Publication Ethics

EDITOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

  1. Accountability and Plagiarism: The editors of a peer-reviewed journal are accountable and responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. It is our routine procedure to run all submission through plagiarism detection software. Our acceptance rate is <20%. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers when making this decision.
  2. Fairplay: An editor should assess manuscripts based only on their intellectual merit, without considering the writers' colour, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political ideology.
  3. Confidentiality: The editor and editorial staff are prohibited from sharing any details of a submitted article with anybody other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial consultants, and the publisher, as deemed appropriate.
  4. Discloser and conflicts of interest: Any privileged information or ideas acquired through the peer review process must be maintained in strict confidence and should not be exploited for personal gain. Reviewers must abstain from evaluating submissions if they possess conflicts of interest arising from competing, collaborative, or other relationships or affiliations with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the articles.


REVIEWER RESPONSIBILITIES:

  1. Reviewers must keep information pertaining to the manuscript confidential. Reviewers must bring to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief any information that may be reason to reject publication of a manuscript. Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.
  2. Every paper undergoes an initial evaluation by the editor. If the paper is deemed appropriate for this publication, it is thereafter sent to two referees for a double blind peer review. The Editorial Board will assess the manuscripts, together with a minimum of one independent referee. The Board's recommendations will determine the publication of a work. Manuscripts submitted by members of the journal's Editorial Board undergo the identical review process.
  3. The reviewers will assess papers only based on their substance, disregarding the writers' genders, sexual preferences, religious beliefs, citizenships, ethnic origins, or political philosophies.
  4. The reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the material contained in the manuscript.
  5. The reviewers are required to notify the Editor-in-Chief of any instances of non-compliance found in the manuscript.
  6. The reviewers must assess the articles with maximum objectivity, and the review outcomes will reflect their opinions on the works.
  7. Reviewers who lack the necessary qualifications to assess the research presented in a paper, or are aware that they cannot promptly complete the review, should inform the Editor-in-Chief and withdraw from the review process.


AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

  1. Reporting standards:Authors are expected to communicate their findings in a transparent and truthful manner, without engaging in any form of fabrication, falsification, or improper manipulation of data. Authors ought to provide a clear and unambiguous account of their techniques in order to enable others to validate their findings.
  2. Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources:Authors must comply with publication guidelines, ensuring that their submitted work is authentic, free from plagiarism, and has not been previously published. Engaging in fraudulent or deliberately inaccurate practices is considered unethical and is not tolerated. If an author has included the work and/or words of others, it is crucial that the original sources are properly referenced or quoted and that they accurately represent the contributions made by individuals to the work and its reporting.
  3. Data Access and Retention: Authors may be requested to furnish the unprocessed data in relation to a manuscript for editorial evaluation, and must be ready to preserve such data for a reasonable duration following publication.
  4. Ethics: Authors are required to exclusively submit papers based on research that has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and that adheres to all applicable legislation.
  5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors are required to state any financial or other significant conflict of interest in their submission that could potentially impact the results or interpretation of their work. Full disclosure of all sources of financial assistance for the project is required.
  6. Authorship of the Paper:Authorship should only be attributed to individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, implementation, or interpretation of the study being reported. It is imperative to include all individuals who have made noteworthy contributions as co-authors. If there are other individuals who have contributed to certain areas of the research study, they should be thanked or listed as contributors. The corresponding author must guarantee that all eligible co-authors are included in the manuscript, while ensuring that no ineligible co-authors are included. Additionally, the corresponding author must confirm that all co-authors have reviewed and given their approval for the final version of the work, and have consented to its submission for publication.
  7. Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication: Authors should generally refrain from publishing articles that describe essentially the same study in multiple journals or primary publications. Engaging in the simultaneous submission of a single manuscript to multiple journals is considered unethical and is not considered an accepted practice in the field of publishing.
  8. Fundamental errors in published works:Upon discovering a substantial error or inaccuracy in their published work, authors have a responsibility to swiftly inform the journal editor or publisher and collaborate with the editor to retract or rectify the manuscript.