Policies

• REVIEW POLICY

The journal uses a double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author’s identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not disclose any aspect of their identity. To comply with this requirement, please ensure the following when submitting to the journal:

Submit the Title Page containing the Authors’ details and a Blinded Manuscript with no author details included as 2 separate files.

After a paper is submitted to the journal, the journal editor / managing editor screens the manuscript to generate a plagiarism report using Turnitin. If the manuscript complies with the journal’s requirements and plagiarism is below the 15% threshold, the managing editor sends invitations to individuals who he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. If a paper does not fulfil the journal’s criteria, the managing editor shall reject the submission.

Potential reviewers consider the invitation in light of their individual expertise, potential areas of conflict of interest, and issues of availability. Following this, they may accept or decline to review a particular submission. If possible, when declining, a reviewer is encouraged to recommend alternative reviewers. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further review. Otherwise, the reviewer shall continue to review the paper several times, taking notes so as to conduct a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else, with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before being reconsidered for publication.

Lastly, members of the editorial board of the journal shall consider the peer reviewers’ reports and make the final decision to accept or reject the manuscript for publication. If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the handling editor is encouraged to include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an e-mail inform them of the outcome of their review.

• PLAGIARISM POLICY

Plagiarism — The managing editor of the assigned article will immediately screen all articles submitted for publication in the journal. All submissions we receive are checked by using online tools for plagiarism detection such as Turnitin. If the manuscript complies with the journal’s requirements and plagiarism is below the 15% threshold, only then it will be processed for review and further process.

• PUBLICATION POLICY

It is the policy of the journal not to publish any manuscript with the affiliation of the publishing university. Therefore, no student or staff member should submit their manuscript for consideration for publication. The journal believes in providing equal opportunities to researchers within the country and abroad and encourages diversity adoption in terms of its identified scope and also the geographical diversity of the author's affiliated institutes/universities/organizations.

• OPEN ACCESS POLICY

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a more effective and efficient global exchange of knowledge and research products.

• CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The journal requires all authors and reviewers to declare any conflicts of interest that may be inherent in their submissions. Conflict of interest for a given manuscript exists when a participant in the peer review and publication process – author, reviewer, or editor – has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgment, regardless of whether or not judgment is in fact affected. Financial relationships with industry, for example, through employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered to be the most notable conflicts of interest. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

Editors — Editors may request that authors of a study funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome be required to sign the following statement: "I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis."

Authors — When they submit a manuscript, whether an article or a letter, authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work. All financial support for the work and/or other financial and personal connections to the work shall be clearly acknowledged by the author in the manuscript.

Reviewers — External peer reviewers should inform the editors of any conflicts of interest that could bias their review of the manuscript and shall refrain themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if they deem it appropriate. The editors must be made aware of reviewers’ conflicts of interest in order to interpret the reviews and determine whether the reviewer should be disqualified. Reviewers shall not use findings of any research work prior to its publication to further their own interests.

• ARCHIVING POLICY

The journal allows and encourages authors to deposit both their pre- and post-prints in Open-Access institutional archives or repositories. All authors hold full copyright and self-archiving rights. Authors are allowed to archive their articles in open access repositories as “post-prints”. In order to digitally preserve all published scholarly content, the journal commits to regularly submit the metadata of all its journals to PKP Preservation Network (PN). This is to ensure that the published content by the journal publishing remains available to the community despite any accidental loss of data in its personal archival records. The journal has further ensured that the metadata of its open access journal is compliant to well-known repository services and their digital crawlers may regularly collect it for record and preservation.