The Ethics Guidelines of The NEHU Journal
The Editorial Board of The NEHU JOURNAL is agreed that there is a necessity to conform to standard norms of ethical behaviour which shall be binding on all the parties engaged in the project of publishing of the Journal viz. the author, the Journal editor, the blind peer reviewer/ reviewers and the publisher. The publisher and stakeholders of the publication are committed to best practices and a clear statement of publication practices including originality of the entries, plagiarism and confidentiality. The ethics policy of the journal is modeled on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The NEHU Journal is a bi- annual multi-discipline research journal with ISSN number, publishing original research and review articles. The journal particularly encourages submissions that reflect critical thinking and employ interdisciplinary and comparative research methods. It is also reflected in the guidelines for manuscript preparation which is outlined in the website.
The main text of the paper/manuscript shall not exceed 4500 to 6000 words including an abstract of 300 words and about 5 to 7 key words. This is in exclusion of the references and bibliography.
General Instructions for Publication
The Editorial Board is collectively responsible for deciding which manuscript shall find place in the Journal as an article on publication. The journal shall be published in the soft/hard copy. The soft copy of the journal shall be uploaded by the editor as per the schedule of the publication of the journal.
The editor shall communicate to the scholar the initial intimation about the receipt of the manuscript for consideration of publication in the journal. No other correspondence of any kind will be entertained during the pendency of the review. The Editor will transmit the intimation about the acceptance/revision /rejection of the submitted manuscript to the communicating author.
Any manuscript received for review must be treated as a confidential document and must not be discussed with any person except as authorized by the editor. Privileged information or ideas obtained from unpublished manuscript must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage or research. Reviewers must clearly desist from accepting assignments of review with which they have clear conflict of interest. The declaration regarding the same must be furnished by the reviewer in the Reviewer’s Declaration.
Acceptance Criterion for all Papers:
All submissions to the Journal must be the original research of the author/authors. The manuscript must clearly indicate the details about the authorship of the paper (single/ joint/ more than two authors, etc.) including the institutional affiliation of the authors (as applicable). Care must be taken to include the names of all the authors if the number of authors of the manuscript is more than one. Papers will only be sent for review if it meets the standards of publication as determined by the Editor on pre-review.
The manuscript must be submitted online with a separate title page reflecting the name, address and email of the author, which will be detached from the manuscript for transmission to the reviewer. This is of utmost importance to ensure the confidentiality of the author of the manuscript under review. The author must be careful not to indicate directly or in any other manner, his/her identity in the body of the manuscript. All articles will undergo the process of blind peer review. It is imperative to note that the editor will subject every entry through a rigorous pre-review including subjecting them through a plagiarism check. The authors should take care to ensure that the content in the manuscript does not offend/hurt the sentiment of any community and does not use any offensive or defamatory statements or derogatory language.
The Authors must present an accurate account of research, which will be substantiated through proper references and notes. The paper must also have a clear statement of objective as well as a clear statement of significance of the research. The authors must note that the article submitted to the NEHU Journal for consideration of publication must not be submitted to any other journal concurrently or till the outcome of the submission (acceptance/rejection) is communicated to them by the editor.
Care should be taken by prospective authorsfrom disciplines of social sciences and humanities to ensure that the data, even if previously used in any other publication, must not be presented in the same format as in any earlier publication, in the manuscript for consideration. The authors must submit an undertaking to that effect along with their entries to the editor. Inability to furnish the same will render the entry ineligible for consideration.
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a declaration from all the contributors (if more than one author) that they have approved the final version of the manuscript and its submission to the journal along with a declaration that the entry is not barred by the terms of ‘Research Misconduct’ as defined in this document.
Research Misconduct:
Research Misconduct would mean plagiarism, falsification and fabrication in proposing, performing or reviewing research or in reporting results. It would mean making up of data or results, manipulating research data, or process and appropriating and claiming of ideas, process, result or words and phrases authored or used or belonging to another person, without proper/ appropriate credit or acknowledgement
Policy on Misconduct:
Any author, if found to be guilty of ‘research misconduct, the journal reserves the right to reject/ retract or withdraw the publishedpaper; decline further submissions from the offending authors for a period as determined by the Journal editorial committee.On receipt of any challenge/ complaint about the authenticity and integrity of an article, the Editor will consult the publisher and author and contribute to the investigation and responsive measures that may follow from such investigation.
Copyright Issues and Conflict of Interest:
The authors must ensure that the paper has not been previously published, in the current form either in print or in the electronic form and is not under consideration for publication by any other journal/publication or has not been previously transferred, assigned or is otherwise encumbered in any other form. Necessary permission and authorization has to be obtained for the use of the same by the author in such situation.
The author/s must certify that all financial and material support for the research is clearly identified in the manuscript. Authors should list all funding sources (if any) in the acknowledgement section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the designation of the funding agency/agencies.
The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Authors will certify that all affiliations with or without financial involvement with any organization or entity with financial interest or conflict with the subject or materials discussed in the manuscript along with other financial or personal relationships that might bias the author/s work must be disclosed to the journal editorial board as part of the initial declaration while submitting the entry for consideration.
Authors must confirm that the procedure followed in the manuscript is in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible institution in the community or organization that they work in.
For manuscripts reporting medical studies that involve human participants, a statement identifying the ethics committee approving the study and a statement of confirmation about the study conforming to the recognized standard procedures as in established protocols (eg, Helsinki Declaration) should be attached along with the entry. The Declaration should be clear and unambiguous about the informed consent of the persons participating in the study. Patients’ anonymity must be preserved. Authors however need to only certify and confirm the consent of the persons covered in the research. There is no necessity to attach the consent form along with the entry that is submitted to the editor for the consideration of publication.
Authors submitting manuscripts on animal studies need to submit a statement indicating that the protocols and procedures employed for such studieswere strictly adhered to.Authors should also mention the name of the institutional ethics committee giving approval for such study/s along with the approval number. This must also be clearly indicated in the section of the paper dealing with research methods.
The Editorial Board of the Journal is jointly and severally responsible for deciding the content of the Journal including the articles/ reviews carried in the Journal. The Editorial Board shall articulate itself through the Editor who shall take the decisions of pre-review and the review processes. The Editor shall have the right to accept/reject amanuscript if it is considered inappropriate for the Journal and communicate the same to the authors.
Editor/s must evaluate each manuscript for its intellectual content without bias. The Editor will not disclose any information, otherwise as is deemed appropriate, about the submitted manuscript to any person not involved with the publication process of the Journal. He/She will also disclose any potential conflict of interest to the Board and shall recues himself/ herself from the process of pre-review and pass on the same to another member of the Board to review and consider the manuscript.The Editor will not use privileged information or ideas obtained through the review of the manuscript for personal advantage.
Reviewer/Referee Code of Ethics:
In conformity with the ethical international standards of peer review, the reviewers must disclose any competing/ conflict of interest. The reviewer must evaluate a manuscript for its intellectual content independent of any bias within a reasonable timeframe. Any manuscript that is transmitted to the reviewer should be treated as a confidential document. The review of the manuscript must be backed by supporting arguments both in favour and against the publication of the same. The reviewer should also inform the editor about any situation of suspected research misconduct and indications about the similarity between the manuscript in consideration and any other manuscript, published or unpublished. The review will also carry a comment on ethical standards if there are any identifiable areas of violation.
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