Instructions for Authors and Editors

These guidelines are retrieved from Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan manual for “Ethical Guidelines for Journals”.

FOR AUTHORS

Reporting Standards

  1. Will ensure that their search report and data contain adequate detail and references.
  2. Fraudulent or knowing lying accurate statements are unethical and unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

  1. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is not acceptable.
  2. Material quoted verbatim must be placed in quotation marks.
  3. If more than a 19% similarity index has been found, as per HEC’s policy it will either be rejected or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of conditional acceptance.

Declaration

  1. A declaration is required that the manuscript contains solely the author’s original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal in any form.
  2. A co-authored paper must be accompanied by an undertaking in order to claim the right to authorship and to ensure that all have agreed to the order of authorship.

Multiple, Redundant and Current Publication

  1. Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or publication except it is a re-submission of a rejected or withdrawn manuscript.
  2. Concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources

  1. A paper must always contain a proper acknowledgment of the work of others.
  2. The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organizations and institutes who assisted the process of research or financial funding (in the acknowledgment).
  3. It is the duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and cite the original publications.

Authorship Credit

  1. Authorship of the work may only be credited to those who have made a noteworthy contribution to the conceptualization, conducting, data analysis and writing up of the manuscript.
  2. The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Privacy of Participants

  1. The authors must respect the privacy of the participant(s) of the research.
  2. Authors must ensure that in instances where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, explicit and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.

Data Access and Retention

  1. The author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor if any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process.
  2. The author(s) must provide an accurate description of how the images were generated and produced and will ensure they are free of manipulation.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

  1. The potential conflicts of interest of all author(s) must be conveyed to the editor at the earliest possible stage, including but not limited to employment, consultancies, honoraria, etc.
  2. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Manuscript Acceptance and Rejection

  1. During the review period, the author can contact the Editor to ask about its status.
    • In case of revisions, the author(s) must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised manuscript should, then, go through the process of affirmation of revisions and be accepted or rejected accordingly.
    • In case of dissatisfaction over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.

For Editors

The Editor’s Responsibilities

  1. Establishing and maintaining the quality of the journal by publishing quality papers.

Promotion of freedom of expression within the cultural, constitutional/legal framework.

Good practices

  1. Encouraging new ideas and suggestions for improving the quality of IRJIS.
  2. Applying the process of blind peer review in its true letter and spirit.
  3. Promoting & implementing anti-plagiarism & journal policy without institutional pressure.
  4. Fair play and Impartiality
  5. Will ensure impartial evaluation of the content of research papers,
  6. Disregard all discriminating factors during the selection of articles, e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, etc. of the author(s)

Confidentiality

  1. The confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the peer review process will be ensured.
  2. The confidentiality of the participants in the research should also be ensured.

Prior to publication, the content of the manuscript would be kept confidential.

Dealing with Misconduct

  1. IRJIS Will encourage reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible misconduct.
    Confirmation of plagiarism through Turnitin and/or searching for similar titles etc.
  2. IRJIS Will publish a corrigendum and remove and retract a plagiarized article.
    Transparency
  3. Editorial Board Members will only be limited to ONE paper per issue.

Authorship & co-authorship policy will be strictly adopted.

Conflict of Interest

The editors and reviewers will not edit a submitted paper for those author (s) and/or institution against which s/he has any conflicts of interest.

Disclosure

  1. IRJIS will not use any unpublished information/data from the submitted research paper without the permission of the author(s).

Publication Decisions

  1. Only shortlisted research papers relevant to the scope of the journal will be published after completion of the review process.
  2. Acceptation or rejection of a paper will be based on academic standards.
  3. The Editor will justify the reason (s) for rejecting a research paper and will timely communicate the editorial decision to the author(s).

Procedure for Appeal

The Editor is responsible for establishing a proper mechanism for appeals launched against:

  1. The rejection of a research paper
  2. Objections to publications causing harm to any party.
  3. Infringement of Ethical boundaries in any manner.