Copyright Notice

Copyright Notice

This notice defines the formal copyright, licensing, and reuse terms for all scholarly content published in Scientific Thought (ST) , ensuring legal transparency and full compliance with international open-access best practices.

1. Copyright Ownership
Authors retain the copyright of their original research and scholarly contributions. By submitting to and publishing with ST, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive, irrevocable license to publish, reproduce, distribute, and archive the definitive version of the work in all formats and media under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2. Open Access Licensing
To maximize the dissemination and application of scientific thought and discovery, each article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This license grants any user the worldwide, royalty-free right to:

  • Share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

  • Adapt – remix, transform, translate, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial and educational uses.

These permissions are granted subject to one condition: proper attribution. Users must:

  • Credit the author(s) and cite Scientific Thought (ST) as the original source of publication.

  • Provide a hyperlink to the CC BY 4.0 license.

  • Clearly indicate if the original work has been modified.

3. Rights and Responsibilities

  • Author Rights and Self-Archiving: Authors are expressly permitted and encouraged to deposit the final published PDF (version of record) in institutional repositories, subject repositories, preprint servers, personal websites, and academic social networks including ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/) and Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/). Authors may reuse their own figures, tables, datasets, and text in future publications, grant applications, presentations, theses, or teaching materials without obtaining further permission, provided the original ST publication is appropriately cited.

  • Third-Party Content: Authors are solely responsible for obtaining written permission from the copyright holder for any third-party material (e.g., images, illustrations, graphs, adapted figures, extended quotations, proprietary datasets) included in their manuscript. Proof of permission must be provided to the editorial office upon request. Authors must also ensure compliance with any relevant ethical guidelines specific to their discipline.

  • Publisher Archiving and Preservation: Scientific Thought (ST) ensures the long-term preservation and perpetual accessibility of all published content through participation in trusted digital preservation networks. These include:

These systems create distributed archives among participating libraries worldwide, guaranteeing that all content remains permanently available to the global scientific community even in the event the journal ceases publication.

4. Ethical Standards and Scholarly Integrity

Authors must confirm that their submission is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not under simultaneous consideration by another publication. Manuscripts must be free from plagiarism, data fabrication, image manipulation, or any other unethical practices. Scientific Thought (ST) adheres to the principles, policies, and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) : https://publicationethics.org. The journal also encourages adherence to discipline-specific reporting guidelines and standards, including:

Any allegations of plagiarism, copyright infringement, data fabrication, image manipulation, ethical approval violations, or other misconduct will be investigated promptly and thoroughly in accordance with COPE guidelines.

5. Research Ethics and Compliance

  • Human Subjects Research: For research involving human subjects, human tissues, or human data, authors must confirm that the study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and that informed consent was obtained where appropriate. A statement of ethical approval from an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee must be included in the manuscript.

  • Animal Research: For research involving animals, authors must confirm that the study complied with relevant institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals, as well as relevant international standards such as the ARRIVE guidelines.

  • Environmental and Field Research: For research involving field studies, collection of specimens, or work in protected areas, authors must confirm that all necessary permits and permissions were obtained from relevant authorities and that the research complied with local, national, and international regulations.

  • Data Availability and Reproducibility: Authors are encouraged to make their data, code, and materials openly available in recognized repositories to support reproducibility and transparency, in accordance with the FAIR Data Principles and the journal's commitment to open science.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage: Authors must disclose any use of artificial intelligence or large language models in the preparation of their manuscript, including in writing, data analysis, or figure generation, in accordance with the journal's AI policy and COPE guidance.

  • Conflict of Interest: Authors must declare any potential conflicts of interest, including financial, professional, or personal relationships that could influence the research or its interpretation.