Ethics and Malpractice

Publisher’s Responsibilities

IRJAY adheres completely to the ethical guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Journals (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) from ICMJE and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA: (http://doaj.org/bestpractice).

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of work of the author and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour. IRJAY is committed to follow ethical standards in its own editorial policy. The editors of IRJAY are committed to ensure fair, unbiased and transparent peer review processes and editorial decisions.

STATEMENT

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement are mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).

 

Editor’s Responsibilities

Publication decisions: The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published. The editor will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper's importance, originality and clarity, and the study's validity and its relevance to the journal's scope. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered.

Confidentiality: The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

 

Reviewer’s Responsibilities

Contribution to editorial decisions: The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.

Promptness: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources: Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider 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 papers.

Author’s Responsibilities

Reporting standards: Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Data access and retention: Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgment of sources: Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publications: In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted.
In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication, they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it.

Duties of the Publisher

The publisher is supposed to protect the intellectual property and copyright of the contents submitted by the authors. We respect the privacy and personal data, especially for authors and peer reviewers. We work in close co-operation with the editors and peer reviewers to maintain editorial independence and to guarantee transparency and integrity in peer-review process.

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question.

 

Publishing ethics issues

Monitoring The Editor-in-chief must ensure to establish the mechanism for monitoring and safeguarding of publishing ethics. All the complaints received from the reviewers or the authors or anybody else should be taken into the proper consideration and appropriate action should be taken promptly for such complaints.

Retraction & Corrections The published articles will be retracted if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable. The retraction can be a result of scientific misconduct or honest error. To maintain the integrity of the scientific record, the retracted article will not be removed from the journal's website; however, a notice of retraction will be posted and is made freely available to all readers. Retraction can be published by the authors or the editor or the publisher. In rare cases involving legal infringement, the Publisher may remove an article. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the integrity of the scientific record. We follow the COPE guidelines in such a case. Sometimes it may be necessary to publish corrections/erratum in an article published in the Journal to maintain the integrity of the academic record. Appropriate notice regarding the correction will be placed and made freely available to the readers. We are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Article withdrawal We expect our authors to comply with best practices in publication ethics as well as in the quality of their articles. To avoid withdrawal of articles we sincerely request the corresponding author to undertake the issues related to authorship, publication ethics and accurateness of data and results at the time of submission of the manuscript.

The authors can withdraw their article(s) at any stage of peer-review and publication process (before the publication of the article that will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) by login to their author homepage and select ‘withdraw article’ option. The authors should be aware that the withdrawal action takes the manuscript out of the peer review & publication process and places it back into the author's dashboard, in the withdrawn Manuscripts list.The manuscript number of withdrawn articles cannot be used by the system and cannot be resubmitted.

If an article found to violate the ethical publishing guidelines of the journal such as duplicate submission, fraudulent data, plagiarism, false