Journal Policies
Our mission is to advance research by working to develop and maintain competence, ethics and integrity, and the highest professional standards in the specialty for the benefit of the public. The Faculty seeks, through its activities, to bring about an improvement in research of the public.
Publication schedule
The journal publishes articles online, Open Access, as soon as they are ready (continuous publication), to avoid delays after acceptance.
Copyright
Individual articles are published Open Access under the Creative Commons Licence: CC-BY 4.0.
Journal Policies
Authorship
Anyone identified as an author must have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research and to the writing of the article. They must be willing to take a shared responsibility in the research and in the article and approve the final version to be published. Anyone who does not fulfill these criteria but has contributed to either the research or the writing of the article should be acknowledged and thanked in the “Acknowledgements” section at the end of the article.
Any changes to authorship either during the peer review process or after acceptance must be confirmed by all named authors and a reason for any addition/removal provided to the Editor-in-Chief.
Ideally, the contribution of each named author should be given in a “Contributor list” at the end of each article (e.g. “TS and SS conceived the study and were responsible for the design and development of the data analysis. TS, MG, and SS were responsible for data collection and analysis. TS and SS were responsible for data interpretation. MG wrote the first draft of the article.”).
Peer review
Each submission is checked for suitability when received by the editorial office and maybe rejected without review if it is outside the scope of the journal, is obviously of insufficient quality, or is missing important sections.
The journal invites external experts (not only Editorial Board members) to review each article that is considered suitable for consideration. The publication decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief after receiving at least two external reviewer reports with recommendations.
Authors are encouraged to suggest suitable reviewers, but the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office reserves the right to select different reviewers. The reason for asking authors to suggest reviewers is that they are best placed to know who is an expert in the field. In addition, the suggested reviewers may be suitable for other articles on the same topic. Therefore, obtaining these names can help the editorial office to ensure that it is approaching suitable people to review all articles.
The journal uses single-blind peer review, which means that, by default, author names are revealed to reviewers but reviewer names are withheld from the authors. Authors can request to “blind” their names.
On receipt of at least two reviews, the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision of (1) accept, (2) minor revision, (3) major revision, or (4) reject. The reasons for the decision will be communicated to the authors.
When the decision of minor/major revision is made, and the authors do not revise their articles satisfactorily after receiving reviewer reports, then the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject the article. When revised articles are received they will either be sent out for further review or the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision depending on the level of revision requested.
The time to review and make a decision is extremely variable since it is sometimes difficult to find suitable reviewers, and there may be delays in receiving reviewer reports. The Editor-in-Chief and editorial office make all efforts to minimize the time from submission to the first decision. The journal aims to make a first decision (after review) within 40–60 days, but cannot guarantee this.
Note that articles that do not report original research (e.g. letters to the editor, editorials) are not externally reviewed and the Editor-in-Chief makes the decision to publish.
Author appeals
If an author considers that a decision of Rejection was incorrectly made, they may appeal the decision. To appeal a decision the author must email the Editor-in-Chief or the publisher, giving reasons why they think the decision was wrong. The appeal will be considered by a member of the Editorial Board who was not involved in the original decision (nominated jointly by the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher). There is only one chance to appeal, so it is very important that authors clearly explain the justification for making an appeal.
Supplemental information
Data sharing
We encourage all researchers to archive and share their data. Several grant funders now require this, and we believe that it benefits research by enabling other researchers to reuse and reinterpret data for the benefit of all. We encourage all authors to make their data available in suitable repositories (for example FigShare, or other similar repository) where the item will be safely archived and given a unique reference number (DOI or similar), so that it can be cited in the authors’ articles.
Permissions
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce anything (e.g. figure, table, text) that has been previously published or created by another person. On request from the Editorial Office or Publisher, they should be able to supply evidence of such permission.
Conflict of interest
A Conflict of Interest is defined as a situation where personal relationships (e.g. friend, colleague, or family), business relationships (e.g. working in a competing company), or financial influences (e.g. funding) will affect the judgment of any person during the publication of the journal.
Authors are required to declare (within the article and to the Editor-in-Chief) any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may have affected their research (e.g. funding) or decision to submit to the journal.
Reviewers are required to declare if they have any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may affect their judgment of any article they review. The COI may not prevent them from reviewing the article but must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief as soon as it is known.
Editors are excluded from any publishing decision in which they may have a Conflict of Interest (COI). For example, if an article by a colleague of the Editor-in-Chief is submitted to the journal, the peer review and all editorial decisions will be managed by another editor.
Plagiarism and copyright infringement
Editorial independence
The editors have a right to select which articles to consider for publication and which to accept and/or reject without influence from the publisher or other external bodies.
Editorial responsibilities
The journal editors have a duty to treat all submissions confidentially, and to ensure that judgments are made free of bias, and in a timely manner. Decisions on which articles to be published are the responsibility of the editors who also have a responsibility not to bring the journal into disrepute (by knowingly accepting bad quality or unethical articles or by failing to comply with the journal policies). The appointment of the Editorial Board is the duty of the Editor-in-Chief.
Open Access
This journal, and the others published by the International Journal of Scientific and Management Research, are published Open Access under a CC-BY 4.0 license which allows readers to reuse the content without restriction. Open Access allows for unrestricted sharing of scholarly information and helps to promote knowledge throughout the world.
International Journal of Scientific and Management Research Open Access as an equitable means of ensuring that scholarly research, usually funded by public institutions, is made available to all. Open Access publications are more likely to be discovered, read, cited, and used for future research than those published in closed journals, and we believe it is in the best interests of authors and their parent institutions, as well as the journals themselves, to make all our content freely available and reusable.
Corrections
If an error is discovered after publication, it will be corrected by an erratum, retraction, or in-line (dated) correction. Authors and readers are encouraged to inform the publisher and Editor-in-Chief if they notice anything that should be corrected.
Where an erratum or retraction notice has been issued, this will be indicated using the industry-standard Crossmark logo. This logo will indicate if any update has been issued: by clicking the logo readers will be informed if the version they are reading is the most up-to-date, or if there is any revision they need to be aware of. For more information about Crossmark, see the Crossmark website: https://www.crossref.org/services/crossmark/
Reported errors will be investigated by the publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and discussed with the authors. The appropriate correction will be made after this consultation.
Articles will be retracted following the COPE
(Committee on Publication Ethics) retractions policy. Retractions are made if the content of the article is unreliable “either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)”, if the contents have been plagiarised, or if the article reports unethical research. See https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines_0.pdf
Authors may request their articles to be retracted if they have valid reasons why they should be removed.
Complaints
Disclaimers