Copyright and Licensing

At Fernando Martins De Bulhão Publishing (FMDB), we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of ethics, transparency, and integrity in scholarly publishing. Our publishing policies and practices are developed in accordance with the COPE Core Practices and internationally recognized best practices in scholarly publishing. We are committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics, editorial independence, research integrity, transparency, and responsible scholarly communication.

Ethical Publishing and COPE Alignment

FMDB develops its editorial and publication policies in accordance with the COPE Core Practices and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing that include:

• Transparent peer review and editorial decision-making processes.
• Clear authorship and contributorship policies to prevent unethical practices such as ghost or honorary authorship.
• Robust mechanisms to handle plagiarism, data falsification, and conflicts of interest.
• Correction, retraction, and withdrawal procedures that ensure the academic record remains accurate and reliable.
• Editorial independence from commercial and financial influence.

FMDB operates a rigorous double-blind peer review process designed to ensure fairness, objectivity, confidentiality, and the publication of high-quality scholarly research. 

Author Rights and Open Access

Authors retain copyright in their published work. By publishing with FMDB, authors grant the publisher a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, archive, and identify itself as the original publisher of the work. All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, adapt, remix, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes, provided appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, any changes made are indicated, and derivative works are distributed under the same license. By adopting an Open Access publishing model, FMDB removes barriers to knowledge sharing, ensuring that published research articles and, where appropriate, associated research data, methodologies, software, and supplementary materials are freely accessible and reusable in accordance with the applicable Creative Commons license.

The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license allows:

• Free access, downloading, copying, redistribution, and non-commercial reuse with appropriate attribution.
• Adaptation, remixing, and sharing of the work for non-commercial purposes.
• Distribution of adapted material under the same Creative Commons license (ShareAlike).

Data Integrity and Open Science

FMDB supports the principles of Open Science by encouraging research transparency, reproducibility, and the responsible sharing of research outputs, where appropriate. Authors are encouraged, subject to ethical, legal, and disciplinary requirements, to share research data, methodologies, software, and supplementary materials that support the reproducibility and verification of their research findings. Published articles are preserved through Portico, ensuring long-term digital preservation and continued accessibility of the scholarly record. 

FMDB encourages:

• Sharing research data where appropriate and permitted.
• Providing sufficiently detailed methodologies to facilitate reproducibility.
• Making supplementary materials available to improve research transparency.
• Preserving the published scholarly record through trusted long-term digital archiving.

Commitment to Ethical Publishing and Transparency: FMDB develops its editorial and publication policies in accordance with the COPE Core Practices and internationally recognized ethical publishing standards.

Clear publication ethics policies based on COPE guidelines

• Transparency in ownership, management, and publication fees.
• Clearly defined publication ethics and research integrity policies.
• Commitment to research visibility, citation integrity, and long-term digital preservation.

Vision for an Open, Ethical Future: FMDB’s Open Science initiatives aim to build a collaborative and trustworthy scholarly ecosystem where:

• Authors retain control of their intellectual property.
• Readers access knowledge freely and without restriction.
• Research outcomes are reproducible, transparent, and beneficial to the global community.

Our guiding principle is simple ethical, transparent, and accessible publishing strengthens science and society alike.

AI Policy: FMDB requires authors to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in manuscript preparation where such use has materially assisted the creation of the work. AI tools cannot be listed as authors and remain the responsibility of the human authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and ethical compliance of all content submitted for publication, including any content generated or assisted by AI tools. AI tools must not be presented as authors or co-authors because they cannot assume responsibility for the integrity of the work.

Editorial Independence: Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial or financial interests and are based solely on scholarly merit, originality, academic quality, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's scope, and the recommendations of independent peer reviewers. Acceptance is based solely on the outcome of independent peer review and the Editor's final decision. FMDB is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record through corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, or removals, where appropriate, in accordance with its publication ethics policies and relevant COPE guidance. Editorial decisions are not influenced by Article Processing Charges (APCs), commercial considerations, or advertising revenue.