Information For Authors

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

 

ETHICAL GUIDELINES

NOTE: These guidelines are retrieved from Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan manual for “Ethical Guidelines for Journals”, which has been prepared by Dr. Rukhsana Kausar, Director Institute of Applied and Clinical Psychology, University of the Punjab, Lahore.

 

FOR AUTHORS:

The following ethical guidelines are mandatory for all author(s). Violation of these guidelines may result in application of penalties by the competent authorities, which will be lead to the suspension or cancellation of publishing rights.

REPORTING STANDARDS:

  • Will ensure that the research report and data contains on satisfactory detail and references.
  • False, knowingly inaccurate or inappropriate statements are unethical and unacceptable in any way/case.

ORIGINALITY OF RESEARCH AND PLAGIARISM:

  • If Plagiarism found in any of its forms, it sets up unethical publishing manners and leads to rejection of research.
  • Material quoted in same must be placed in quotation marks.
  • Similarity index shouldn’t be more than 20%, As per HEC’s policy.

DECLARATION & CERTIFICATE:

  • A declaration certificate will be required that the Article/Research Paper/ manuscript contains only author(s) original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal/proceedings in any form.
  • Co-authored paper must be accompanied by an undertaking in order to claim right to authorship and to ensure that all have agreed to the sequence/order of authorship.

SUBMISSION TO OTHER JOURNAL FOR PUBLICATION:     

  • Submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical and lead to rejection at once.         

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SOURCES IN RESEARCH:

  • A paper must contain proper acknowledgment of the work of others.
  • The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organizations and institutes who assisted the process of research or financial funding (in the acknowledgement).
  • It is duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and cite the original publications.

RESEARCH WORK AUTHORSHIP CREDIT:

  • Authorship of the work will be only credited to those who have made a significant contribution in presentation of concept, data analysis and writing up of the manuscript.
  • The corresponding author(s) should ensure that all co- authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

PRIVACY OF PARTICIPANTS/AUTHOR(S):

  • Authors must respect the privacy of the participant(s) of research.
  • Authors must ensure that in examples where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, obvious and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.

RESEARCH DATA ACCESS AND PRESERVATION:

  • If any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process the author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor.

ALREADY DISCLOSURE AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:

  • The potential conflicts of interest of all author(s) must be conveyed to the editor at the earliest possible stage, including but not limited to employment, consultancies, honoraria, etc.
  • If necessary for Research, all sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed at earliest.     

CONDITIONS OF MANUSCRIPT’S ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION:

  • 60 days after submission of Paper and receiving acknowledgement letter, the author can ask about the status of his article.
  • In case of any recommended and suggested revision, the author(s) will be demanded to revise his research accordingly in time given from Editor. Later on, he must provide a description of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised copy.
  • If author does not satisfy over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.