Ethics

1. Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

1.1) Authorship and Author Responsibilities: Those who make substantial contributions to the article should have their names on the article. Such contributions involve conceptualizing the data or designing the work, obtaining, analyzing, or interpretating the data, or drafting or revising the work. All authors should be assigned responsibility and accountability for published work. Individuals who provide nonsubstantial contributors should be included in the acknowledgement section. It is the author’s responsibility to get written approval by individual contributors before submitting an article.

The corresponding author is primary responsible for communication with the journal and editorial members throughout peer review and publication processes. The corresponding author also takes responsibility for ensuring all journal requirements are met, declaring conflict of interest, and respond to any enquiries or critics in post-publication.    

1.2) Conflicts of Interest Disclosure: All authors are required to declare any actual and potential competing interests at submission. Anything that can be perceived as a potential competing interests should be declared within the statements section. Failure to declare competing interests can result in the rejection of a manuscript.

1.3) Original Content, Duplication, and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that manuscripts submitted to the journal must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere, either in whole or in part. If an article has been previously submitted for publication elsewhere, the journal will only consider publication if the article has been definitively rejected by the other journal(s) at the point of submission to the journal. 

The journal publishes only original content. Those manuscripts where plagiarism or duplication is profound will not be considered for publication in the journal.

The content of the manuscript must be original. If authors do not hold the copyright, they are required to provide proof of permission to reuse of the published works or cite in the Acknowledgements section or the reference section if applicable.

1.4) The Quality of Work: Authors are expected to produce their works that make significant contributions to knowledge. Authors have a responsibility to create a publication that is accurate and true to the study results. Authors should forgo from misinterpreting research results and maintaining integrity of the research.

1.5) Data Policies: Authors are required to make all raw data and materials used to conduct their research available to other researchers. Authors are strongly encouraged to make this raw data available upon request to interested researchers, and this should be stated in the manuscript.

1.6) Errors, Corrections, and Retraction: Once authors encounter a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article, it is authors' obligation to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. The editor will decide whether this will be a correction or retraction. 

 

2. Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

2.1) Conflicts of Interest Declaration: Assigned reviewers will be asked to consider the following potential conflicts of interest (e.g., family member, close personal friend, affiliation, financial interests or business relations) before accepting any review assignment. If the reviewers has any conflicts of interest, they should declare and decline the request to review. 

2.2) Timely Peer Review: The reviewers should commit to providing actionable and timely feedback geared toward improving the quality of publications. The reviewers should finish the review within the predefined deadline. 

2.3) Confidentiality: The review process is completely confidential, and all reviewers are expected to maintain confidentiality regarding the manuscript and its contents they are reviewing. All reviewers must not reveal their identities to the authors or to other colleagues.

2.4) Objective and Unbiased Assessment: The reviewer’s comments and recommendations should be objective and unbiased. The contents should be considered based on the facts that are being presented, and comments should be based solely on the paper’s originality, quality, and merits. The reviewer should provide a thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative evaluation of the manuscript, and avoid personal comments or criticism.

2.5) Plagiarism and Duplicate Publications: The reviewers must notify the editor when they detect plagiarism or duplication in a submitted manuscript contains. 

 

3. Ethical Responsibilities of Editors

3.1) Fairness and Bias-Free: The editors should assess manuscripts for their merits and scientific value of the content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political ideology of the authors or the authors' affiliations. 

3.2) Confidentiality: The journal adheres to a double-blind review policy, where the authors’ names and affiliations are not disclosed to the reviewers, and the reviewers’ identities are held anonymously. The editors must maintain the confidentiality of the review process.

3.3) Publication Misconduct: The editors play an active role in detecting ethical misconduct. The editors will take proactive actions to reject suspicious manuscripts before peer review.

3.4) Conflicts of Interest Declaration: The editors are required to disclose any actual and potential conflicts of interest upon accepting an editorial or review assignment. The editor must guarantee the transparency and objectivity of the review process. The editors must not use any parts of a manuscript, including figures and tables, from another publication without permission.

3.5) Errors, Corrections, and Retraction: The editors reserve the right to correct misleading errors in published articles, or even retract a publication if they have clear evidence that the research methods and findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct.