CETRA Conference serves as a platform for a broad blend of scientific and technical papers in the fields of Civil, Transport, Geotechnical, Environmental, Traffic and Electrical Engineering with application in Road and Rail Infrastructure. Papers considered for publication in the conference Proceedings are original papers that form a contribution to the theory or practice of infrastructure engineering, present state-of-the-art work on topics related to infrastructure, or case studies in which theory is applied to a significant infrastructure problem.
University of Zagreb Faculty of Civil Engineering Department of Transportation Engineering as a publisher, takes its duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities. Therefore, all parties involved in the act of publishing (editors, authors, reviewers and the publisher) of these Proceedings have to agree upon following standards of ethical behaviour based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE (available at http://publicationethics.org/).
Editors’ Duties
Publication Decisions: The Editor is responsible for deciding on accepting, rejecting or requesting modifications to the manuscript. In some instances, the Editor may require multiple rounds of reviews and modifications. The Editor communicates review result in a timely fashion. The Editor reserves the right to edit, clarify or shorten the manuscript as deemed necessary.
Fair Review: The Editor must ensure that each manuscript submitted to CETRA Conference is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to the Author’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy. The decisions will be based on the paper’s importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the Conference’s scope.
Confidentiality: The Editor must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the Authors is kept confidential.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The Editor shall not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for his/her own research without the Author’s explicit written consent.
Academic Integrity (corrections, retractions, expressions of concern): The Editor is responsible for granting the integrity of published works by issuing corrections and retractions, if necessary. The Editor will pursue suspected or alleged research, or any other form of publication misconduct. Likewise, the Editor will pursue Reviewer’s misconduct. The Editor will take necessary responsive measures if ethical complaints concerning submitted or published papers arise. If Editor finds post-publishing Author's complaint valid, “corrections” will be published in online version of the proceedings. Likewise, “retractions” will be published if work is proven to be fraudulent or plagiarism or will published “expressions of concern” if Editor have well-founded suspicions of misconduct. The Authors can send retraction note for published paper, but the Editor decides if such statement will be accepted or not.
Authors’ Duties
Publication guidelines: Authors must follow the submission guidelines of the CETRA Conference.
Originality, Plagiarism and Acknowledgement: Authors must ensure that the work they are submitting as theirs is entirely original. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere. Authors will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. It is also their responsibility to check that all copyrighted material within the article has permission for publication and that material the author does not personally hold copyright in is not reproduced without permission. Finally, authors should ensure that the submitted article has a funding acknowledgement, where relevant. Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled “Supporting agencies” in abstract submission procedure.
Multiple Submissions: Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
Authorship of the Paper: All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. The Author submitting the manuscript ensures that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved person(s) are included in the author list.
Conflict of Interest: Authors must notify the Editor of any conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the manuscript.
Fundamental Errors: Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes at any point in time if the author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in submitted manuscript.
Use of Generative AI and AI Assisted Technologies
Responsible use of AI tools
Authors must check the terms and conditions of any AI tool that they use to ensure that the privacy and confidentiality of their data and input, including their unpublished manuscripts, is maintained. Particular care should be taken with any personally identifiable data. Authors should check for factual errors and for any potential bias.
Authors should also check the terms and conditions of any AI tool they wish to use to ensure that, they only grant to the AI tool the right to use their materials to provide the service to them and that they do not grant to the AI tool any other rights to the materials that they input into the AI tool (including without limitation the right to train the AI tool on those materials). They must also ensure that the AI tool does not impose constraints on the use of outputs from the AI tool in a way that could restrict the subsequent publication of the relevant article.
Disclosure
Authors should disclose the use of AI tools for manuscript preparation in a separate AI declaration statement included in their manuscript upon submission. This statement will appear in the published article to ensure transparency. Authors should document their use of AI, including the name of the AI tool used, the purpose of its use, and the extent of their oversight. Declaring the use of AI tools supports transparency and trust between authors, readers, reviewers, editors and contributors and facilitates compliance with the terms of use of the relevant AI tool.
Please note: Basic checks of grammar, spelling and punctuation do not need a declaration statement. However, when an AI tool makes substantive changes to sentence structure or organization of a part of the text, this should be disclosed.
In addition, authors are not required to disclose the use of AI tools or features within specialist disability-related assistive technology, provided these are used solely for accessibility purposes.
Where AI tools are used as part of the research process rather than manuscript preparation, this use should be described in detail in the Methods section.
Plagiarism Screening
All manuscripts submitted to the CETRA Conference are screened for textual similarity using the Crossref Similarity Check tool (powered by iThenticate) prior to peer review. Submissions showing significant overlap with previously published work, including the authors' own publications, are returned to the authors for clarification or rejected in accordance with COPE guidelines. Acceptance for publication is conditional on the manuscript passing this screening and the subsequent peer review process.
Reviewers’ Duties
Confidentiality: Reviewers must keep all manuscripts received confidential.
Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers must ensure that Authors have cited all relevant published work referred to in the paper in the endnotes and bibliography. Reviewers will bring to the Editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript and any other published paper they are aware of.
Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the Author is inappropriate.
Supporting Argument: Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or other relationships, or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the paper(s).
Promptness: If a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within the stipulated time he/she should notify the Editor in a timely manner and withdraw from the review process.
Peer-review Process
CETRA applies a double-blind peer review process at both stages of submission: the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the review.
Abstract review: Submitted abstracts are evaluated for scope, relevance and scientific merit by members of the International Scientific Committee. Only authors of accepted abstracts are invited to submit a full paper.
Full paper review: Each full paper is screened for textual similarity using the Crossref Similarity Check tool and then reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee with subject expertise. Reviewers assess originality, technical soundness, clarity, and adequacy of references.
Decisions: Based on the reviews, papers are accepted, accepted subject to revision, or rejected. Revised papers are checked by the handling editor, who may return them to the original reviewers.
Conflicts of interest: Where an editor or Scientific Committee member is an author of a submitted paper, the review is handled entirely by other members, and blinding procedures prevent any influence over the decision.
Appeals and Complaints
Appeals against editorial decisions. Authors may appeal a rejection by submitting a detailed written justification to the Editorial Office (cetra@grad.hr) within 30 days of the decision. Appeals must address the scientific grounds of the decision; new data or arguments not present in the reviewed manuscript cannot be considered. The Editorial Office forwards the appeal to the Conference Chairman, who may consult the original reviewers or appoint an independent member of the International Scientific Committee to advise. The Chairman's decision on the appeal is final. Appeals are handled confidentially and do not affect the consideration of the authors' future submissions.
Allegations of misconduct. Complaints concerning suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data falsification or fabrication, authorship disputes, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or reviewer misconduct – whether relating to a submitted manuscript or a published paper – should be addressed to the Editorial Office at cetra@grad.hr. All allegations are handled following the relevant COPE guidelines and flowcharts. The Editorial Office acknowledges receipt, gathers the facts, and gives the parties concerned the opportunity to respond before any conclusion is reached. Depending on the outcome, actions may include correction of the published record, publication of an expression of concern, retraction of the paper with a linked retraction notice, and, in serious cases, notification of the authors' institutions. Retracted papers remain in the proceedings archive, clearly marked as retracted, to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.