same manuscript at the same time to more than one journal constitutes a violation of ethical publishing behaviour and will not be accepted. Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted to Geodynamica. Similarly, manuscripts under consideration for publication in Geodynamica should not be submitted or resubmitted to other peer-reviewed journals. Note that Geodynamica accepts preprints and postprints (see our preprint/postprint policy).
Any (co-)author on a manuscript submitted to Geodynamica who is also part of the editorial team of Geodynamica will not be involved in handling the manuscript and agrees not to use their position as a means to track or alter the review process.
- Research submitted by the author(s) must be original. Relevant other works must be appropriately cited or quoted. Manuscripts are systematically checked for plagiarism using appropriate software.
Plagiarism is defined as the use of any materials (e.g., text, data, figures) or ideas developed or created by (an)other person(s) without acknowledging the original source
(modified from the Publication Ethics of Solid Earth).
It is the responsibility of the author(s) to ensure that all research was undertaken following appropriate ethical practice, any fieldwork and sample collection were carried out in line with local codes of practice, and that permissions were granted by relevant bodies where appropriate.
Geodynamica requires that all data and software necessary to understand, evaluate, replicate, and build upon the submitted work must be made available and accessible whenever possible. This includes a full description of or reference to the numerical tools used for simulations and/or analogue experiments. Also see the Geodynamica Manuscript Guidelines for guidance on what information should be provided.
- Authors will check to ensure that their manuscript has fully met data availability and metadata/documentation standards. Authors will also ensure that all data, simulations, experiments, and relevant information are presented clearly so that readers can easily determine where such information may be accessed.
- Authors are recommended to make relevant data accessible in line with FAIR principles, and available to readers either in the article itself, as supplementary information, or by referring with the relevant deposit’s DOI to an openly accessible data repository (e.g., Pangea, Mendeley Data, Zenodo…).
- A statement regarding data availability must be provided within the manuscript. If for any reason data cannot be shared (for example due to pre-existing confidentiality agreements or legal rights concerning proprietary data, embargo), this must be stated explicitly in a “Data Availability” statement of the manuscript. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements about data availability and collection constitute a breach of ethical behaviour.
- An “Ethics statement” is required to confirm that proper protocols and permissions have been followed. For example, if relevant, this statement should indicate sampling and site access was permitted and followed appropriate codes of practice.
Authors must disclose and acknowledge any and all funding sources relevant to the publication of the manuscript or the content therein.
Authors must disclose any conflicts of interests or competing interests relevant to the submitted manuscript.
Conflicts of interest for authors occur when professional conclusions regarding the complete and objective presentation of research are influenced or could be influenced by a secondary interest. Competing interests often arise with regard to financial matters, but they can also be non-financial, professional, or personal and can exist in relation to institutions or individuals.
(modified from Competing Interests Policy of Solid Earth)
Deceased authors that made a significant contribution to the manuscript may be included. Corresponding authors are the representative and point of contact for any issues relating to the deceased author.
In the event that a manuscript is accepted and published by Geodynamica, the author(s) retain(s) the rights to the published material. Unless otherwise stated, all work on the Geodynamica platform is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). This means that the author(s) and others are able to share (copy and redistribute) or adapt the material in any medium or format (even commercially), provided the original work and author(s) thereof are given appropriate credit.
In the case that any author becomes aware of a significant inaccuracy or error in any of their work published in Geodynamica, it is their obligation to notify the editorial team of Geodynamica as soon as possible. They must then work with an editor in order to retract the published work or issue an erratum or corrigendum.
If authors are found to have breached the Code of Conduct described in this document, either during review or after publication, their manuscript will be retracted and any future contributions to Geodynamica will require permission from the editorial team.
Reviewers
A peer-review procedure is a constructive process aimed at enhancing the quality of a manuscript or research. Both reviewers and authors should remain mindful of the diverse perspectives involved and consider how feedback is communicated and received.
Reviewers advise and assist editors in making editorial decisions, and serve author(s) by improving the manuscript.
All reviewer duties should be carried out in a timely manner, generally 4 weeks. If a reviewer cannot complete their duties, for whatever reason, they should contact the editor handling the manuscript for an extension as soon as possible.
Reviewers should not accept to review submitted manuscripts if this may raise any kind of conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest for reviewers and editors occur when the relationship between the reviewer or editor and the author(s) could bias the evaluation of the manuscript. Such conflicts may include but are not limited to, handling manuscripts from present and recent (in the last 3 years) students, employees/employers, co-authors, collaborators, and colleagues from the same institution. Another type of conflict of interest may arise when the reviewer and the authors are engaged in an active scientific controversy, which may induce negative evaluation biases.
By agreeing to review a manuscript, the reviewer acknowledges that their review will be published and their name revealed alongside the published manuscript, unless they have requested to remain anonymous. Should a manuscript be rejected, the review will remain confidential.
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as independent confidential documents, with the exception for training of early career scientists under direct supervision. In such cases, this should be communicated to the handling editors.
Reviewers should give due and unbiased consideration to their assigned manuscripts. Reviewers should judge a manuscript based on the scientific merit, originality, clarity, and validity of its content.
Geodynamica encourages reviewers to structure their report around the following themes:
- Quality of research: original (i.e. the results have not been previously published), impact, explicit working hypotheses, validity of the methodology to answer the scientific questions, robust analysis of the results, well-designed experiments, relevance of results’ interpretation, fair acknowledgement of limitations.
- Quality of presentation: sufficient text clarity to assess scientific research quality, logical and efficient manuscript organisation and title labelling, careful figure construction (scale, axis, legend, colors) and captions content, relevance figures to assess results.
- Quality of the referencing: placing the study in a broader scientific area in the introduction, acknowledgement of a fair number of previous studies on similar topics, fair comparison with other specialized studies, parcimonious self-citations of authors’ previous studies, diversity of publication year of cited studies
- Reproducibility of the research: accuracy and completeness of methods description, fair availability of data
Reviewers should identify cases wherein relevant published research has not been cited by the author(s), or where observations or arguments derived from other published research are not accompanied by an appropriate citation of the original source(s).
Reviewers should notify the editor if they detect a substantial similarity between the manuscript being reviewed and any other published research of which they have personal knowledge.
Reviewers must respect the intellectual independence of authors. Moreover, unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript cannot be used in the research of any reviewer without express consent of the author(s).
By agreeing to review a manuscript, the reviewer acknowledges that any deemed failure on their part to meet the standards outlined in this document will result in: (1) an editor requesting modification to their review; or (2) discarding their review.
Editors
All editors on the editorial board of Geodynamica have equal responsibility. Together, they cover the range of topics defined in the scope of Geodynamica.
Throughout the review process, from submission to revision, editors should give due and unbiased consideration to all manuscripts. Manuscripts are judged based on the scientific merit, originality, clarity, and validity of its content as well as its relevance to the journal’s scope. Editors will also consider legal and ethical concerns such as copyright infringement, libel, and plagiarism. No regard should be given to gender, race, age, career stage, ethnic origin or citizenship, religious belief, affiliations or political or scientific alignment of the author(s) or the reviewer(s).
All editorial duties should be carried out in a timely manner. If an editor cannot complete their duties in a timely manner, for whatever reason, they may transfer editorial responsibility to another editor within Geodynamica.
Editors will not handle submitted manuscripts that may raise any kind of conflict of interest.
Editors are responsible for timely and transparent communication with authors about the status of the review and publication process. Open dialogue between authors and editors about reasonable concerns and questions related to the review process should be welcomed and encouraged.
Editors should inform reviewers of the final decision on manuscripts.
Editors should abide by the authors’ wishes concerning the peer-review mode, open transparent or double-blind (see Geodynamica‘s peer-review mode), and ensure the correct reviewing procedure is implemented.
Editors should assess whether the level of self-citation (if any) by authors or reviewers is appropriate and justified.
Editors should ensure that authors comply with the data availability policy and document metadata and methods.
The editorial team has ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. Reviews and reviewer identities may be shared with other editors. The editor must respect the intellectual independence of authors. Moreover, unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in the research of any member of the editorial team without express consent of the author(s).