The Ethical Standards of the “Journal of Applied Research in Electrical Engineering (JAREE)”

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Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Duties and Responsibilities of Publisher

Publication Decisions, Confidentiality, Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct, Specifications of a Good Scientific Practice, Revenue Sources/Advertising/Direct Marketing, Publishing Schedule/Archiving

Duties of Authors

Authorship and Contributorship, (a) Disputes, (b) Misconduct, Procedure for Requesting for Changes to the Article Authors’ List, Article Processing Charge (APC), Reporting Standards, Data Sharing and Reproducibility, Originality and Plagiarism, Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication, Acknowledgment of Sources, Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests, Confidentiality, Copyright and Open Access License, Appeals for Nominating or Excluding Reviewers, Complaints and Appeals Process, Journal Options for Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections, Journal Policy on Ethical Oversight 

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

Peer Review Process, Contribution to Editorial Decisions, Promptness, Confidentiality, Alertness_to_Ethical_Issues, Standards of Objectivity and Competing Interests 

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

Peer Review, Fair Play, Journal Metrics, Confidentiality, Declaration of Competing Interests, Vigilance Over the Published Record 

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The Journal of Applied Research in Electrical Engineering (JAREE) aims to go through the procedure of getting membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the future. For the time being, the JAREE follows the principles of the COPE on all aspects of publication ethics, and in particular, on how to deal with acts of misconduct thereby committing to investigate allegations of misconduct in order to ensure the integrity of research. Readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with JAREE. The ethical policy of JAREE 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 http://publicationethics.org.

Duties and Responsibilities of Publisher

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

1. JAREE is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are final.
2. JAREE 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. JAREE is committed to ensuring that the potential for advertising, reprint, or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.
4. JAREE is committed to maintaining the integrity of academic and research records.
5. JAREE is monitoring the publication ethics to be followed by its Editors, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
6. JAREE is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involved in the submitted manuscript.
7. JAREE is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Publication Decisions

JAREE's publication decision is based on a codified process. Journal policies are a part of this process. Content compatibility of each submitted paper with the scope of the journal is one of the journal's policies. COPE's guidelines are also checked in this part. Submitted papers must be free of allegations such as libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. Reviewer comments are another part of the decision process. The results of these two parts determine the final decision for each paper. JAREE has been authorized to select valuable submitted papers for publication. 

Confidentiality

JAREE is committed to protecting all information of submitted articles from untrusted ones. In this regard, JAREE’s editorial boards such as reviewers and advisers are only able to access the information. 

Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct

The publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and Editors of the JAREE take 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. In no case shall the journal or its editor encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. In the event that the journal’s publisher or editor is made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in the journal, the publisher or editor shall follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the editorial board will carry out a comprehensive investigation and if the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to explain the issue. If the misconduct is established beyond a reasonable doubt, the Editor-in-Chief may implement the following actions:

• If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, either an erratum will be placed with the article, or complete retraction of the article will occur.
• The author’s institution may be informed as well.

Specifications of a Good Scientific Practice

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results. Maintaining the integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, as listed below:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal simultaneously,
• The manuscript should not be published previously,
• A single research should not be split up into parts,
• Fabrication and manipulation of data are not acceptable,
• Proper acknowledgments to other works must be given,
• Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities of the organizations which have supported the research,
• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work,
• Authors are to ensure the proper author list, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission,
• Authors are to be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the research results, upon request.

Revenue Sources/Advertising/Direct Marketing

Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz (as the publisher of JAREE) financially supports the publication costs for this journal. This journal has no other sources for earning funds and accepts no advertisements in its official website. 

Publishing Schedule/Archiving

JAREE publishes two issues per year, with occasional special issues coming in addition. All the contents of the journal are available forever on JAREE's exclusive website. JAREE is indexed in Magiran and Civilica and the published papers of JAREE are available in these websites in addition to the JAREE’s website. JAREE has a plan to enter Scopus and Web of Science databases. 

Duties of Authors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)

1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English 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 (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by 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 coauthors.
4. To sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to 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. Authors are requested to clearly 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, prior to the acceptance of the manuscript, for publication to be legally responsible for the Journal's ethics and privacy policy.
9. Under the JAREE's 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 own published work, it is the author’s obligation to 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 with JAREE 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 JAREE. For more details kindly see the link https://jaree.scu.ac.ir/journal/authors.note.

Authorship and Contributorship

The term authorship refers to the creator or originator of an idea (e.g., the author of the theory of relativity) or the individual or individuals who develop and bring to fruition the product that disseminates intellectual or creative works (e.g., the author of a scholarly article). Authorship conveys significant privileges, responsibilities, and legal rights; in the scholarly arena, it also forms the basis for rewards and career advancement (See COPE Discussion Document: Authorship).

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study.  All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors, to ensure transparency and research integrity. Authors take collective responsibility for determining who should be listed as an author and the order in which they should appear.

Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the paper (e.g. language editing or medical writing), they should be recognized by name and affiliation in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript.

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Submitted papers must be approved by the author(s) to be considered for refereeing in JAREE. Author(s) must thus have an active presence to design and prepare all materials for their papers. All the authors must have critically reviewed its content and have approved the authenticity of the final version of the manuscript submitted for publication. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the manuscript content. They should also sign an agreement form confirming their contribution in writing the manuscript. Papers are only considered for publication once consent is given by all contributing authors.

When submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author must fill and sign the JAREE Copyright Form in which he/she writes the complete list of authors and approves that has the power and authority to make and execute this assignment and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of all co-authors. When the manuscript is submitted to JAREE, an acknowledgment email is sent to all the authors. In addition, when submitting the revised version of the manuscript, the corresponding author is requested to download the Authorship and Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form, fill and sign it on behalf of all co-authors, and upload it to the journal submission system together with the revised manuscript. This form has two parts. The first part of this form is Authorship (CRediT author statement). In this part, for transparency, we ask the corresponding author (on behalf of all co-authors) to outline the contribution (role) of each author to the paper using the relevant CRediT roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. The information provided in this part is placed at the end of the published version of the paper.

Disagreements of the authors about authorship can be classified into two types: those that do not contravene COPE guidelines (disputes) and those that do (misconduct).

(a) Disputes

These are largely questions of interpretation, such as whether someone’s contribution was ‘substantial’ or not. In such cases, the author needs to negotiate with the people involved. If the suggestions to include or omit names came from the supervisor, it is recommended that this author make it clear that he/she is not disputing his/her right to make such a decision, but show dispassionately why you he/she does not agree with the decision. If he/she remains unhappy with the supervisor’s decision, he/she may consider an appeal to someone more senior, such as the departmental head or dean. But he/she should do this in exceptional circumstances only - and make sure your supervisor knows what he/she intends to do.

(b) Misconduct

If an author believes that someone is proposing to do something with the authorship list that is unethical, it is recommended to this author to explain the fact that the suggested author list contravenes editors’ recommendations, and could be considered scientific misconduct, and the Editor-in-Chief could well decline to publish if he or she finds out. (See COPE guideline: How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers).

Generally, if there is disagreement amongst the authors concerning authorship and a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached, the authors must contact their institution(s) for a resolution. It is not the journal editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disputes.

When a manuscript is in the review or publication process in JAREE and an authorship disputes problem is announced to JAREE by email, the manuscript can be halted in the review or publication process until the dispute is resolved. Editors are not in a position to fairly adjudicate disputes, nor do they capitulate to threats and bullying by the authors involved in those disputes. In such cases, the editorial office communicates with the corresponding author, for purposes of transparency, and cc all co-authors on correspondence related to authorship disputes or missing statements of competing interests and funding. It is then up to the authors to satisfy the journal requirements or withdraw the submission. When a paper has already been published and an authorship dispute emerges, the editor has an obligation to correct the scientific record through an erratum, corrigendum, or, in extreme situations, an editorial expression of concern or retraction (See COPE Discussion Document: Authorship).

Procedure for Requesting for Changes to the Article Authors’ List

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. The Editor and Publisher are not empowered to arbitrate authorship disputes; in the event of an authorship dispute, consult your institution’s research ethics department for guidance. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor-in-Chief consider (at his/her discretion) the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been submitted and the author must clearly flag any such request to the Editor-in-Chief. All authors must agree with any such addition, removal or rearrangement.

Authors take collective responsibility for the work.  Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Any change in authorship (i.e. order, addition, and deletion of authors) after initial submission must be approved by all authors via written confirmation that is sent to JAREE, in line with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will carefully review the request, in line with the authors and contributors policies outlined by COPE guidance, and may communicate with the authors to check the issue. The template for its request form is JAREE Form for Request for Changes to Article Authors List which is available in Section 3.7 on the Guide for Authors page.

A brief explanation of why the requested change is needed has to be written in the request form. All the new and old authors must fill and sign the form and the (old) corresponding author must send it via his/her registered email in the journal submission system to jaree@scu.ac.ir. If the authors list is changed when sending the revised version of the manuscript (in the review process), this form has to be uploaded in the journal submission system as a supplementary file with the revised version of the manuscript. All authors (including any added or removed) should be copied on the email requesting the change. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors confirm they agree with the proposed changes. A change in authorship after the publication of an article can only be amended via the publication of an enduring Erratum/correction statement.

Article Processing Charge (APC)

There is no charge for submitting to JAREE. JAREE is a 100% free journal for both authors and readers and all accepted papers are published in the journal without any publication fee.

Reporting Standards

Authors of original research and applied articles should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial ‘opinion’ works should be clearly identified as such.

Data Sharing and Reproducibility

JAREE is committed to an open research landscape and facilitating access to research by enabling reproducibility. JAREE encourages authors of articles to share their research data where relevant, including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials. However, the authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review. Authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable.

We encourage authors to share the data supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. A data repository is a storage space for researchers to deposit data sets associated with their research. Authors may provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published in their paper. We encourage authors to select a data repository that issues a persistent identifier, preferably a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and has established a robust preservation plan to ensure the data is preserved in perpetuity.

Shared data should be cited in the manuscript. All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. For authors who have shared data: this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. Authors who have shared data must use one of the following Standard Templates for data availability (presented in the second column of the following table) in a section titled "Data Availability Statement" before the References section of the manuscript.

When data is available and linked, authors will need to provide a citation of the data in their reference list.

Data citation:

Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI)

JAREE strongly recommends the use of a specialized repository over the use of a generalist repository, if available. Additionally, JAREE suggests that authors follow institutional guidelines on data sharing. If you’re an author intending to share the research data, you’ll need to identify a suitable repository for your data. Visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to search for a suitable registered and certified data repository relevant to your subject area - both provide a list of certified data repositories. For cases where there is no subject-specific repository, you may wish to consider some of the generalist data repository types below.

• ResearchData
• ANDS contributing repositories
• Dryad Digital Repository
• Figshare
• Harvard Dataverse
• Mendeley Data
• Open Science Framework
• Science Data Bank
• Open Science Framework
• Zenodo
• Research Data Australia
• DataverseNO

A non-exhaustive list of JAREE recommended subject-specific repositories can be found here.

Originality and Plagiarism

Author(s) must present original works for consideration in JAREE. In papers containing any part of a published article, the author(s) have to properly cite or quote the source of the published article. JAREE utilizes appropriate plagiarism detection software packages for checking the originality of submitted manuscripts during different steps of the reviewing process.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Author(s) should not submit manuscripts while they have been previously presented for refereeing to other journals. Simultaneous submission of a manuscript in more than one journal will be faced with unethical publishing behaviors.

Acknowledgment of Sources

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted and permission has been obtained where necessary. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable.

In addition, proper acknowledgment of the non-author contributors and financial support of the research must always be given in the submitted manuscript as specified in the JAREE Manuscript Template. When submitting a manuscript, as an item of the submission checklist, the corresponding author must approve that if the research work received any fund, the name of the funding organization(s) and the corresponding contract number(s) have been provided in the acknowledgment section.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

Competing interests can be financial, commercial, legal, familial, or professional. Authors must declare any conflict or competing interests that are relevant to the article (as well as those that may be perceived to be relevant by others). All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. When submitting the revised version of a reviewed manuscript (prior to acceptance) the authors have to upload the filled and signed Authorship and Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form to the journal submission system. In this form, the authors should disclose any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript. According to the content of this part, is declared in the published paper in a section entitled “Declaration of Competing Interest”.

Confidentiality

Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

Copyright and Open Access License

An author submitting a paper should ensure that he or she has the right to publish the paper and that it contains nothing defamatory. The JAREE will assume that all co-authors have agreed to the submission of any paper received. The corresponding author should sign the journal copyright form on behalf of any and all co-authors and upload it to the Journal’s Submission System when submitting the manuscript. The journal copyright form can be downloaded from the table presented in Guide for Authors. In this form, the authors transfer the copyright to this article to JAREE if and when the article is accepted for publication. The undersigned thereby transfers any and all rights in and to the paper including without limitation all copyrights to JAREE.

JAREE is committed to immediate and real open access for academic work. All the original research papers, application papers, and review papers published in this journal are free to access immediately from the date of publication. There are no author charges (APCs) prior to publication, and no charge for any reader to download articles and reviews for their own scholarly use.

The non-commercial use of the article will be governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License as currently displayed on (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the authors' work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge the authors and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms. 

Appeals for Nominating or Excluding Reviewers

When submitting the manuscript, the authors can suggest suitable potential reviewers. For this purpose, their names, affiliations, specialties, and e-mail addresses should be entered. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. The editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used.

In addition, the authors can request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. As one step of the submission process, there is a field for entering additional comments, where the authors can write this request. It is required to provide the reasons for this request. However, there is no guarantee that the editor will exclude those individuals, especially if they are considered experts in the field, and if the author requests a lot of reviewers to be excluded. The editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not to the non-preferred reviewers are used. If the editor includes non-preferred reviewers, other reviewers are also included.

Complaints and Appeals Process

JAREE will carefully consider complaints, appeals, and allegations in line with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This applies both pre- and post-publication.

When a complaint is made to JAREE, it must be passed to the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, who must then check the issue following COPE guidelines. Pending the outcome of an investigation, the published record will be updated accordingly, with a post-publication notice in the form of either a Correction or a Retraction. This notice will be linked to the original article (see the section Journal Options for Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections on this page for further details). A permanent digital object identifier (DOI) and universal resource locator (URL) link between the notice and the full article enhances transparency and the integrity of the publication record; only in rare cases, where it is in the public interest, will an article be removed.

Well-evidenced appeals to editorial decisions are welcome and will be handled by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, who will assess the appeal’s validity. If valid, the journal’s editorial board and/or external peer reviewers will review the appeal. A new editorial decision will be made based on the results of this review.

To submit a complaint or raise an issue of potential misconduct to a journal, or to appeal an editorial decision:

• Contact the journal's Editor-in-Chief with an explanation of your complaint or appeal by writing to jaree@scu.ac.ir.
• Especially complex cases may be submitted directly to COPE for guidance on how to proceed.

Please submit complaints or appeals by email, by visiting the JAREE’s ‘Contact us’ page. Our aim is to acknowledge complaints or appeals within 10 days of receipt and to keep complainants updated throughout the process. If the resolution reached by the JAREE is not satisfactory to the complainant, the matter may be escalated to COPE or a similar, appropriate body.

Journal Options for Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Where post-publication corrections or retractions need to be made, or if an article is to be removed, these will be accompanied by a correction or retraction notice to indicate the incorrect elements of the article and the extent of the corrections made, or the basis for the article’s retraction or removal.

Correction notices are issued to address relatively minor errors in the article’s content or changes that have been made to the article’s metadata. To avoid multiple versions of the same article being circulated, these corrections are strictly limited to, for example, errors of spelling and phrasing that affect meaning, data errors, or mis-citations. These changes are outlined in the corrections notice and the original article must be clearly linked to this notice. Corrections are usually made within a short time period after publication (typically within 10 working days).

Retraction notices are issued for major issues affecting the argument or substantive content of an article that a correction would otherwise not fix. When a retraction is made, following COPE’s Retraction Guidelines, a retraction notice will be issued, linking to the original article, which states very clearly and exactly which part(s) of the article is/are incorrect or unreliable, and therefore the basis for the retraction. An ‘Editorial’s Note’ will be added to the original article linking readers to the retraction notice.

Removals are only to be made in rare circumstances, where not doing so would infringe copyright or cause harm. In the case of an article’s removal, the contents of the article will be removed from circulation. It will not be downloadable as a file or displayed on the article's webpage. A notice of retraction will be issued in the same manner as a standard retraction notice, and it will include the reason(s) for the article’s removal. The original article’s metadata will remain, linked to the retraction notice.

Journal Policy on Ethical Oversight

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. Authors are expected to follow their institutional policies for research ethics. For most research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parents or guardians in the case of children under 16). Peer reviewers are asked to comment on any ethical problems perceived within submissions.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

(https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf)

Peer Review Process

All of the journal’s content, apart from any editorial material that is clearly marked as such, is subjected to the peer-review process. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from expert reviewers in the fields that are not part of the journal’s editorial board. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. The following rules are to be considered if one gets invited by the JAREE's Editor-in-Chief to review a manuscript:

1. Reviewing manuscript critically but constructively and preparing detailed comments about the manuscript to help authors improve their work
2. Reviewing multiple versions of a manuscript as necessary
3. Providing all required information within established deadlines
4. Making recommendations to the editor regarding the suitability of the manuscript for publication in the journal
5. Declaring to the editor any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authors or the content of a manuscript they are asked to review
6. Reporting possible research misconducts
7. Suggesting alternative reviewers in case they cannot review the manuscript for any reasons
8. Treating the manuscript as a confidential document
9. Not making any use of the work described in the manuscript
10. Not communicating directly with authors, if somehow they identify the authors
11. Not identifying themselves to authors
12. Not passing on the assigned manuscript to another reviewer
13. Ensuring that the manuscript is of high quality and original work
14. Informing the editor if he/she finds the assigned manuscript is under consideration in any other publication to his/her knowledge
15. Writing review report in fluent English only
16. Checking novelty, originality, scientific reliability, a valuable contribution to the science, ethical aspects, appropriate grammar, punctuation and spelling, appropriate citation, and probable scientific misconduct in the submitted article
17. Checking the structure of the article submitted and its accordance with the authors’ guidelines
18. Assisting the Editors in making the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
19. Maintaining the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
20. Providing comments in time that will help Editors to make a decision on whether the submitted manuscript is to be published or not.
21. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
22. The Reviewers' comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional, and objective.
23. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
24. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer reviewers have an effective role in assisting the editor in making editorial decisions. They also can assist the authors in improving their papers throughout the editorial communications.

Promptness

Each one of the peer reviewers who feels unqualified to review a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse him/herself from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor and in accordance with the ethical standards. Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Alertness to Ethical Issues

A reviewer should be alert to potential ethical issues in the paper and should bring these to the attention of the editor, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.

Standards of Objectivity and Competing Interests

Reviews should be conducted objectively and should be aware of any personal bias they may have and take this into account when reviewing a paper. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Reviewers should consult the Editor before agreeing to review a paper where they have potential conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

If a reviewer suggests that an author includes citations to the reviewer’s (or their associates’) work, this must be for genuine scientific reasons and not with the intention of increasing the reviewer’s citation count or enhancing the visibility of their work (or that of their associates).

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

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 should make a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published 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.

1. 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.
2. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the Editor or the members of the Editorial Board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Peer Review

The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely.  Research articles must typically be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers, and where necessary the editor should seek additional opinions.

The editor shall select reviewers who have suitable expertise in the relevant field, taking account of the need for appropriate, inclusive, and diverse representation. The editor shall follow best practices to avoid the selection of fraudulent peer reviewers. The editor shall review all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions for self-citation made by reviewers in order to determine whether there is any potential for bias.

Fair Play

The editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. When nominating potential editorial board members, the editor shall take into account the need for appropriate, inclusive, and diverse representation.

JAREE policies encourage transparency and complete, honest reporting, and the editor should ensure that peer reviewers and authors have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. The editor shall use the JAREE’s standard electronic submission system for all journal communications.

The editor shall establish, along with the publisher, a transparent mechanism for appeal against editorial decisions.

Journal Metrics

The editor must not attempt to influence the journal’s ranking by artificially increasing any journal metric. In particular, the editor shall not require that references to that (or any other) journal’s articles be included except for genuine scholarly reasons and authors should not be required to include references to the editor’s own articles or products and services in which the editor has an interest.

Confidentiality

The editor must protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers unless otherwise agreed with the relevant authors and reviewers. In exceptional circumstances and in consultation with the publisher, the editor may share limited information with editors of other journals, institutions, and other organizations that investigate cases of research misconduct where deemed necessary to investigate suspected ethical breaches. In addition, the editor must protect reviewers’ identities.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Declaration of Competing Interests

Any potential editorial conflicts of interest should be declared to the publisher in writing prior to the appointment of the editor and then updated if and when new conflicts arise. The publisher may decide to publish such declarations in the journal.

The editor must not be involved in decisions about papers which he/she has written himself/herself or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. Further, any such submission must be subject to all of the journal’s usual procedures, peer review must be handled independently of the relevant author/editor and their research groups, and there should be a clear statement to this effect on any such paper that is published.

The editor shall apply JAREE’s policy relating to the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest by authors and reviewers.

Vigilance Over the Published Record

The editor should work to safeguard the integrity of the published record by reviewing and assessing reported or suspected misconduct (research, publication, reviewer, and editorial), in conjunction with the publisher (or society).

Such measures will generally include contacting the author of the manuscript or paper and giving due consideration to the respective complaint or claims made, but may also include further communications to the relevant institutions and research bodies. The editor shall further make appropriate use of the publisher’s systems for the detection of misconduct, such as plagiarism.

An editor presented with convincing evidence of misconduct should coordinate with the publisher (and/or society) to arrange the prompt publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other correction to the record, as may be relevant.

Last Modified: April 4, 2024.