Ethics and Malpractice

Our publication ethics and malpractice statement is based on the guidelines for journal editors developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics(COPE).
Manuscripts submitted to the journal are evaluated on the basis of their scientific content. Measures are adopted to uphold the standards of publication ethics and to avoid malpractices. We endure so that the submitted papers to this Journal and their work is original and unpublished and is not submitted for publication elsewhere. In addition, authors certify that their research paper is their own original work, that is neither copied or plagiarized, partly or whole from other works and used then the works of others is appropriately cited or quoted.

 

Duties / Responsibilities of Editors

The Editorial Team of the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, comprising the Editorial Board and the Editorial Staff with the Publisher is responsible for taking a decision as to which of the articles submitted to the journal are to be published. The Editors have complete discretion to reject/accept an article. The Editorial Team may confer/deliberate with other reviewers/editors in arriving at its decisions. The evaluation of manuscripts is made on the basis of their scholarly and intellectual content without having regard to the nature of the authors or the institution including gender, race, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. The journal follows a policy of fair play in its editorial evaluation. The editors are expected to exercise caution and ensure that they have no conflict of interest with respect to the articles they accept/reject. The editors and the editorial staff follow strict confidentiality and are required not to disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to any one other than the corresponding author, reviewers and the publisher. Authors are encouraged to correct the errors which are found during the process of review while preserving the anonymity of the reviewers.

Duties / Responsibilities of Reviewers

Editorial decisions are based on peer review. The reviewers are expected to maintain absolute confidentiality with regard to the contents of manuscripts. The reviews are to be conducted objectively and the referees are expected to express their views clearly with supporting reasons. The reviewers should have no conflict of interest with the authors and the subject matter of the research. The reviewers are required to identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any observation or argument which has been previously reported should also be accompanied along with the relevant citation. Similarities or overlaps between the manuscript under review and any other published paper of which the reviewer may have personal knowledge, may also be brought to be attention of the editors. The information or ideas obtained through peer review are of a privileged nature and 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 relationship with any of authors or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties/Responsibilities of the Authors

Authors must present accurate original research work followed by objective discussion bringing out significance. The paper should brought out details of the available literature and references. Further all the authors must have significantly contributed to the research. Inaccurate statement constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable. Authors must ensure that the submitted work is original and has not been published elsewhere, and if the authors have used the work of others the same has been appropriately cited or quoted. Authors must follow Applicable copyright laws and conventions .Permission must be sought for Copyright materials snd reproduced only with permission and acknowledgement of source . Authors must ensure that submitted article is not sent out to other journal. Submitting the same Ms to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical practice and is not acceptable . Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be made. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the paper which is submitted for publication. Other persons who have contributed in certain substantive aspects in the development of the paper should be acknowledged. The corresponding author must endure that all co-authors are included in the paper, and that the latter have seen and approved the final version of the paper before submission for publication. All sources of financial support should also be stated. Upon discovery of any significant error in the published work, it is the responsibility of the authors to promptly notify the editors and cooperate in the retraction or correction of the paper

Peer Review Policy for the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
The practice of peer review is to ensure that only good science is published. It is an objective process at the heart of good scholarly publishing and is carried out by all reputable scientific journals. Our reviewers therefore play a vital role in maintaining the high standards of the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities and all manuscripts are peer reviewed following the procedure outlined below.

Initial manuscript evaluation
The Editors first evaluate all manuscripts. In some circumstances it is entirely feasible for an exceptional manuscript to be accepted at this stage. Those rejected at this stage are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, have poor grammar or English language, or are outside the aims and scope of the journal. Those that meet the minimum criteria are passed on to experts for review.
Authors of manuscripts rejected at this stage will be informed within 2 weeks of receipt.

Type of Peer Review
South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities employs double-blind peer review: the identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and the identities of the reviewers are concealed from the authors, throughout the review process.

How the reviewer is selected
Reviewers are matched to the paper according to their expertise. Our reviewer database contains reviewer contact details together with their subject areas of interest, and this is constantly being updated.

Reviewer reports
Reviewers are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:
Is original
Is methodologically sound
Follows appropriate ethical guidelines
Has results which are clearly presented and support the conclusions
Correctly references previous relevant work

Reviewers are not expected to correct or copyedit manuscripts. Language correction is not part of the peer review process. Reviewers are requested to refrain from giving their personal opinion in the “Reviewer blind comments to Author” section of their review on whether or not the paper should be published. Personal opinions can be expressed in the “Reviewer confidential comments to Editor” section.

How long does the peer review process take?
Typically the manuscript will be reviewed within 2-8 weeks. Should the reviewers’ reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed a further expert opinion will be sought. Revised manuscripts are usually returned to the Editors within 3 weeks and the Editors may request further advice from the reviewers at this time. The Editors may request more than one revision of a manuscript.

Final report
A final decision to accept or reject the manuscript will be sent to the author along with any recommendations made by the reviewers, and may include verbatim comments by the reviewers.

Editor’s Decision is final
Reviewers advise the Editors, who are responsible for the final decision to accept or reject the article.
Special Issues / Conference Proceedings

Special issues and/or conference proceedings may have different peer review procedures involving, for example, Guest Editors, conference organisers or scientific committees. Authors contributing to these projects may receive full details of the peer review process on request from the editorial office.

Becoming a Reviewer for the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
If you are not currently a reviewer for the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities but would like to be considered as a reviewer for this Journal, please contact the editorial office by e-mail at editor@sajssh.com, and provide your contact details. If your request is approved and you are added to the online reviewer database you will receive a confirmatory email, asking you to add details on your field of expertise, in the format of subject classifications.

About Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one’s own original work. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been copied and pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in the Journals. But minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example when an author reuses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper. The editors will judge any case of which they become aware (either by their own knowledge of and reading about the literature, or when alerted by referees) on its own merits.
If a case of plagiarism comes to light after a paper is published in SAJSSH Journals, the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation. If plagiarism is found, the journal will contact the author’s institute and funding agencies. A determination of misconduct will lead the Journal to run a statement, bidirectionally linked online to and from the original paper, to note the plagiarism and to provide a reference to the plagiarized material. The paper containing the plagiarism will also be obviously marked on each page of the PDF. Depending on the extent of the plagiarism, the paper may also be formally retracted.
SAJSSH consider only those manuscripts which contain less than 20% plagiarism. If any manuscript contains more than the mentioned percentage, it will be reverted back to the author for removing the plagiarism. If author does not send revised manuscript with less than 20% plagiarism, the journal will reject his/her manuscript.

Duplicate Publication
The Journal will not accept duplicate publication of scientific data. Manuscripts submitted to South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities should not have been published/ accepted for publication or simultaneously submitted. The “possible” duplicate manuscript should be submitted with the original publication (s) and the authors should provide documentation/ statement to justify the originality of the newly submitted manuscript.

Prior Publication
The Journal will accept original manuscripts that contain material that has not been reported elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract of not more than 250 words, or an alternative short communication. If any preliminary report other than an abstract has been published or submitted, copies must be submitted with the manuscript and this must be noted in the cover letter to the editor. Prior abstract presentations must be described in a footnote to the title. Initial submissions must be accompanied by the copyright assignment form, with original signatures of all authors.

Article Withdrawal
Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” from us. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the SAJSSH Publication Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.

Article Retraction
Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by 

 Article Replacement
In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.

Sending a revised manuscript
The authors revise the manuscript as advised by reviewers and submit the revised version. Typically, at this stage, authors are advised to prepare the manuscript by closely following the journal’s instructions about style and format and to submit the manuscript in electronic form.

Proofs and Reprints
Usual practice will involve corresponding authors receiving email notification with a password and web address from which to download a PDF. Hard copies of proofs will not be mailed. To avoid delays in publication, corrections to proofs must be returned within 48 hours, by electronic transmittal, fax or mail. Authors will be charged for excessive correction at this stage of production. If authors do not return page proofs promptly, the Publisher reserves the choice to either delay publication to a subsequent issue or to proceed to press without author corrections. The Publisher reserves the right to proceed to press without submitting page proofs to the author.

Ethic Approval: All authors have to follow the ethical guidelines for journal publication. The authors are dutybound to obtain prior permission from the officials of the Institution/ University, where the work is to be undertaken, for conducting the experiments on animals including human and the work reported should not violate the law. Animal related experiments, prior to their execution, should be got examined and approved by the professionals (Institutional Ethical Committee) with respect to the moral aspects. Researches on human beings must comply with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for Experiments Involving Humans [https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/]; EU Directive 2010/63/EU for Animal Experiments [http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm]; Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals [http://www.icmje.org]. Human/animal details may be included only if they are essential for scientific purposes and the author(s) need to obtain written permission from the individual, parent, owners or guardian. All the manuscripts reporting the findings of experimental study involving human/animal subjects should provide a statement confirming that each subject or subject’s guardian obtains an informal consent, after the approval of experimental protocol by the ethics committee. While reporting the experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed or not. Needless cruelty in animal experimentations is not acceptable to the journal.

Intellectual Property Right: Author(s) must obedient to the law and/or ethics in treating the object of research and pay due attention to the legality of material sources and intellectual property rights.

Conflict of Interest and Source of Funding: Author(s) must properly disclose and acknowledge all the sources of institutional, private and corporate financial and logistic support for the research within the manuscript.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works: When an author finds a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the editor or publisher of journal and cooperate with the editor to retract the wrong information and correct the paper

Duties / Responsibilities of the Publisher
ACS Publisher, as publisher of the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, supports the editors in upholding publication ethics and follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The publisher:

• does not interfere with editorial decisions; acceptance or rejection of a manuscript rests with the editors alone and is never influenced by commercial considerations;
• maintains the integrity of the published record, keeps every published article permanently available, and preserves it through archiving services;
• publishes corrections, expressions of concern and retraction notices promptly when the editors decide they are needed, free to read and linked to the original article;
• works with the editors to investigate any allegation of misconduct concerning a submitted or published article, and co-operates with institutions and other publishers where required;
• protects the confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewers and personal data handled during the editorial process.

Responsibilities of the Editors after Publication
The responsibility of the editors does not end when an article is published. The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board:

• consider every concern raised about a published article, whether it comes from an author, a reader, a reviewer or an institution, including concerns raised anonymously where they are supported by evidence;
• give the authors the opportunity to respond before any decision is taken;
• follow the relevant COPE flowcharts when dealing with suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, authorship disputes, undisclosed conflicts of interest or manipulation of peer review;
• decide, on the evidence, whether a correction, an expression of concern or a retraction is required, and ensure that the notice is published;
• take no part in decisions on articles in which they themselves have a conflict of interest.

Post-Publication Corrections Policy
The journal corrects the published record whenever this is necessary. The published version of an article is never altered silently: every change made after publication is announced in a separate notice, which is free to read, carries its own DOI where applicable, and is linked in both directions with the original article. The following notices are used:

• Erratum – corrects an error introduced by the journal or the publisher during editing or production which affects the meaning of the article, its scholarly record, or the names and affiliations of the authors.
• Corrigendum – corrects an error made by the authors which affects the article but does not invalidate its findings. All authors must agree to the correction, and it is approved by the editors.
• Addendum – adds information that was not available or was omitted at the time of publication. An addendum may be sent for peer review.
• Expression of Concern – issued by the editors when there is a serious concern about an article that cannot yet be resolved, for example while an institutional investigation is in progress, or when the evidence is inconclusive.
• Retraction – issued when the findings are unreliable because of honest error or misconduct, or in cases of plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research or compromised peer review. The retraction notice states who is retracting the article and why. The retracted article remains online, clearly marked as retracted on the article page and on every page of the PDF.
• Removal – in very rare cases an article may be removed, for example where it is defamatory, infringes legal rights, or is the subject of a court order. The title and authors remain on record with a notice explaining the removal.

Minor errors that do not affect the meaning or the scholarly record of an article, such as spelling or formatting, are not corrected after publication.

How to request a correction or raise a concern
Authors who discover an error in their published article, and readers who have a concern about any article in the journal, should write to the Editor-in-Chief at editor@sajssh.com, giving the title of the article, its DOI, and a clear description of the error or concern with any supporting evidence. Every request is acknowledged and examined by the editors, the authors are asked to respond, and the person who raised the matter is informed of the outcome. The decision of the editors on the type of notice to be published is final.