Ethical Guidelines for Editors

1. Editor of a research journal should be responsible for following:

• To establish and maintain quality of the journal by publishing quality papers in his/her journal,
• Promotion of freedom of expression within the cultural, constitutional/legal framework,
• Providing integrity and credibility of the research contributions,
• Meeting the needs of authors and readers,
• Maintaining ethical standards of their journal,
• Providing corrigendum for any correction, clarification and apologies where required.

2. Good practices for their job would include to:

• Encourage new ideas and suggestions of authors, peer reviewers, members of editorial board and readers for improving quality of his/her journal,
• Apply the process of blind peer review in true letter and spirit,
• Promote innovative findings in respective field and publishing them on priority,
• Promote anti-plagiarism policy,
• Educate contributors (authors) about ethical practices in research, and
• Implement the journal policy without institutional pressure and revise the policy from time to time.

3. Formation of Editorial Board

• Editor must ensure that editorial board comprises of prominent scholars of the field who can adequately promote the journal,
• The editorial board shall be comprised of:
• Editorial Committee, who will be responsible for providing logistics, and
• Advisory Committee, who will be responsible for reviewing the submitted research papers. This committee should have at least 50% representation of scholars from abroad.
• May appoint editorial board members for a prescribed duration and add or revise the board if required,
• Editor should inform new board members about ethical guidelines and their expected role and update editorial board members about development, challenges and any changes made in the journal policy,
• To ensure smooth functioning of the journal, editors are responsible to conduct the editorial board meetings on regular basis (at least twice a year).

4. Fair play and Impartiality

• The criteria for the selection of research papers must be impartial and editor should select academically and scientifically sound papers,
• Editor should:
• Promptly respond to the author(s) of the papers submitted for publication, and assign a specific number to an article submitted for processing; and pay impartial consideration to all research papers submitted for publication
• Ensure to evaluate (get evaluated) the content of research papers impartially and on merit, and
• Disregard the discriminating factors, e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, cultural sentiments, political affiliation, seniority and/or institutional association of the author(s) while selecting articles for publication, and
• Ensure impartiality of the review process by informing reviewer (s) that s/he needs to disclose any conflicts of interest regarding the submitted research paper.

5. Confidentiality

• The editor must ensure confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the process of double-blind peer review,
• Information pertaining to a research paper should not be disclosed by the editor to anyone except the author(s), reviewer(s), and editorial board members,
• Upon reaching a decision about a research paper, the editor may only disclose or announce title of the study and name of the author(s) that has been accepted for publication. Any other information may only be disclosed with the prior approval of the author(s), and
• Confidentiality of the participants of the research should also be ensured by protecting personal information (e.g. identifiable personal details, images, and/or individual results), editor should declare clear guidelines to the contributors (authors) regarding confidentiality of the individual participant.
• Prior to publication, the content of the manuscript should be kept confidential, both the editor and reviewer(s) will not share or use any part of the work.

6. Editing and Formatting Guidelines

• The editors should prepare clear guidelines about preparing and formatting of a paper and print these guidelines in each issue of the journal,
• The guidelines should cover information related to content and format of a research paper,
• Any preferred manual of style (e.g. APA, Chicago Manual, MLA Style, etc.) should be declared as a policy decision.

7. Review Process

Details about review process should be declared,

• Editor should ensure that all published papers have gone through a double-blind peer review, and at least one of the reviewers is from outside the country,
• Editor should ensure that peer-review is masked in both directions and as such the identity of the author is removed from the manuscript prior to its review in order to protect the confidentially and privacy,
• Editor should provide sufficient guidelines to reviewers, including necessary information about the review process and provide them a reviewer comment form for recording his/her comments,
• Editor must ensure that peer review process is prompt, nondiscriminatory and highly professional,
• Editor should develop a system of confidentiality of research papers undergoing the review process,
• Editor is required to send reviewers comments to author(s) promptly,
• Editor should ensure that the corrections suggested by the reviewers are incorporated by the author(s) in letter and spirit,
• Editor to critically evaluate peer review practices regularly and make improvement, if, required,
• Editor should maintain a database of competent and qualified reviewers. For this purpose, s/he may use various sources other than personal contacts to identify new reviewers (e.g. referring by author(s), citations and references section in a book/journal), and
• Editor should refer trouble cases (e.g. in case of one acceptance and one rejection or any conflict arisen after review) to advisory committee in order to resolve the matter amicably.

8. Dealing with Misconduct

• Editor should encourage reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible research and publication misconduct in case the submitted research paper has indulged in (e.g. inappropriate research design, incomplete detail on participants consent, data manipulation, presentation),
• Editor should encourage reviewers to comment on the validity of submitted research paper and identify subtle (simple copy-paste) and/or blatant (paraphrasing) type of plagiarism, if, practiced by the author(s),
• Editor should confirm plagiarism (carry out objective check through Turnitin) and/or searching for similar titles to the submitted research paper, and
• Editor should be prepared to publish a corrigendum, remove and retract a plagiarized article if it comes to his/her knowledge subsequent to its publication

9. Transparency

• Editor must ensure that multiple papers as a principal investigator submitted by an author should not be published in the same issue,
• Only ONE co-authorship will be allowed for those author who will also contribute a research paper as a principal investigator in the same issue,
• For the members of the editorial board (including the editor), it will only be limited to ONE paper per issue either to submit research paper as a principal investigator or co-author, and
• Editor should adopt authorship or co-authorship policy that will lead to set example in the scientific community and strictly discourage any misconduct (e.g. forcible inclusion of a name in the author list). Authorship should only be given to those individuals who have substantially contributed in the said article.

10. Conflict of Interest

• Editor should not edit a submitted paper for those author(s) and/or institution against which s/he has any conflicts of interest (e.g. resulting from competitive, collaborative and/or professional standing),
• Editor should also apply this guideline on their reviewers and editorial board members.
• To ensure unbiased review, the editor should declare a clear cut policy for his/her own submission and a research paper submitted by an editorial board member, and
• Editor must publish a list of common interests (e.g. financial, academic and/or any other type) for all editorial board members and editorial staff. This list should be updated from time to time.
• To ensure unbiased review, the editor should declare a clear cut policy for his/her own submission and a research paper submitted by an editorial board member.
• Suggested that “decision pertaining to the editors’ submitted article/s”, one of the associate editors must decide and the information about reviewers should be kept confidential from the editor.

11. Disclosure

• Editor must not use any unpublished information/data from the submitted research paper without the permission of the author(s), and
• Any information received after peer review process must be kept confidential and not be used for personal gains.

12. Publication Decisions

• Editor is to only short list research papers which have relevancy with the scope of the journal based on his/her judgment, but without any prejudice,
• After completion of the reviewing process, submission of revised manuscript, and assessing the quality and validity, the editor has a right to accept or reject a research paper,
• Editor decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be purely based on merit, academic standards and professional demands of the journal,
• Editor must justify the reasons of rejecting a research paper to author(s). This may include:
  • Failure to fit in the scope of the journal (can be communicated after preliminary review)
  • Insufficient depth of content
  • Major errors related to design, analysis, write up and format
  • Any misconduct or conflicting factors (e.g. plagiarism, copyright infringement, legal issues, fake data, authorship issues)
• Editors are required to timely communicate the editorial decision to the author(s),
• Editors should not reverse decisions in favor or against author(s) at his/her own.

13. Establishing a Procedure for Appeal

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

• The rejection of a research paper
• Objections to publications causing harm to any party
• Infringing ethical boundaries in any manner.