Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Trends in Entrepreneurship is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and follows the Core Practices guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All parties involved—authors, reviewers, and editors—are expected to adhere to these standards.

Duties of Authors

  • Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original. Any work or words of others must be appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
  • Multiple Submissions: Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal concurrently.
  • Authorship: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All listed authors must have approved the final version of the manuscript and its submission for publication.
  • Data Access and Retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study for editorial review and should be prepared to make such data publicly available if practicable.
  • Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their work. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
  • Fundamental Errors: If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate to retract or correct the paper.

Duties of Reviewers

  • Confidentiality: Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
  • Objectivity and Constructiveness: Reviews should be conducted objectively and provide constructive feedback. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  • Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
  • Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer's own research without the express written consent of the author. Reviewers should recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts where they have conflicts of interest.

Duties of Editors

  • Fair Play and Impartiality: Editors will evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. Editorial decisions are based on the manuscript's importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal's scope.
  • Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and the publisher.
  • Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Editors will recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest.
  • Decision-Making: Editors are responsible for making publication decisions based on the validation of the work, its significance to researchers and practitioners, and the feedback provided by reviewers.
  • Handling of Corrections and Retractions: If ethical concerns are raised regarding a submitted or published manuscript, the editor will follow COPE guidelines to investigate and take appropriate action, including issuing corrections or retractions.

Policies
Peer Review Process
Trends in Entrepreneurship operates a strict double-blind peer review system. This means that the identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and the identities of the reviewers are concealed from the authors throughout the review process.

  1. After initial editorial screening, manuscripts deemed suitable for review will have all author-identifying information removed.
  2. The anonymized manuscript is then sent to at least two independent expert reviewers.
  3. Reviewers evaluate the manuscript based on criteria including originality, theoretical grounding, methodological rigor, clarity of argument, and contribution to the field.
  4. The editorial decision (Accept, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, Reject) is based on the reviewers' recommendations and the editor's own assessment.

Plagiarism Policy
All submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism and self-plagiarism using industry-standard detection software. Manuscripts found to contain significant plagiarism or repetitive content from the authors' own previous work without proper citation will be rejected. In severe cases, this may lead to a ban on future submissions from the offending authors.
Open Access Policy
Trends in Entrepreneurship is a fully open-access journal, which means that all articles are published on the internet and are freely available to all readers worldwide immediately upon publication. This model ensures that authors' work gains the widest possible readership and impact.
Copyright and Licensing
Authors retain the copyright of their published work. Articles in Trends in Entrepreneurship are published under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited appropriately. This permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles without seeking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
Publication Fees 
To cover the costs of editorial management, peer review management, copyediting, typesetting, plagiarism screening, long-term archiving, and open-access hosting, Trends in Entrepreneurship charges an Open Access Charge upon manuscript acceptance.