Publication Ethics

The following ethical guidelines are obligatory for all author(s) violations that may result in the application of penalties by the editor, including but not limited to the suspension or revocation of publishing privileges.

Reporting Standards

• Will ensure that the research report and data contain adequate detail.
• Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unethical.

Originality and Plagiarism

• Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is not acceptable.
• Material quoted verbatim must be placed in quotation marks.
• If more than 19% similarity index has been found in the TURNITIN Similarity index, it will either be rejected (As per HEC’s policy) or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the reduction of similarity by possible changes for further acceptance.

Declaration

• 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.
• An undertaking must accompany a co-authored paper to claim the right to authorship and to ensure that all agree with the authorship order.

Multiple, Redundant, and Current Publication

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describing the same research to more than one journal or publication except if it is a re-submission of a rejected or withdrawn manuscript.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

Acknowledgment of Sources

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

Authorship Credit

• Authorship of the work may only be credited to those who have made a noteworthy contribution in conceptualization, conducting, data analysis, and writing the manuscript.
• 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

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

Data Access and Retention

• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Copyright

• Authors may have to sign an agreement for CC-BY.

Manuscript Acceptance and Rejection

• 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. 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 rejection decision, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.