Evolving Cities Publications

Instructions for uploading papers (and other materials related to your presentation) are provided here.

Each manuscript submission is subject to single-blind peer review by a minimum of two independent reviewers. The reviewers are assigned by the ICEC Management Committee, who handle the process throughout, led by the chair of the conference. Reviewers are required to state any competing interests before completing a review.

At the point of submitting an abstract to ICEC, authors agree to transfer copyright to ICEC on acceptance of their final manuscript in the ICEC proceedings. If the manuscript is withdrawn at any stage up until the proceedings are finalized, copyright is not transferred and authors retain the rights over the submission. In the case that the paper is, with the consent of the authors, selected for a Special Issue, ICEC will transfer the copyright back to the authors and the paper will be removed from the proceedings, with a permanent note linking to the online open-access article. See below for the full ICEC copyright statement.

The general ICEC policy requires that authors should only submit original work that neither has appeared elsewhere for publication, nor is under review for another publication or conference. The submitting author is responsible for obtaining agreement of all co-authors and any consent required from employers or sponsors before submitting an article. The ICEC conference strongly discourages courtesy authorship and authors may be asked by reviewers to state the contribution of each author. It is the obligation of the authors to cite only relevant prior work.

All submissions including research involving humans or animals, or using personal data, are required to state that an appropriate ethical review has taken place and approval granted by the appropriate body (a university research ethics committee, for example).

In simple terms, plagiarism is defined as presenting another author’s work as if it were your own. It can range from a single sentence to an entire article. It also includes data, text, figures and analysis methodology. Any submissions where plagiarism is suspected is declined immediately. Minor infringements, for example omitting a reference to a non-essential figure copied from a source, are dealt with during the review and copy-editing stages.

There are a large number of potential ethical breaches that can be committed in the process of publication, many of which are listed by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) web site.
If reviewers or the Management Committee  believe that they have identified a case of misconduct they will immediately notify the Editors, who will investigate, and if necessary, take action. This will be done in accordance to the flowcharts produced by COPE.

If an author believes that a reviewer or  editor has unfairly treated them in respect to the processes described above, they are advised to contact the Conference Chair confidentially via email. The Conference Chair will then investigate the matter and undertake any appropriate actions.

The authors retain rights in any idea, process, procedure, or articles described in the paper, including the right to seek patent protection for them.

The authors may use the paper to perform, lecture, teach, and carry out research. The author may display and distribute the paper in printed form for non-commercial use.

The undersigned represents that they have the power and authority to make and execute this assignment.

In the event the above work is not accepted and published within the ICEC proceedings or is withdrawn by the author(s) before acceptance by the date announced on the ICEC web site, the copyright transfer shall become null and void.

For jointly authored works, all joint authors should sign, or one of the authors should sign as authorized agent for the others.

A pre-print version of a paper without ICEC logos, header, footer or page numbers may be uploaded by the authors to an online repository after the conference has ended. It should be made clear that the version is not the final version as appearing in the proceedings.

ICEC Copyright statement (2022 version):

1. The undersigned and all authors hereby assign to the ICEC all worldwide rights under copyright that may exist in and to the above paper, including any revised or expanded derivative works submitted to ICEC as a response to its review process by the undersigned based on the paper. However, unless the paper is selected for a journal, this assignment does not preclude authors rights to publish an extended and more detailed work based on the ICEC paper in a journal of their choosing. (For the avoidance of doubt, “extended and revised” means that material from the ICEC conference paper makes up no more than 40% of the journal paper).
2. In the event that the undersigned accepts that their paper could be considered for inclusion in a journal, the undersigned hereby consents that the ICEC may transfer copyrights for the paper, including any revised or expanded derivative works submitted to ICEC, to any journal of their choosing for publication.
3. The undersigned hereby warrants that the paper is original and that they are the author of the paper. Where the paper incorporates text passages, figures, data or other material from the works of others, the undersigned has obtained any necessary permission. Where necessary, the undersigned has obtained all third party permissions and consents to grant the license above and has provided copies of such permissions and consents to ICEC.