Ethics Statement
IAFOR aims to ensure that best practice and ethical standards are maintained by journal editors, authors and reviewers. IAFOR editors and reviewers are required to assess manuscripts fairly and maintain confidentiality. Authors must ensure that research submitted to an IAFOR journal is their own original work and is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere (not even another IAFOR journal).
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Editors and editorial board members/reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers. In the event that this kind of conflict arises, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.
Authors too must disclose any conflicts of interest that could be considered as influencing the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. This information should be provided on submission.
Plagiarism
Manuscript submissions are checked with anti-plagiarism software for exact or near-exact matches in the public domain to satisfy the Editor that the submitted manuscript has not been plagiarised. However, when authors submit their manuscripts for consideration in the Journal, they declare that their work is not plagiarised. While the Editor makes reasonable efforts to determine the academic integrity of papers published in the Journal, ultimate responsibility for the originality of submitted manuscripts thus lies with the author.
Plagiarism takes place when one author deliberately uses another’s work without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Authors must always remember that crediting the work of others (including your advisor’s or your own previous work) is paramount. Authors should always place their work in the context of the advancement of the field, and acknowledge the findings of others on which you have built your research.
Publication Malpractice Statement
Concerned with the increase of plagiarism, fraud and misconduct in academic publishing, the Editor, the Associate Editor, Advisory Editors and the Editorial Board of the journal officially endorse the position statements for editors and authors developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity in Singapore in 2010 (Kleinert & Wager, 2011), notably the following statements:
- Editors are accountable and should take responsibility for everything they publish
- Editors should make fair and unbiased decisions independent from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process
- Editors should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting
- Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct
- Editors should pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct.
As to authors:
- The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation
- Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation
- Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others
- Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere
- Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work
- The manuscript must contain nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libelous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.
Editors and reviewers will ensure that articles submitted to the journal are original studies which have not been submitted anywhere else. Manuscripts will be fairly and objectively reviewed; authors will receive corrections and suggestions relatively quickly depending on the availability and expertise of reviewers.
References
Kleinert, S., & Wager, E. (2011). Responsible research publication: international standards for editors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 51 in: Mayer, T., & Steneck, N. (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 317-28). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7). Retrieved October 10, 2016 from http://www.riha-journal.org/international-standards-editors.