PUBLICATIONS STANDARDS POLICY AND PRINCIPLES FOR AUTHORS, REFEREES, AND EDITORS
Publications Standards Policy
IRJGES support the highest standards of intellectual discourse in its publications. All members of the publication process authors, editors and reviewers should be treated with fairness and balance, and adhere to the principles in Section of “PUBLICATION PRINCIPLES”. The principles in this document represent a minimum set of requirements. Individual publications may have additional requirements. A publication with additional requirements shall have a publicly available statement of publication policies and procedures.
PUBLICATION PRINCIPLES
A. Authorship
Authorship credit should be based on a substantial intellectual contribution. It is assumed that all authors have had a significant role in the creation of a manuscript that bears their names. Therefore, the list of authors on an article serves multiple purposes; it indicates who is responsible for the work and to whom questions regarding the work should be addressed. Moreover, the credit implied by authorship is often used as a measure of the contributors’ productivity when they are evaluated for employment, promotions, grants, and prizes.
a) IRJGES affirm that authorship credit must be reserved for individuals who have met each of the following conditions:
Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the manuscript.
Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content.
Approved the final version of the manuscript, including references. (Deceased persons deemed appropriate as authors should be so included with a footnote reporting their death.)
b) In papers with multiple authorship, the order of the authors shall be at the discretion of the authors.
c) Once the list and order of authors has been established, the list and order of authors should not be altered without permission of all living authors.
d) Any part of an article essential to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.
e) In the case of papers with multiple authors, a “corresponding” author must be designated as having responsibility for overseeing the publication process and ensuring the integrity of the final document. The corresponding author accepts the responsibility for:
Including as co-authors all persons appropriate and none inappropriate;
Obtaining from all co-authors their assent to be designated as such, as well as their approval of the final version of the manuscript; and
Keeping all co-authors apprised of the current status of a manuscript submitted for publication, including furnishing all co-authors with copies of the reviewers’ comments and a copy of the published version, as appropriate.
f) Co-authors have responsibility for work submitted under their names. They should remain knowledgeable in so far as possible regarding the status of the manuscript, including the nature of any revisions.
g) If a manuscript is revised and resubmitted to the same journal, co-authors should be asked by the corresponding author to reaffirm their assent to be listed as co-authors and to approve the revised version. In addition, if the manuscript is rejected or withdrawn from a journal and then submitted to a different Journal, the co-authors should be asked again by the corresponding author to affirm their assent to authorship even if no substantive changes have been made.
h) Co-authors have the right to withdraw their names from a manuscript at any time before acceptance of the manuscript by the editor. However, an author’s or co-author’s name should not be removed from a manuscript without his or her permission. The responsible editor shall be notified of any change in authorship.
B. Responsibilities of Manuscript Authors
a) Peer review is essential to scientific and technical discourse. Authors are encouraged to have the first formal publication of their results be a peer-reviewed paper.
b) Financial support of the work being reported and of the authors should be clearly acknowledged, as should any potential conflict of interest.
c) Methods and materials should be described in sufficient detail to permit evaluation and replication.
d) All data should be presented upon request by the editor, to facilitate the review process.
e) Authors have an obligation to correct errors promptly.
f) IRJGES define plagiarism as the use of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and is considered a serious breach of professional conduct, with potentially severe ethical and legal consequences.
g) Fabrication and falsification are unacceptable.
h) Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication, nor which is under review for another refereed publication. If authors have used their own previously published work(s) as a basis for a new submission, they are required to cite the previous work(s) and very briefly indicate how the new submission offers substantively novel contributions beyond those of the previously published work(s).
Note: Authors should not discuss any aspect of a manuscript under evaluation with reviewers of the submitted manuscript.
i) Only those articles of a researcher’s publication record that are directly relevant to the subject matter of the paper under consideration should be included in the bibliography. Furthermore, an article should be appropriately labeled as "submitted" when still in the review process when it has been accepted for publication.
j) The IRJGES assumes that the material submitted to its journals for publications is properly available for general dissemination to the readership of those journals. It is the responsibility of the authors, not the IRJGES, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and, if so, to obtain it. If authors make use of charts, photographs, or other graphical or textual material from previously published material, the authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to use the material in the manuscript.
C. Referees of Manuscripts
a) Referees should be chosen for their high qualifications and objectivity regarding a particular manuscript.
b) Reviews should be prompt and thorough.
c) Anonymity of referees should be preserved to the extent possible, unless the referee and editor agree to disclosure.
d) Information contained in a manuscript under review is confidential and must not be shared with others, nor should referees use non-public information contained in a manuscript to advance their own research or financial interests.
D. Editors of IRJGES Journals and responsibilities
a) The sole responsibility for acceptance or rejection of a manuscript rests with the editor.
b) Editors should generally grant the request of an author who asks that particular individual(s) be excluded from the review of a particular manuscript.
c) Editors should establish a review process that minimizes bias.
d) Editors should subject all manuscripts of a given type to equivalent and unprejudiced reviews. Decisions about acceptance for publication should occur in a reasonable time frame, and (except for issues devoted to special topics) manuscripts should, to the editor’s best ability, be published in the chronological order of acceptance.
e) Editors should provide to the authors a written rationale for editorial decisions regarding a manuscript submitted for publication. This is especially important if the manuscript is being rejected.
f) Unpublished manuscripts must be treated as confidential documents by all individuals involved in the editorial process.
g) Editors should correct errors in a manuscript if the errors are detected or reported before publication, or publish corrections if they are detected afterward.
h) Editors should handle cases of alleged misconduct at the lowest possible organizational level, and should usually involve the institutions at which the research in question was performed.
i) Papers submitted by an editor or associate editor should be handled by another member of the editorial board.
