Download Social Empowerment Journal Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement: Available in two languages (Arabic, English).

ENG Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

ARA Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The following statement on Publication Ethics and malpractice demonstrates the Social Empowerment Journal policy that has been in place since its establishment and became more visible after its integration into Algerian Scientific Journals Platform ASJP. Social Empowerment Journal follows a publishing model that privileges research publication integrity based mainly on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).

Social Empowerment Journal publishes original and blind peer-reviewed research papers, reports and case studies relevant to topics related to Humanities, Social and economic Sciences. The journal’s content is open access and is archived at ASJP as indicated in this link (https://www.asjp.cerist.dz/en/PresentationRevue/644). The journal’s content is available online through ASJP, assuring the long-term survival of Web-based academic publications. Furthermore, publications will remain digitally available for free under Creative Commons License.

The content in the Social Empowerment Journal falls under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, allowing for the non-commercial sharing, copying, and redistribution of materials in any format or medium. Additionally, it allows remixing, transforming, and building upon the original work with appropriate credit given. The contributors retain intellectual property rights of their submitted papers. The journal, edited by the University Amar Telidji of Laghouat, does not engage with any private publishing companies in order to avoid promoting deceptive publishing. In addition commercial use or marketing of published material is expressly prohibited.

The Social Empowerment Journal complies with international standards on plagiarism. The editors are fully committed to preventing plagiarism and other types of academic publishing misconduct. Hence plagiarism detection software is used to screen all submitted manuscripts. Prior to peer-review, each manuscript undergoes plagiarism screening. A secretary is tasked with checking papers for plagiarism. Furthermore, accepted papers' final versions are also submitted for plagiarism check.

The Social Empowerment Journal provides guidelines for dealing with errata, retracting, or rectifying papers. The journal commits to promptly addressing any legitimate errors in published work identified by readers, authors, or editors who may not approve the work. Every edited paper will feature a time stamp. However in case the work contains significant errors, the editor will withdraw the paper and provide an explanation for the retraction.

All members and key actors of the editorial board of Social Empowerment Journal are to be fully committed to good publication practice and accept the responsibility for fulfilling the following duties and responsibilities defined by COPE Committee on Publication Ethics and their updates as stated in this link (https://publicationethics.org/ ).

These principles are reflected in the following ethical guidelines, organized as follows authors’, editors', and reviewers’ responsibilities.

1. Duties of Authors:

Submitted original papers for publishing are ought to be established on unique, unpublished information. They ought to include the obtained data and use an objective discussion of the results. Adequate points of interest must be given to empower other researchers to reproduce the research, confirm or refute the interpretations supported within the original paper. 

Authors are required to adhere to the following ethical principles:

- Reporting standards: Authors should accurately present their original research and objectively discuss its significance. Papers are to be edited following the submission guidelines of the journal. Authors are also responsible for language editing before submitting the paper. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain enough details and references enbaling others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

- Originality and Plagiarism: Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, yet if they have used the work and words of others, it must be appropriately cited or quoted. All authors must ensure that the data and results reported in the manuscript are original and have not been copied, fabricated, falsified or manipulated.

Plagiarism in all forms, multiple or redundant publications, and invention or manipulation of data, constitute serious ethical failings and are considered scientific fraud. Social Empowerment Journal reserves the right to use plagiarism-detecting software to screen submitted papers at all times. 

- Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication: Authors should not publish papers encompassing the same research in more than one journal or conference. Submitting the same content to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. No significant part of the article must have been previously published either as an article or as a chapter or be under consideration for publication somewherelse.

- Data Access and Retention: Authors should maintain raw data related to their submitted papers and provide them for reviweing and editing upon request of the Editor-in-Chief.

- Disclosure and Opposing Interests: Opposing Interests easily identified are financial interests such as direct employment, payment for consultancies, participation in a company, salaries fees, patent exploitation or payment for lectures. However, conflicts may also result from friendships, intellectual competition, academic competition or personal beliefs. When sending an article for publication, all authors must bring forward any financial or personal relation to any public or private institution that might influence (even if unintentionally) the results of their work. Likewise, authors must declare any non-financial relation that may cause a conflict of interest in their work (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political or religious). Opposing Interests, both financial and non-financial, must be notified when the article is submitted. The rationale behind this requisite is not to impede the publication of authors with competing interests but to make sure that these can be clearly identified enabling the readers to judge if authors may be liable or influenced in their work.

At the end of the work, a note referred to as “Opposing Interests” will be published. The status included will appear as 'None' if no conflict exists. 

Authors must communicate in their paper any financial or any other substantive conflict of interest that might be susceptible of affecting the results or interpretation of their paper. They should communicate all sources of financial support for the project. Authors must indicate the journal when they have a direct or indirect Opposing Interests with editors or members of the Editorial Board or International scientific committee.

- Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be fixed just for those who have actually contributed to conceiving, designing, executing and interpreting the submitted reaserch.

Authors should provide appropriate authorship attribution and acknowledgement. Authors must refrain from deliberately misrepresenting a researcher’s relationship with published work. All authors must have significantly contributed to the research.

As for those who do not comply with these three criteria, they can only be cited in the acknowledgements part. In order to prevent ghostwriting or fictive/purloined authorship, before the submitting the document, all authors must agree on their contributions and the order in which they will appear on the list of co-authors.

Yet, to avoid any potential misunderstanding with the authors’ names and to guarantee the adequate attribution of publications and quotes, the Social Empowerment Journal requires the ORCID ID from all involved authors. Even though taking only this measure cannot ultimately ensure correct identification, the adoption of ORCID constitutes an additional form of control against authorial fraud.

However, any possible changes in authorship, inclusion, exclusion or order of the authors’ names must be executed before the work has been accepted for publication and needs to be approved by the journal’s editor.

There must be a solid reason to justify the modification of the list of authors and the written confirmation of all involved authors expressing their agreement with the inclusion, exclusion or reordering of the list of contributors. In the cases of inclusion or exclusion, the confirmation of the author affected needs to be included as well. To request this change, the author must send the following to the editor:

When the paper is accepted, the editor will take into account the inclusion, exclusion or reordering of the contributors’ list in exceptional circumstances. The process of paper's publication will be restrained while the request for the changes is evaluated. If the paper is published online, the editor will present the changes request in a correction note.

- AFFirmation of Sources: Appropriate affirmation of the work of others must continuously be given. Any task or words of other authors, contributors, or sources ought to be suitably credited and referenced. Reviewers ought to attempt to recognize pertinent published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that a result or argument has been already detailed ought to be accompanied by the relevant quotation. A reviewer ought to also call to the editor's consideration any considerable similarity or overlap between the original copy beneath thought and any other published paper of which they have personal information. Accordingly, authors ought to give suitable authorship attribution and affirmation .

- Basic errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their already published work, the author must communicate it to the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct that error.

Copyright: The Social Empowerment Journal is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Under this license of open access, the copy, utilize, spread, transference and public exposition area allowed as long as:
The author and source of the publication are cited (journal, publishing house and URL of the work). They are not utilized for commercial purposes.
The presence and details of this license of use are specified. If the material is remixed, changed, or built upon, its distribution must be done beneath the same license as the original.
 This type of license simplifies the access to reutilization and guarantees that the contents of the journal can be used for the needs of academic research.

Authors may reuse published works, meaning the post-print (final PDF file of the publisher) can be archived. In addition, authors are motivated to upload and save their work in social media, institutional and public repositories, scientific, social networks, personal websites, blogs, etc.

- Information about funding: Authors are requested to mention if their research has received private or public funding. For the submission, authors are required to show any monetary support from private or public sources which will have been obtained for the recollection of data analysis and interpretation of results or indeed for writing the papers's content. Each author must reveal all the data concerning the funding received for the research and work submitted to the Journal. Cited data incorporates the title of the funding entity, ID number of the finance and the portrayal of the role played by the funding entity within the research process (determination of the hypothesis, plan of the investigation/experimentation, participation in any stage, analysis, composing or review). If the funding entity has not participated in the execution of the research process, it must be expressly declared as well. It must be stated:

* (Optional) In the letter of introduction: this information should be included in the introduction letter sent during the article’s submission.

* In the article: funding information must be included in the final section, in a note titled 'Support' under acknowledgments.

- Research Studies Comprising Humans or animals: All papers dealing with human participants should be achieved in accordance with the ethical standards of the World Medical Association (WMA) and with the principles of Declaration of Helsinki (DoH).

Researches carried out on animal experimentation or clinical studies including: patients, samples from patients and personal data must obtain an approval report issued by Research Ethics Committee, on national, regional or institutional scales. If no ethical support is provided, the authors must explain the motive, including an explanation of the study’s adherence to the criteria included in the DoH. In addition, they must state that the experiments have been carried out with the prior consent of each of the participants involved.

The Methodology section must mention the committee’s authorization and the participant’s consent.

* If human participants are involved, authors must mention whether the procedures followed were in compliance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5).

* Every research involving human subjects must obtain informed consent from participants, or their parents, guardians in case of children under the age of 18 and a statement to this effect should appear amid the paper.

* Informed consent for publication: Authors must ensure the right to privacy of individuals involved in the study, protecting their identity in both the text and figures/images of the work and anonymizing the information to protect personal data. Any element that may reveal the identity of a participant must be deleted, including name or initials, online alias, social media user names, etc., as well as any other resource such as graphs, photos, video recordings…etc.

2. Duties of the Editor:

Social Empowerment Journal is committed to ethical standards in its publication policy, where editors reliably attempt to guarantee reasonable, fair, and transparent peer review forms and publication decisions. The editors accept responsibility for everything they publish. They have strategies and arrangements in put to guarantee the quality of the material Social Empowerment Journal publishes and keep up the integrity of the published record.

- Publication Decisions:The journal Editor-in-Chief is responsible for determining which papers are to be published. He is guided by the journal's editorial standards and limited by the legal provisions in force at the time concerning the violation of copyright, defamation and plagiarism. The editor-in-chief may discuss this decision with the associate editors or reviewers.

The journal's editorial staff will first evaluate all contributions. They solely and independently responsible for choosing, processing and deciding which papers submitted to the journal meet the editorial objectives and can therefore be published. Each paper deemed eligible is sent to two independent reviewers who are experts in their field and can assess the specific qualities of the work. The editor-in-chief is responsible for the final decision on acceptance or rejection.

The decision to publish a paper will always be measured by its importance to researchers, practitioners, and potential readers. Editors should make unbiased decisions independent of commercial considerations.

- Fair Peer Review:The Editor-in-Chief assures that each submitted paper is assessed upon its intellectual content aside from the authors' race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

Each submitted paper is the responsibility of one member of the Editorial Board or of the international scientific committee, who manages to have it assessed by two peers who are experts in the field and review it anonymously.

Editorial board members, the international scientific committee, and reviewers deal with reviewed papers confidentially

The Editorial Board will evaluate and acknowledge the contributions of all the reviewers of the paper submitted to the journal. They will also encourage academic authorities to acknowledge peer review activities as part of the scientific process and are ought to decline reviewers who submit reports of poor quality, improper, disrespectful or delivered after the agreed deadline.

- Confidentiality:The Editor-in-Chief, the members of the Editorial Board, and any editorial staff should not reveal any information about a submitted paper to anyone other than the authors of the paper, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

- Identifying and Avering Malpractice: Social Empowerment Journal, the members of the Editorial Board and the international scientific committee shall not, under no circumstances encourage malpractice of any kind or knowingly allow it to occur.

Members of the Editorial Board and the international scientific committee shall attempt to stop malpractice by notifying authors and reviewers about their ethical conduct.

Members of the Editorial Board, scientific committee, and reviewers are requested to be conscious of all types of malpractice for the aim of identifying papers where research malpractice of any type has or seems to have occurred and deal with the proclamation in an appropriate way.

If a malpractice takes place, the journal editor is responsible for resolving the issue. He/she may collaborate with the other co-editor, Editorial Board and scientific committee members, peer reviewers, and experts in the field. The issue will be documented accordingly. Relevant questions should be documented: who, what, when, where, and why. All relevant documents should be kept, especially the paper(s) concerned.

The journal editor shall contact the author of publication involved, either the author submitting or another co-author. The author is thus allowed to respond to or comment on the complaint, allegation, or dispute.

If a malpractice has or seems to have took place, or in the case of needed corrections, the Editorial Board deals with the different cases following the appropriate COPE recommendations. Due care will be taken to differentiate between cases of honest human error from deliberate intent to cheat.

The editorial board must consider withdrawing a paper in case of malpractice, issuing an expression of concern, in case of inconclusive proof of misconduct, or issuing a request to correct a confusing segment.

- Disclosure and Opposing Interest: Unpublished materials shown in a submitted paper will not be used in the research of the Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Board members without the author's explicit written consent.

Editors making final decisions about papers should withdraw from editorial decisions if they have opposing interest or relationships that may create potential problems concerning papers under consideration. The responsibility of the final decision regarding publication will be attributed to an editor with no opposing interest.

3. Duties of Reviewers:

All papers published in the journal undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process based on an initial editor's choice, anonymous arbitration by external reviewers with expertise in their field, and subsequent revisions by the article's authors, if necessary.

The editorial team assigns the article to at least two experts who review the article and make recommendations for improvement, and then give their opinion on the article's acceptance or rejection.

Both positive reviews are required for final publication; if not, the product is subject to a third evaluation.

The outcome is either that the work is accepted, that revisions are required to reassess the work's chances of being accepted, or that it is ultimately rejected.

The double-blind peer review process assures that the assigned reviewers are unaware of the authors' identities, just as authors are unaware of the identities of those reviewing their work.

In any case, journals are encouraged to publish a list of external reviewers who have worked with the journal in the past two years.

All reviewers must follow the following ethical principles: 

- Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review helps Editor-in-Chief, and the Editorial Board in making editorial decisions and the editorial communications with the author via ASJP may also help the author in improving the quality of the paper.  

- Rapidity and Readiness:  chosen reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a paper or knows that its rapid review will be impossible should inform the editor and may decline to review the paper.

- Confidentiality: The papers for review must be treated as confidential documents. They should not be revealed to or discussed with others only if permitted by the editor. 

- Norms of Objectivity: Reviews should be lead Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Reviewers should express their opinions clearly with supporting arguments.

- Identification of Sources: Reviewers must seek to identify relevant published work that has not been mentioned by the authors. The relevant citation should accompany any statement that a result or argument has been previously reported. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper they have personal knowledge.

- Disclosure and Opposing Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be confidential and not used for personal interest. Reviewers should not consider papers with opposing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

All reviewers must know and keep the Editorial Policy and Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement in mind. 

The journal stipulates potential reviewers to have scientific proficiency or significant work experience in a relevant field. They must have recently carried out a research and/or work and recognized their peers' proficiency. Potential reviewers should provide personal and professional information that is accurate and that provides an adequate representation of their proficiency. 

All reviewers must likewise withdraw if they know they are unqualified to assess a paper, if they feel their assessment of the document might not be objective or if they realize that they are in an opposing interest.

4. Guidelines for Errata, corrections and retractions:

Published  papers and other types of documents in the journal will remain valid, minute and unchanged to the maximum extent possible. But, exceptional circumstances may occur in which a published paper needs to be edited, or withdrawn. These measures will be considered meticulously by the Editorial Team of the journal, with the support of the staff of Social Empowerment Journal to assure that they carried out with the utmost guarantees following the rules set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

In such cases, the norms and mechanisms of control of scientific communication have several main procedures of rectification per type, seriousness and consequences of the detected inaccuracy. These can assume the form of a notice of an erratum, a correction, a retraction or, on rare occasions, the removal of an article. The purpose of this mechanism is to ensure that changes are transparent and that the integrity of the academic record is always warranted.

- Errata: The Errata will be published when an error or omission made by the journal might affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal but when the academic integrity of the article remains intact. All errors will be accompanied by a separate notification. The notice must provide clear details of the erratum and the changes made to the document. In such circumstances:

* The article will be corrected.

* A final note with reference to the notice of errata will be included in the article.

* Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.

- Corrections: Notice of corrections will be published when an error or omission by the author needs to be corrected. Otherwise, this would affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal. However, this will not affect the academic integrity of the article.

A separate notification will accompany all errors. The notice must provide precise details of the erratum and the changes made to the document. In such circumstances: 

* The article will be corrected.

* A final note with reference to the notification of errata will be included in the article.

* Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.

- Withdrawing: A notice of withdrawing will be published when a significant error disproves the paper's findings or in case of a malpractice during the research and/or publication process. Authors can request a withdrawing of their papers if any of the following criteria are met:

* If there is strong proof that the findings are questionable, whether derving from malpractice (for instance, fabricated data and manipulated images) or a mistake (e.g. an experimental error or miscalculation).

* If the findings were published somewhere else without any proper cross-referencing, license or justification (e.g. in cases of redundant or duplicate publication).

* If the research comprises plagiarismof whatsover.

* If there is evidence of improper

* If the peer review process have been proved counterfeit.

* If there is evidence of unethical research and infringement of professional ethical codes.

Once the decision to withdraw an article is taken:

* The icon “withdrawn Paper” will be added to the published version of the paper’s record.

* The paper’s title will be entitled “ withdrawn Paper”: [Title of the article]'.

* A separate declaration of withdrawing will be published, entitled ' withdrawing: [Title of the article]', which will be linked to the withdrawn Paper. The editors of the journal will sign this note.

- Papers Removal: The removal of a paper will only take place due to exceptional situations i.e.  when the issues are exceedingly severe to be addressed through a notice of correction or withdrawing. This will only occur:

* İf the paper is slanderous or violates other legal rights.

* İf the paper is subject to a court order.

When a paper is being removed, the metadata (authorship and title) will remain, and the text will be substituted by a document indicating that the paper has been removed due to legal reasons.

5. Complaints:

The journal intends to answer and deal with all complaints on time and effectively. The Editorial Team and the staff Social Empowerment Journal will analyze particular cases of the complaint taking into account its type and complexity. Any made decision will consider the recommendations the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has provided.

Suggestions or complaints are to be sent to the journal’s e-mail address. All messages will be addressed and solved in no more than thirty working days. Yet, in terms of the degree of complexity of the complaint, the editor will then notify the complainant if additional time is needed for concluding the case inquiry.

The complaint must be concise and precise and contain enough data showing any potential error among the journal’s publication ethics. The complaining party should also provide complimentary documents as evidence of the particular request.

Complaints which may go beyond the journal’s capacity, such as personal complaints against authors, editors, reviewers or the journal’s Editorial Team, shall receive an answer indicating why the complaint has been regarded as beyond the journal’s responsibility. In addition, the journal will refrain from undertaking pertinent inquiry when complaints are addressed in an offensive, threatening or defamatory manner.

References

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from: http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf