Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement

Duties of the Publisher

The publisher acknowledges and supports efforts of Editors and reviewers to give valuable suggestions and recommendations to improve quality of manuscripts and maintain the integrity of the scholarly articles. Publication ethics and publication malpractice statements are developed based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct, best-practice guidelines for journal Editors [1], and ethical guidelines for peer Reviewers and Authors [2,3].

Duties of Editors

• The editor is independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may discuss with other editors (associate editors and editorial board members) or reviewers in making these decisions.
• The editor takes decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication based on the paper’s scope, originality, quality, and relevance to journal.
• The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely.
• The editor shall follow best practice in avoiding the selection of fraudulent peer reviewers and potential conflicts of interest.
• Articles must be reviewed by at least two external and independent reviewers that have expertise in the relevant field.
• Unbiased peer review should be conducted for handling submissions from the editors or editorial board members. The editor must not be involved in decisions about papers which s/he has written him/herself. Any such submission must be handled independently of the relevant author/editor.
• Suspected misconduct, disputed authorship, or suspected reviewer should be handled as per guidance available on COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts).
• The Editor shall send reviewers’ comments to authors in their entirety unless they contain offensive or libellous remarks.
• The editor shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
• The editor shall establish, along with the publisher, a transparent mechanism for appeal against editorial decisions.
• The editor must protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers.
• Any potential editorial conflicts of interest should be declared to the publisher in writing.

Duties of Reviewers

• Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions.
• Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should decline to participate in the review process.
• Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor.
• Do not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript without first obtaining permission from the journal (e.g., https://cope.onl/case-reviewer).
• Reviewer should remain unbiased by considerations related to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, origins of a manuscript or by commercial considerations. 
• Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
• A reviewer should report potential ethical issues in the paper to the attention of the editor, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge.
• Reviewers should point out relevant published work, which is not yet cited.
• Reviewers should consult the Editor before agreeing to review a paper where they have potential conflicts of interest.
• If a reviewer suggests that an author includes citations to the reviewer’s work, this must be for genuine scientific reasons and not with the intention of increasing the reviewer’s citation count or enhancing the visibility of their work.
• If possible, reviewer should try to accommodate requests from the journal to review revisions.

Duties of Authors

• Authors should present original research and significance of the work performed.
• The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original work.
• A paper should contain sufficient detail and permits others to replicate the work.
• If the authors have used the work of others, it should be appropriately cited or quoted and permission should be obtained where necessary. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Relevant and genuine references should be provided.
• Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
• Plagiarism constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. To verify originality, the submitted article will be checked by the text-similarity detection service Turnitin.
• An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable.
• In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a paper that has been published previously, except in the form of an abstract. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.
• Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors.
• Authors should provide a description of what each contributed.
• The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
• Authors take collective responsibility for the work. Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
• All sources of financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article should be disclosed.
• Author may ask to withdraw his/her name from a paper if it has been included against his/her wishes.
• When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher.

References