Journal Issues holds the ethics of publication as one of its core values and as such, adheres strictly to internationally accepted publication ethics. To ensure compliance, Journal Issues employs the double-blinded peer-review process for all articles she reviews. The rationale for double-blinded peer review process is to validate the integrity and novelty of the research work. Peer review process adopted by the journal acts as filter and increases the quality of research submitted for publication. This process also help the authors to remove any errors or gaps in manuscript mistakenly overlooked and assists in making the research more applicable in real time.
Journal Issues adopts the COPE guidelines on publication ethics.
Authors must confirm the following; that:
- Submitted manuscripts must be the original work of the author(s);
- Only unpublished manuscripts should be submitted;
- It is unethical to submit a manuscript to more than one journal concurrently;
- Any conflict of interest must be clearly stated;
- The sources of data used in the development of the manuscript is acknowledged;
- All errors discovered in the manuscript after submission must be swiftly communicated to the Editor.
Reviewers are expected to evaluate a manuscript for critical analysis, comparative analysis and most importantly for integrity and novelty of the research work.
Therefore, reviewers must confirm the following; that:
- All manuscripts are reviewed in fairness based on the intellectual content of the article regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenry nor political values of author(s);
- Any observed conflict of interest during the review process must be communicated to the Editor;
- All information pertaining to the manuscript is kept confidential;
- Any information that may be the reason for the rejection of publication of a manuscript must be communicated to the Editor.
Editors must confirm the following; that:
- All manuscripts are evaluated in fairness based on the intellectual content of the paper regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenry nor political values of authors;
- Information pertaining to manuscripts are kept confidential;
- Any observed conflict of interest pertaining to manuscripts must be disclosed;
Editorial Board takes responsibility for making publication decisions for submitted manuscripts based on the reviewer’s evaluation of the manuscript, policies of the journal editorial board and legal restrain acting against plagiarism, libel and copyright infringement.
Editorial responsibilities
- Publication decisions: Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. But this decision should only be based on the paper`s relevance to the journal`s scope and its academic quality, including the reviewers` judgments, the research`s innovation, the experiment`s validity, etc. And only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
- Confidentiality: Editors and the editorial staff should guarantee the confidentiality of the submitted papers which should be only disclose to the authors, the reviewers, the potential reviewers, the adviser from the ISR Editorial Committee, and the publisher if necessary before publication. And the submitted papers should not be used for the editors` and the editorial staff`s own research without the authors` written authorization.
- Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
- Adhere to the double-blind review in the peer review process.
- Preserve anonymity of reviewers.
- When errors are found, promote publication of correction or retraction.
Publishing ethics issues
- No plagiarism and no fraudulent data.
- Plagiarism and fraudulent data are forbidden. When a case of plagiarism and fraudulent data is exposed after the paper`s publication in ISR, a preliminary investigation will be conducted by ISR, and also inform the author. If the plagiarism is confirmed, ISR will contact the author`s institute and funding agencies and will mark the plagiarism paper obviously on the PDF of this paper or formally retract the paper.
- Monitoring/safeguarding publishing ethics by editorial board.
- Crosscheck and double-blind peer review should be conducted for each paper to avoid academic misconduct. And all the files related to each paper should be kept properly
Guidelines for retracting articles.
- Retracting article will be considered if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error), or if the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication), or if the paper constitutes plagiarism, or if the paper reports unethical research.
- The main purpose of retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity rather than to punish authors who misbehave.
- The retracted paper will not be removed from the ISR online issues. But notices of retraction will be promptly published and linked to the retracted article, accurately stating the information of the retracted article, the reason(s) for retraction, and who retracts the article, which will be freely available to all readers.
- Articles may be retracted by their author(s) or by ISR. In some cases, retractions are issued jointly. ISR has the final decision about retracting articles. It will retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication themselves if the unethical behavior is confirmed.
Maintain the integrity of the academic record.
- All the authors will make a commitment of the integrity of the academic record, including the integrity of the data and figures in the paper, when they sign the ISR Copyright Form. And the crosscheck and peer review will help the editors to verify the originality and integrity of the submitted paper.
- All the business needs should be precluded from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
- Dealing with the fundamental errors.
- When an author discovers fundamental errors in the published works, it is the author`s obligation to notify the editor promptly by e-mail. The editors and the editorial stuff should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.