PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

The ethical policy of the Regional Studies Journal (RSJ) is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with the (RSJ) Editorial Board codes of conduct. The readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with the (RSJ). The ethical policy of the (RSJ) is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit https://regs.mosuljournals.com/journal/process?ethics       

 

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

1. The (RSJ) is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.

2. The (RSJ) 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. The (RSJ) is committed to maintaining the integrity of academic and research records.

4. The (RSJ) is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.

5. The (RSJ) is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscript.

6. The (RSJ) is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

1. The 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 decides whether to publish submitted manuscripts 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.

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 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.

10. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their research purposes without the author's explicit written consent. 

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

1. The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in deciding to publish 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 the 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-reviewing for personal advantage. 

5. The Reviewer's comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.

6. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflict of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.

7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest. 

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

 1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in Arabic or English languages 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, and are not currently under consideration by another journal or any other publisher.

3. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other co-authors.

4. To sustain the peer review system, authors must participate in the peer-review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 

5. 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.

6. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.

7. The authors are requested to 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.

8. A copyright release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, before the acceptance of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. When the author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her published work, the author should promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 

12. All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review or published by the (RSJ) are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 

13. All authors must ensure that all authors have read the submission final checklist before being submitted to the (RSJ).

Principles of Transparency

1. Peer review process: the (RSJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed electronic and print biannual publication. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer-review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site: https://regs.mosuljournals.com/.

2. Governing Body: the (RSJ) has a very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal’s Web site: https://regs.mosuljournals.com/.

3. Contact information: The Journal provided the contact information for the editorial office of the (RSJ): https://regs.mosuljournals.com/.

4. Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost. Besides, the authors should pay an article publication fee which is 100 $.

5. Copyright: Journals made 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".

6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.

7. Web site: A journal’s Website: https://regs.mosuljournals.com/

contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

8. Name of journal: Regional Studies Journal (RSJ) is unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.

9. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is indicated :

 https://regs.mosuljournals.com/

 10. Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is indicated: https://regs.mosuljournals.com/

 Violation of Publication Ethics

1. Plagiarism: It is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation, is considered by the (RSJ) as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published by the (RSJ) are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The development of Crosscheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. Crosscheck is powered by the Authenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin. For a searchable list of all journals in the Crosscheck database, please visit: 

https://www.turnitin.com/

2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means that the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.

3. Simultaneous Submission: It 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: It occurs when two or more papers, without full cross-referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.

5. Redundant Publications: They involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, 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.

7. Citation Manipulation: It is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely to increase citations to a given author’s work, or articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and the journal in which it appears, thus it is a form of scientific misconduct.

8. Sanctions: If 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 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 the (RSJ) confirms a violation against the RSJ’s publication ethics, the (RSJ) 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 the (RSJ) by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental 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 the (RSJ) 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 the corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by the (RSJ) will be rejected immediately.

5. The authors are prohibited from serving on the (RSJ) editorial board and serving as a reviewer for the (RSJ). The (RSJ) has the right to take more action.

6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to the (RSJ) for 5 years.

7. In serious cases of fraud that results in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the online article version. The online version will also be marked as “retracted” with the retraction date.