Submissions

Author Guidelines

ETHICAL GUIDELINES BY HEC

“These guidelines are retrieved from Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan manual for “Ethical Guidelines for Journals”, which has been prepared by Dr. Rukhsana Kausar, Director Institute of Applied and Clinical Psychology, University of the Punjab, Lahore”

For Authors

The following ethical guidelines are obligatory for all author(s) violation of which may result in application of penalties by the editor, including but not limited to the suspension or revocation of publishing privileges.

Reporting Standards

• Will ensure that the research report and data contain adequate detail and references.
• Fraudulent or knowingly in accurate statements are unethical and unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

• Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is not acceptable.
• Material quoted verbatim must be placed in quotation marks.
• If more than 19% similarity index has found, As per HEC’s policy it will either be rejected or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of a conditional acceptance.

Declaration

• A declaration is required that the manuscript contains solely author original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal in any form.
• A co-authored paper must be accompanied by an undertaking in order to claim right to authorship and to ensure that all have agreed to the order of authorship.

Multiple, Redundant and Current Publication

• Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or publication except if is a re-submission of a rejected or withdrawn manuscript.
• Concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources

• A paper must always contain proper acknowledgment of the work of others.
• The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organizations and institutes who assisted the process of research or financial funding (in the acknowledgement).
• It is duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and cite the original publications.

Authorship Credit

• Authorship of the work may only be credited to those who have made a noteworthy contribution in conceptualization, conducting, data analysis and writing up of the manuscript.
• The corresponding author should ensure that all co- authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Privacy of Participants

• Authors must respect the privacy of the participant(s) of research.
• Authors must ensure that in instances where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, explicit and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.

Data Access and Retention

• The author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor, if any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process.
• The author(s) must provide an accurate description of how the images were generated and produced, and will ensure they are free of manipulation.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

• The potential conflicts of interest of all author(s) must be conveyed to the editor at the earliest possible stage, including but not limited to employment, consultancies, honoraria, etc.
• All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Manuscript Acceptance and Rejection

• During the review period the author can contact the Editor to ask about its status.
• In case of revisions, the author(s) must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised manuscript should, then, go through the process of affirmation of revisions and be accepted or rejected accordingly.
• In case of dissatisfaction over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.