Ethical Issues

Ethical issues

Ethical Responsibilities of the Reviewers

• The reviewer should assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
• Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript that could affect the impartiality of their reviewing and decline to review where appropriate should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
• The reviewer must maintain the confidentiality of the review process. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
• Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism must not affect the review process. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. A reviewer should also call the editor's attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which he has personal knowledge.
• Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Ethical Responsibilities of the Editor/ Editorial Board

• At any time, the editor/ the Editorial Board evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
• The editor and any member of the editorial board must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as they may consider appropriate.
• Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's research without the concerned author's written consent.
• The editor will acknowledge the paper's receipt, as soon as he gets it, within ten days through e-mail.
• The primary feedback about the paper (just after the primary screening, including plagiarism checking, by the editor to decide whether the paper should be put on review or not) should be provided within a week of its receipt.
• The reviewers’ report should be delivered to the author within three months after the editor’s primary feedback.
• Editors should maintain and promote consistent ethical policies for their journals
• Editors should ensure the confidentiality of the review process
• Editors should work with authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members as necessary to ensure they are sufficiently advised regarding their journals’ ethics and publishing policies and that the journal’s stewardship on ethical matters is fair, unbiased, and timely