Publication Ethics Statement

Nordic Research in Music Education is published by Cappelen Damm Akademisk, a division of Cappelen Damm AS, on its platform NOASP. Cappelen Damm Akademisk complies with the membership guidelines and best practices set forth by the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA).

Cappelen Damm Akademisk journals are listed with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Cappelen Damm Akademisk recognizes the importance of the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record to researchers, librarians, and others and has therefore drawn up a policy on article corrections, retractions, plagiarism and peer review integrity.

COMPOSITION OF EDITORIAL TEAMS

Editors-in-chief must be on associate professor level at the least. Ideally the editorial team of each journal shall include at least one full professor. Editors-in-chief are highly involved in the selection of the editorial team, in consultation with the board of Nordic Network for Research in Music Education. Cappelen Damm Akademisk seeks to ensure that the editorial team is comprised of individuals from multiple institutions and preferably located in different countries to limit competing interests. In some cases, an editorial team may be based at one institution.

All journals are governed by an editorial board, the members of which may be appointed by the editorial team and, when appropriate, by the publisher. Members of the editorial board are charged with monitoring and safeguarding publishing ethics among other things.

DETECTING PLAGIARISM

All manuscripts submitted to a journal published by Cappelen Damm Akademisk are run through iThenticate (plagiarism detection software) before being sent out to peer reviewers, unless rejected at the triage stage (direct rejection). The reports generated from iThenticate are evaluated by the editor-in-chief or a qualified subject editor.

Editors and staff are required to report any case of suspected plagiarism to Cappelen Damm Akademisk. The publisher and editor-in-chief determine the steps to be taken vis-a-vis a case of suspected plagiarism.

(For more on iThenticate, visit: https://www.ithenticate.com/

REVIEW process ethics

Manuscripts submitted to this journal is subjected to external peer review. The decision to accept or reject a paper is based on comments from at least two reviewers outside the editorial board. After the peer review process, the editorial team will make the final decision regarding acceptance/rejection of the manuscript. The editor-in-chief is accountable for the quality of editorial decisions. Editors consider competing interests when a manuscript is submitted by a colleague at their own institution or from their research network. In this case, a co-editor – or an external trusted expert – with no such connections is asked to act as the editor for that particular paper.

Should a member of a journal’s editorial team submit a manuscript to the journal, a co-editor will be assigned to take charge of the entire review process and act as editor for that particular paper. Alternatively, the co-editor may assign an external trusted expert. The person acting as editor will be named as responsible editor of the article, indicating that the editor who submitted the paper has had nothing to do with the handling of this particular article.

All manuscripts submitted to journals published by Cappelen Damm Akademisk, including meeting proceedings, etc., are handled through the NOASP platform. In cases where a guest editor is involved in handling the review of meeting proceedings, Cappelen Damm Akademisk will provide support and ensure that all materials are handled through the platform.

It is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief to appoint guest editors of special issues. Guest editors are informed that the practices outlined above also apply to guest editors.

Peer reviewers are expected to disclose any competing interests. Reviews shall be objective and constructive. Reviewers shall consider the methodological rigor of the submission, the appropriateness of findings on the basis of methodology, the appropriateness of conclusions, proper establishment of the contribution within the scholarly literature more broadly, among other things. All reviewed manuscripts shall be treated confidentially.

CORRECTION AND RETRACTION POLICIES

Articles that have already been published will remain unaltered as far as is possible, though updated with information that an erratum/corrigendum or other amendment exists.

ARTICLE CORRECTION

Should the author discover a major mistake or error in his/her article after it has been officially published online, the editor will be consulted/notified and if found necessary an erratum or corrigendum will be published. There will be links from the online version of the article to the erratum/corrigendum and vice versa.

ARTICLE RETRACTION

This action is reserved for articles that are seriously flawed and so the findings or conclusions cannot be relied upon. Articles may be retracted for several reasons. These may include honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty) as well as issues such as research misconduct (data fabrication), duplicate or overlapping publication, fraudulent use of data, plagiarism or unethical research. For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in a retraction notice. The retraction notice will be linked to the retracted article and the article will be clearly marked as retracted (including the PDF).

IN-HOUSE TRAINING

Editors-in-chief who become part of the network of editors using the NOASP platform receive initial training to review editorial guidelines and standards and ongoing support from the publisher.

Each publication on the NOASP platform is assigned an in-house managing editor in the division for open research publishing at Cappelen Damm Akademisk. All managing editors receive initial and ongoing training in the detection of irregularities in the editorial process.

INTERNAL AUDITS

To prevent and detect any potential breaches in proper editorial management of peer review – whether inadvertent or deliberate – Cappelen Damm Akademisk carries out regular internal audits of all journals. Following a rotating schedule, each journal is subjected to a review every three years.

This audit covers a random selection of articles, including spontaneously submitted content and those from special issues where contributions have been invited and the peer review performed by a guest editor. Any articles submitted by a member of the editorial team during the preceding three-year period shall be included in the review.

All documents associated with the peer review of the selected articles are reviewed for: evidence of clear and appropriate external peer review, competing interests, and that general practices and standards have been upheld.

AUTHOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES

Authors are responsible for disclosing all relationships that could be viewed as potential competing interests. Any authors listed must meet the criteria for authorship, which are described in the Author Guidelines of all publications on the NOASP platform. Other contributors shall be mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the paper and their contribution described. Authors shall verify that all data referred to in the manuscript are authentic. Should errors or other discoveries warranting a correction or a retraction of the article be detected, these shall be brought to the attention of the publisher immediately.

COMPLAINTS POLICY

Authors who wish to submit a complaint related to the peer review process should contact the publisher's division leader, Simon Aase: simon.aase@cappelendamm.no.

Complaints regarding suspected abuse or inappropriate content shall be submitted to the specific journal’s editor-in-chief as a first point of contact, and copy in the publisher's division leader, Simon Aase: simon.aase@cappelendamm.no.