Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Research involving individuals through surveys, interviews, experiments, focus groups, observations, driver behavior studies, passenger studies, workforce assessments, behavioral data, identifiable records, or other human-participant methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when vulnerable participants are involved.

Research in logistics and transportation may involve confidential supply-chain records, shipment data, fleet information, route histories, vehicle telematics, warehouse records, customer information, freight contracts, operational performance data, GPS data, traffic datasets, proprietary optimization models, or third-party logistics systems.

• Authors must have lawful and authorized access to all operational, commercial, transportation, and logistics data used.
• Personal, customer, driver, employee, and organizational information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Commercial confidentiality, contractual obligations, and third-party restrictions must be respected.
• GPS, route, fleet, and telematics data must be handled in a manner that protects privacy and operational security.
• Authors must not disclose commercially sensitive rates, contracts, customer details, security procedures, or identifiable operational information without authorization.
• Restrictions affecting the sharing of logistics datasets, proprietary models, routing information, or operational records must be stated in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report research methods and analytical procedures with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Population, sample, participants, companies, facilities, routes, vehicles, transport networks, shipments, cases, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling, case selection, route selection, and dataset construction procedures must be transparent.
• Measurement instruments, indicators, variables, service metrics, operational parameters, and definitions must be stated.
• Statistical, econometric, optimization, simulation, qualitative, computational, geographic, or network-analysis procedures must be described.
• Algorithms, optimization models, simulation parameters, transport models, software, and relevant technical settings should be reported where applicable.
• Assumptions, exclusions, transformations, sensitivity analyses, robustness tests, validation procedures, and analytical decisions should be reported where relevant.
• Systematic reviews should follow an appropriate reporting framework such as PRISMA where applicable.
• Qualitative studies should follow suitable transparent reporting standards where applicable.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate academic and methodological expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, datasets, operational information, supplementary files, models, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, manipulated operational data, fabricated experiments, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished data, models, operational information, algorithms, or ideas for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report methods, models, datasets, experiments, operational analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting data, calculations, model files, simulation outputs, documentation, and relevant records where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, consent, permissions, licenses, and data-use authorization.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error, safety concern, data problem, or ethical issue is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. The journal applies the four authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Non-author contributors should be acknowledged with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the role of the funder in study design, data collection, model development, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Datasets, repositories, model files, simulation files, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or restrictions should be reported where relevant.
• De-identified data, analytical code, optimization models, instruments, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically, legally, commercially, and technically possible.
• Restrictions arising from privacy, commercial confidentiality, security, contracts, proprietary systems, or third-party platforms must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, or misleading presentation of operational data, transport data, simulation results, performance indicators, or model outputs is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data, calculations, model files, logs, documentation, or supporting materials when necessary to evaluate research integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published text, tables, figures, datasets, models, or other scholarly material are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, data, models, analyses, interpretation, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, data, code, models, analyses, or interpretations must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, operational datasets, route information, models, or unpublished information into public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, bias, hallucinations, unsafe recommendations, and misleading content.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on subject and methodological expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit rather than financial or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, or integrity of scholarly publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original data, operational records, model files, calculations, documentation, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek subject, methodological, statistical, logistics, transportation, engineering, ethical, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, manipulated operational data, fabricated results, or research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material, datasets, maps, images, diagrams, transport-network data, proprietary models, software, or other protected material where required.
• Authors must comply with applicable data licenses, software licenses, mapping licenses, and repository terms of use.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, personal information, allegations, datasets, operational records, route information, models, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.