Institute for Promoting Research

Publishing Policies & Ethics

Scholars should conduct their research from research proposal to publication in line with best practices and codes of conduct of relevant professional bodies. Respected authors are expected to follow several code of Ethics as they are believed to be highly knowledgeable in their respective field of knowledge. They will be highly appreciated if they follow some ethical responsibilities.

Ethical responsibilities of authors

Authors should abstain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal.  Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

ü  The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for concurrent concern;

ü  A single study is not fragmented up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time;

ü  No data have been fictitious or manipulated (including images) to support your assumptions;

ü  The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work;

ü  No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given, summarized and/or paraphrased, quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted;

ü  Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted;

ü  Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results;

ü  Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or independent body and/or when there is agreement between all authors.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

If there is a notion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following specific guidelines.  If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

ü  If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author;

ü  The author’s institution may be informed.