The International Symposium on Characterization (ISC) is committed to ensuring the highest standards of publication ethics. All parties involved in the act of publishing (authors, editors, and reviewers) must agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior.

Duties of Authors

• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original. If authors have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

• Data Access and Retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review.

• Multiple or Concurrent Publication: Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal or conference concurrently is considered unethical and unacceptable.

Duties of Reviewers

• Confidentiality: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

• Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

• Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.

Duties of Editors

• Publication Decisions: The editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the symposium should be published.

• Fair Play: Editors evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)

The International Symposium on Characterization clearly defines the acceptable and ethical use of GenAI tools in the preparation of submissions. Authors are permitted to use GenAI technologies (e.g., for language improvement or editing purposes) provided that such use is transparently disclosed. GenAI tools may not be listed as authors and must not replace the authors’ intellectual responsibility for the content, originality, data interpretation, or conclusions. All submissions remain subject to rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity and originality.