Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The AAUJBL follows the highest standards of transparency principles and publication ethics. The Journal takes all measures necessary to identify and prevent the publication of papers if research misconduct has taken place. These measures are based on ‘Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE)’ guidelines on good publication practice. It is therefore important that all the parties involved in the publication process adhere to the expected ethical and academic behavior standards indicated in COPE.

Each submitted manuscript has to be an original work, which implies that the work described has not been published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Each author and co-authors should have a significant contribution to the submitted work. Every submission will go through particular software (iThenticate) to check plagiarism and verify its originality. Duplicate/multiple submissions and redundant publications are unethical and completely prohibited. Authors and their co-authors shall bear all the responsibility to prevent and avoid such misconduct. AAUJBL will deal with any misconduct or claim of misconduct following the guidelines of COPE. The AAUJBL will take all the necessary measures to correct or retract any paper if it was discovered that it has significant flaws or problems, as soon as a case is discovered. Whenever needed, the AAUJBL will publish responsively any corrections, clarifications, explanations, or apologies. If a correction to a published work is needed, AAUJBL expects authors to inform the editorial office of any errors they observed (or have been observed) in their published paper. The correction process is based on including a correction notice in the next available issue and linked to the online version of the paper. Moreover, AAUJBL will retract any published paper if there is evidence of plagiarism, multiple publication, unethical conduct, or untrustworthy results.

 

Responsibilities of Editors

The main duties of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board are to:

• Verify whether a submitted paper is suitable for possible publication and within the subject areas of the Journal. Each submitted paper is evaluated for its intellectual value and editorial appropriateness, without any possible discrimination for any reason, such as ethnic origin, citizenship, gender, race, sexual orientation, religious belief, or political philosophy of the authors.
• Select potential reviewers who are experts in the subject area and invite them to referee the submitted paper and provide their objective comments, thorough evaluation, and justified recommendations.
• Comply with all needed measures of confidentiality. No information is disclosed about the submitted manuscript to any person other than the authors, reviewers, Editorial Board, and editorial office, as necessary. Unpublished information, ideas, and results of a submitted manuscript are confidential and should not be used for any personal or somebody else’s interests.
• Declare any conflicts of interest when a manuscript is submitted for possible publication.
• Provide a final decision on each submitted paper based on the comments and recommendations of the reviewers and communicate the decision to the authors and the reviewers.
• Schedule accepted papers for publication online first and in the next available printed issue.
• Handle any conflicts, disputes, and investigations if ethical misconduct has been reported or observed regarding a submitted manuscript, following the ‘Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE)’ guidelines on good publication practice.

 

Responsibilities of Reviewers

The main duties of reviewers are to:

• Deal confidentially with a submitted manuscript, where information, ideas, or results obtained through the peer review process should not be disclosed without the Editor’s approval. Reviewers should not also use this information for their own or anybody else’s interests.
• Declare any conflicts of interest when a manuscript is sent to them for review and evaluation. Reviewers should not consider any submitted papers if they have any conflicts of interest that may result due to a connection, relationship, competition, or collaboration with any one of the authors, institutions, or business firms related to the submitted paper.
• Notify the Editor if they are not qualified to conduct the review or if the review cannot be performed within a reasonable time.
• Review and evaluate a submitted manuscript objectively following the best scholarly review measures and prepare a report that contains all the comments about the manuscript under review along with a justified recommendation. These comments may also help the authors in improving their submitted work. The peer review process assists the Editorial Board to make an informed and justified decision about each submitted paper.
• Avoid any personal criticism of authors and partiality, where these are considered inappropriate and unacceptable.
• Bring the attention of the Editor to any significant similarity or overlap between the paper under review and any other published work they are aware of. Every published work relevant to the manuscript under review needs to be cited properly.

 

Responsibilities of Authors

The main duties of authors are to:

• Ensure that the submitted work is original, accurate, objective, and entirely written by the authors themselves. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or other forms, should not be used unless scholarly acceptable procedures are adopted. If the authors are using words from other work, this should be acknowledged using proper citations.
• Avoid any multiple, redundant or concurrent publications describing the same or similar research results. Authors and their co-authors shall bear all the responsibility to prevent and avoid any misconduct.
• Limit authorship and co-authorship to those who have significantly contributed to the ideas’ development, derivations, design, analysis, simulation, or interpretation of the submitted manuscript. Those who have provided other aspects of the research work should be separately acknowledged. Authors receiving any financial support for their submitted research manuscript should mention the funding organization/entity in their work.
• Provide all necessary content details and references that allow others to redo the work including raw data and source codes, if necessary.
• Disclose any conflict of interest or financial support that might be used to affect the conclusions and the results of the submitted work.
• Inform the Journal’s Editor immediately if the authors discovered substantive errors in their work during the review process or after publication either to correct the work or retract it.