BIM 2025
Publication Ethics

BIM 2025 is committed to maintaining high standards of academic integrity, research ethics, transparency, fairness, and professional conduct throughout the submission, review, acceptance, and publication process. Authors, reviewers, editors, Program Committee members, and other individuals involved in the publication process are expected to follow the ethical principles stated below.

Responsibilities of Authors

Submitted manuscripts must represent original, accurate, and ethically conducted research.
Authors must appropriately acknowledge ideas, methods, results, figures, tables, datasets, software, and other materials obtained from existing sources.
All listed authors must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution and must approve the submitted manuscript.
Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all data, analyses, references, conclusions, and other content in the paper.

Originality, Plagiarism, and Similarity

BIM 2025 does not tolerate plagiarism in any form.
Manuscripts may be checked using appropriate similarity-detection or plagiarism-detection tools.
Similarity reports are interpreted carefully because legitimate quotations, references, standard terminology, and methodological descriptions may produce matching text.
Significant unattributed copying, inappropriate text reuse, or misappropriation of ideas, data, images, or other intellectual contributions may lead to rejection, withdrawal, correction, or retraction.

Multiple, Duplicate, or Concurrent Submission

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to BIM 2025 and another conference, journal, book, or publication venue.
A manuscript already under active consideration elsewhere should not be submitted to BIM 2025.
Previously published work must not be presented as a new contribution unless the new submission contains substantial additional work and clearly cites and explains the relationship to the earlier publication.

Authorship and Contributor Responsibility

Only individuals who have made meaningful scholarly contributions should be listed as authors.
Guest, gift, honorary, or fraudulent authorship is unacceptable, and deserving contributors should not be omitted.
All authors should agree to the author list and to submission of the manuscript.
Changes to authorship after submission should be properly justified and agreed to by all concerned authors.

Corresponding Author Responsibility

The corresponding author must ensure that all authors approve the submitted and revised versions of the manuscript.
The corresponding author is responsible for communication with BIM 2025 during review, revision, camera-ready submission, and publication processing.
Author names, affiliations, contact details, and publication metadata must be accurate.
Any significant error discovered after submission should be reported promptly.

Accuracy and Integrity of Research

Research findings must be presented accurately and honestly.
Data, observations, simulations, experiments, analyses, and conclusions must not be fabricated, falsified, selectively manipulated, or misleadingly presented.
The manuscript should contain sufficient methodological information for readers and reviewers to understand and assess the reported work.
Authors should retain appropriate research records and supporting data where applicable.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Inventing data or results that were not obtained is prohibited.
Changing data, images, experimental outputs, or analytical results to support a preferred conclusion is prohibited.
Important results must not be deliberately omitted when such omission would mislead readers.
Papers found to contain fabricated or falsified material may be rejected or withdrawn and may be referred to the relevant publisher or institution where appropriate.

Ethical Treatment of Human Participants

Research involving human participants, surveys, interviews, behavioral data, personal information, or sensitive information must follow appropriate ethical standards.
Institutional or ethical approval should be obtained where applicable, and informed consent should be obtained where required.
Participants' privacy, dignity, safety, and confidentiality must be protected.
Relevant approval or consent information should be reported in the manuscript when appropriate.

Research Involving Animals

Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional, national, and internationally recognized ethical requirements.
Necessary approval should be obtained where required, and relevant ethical and animal-welfare information should be reported where appropriate.

Data Privacy and Confidentiality

Personal, confidential, restricted, or sensitive information must be handled responsibly.
Authors must ensure that personal data are collected, processed, stored, and reported in accordance with appropriate ethical and legal requirements.
Personal identifiers should be removed, anonymized, or otherwise protected where necessary.
Confidential information must not be disclosed without appropriate authorization.

Dataset Ethics

Public, private, proprietary, scraped, crowdsourced, institutional, and third-party datasets must be used in accordance with applicable permissions, licenses, and terms of use.
Dataset sources should be cited appropriately.
Authors should consider relevant limitations, potential bias, representativeness, privacy concerns, and ethical implications of the datasets used.
Necessary authorization should be obtained for restricted or non-public datasets.

Conflict of Interest

Authors should disclose relevant financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work.
Reviewers should decline assignments where a conflict of interest may compromise impartial assessment.
Editors and Program Committee members should not participate in decisions where they have a significant conflict of interest.
Potential conflicts may include recent collaboration, supervisory relationships, close institutional relationships, personal relationships, financial interests, or direct academic competition.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

BIM 2025 follows a double-blind peer-review process, and each eligible paper is normally evaluated by two independent reviewers.
Reviewers should provide objective, professional, constructive, and evidence-based assessments.
Reviewers should evaluate papers on academic and technical merit and should avoid personal criticism of authors.
Reviewers should identify significant errors, unclear claims, unsupported conclusions, and relevant work that may have been overlooked.
Reviewers must maintain confidentiality, avoid improper use of unpublished information, disclose conflicts of interest, and complete reviews within the required period whenever possible.

Confidentiality of Peer Review

Submitted manuscripts and review materials are confidential documents.
Reviewers must not share manuscripts or review reports with unauthorized persons.
Information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal research, commercial purposes, competitive advantage, or any unauthorized purpose.
Under the double-blind review process, reviewer identities are not normally disclosed to authors.

Reviewer Misconduct

Using confidential manuscript information for personal benefit is unacceptable.
Deliberately delaying a review for competitive reasons, providing knowingly biased evaluations, or reviewing despite a serious undeclared conflict of interest is prohibited.
Reviewers must not coerce authors to cite unnecessary publications, including the reviewer's own work.
Appropriate action may be taken if reviewer misconduct is established.

Responsibilities of Editors and Program Committee

Editors and Program Committee members should manage submissions fairly, impartially, and confidentially.
Decisions should be based primarily on originality, technical quality, scholarly merit, relevance, reviewer reports, and compliance with conference requirements.
Conflicts of interest must be managed appropriately.
Ethical concerns or allegations of misconduct should be considered carefully and handled in a fair and evidence-based manner.

Fairness and Non-Discrimination

Editorial and review decisions must be based on scholarly merit and relevance, not on irrelevant personal characteristics.
Manuscripts should not be accepted or rejected because of nationality, gender, institutional affiliation, geographic location, ethnicity, religion, personal background, or academic seniority.

Citation Ethics

References should be relevant, accurate, and appropriate to the submitted work.
Citations must not be added solely to manipulate citation counts.
Excessive self-citation should be avoided, and reviewers must not pressure authors to cite unnecessary publications.
References should fairly represent relevant literature in the field.

Image, Figure, and Table Integrity

Figures, photographs, charts, tables, and other visual materials must accurately represent the underlying data.
Image or figure manipulation that changes the scientific meaning of the material is prohibited.
Adjustments made for clarity must not misrepresent the original results.
Previously published visual material must be cited and used with permission where required.

Copyright and Third-Party Material

Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted content does not improperly infringe copyright or other intellectual-property rights.
Necessary permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material where required.
Previously published figures, tables, extensive text, questionnaires, datasets, or other protected content must be properly acknowledged.

Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Tools

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and reliability of content created or revised with AI-assisted tools.
AI tools must not be used to fabricate references, datasets, experimental results, analyses, or conclusions.
Authors must verify factual claims, citations, equations, code, data, and technical content produced with AI assistance.
AI tools should not be listed as authors because authorship requires accountability and responsibility.
Significant use of generative AI in research methodology, data generation, analysis, or manuscript production should be disclosed when relevant and must comply with applicable publisher requirements.

Acknowledgment of Sources and Funding

Authors should appropriately acknowledge contributions from individuals, institutions, laboratories, software resources, datasets, and funding organizations.
Relevant funding information, including funding organization and grant or project information where required, should be disclosed accurately.

Errors Identified After Submission

If authors identify an important error or inaccuracy after submission, they should inform the BIM 2025 organizing or publication team promptly.
Depending on the stage of processing, corrective action may include revised material, correction of the camera-ready paper, or withdrawal where necessary.

Corrections After Publication

If a significant error is identified after publication, BIM 2025 will cooperate, where appropriate, with the publisher and authors to determine suitable corrective action.
Corrective measures may include a correction, erratum, clarification, metadata update, or retraction in serious cases.

Retraction and Withdrawal

A paper may be considered for withdrawal or retraction where serious problems are established, including plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, serious ethical violations, fraudulent authorship, unauthorized use of protected material, or substantial errors that invalidate the main findings.
Any such action should be based on careful examination of the available evidence and applicable publication requirements.

Allegations of Research or Publication Misconduct

Allegations of misconduct should be treated seriously, confidentially, and fairly.
Available evidence may be examined, and relevant authors may be asked to provide clarification.
Reviewers, editors, institutions, or publishers may be consulted where appropriate.
Decisions should not be based solely on unsupported allegations, and corrective action should be proportionate to established findings.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may raise legitimate concerns regarding review procedures, editorial decisions, ethical issues, conflicts of interest, or procedural irregularities.
An appeal should clearly state the reasons and provide relevant supporting information.
The conference may review the matter and seek additional expert or editorial opinion where appropriate.
Submission of an appeal does not automatically result in a change of decision.

Research Integrity

All parties associated with BIM 2025 are expected to uphold honesty, accuracy, transparency, accountability, objectivity, respect for intellectual property, responsible authorship, appropriate acknowledgment, confidentiality, and ethical management of research data and participants.

Examples of Publication Malpractice

Plagiarism or inappropriate self-plagiarism.
Data fabrication, falsification, or misleading manipulation of images or results.
Duplicate publication or simultaneous submission.
Fraudulent, gift, guest, or honorary authorship.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Citation manipulation or peer-review manipulation.
Submission of fraudulent reviewer information.
Fabrication of references or misrepresentation of research methods and results.
Unauthorized use of copyrighted, confidential, personal, or sensitive material.
Other conduct that materially compromises the integrity of scholarly publication.

Consequences of Ethical Violations

Depending on the seriousness and stage at which a violation is identified, BIM 2025 may request clarification or correction, reject the manuscript, withdraw an accepted paper, remove a paper from the publication process where possible, inform the publisher, request correction or retraction, communicate serious concerns to relevant institutions where justified, or take other appropriate measures necessary to protect the integrity of the proceedings.

Commitment of BIM 2025

BIM 2025 is committed to conducting scholarly publication activities with fairness, confidentiality, transparency, academic integrity, and respect for all participants.
Authors, reviewers, editors, Program Committee members, and organizers are expected to cooperate in maintaining these standards.
Ethical concerns will be considered carefully, and appropriate action will be based on available evidence, the seriousness of the matter, and applicable publication requirements.
This Ethics and Malpractice Statement is intended to protect the integrity of the scholarly record and support responsible academic and scientific practice.