Preamble

The present rules shall apply to authors, editors and reviewers who contribute to “Journal of Arid Land Studies (JALS)” (hereinafter referred to as "the Journal") published by “Japanese Association for Arid Land Studies (JAALS)” (hereinafter referred to as "the Society"), in order to ensure fairness and propriety of the scientific research results published on the Journal.

1. Obligations of Authors

(1) The author shall not implement the following “research misconducts” defined in “Guidelines for Responding to Misconduct in Research”（Adopted August 26, 2014 by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology（MEXT））

•Fabrication: Making up data or research results, etc.

•Falsification: Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes to change data or results obtained from research activities.

•Plagiarism: Appropriating the ideas, analysis, analytical methods, data, research results, research paper(s), or words of other researchers without obtaining the permission of the researchers or giving appropriate credit.

(2) With respect to the handling of personal information, authors, investigators, etc. shall endeavor to protect such information and shall remove all or part of descriptions, etc. which enable identification of a specific individual upon publication.

(3) Authors shall not submit essentially the same research paper as one that has already been published or submitted to the Journal or another journal.

(4) Authorship shall be attributed to qualified authors who are able to share responsibility regarding the research results to be published.

2. Obligation of the Editors and Reviewers

(1) Editors and reviewers shall review the paper from scientific, objective and impartial standpoint.

(2) Editors and reviewers shall not disclose contents of a paper to a third party or use the information obtained in the peer-review process for purposes other than peer review.

3. Responding to and preventing misconducts

In case of suspicion of misconduct against the submitted and contributed papers, the Association shall establish Investigation committee under the editor-in-chief, which shall conduct appropriate survey and hearing and report the results to the editorial board. In the cases where misconduct is proved, the editorial board shall deliberate and decide on actions including punishment and countermeasures to prevent recurrence, which shall be reported to the Board of Association.