Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The ethical policy of IJSRCS is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of IJSRCS Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with IJSRCS. The ethical policy of IJSRCS is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or manuscripts submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit  http://publicationethics.org (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices and https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines)

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

1. IJSRCS is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.
2. IJSRCS is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
3. IJSRCS is committing to maintain the integrity of academic and research records.
4. IJSRCS is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
5. IJSRCS is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscript.
6. IJSRCS is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

1. The Editor-in-Chief/Associate Editors of the journal should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
2. The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
3. The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
4. The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
5. The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.
6. The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
7. The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
8. The Editors of the journal should have the limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
9. The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

1. The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in taking the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
2. The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
3. The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make decision on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
4. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
5. The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
6. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
2. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
3. Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.
4. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other co-authors.
5. To sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
6. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
7. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
8. Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
9. A copy right release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
10. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
11. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
12. When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
13. All authors must know that that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with IJSRCS are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 
14. All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
15. All authors must ensure that the manuscript should have essential sections (the order can vary) of title, abstract, keywords, introduction, related work, research/excremental design, materials and methods, results and discussion, supplementary materials, funding, acknowledgments, author contributions, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest, references
16. All authors must ensure that all authors and co-authors have read the submission checklist before being submitted to the IJSRCS.   For more details, see the given link: https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/submission_checklist.php

Principles of Transparency

1. Peer review process: This journal follows a double-blind peer review process, and all papers are first reviewed at editorial board level and assessed on the basis of their methodological suitability of the paper for the journal, layout, scope of the journal, plagiarism and other ethical compliances. If selected by the editorial board, the paper shall be subjected to a fair and double-blind peer review process by at least two subject area experts, who judge the paper on its relevance, originality, clarity of presentation, completeness, significance and research contribution. Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible, and the journal strives to return reviewers’ comments to authors after 5 weeks because the review process may take 4 to 15 weeks, depending on the number of cycles of review required, before the paper is finally accepted. The complete review process is available step by step on the link given below: https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/peer_review_proc.php)
2. Governing Body: IJSRCS has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names, affiliations, Scopus, Publon, ORCID and Google Scholar profiles of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal’s editorial webpage. Click on the link given below to see the list of Editorial Board: https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/edu_board.php
3. Contact information: The IJSRCS journal's contact information is given on the Contact Us page. Please refer to the given link below:https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/contact_us.php
4. Author fees / Open Access: The Journal database and archive issues are fully open access, and the full text of published manuscripts is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of charge. Besides, the authors never pay any charges for submission, article processing, and publication, which is clearly mentioned on the Home Page of the journal.
5. Manuscript Structure: The manuscript structure is clearly mentioned in the author guidelines page with given link below:https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/manuscript_structure.php
6. Journal Template: The template of the journal is attached in the Download Section.
7. Copyright:  Journals make clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published. Upon acceptance of the manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'. It is available in the Download Section.
8. Cover Letter: The cover letter of the journal is attached in the Download Section.Which will be used to present and publish the author's work.
9. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct:  Research misconduct is defined as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results”. The journal abides by allegations of misconduct. Investigation into research misconduct is under the purview of the employing institution, often in coordination with the appropriate funding agency. The journal is committed to cooperating with investigations and abiding by official institutional or governmental rulings with regard to publications affected by research misconduct.
10. Web site:  Our journal’s Web Site, including the text that it contains, demonstrates that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards
11. Name of journal: The name of the journal has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.
12. Conflicts of interest:  The conflict of interest policy is explained in detail at the link given below: https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/conflict_of_interest.php.
13. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated at https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/call_for_paper.php.
14. Archiving: The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in IJSRCS.
15. Access: The IJSRCS publishes fully open-access articles, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. Non-commercial use and distribution in any medium is permitted, provided the author and the journal are properly credited.For more details click here
16. Journal matrix: The matrix of journal is clearly mentioned on the journal home page which includes title, ISSN No, Publication Language, Frequency, Focus Subject, DOI (CorssRef), OCLC No (WorldCat), Review Process, Time to 1st Decision, Time to Acceptance, Time to Publication, contact details etc.
17. Privacy Statement: The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.
18. Advertising Policy: The publisher does not allow any type of advertisement in the journal or on the publisher's website.
19. Withdrawal Policy: The IJSRCS is committed to maintaining a manuscript withdrawal policy at various levels. For more details click here.

Violation of Publication Ethics

1. Plagiarism: PLAGIARISM is a violation or infringement of the intellectual property rights (IPR) of the original author in the form of authorship rights, sometimes also known as the paternity right. Plagiarism certainly points towards a lack of originality and novelty in any writing, whether scientific or otherwise. Plagiarism in scientific research papers is a serious matter because it creates doubts about the quality of research in terms of novelty. Plagiarism is not acceptable in IJSRCS. Plagiarised content will not be considered for publication. If plagiarism is identified, we will follow the standard procedure for taking action against authors. All manuscripts under review or published with IJSRBS are subject to screening using plagiarism-prevention software. All submitted manuscripts are checked for similarity through a trustworthy software named Turnitin Software to be assured of originality and then rigorously peer-reviewed by the reviewers. For more details visit the link given below: https://www.isroset.org/journal/IJSRCS/plagiarism_policy.php
2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
4. Duplicate Publication: In the event that the authors' previously published figures and/or data are included in a submitted manuscript, it is incumbent upon the corresponding author to (i) identify the duplicated material and acknowledge the source on the submission form, (ii) obtain permission from the original publisher (i.e., copyright owner), (iii) acknowledge the duplication in the figure legend, and (iv) cite the original article. For more details click here
5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several manuscripts, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
7. Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to manuscripts published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
8. Sanctions: In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript, (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript, (iii) Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct
Once IJSRCS confirms a violation against IJSRCS’s publication ethics, IJSRCS addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of IJSRCS by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a non-judgmental manner.
2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of IJSRCS publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
4. Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons co-authored that is under review by IJSRCS journal will be rejected immediately.
5. The authors are prohibited from serving on IJSRCS editorial board and serving as a reviewer for IJSRCS Journal. IJSRCS reserves the right to take more actions.
6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to IJSRCS for 5 years.
7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

References

1. “Standard Ethics”, approved by Vice-Presidency for Research & Technology, the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology
2. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Code of Conduct, www.publicationethics.org

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