Policies

Open Access Policy
Allegations Of Misconduct Policy
Appeal & Complaints Policy
Conflict Of Interest Policy
Review Policy
Authorship Policy
Plagiarism Policy
Publication Fee Policy
Copyright & Licensing
Archiving Policy
Repository Policy
Correction Policy
Retraction Policy
Privacy Policy
Subscription Policy

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Open Access Policy

JISR management and social sciences & economics follow an open access publication policy. All published articles have undergone a double-blind peer review process and upon acceptance are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Re-use of published articles is permitted as per the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) international license.

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Allegations Of Misconduct Policy

JISR-MSSE strictly follows COPE Guidelines for allegations of misconduct https://publicationethics.org/guidance?classification=2771.

JISR-MSSE advises the readers/reviewers/authors to submit any formal complaint to the Editorial Team via email jisr.msse@szabist.edu.pk. All complaints will be dealt with full confidentiality.

The complaints can be on the grounds of the following misconducts:

Author Misconduct

Prior to Publication (Concerns raised by reviewers)

As part of the review process, any manuscript submitted may raise some concerns:

• If the reviewer/s find/s any suspicious content (writeup/data, originality, redundancy etc.) regarding the integrity of the research, the reviewer/s must report such concerns to the journal.
• Either the reviewer/s can highlight the valid concerns in the section “confidential comments to the editor’ in the OJS by submitting the review or email to the journal provided to them for review process.
• The reviewer/s can ask the editorial team to provide the data or any other material related to manuscript before reviewers provide their final decision on the manuscript.
• Once such concern has been received to JISR-MSSE, the review process should not continue until the concerns are fully accounted for and the author will be asked to provide justifications or data (whatever asked by the reviewers).
• The reviewer may also demand clarification where necessary. The reviewer should, however, avoid using indecent or accusatory language and limit the conversation to the relevant facts only.
• If the author manages to eliminate all concerns, the review process may proceed with specific changes made by the author.
• If the author admits to having committed the misconduct or has no explanation for the concerns raised, then the manuscript would be rejected forthwith.
• The reviewers must be informed of the final decision on the manuscript in all cases.

After Publication (Concerns Raised By Readers/Whistleblowers)

The reader may have concerns about the published manuscript. the reader should validate the concern first and if the reader finds the concerns are valid, they must report to the journal through the email mentioned above.

• The editorial team will respond to the readers with the thanks note and report this complaint to the editorial board.
• If the editorial board finds that the complaints are invalid based on very weak grounds, the journal will reject/dismiss the case against the manuscript and report to the readers immediately,
• If the editorial board finds the complaints are valid, they will discuss and investigate the matter on merit. There can be several allegations (plagiarism, fabrication of the data, redundant, conflict of authorship, image manipulation etc.). Each case must be dealt with accordingly in light of COPE ethical guidelines.

Reviewer Misconduct

Reviewer misconduct can also occur through coarse or non-constructive comments or, at the extreme, through misuse of the author's data.

• Minor issues are easily dealt with. If the review is of poor quality and/or has harsh/inappropriate comments/statements, Journal may avoid sending manuscripts to such reviewer/s in the future and such indecent comments should be deleted. The journal may also send the submitted manuscript to another reviewer if finds necessary.
• If the reviewer has found/reported misuse of the author’s data, the case should be immediately reported to the editorial board and be dealt with strictly in light of COPE ethical guidelines.

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Appeal & Complaints Policy

Appeal Against a Rejection

JISR-MSSE follows the transparent process of review process and decisions either to publish or reject the manuscripts are made purely on a merit basis. However, JISR-MSSE is open to accepting the appeal/s against rejection of the manuscript. If the author wishes to reconsider a rejection manuscript to the journal, they must write to the JISR-MSSE official email mentioning their manuscript details.

The author is allowed to make an appeal only once for a rejected manuscript and will be sent to the next editorial board meeting whenever is scheduled after the date of appeal received to the journal. Only the corresponding author is allowed to appeal.

An appeal can be made if Author can:

• provide the details of why he/she disagrees with the decision. The author will be required to provide the answers to the comments of the journal and/or reviewers who contributed to the rejection decision.
• give any new information or data you would like the journal to consider.
• Provide evidence if the author believes that a reviewer has made technical errors in his/her assessment of the manuscript.
• include evidence if the author thinks a reviewer may be in a conflict of interest.

Decisions Against Appeal

• If the appeal against rejection is successful, the editorial board may send this case (including revised manuscript and author response) to the reviewer for merit decision. The author will be provided instructions by the editorial team on the submission of the revised manuscript to consider for another review stage.
• If the appeal is unsuccessful, the decision will be final and no further request will be entertained by the journal.

Complaints Process Policy

JISR-MSSE welcomes the complaints against the process and publication ethics.

Complaint About Processes

Authors may email their complaints directly to the journal. The Editor-in-Chief together with Editor will investigate the matter and appropriate feedback will be to the complainant.

Complaint About Publication Ethics

Authors may send an email to jisr.msse@szbist.edu.pk concerning ethical issues or complaints. The Editor-in-Chief along with the editorial board will follow the guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to deal with such complaints. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback on the complaint.

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Conflict Of Interest Policy

JISR-MSSE requires ‘no conflict of interest’ among authors for their submitted or published manuscript and requires the conflict-of-interest statement from authors with submissions.

A) AUTHORS

While submitting the manuscript, the corresponding author is required to provide the following information:

• Name of funding agency/organization if the project is supported by such agency/organized
• Role of funding agency/organization for supporting data collection or any other part of the research.
• Any necessary information (financial and/or non-financial) which the author/s believes that it would be required to be known to editors/reviewers/readers.

B) EDITORS

JIISR-MSSE requires the editorial board and team members to declare any competing interest during the contract and update their designation whenever is changed. Further, any member of the editorial board should not deal with such manuscripts which he/she may find conflicts of interest from his/her side.

C) REVIEWERS

JISR-MSSE team keeps in mind the possible "conflicts of interest" while assigning reviewers. JISR-MSSE assures through a request for review that acceptance of invitations does not imply "financial or competitive interest

• If a reviewer accepts the possibility of a "conflict of interest", then a different reviewer is considered by the JISR-MSSE.
• If a reviewer fails to mention the conflict of interest, he/she may be removed from the reviewer’s list.

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Review Policy

The journal employs double-blind peer review process, where both reviewers and authors remain anonymous to each other throughout the review process. All research articles are submitted to two experts, not belonging to the editorial Staff, editorial board and Advisory Board. The reviewers are chosen from national and international review panel comprising PhD holders with relevant domain, expertise and publications record. Every manuscript submitted for publication is read by the editorial team, for an initial review. If the article meets minimum quality criteria, it is sent to two reviewers.

Review Process

Initial/Desk Review

• Submitted manuscripts are first checked by the editorial team to ensure if the manuscript adheres the required formatting (APA 7th) and fulfils the word count limit (4000-8000 words) as prescribed by the journal.
• The manuscript is also checked for plagiarism using Turnitin software. If the plagiarism report is below 19% and less than 5% from a single source, the manuscript is forwarded to the Managing editor.
• Manuscripts that do not fall within the scope of the journal are 'desk-rejected'.

Double-Blind Review

• Manuscripts passed through the desk review are sent for a double-blind review process (one national reviewer and one international reviewer).
• JISR-MSSE selects the reviewers based on their subject and research expertise and give complete freedom to decide on the papers.
• To ensure confidentiality and privacy, anonymous/blind manuscripts (without authors’ names and details) are sent to all reviewers.
• Any paper rejected by the reviewers do not process further, and the author is notified accordingly.
• If the manuscript is accepted by reviewers with minor changes, the corresponding author is provided with the comments and given ample time to incorporate the comments.
  • The corresponding author send the revised manuscript to the journal in a stipulated time.
  • The editorial board decides on comments and if the manuscript is ready for publication. The corresponding author is informed of the decision.
• Manuscripts accepted by reviewers with major changes are sent to the corresponding author with ample time to incorporate all comments.
  • The corresponding author is responsible to submit the revised manuscript in a stipulated time and it is at the discretion of the editorial board to send the revised manuscripts to the same reviewers or any other reviewers if required. Otherwise, Editorial board may decide to send the manuscript for the publication process.
• The corresponding author is responsible to respond the editorial board for all the changes suggested by the reviewers. If the corresponding author does not respond to the journal despite sending reminders, the editorial board has a fully right to reject the paper. Similarly, the corresponding author does not incorporate the required comments or justify on not incorporating the suggested comments. The editorial board has fully right to reject the manuscript.

Decisions on Article

Reviewers will have four possible options for each article [1] Accept [2] Accept with minor changes [3] accept with major changes and likely re-review [4] Reject. In cases where there is a strong disagreement between reviewers, further expert advice may be sought. Based on the reviewers' comments, the editorial team makes the final decision either to accept, reject or revise the manuscript and communicates the decision to the authors, along with referees' reports. If significant revisions are proposed, acceptance is dependent on the satisfactory response to the proposed revisions by the author and may be sent back to the same reviewers for final decision or another reviewer depending on the availability of the reviewers.

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Authorship Policy

JISR-MSSE believes that the published manuscript is original and all the authors whose names are given in the manuscript have made significant contributions and fulfil the criteria of authorship as per COPE definition of authors https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/authorship.

Authorship Credit

Authorship credits may only be awarded to those who have made a substantial contribution to the construction of the article. The corresponding author of the article is responsible for granting credits to co-authors who are heavily involved in the work. In addition, the corresponding author must ensure that all co-authors have endorsed the final submission and the ready-to-publish version of the article. Others who have been involved in some important aspects of the research should be recognized for their contribution in the acknowledgment section.

Changes In Authorship

The corresponding author is entirely responsible for providing the authors' names when submitting the paper to the journal. Once the paper is accepted for publication, any addition, deletion or rearranging of authors' names will not be entertained unless approved by the journal's editor.

To request such an amendment, the corresponding author must provide the publisher of the review with the reason for the modification of the list of authors and a confirmation email from all authors that they agree. However, such a request cannot be accepted if the manuscript has already been published in an online issue,

Order Of Authors

The corresponding author is responsible to provide consent on the order of the authors while submitting the manuscript. All authors must agree to the order of the authors. If the journal receives any conflict/complaint on disagreement from any of the authors, will hold the manuscript and reject if the authors do not agree mutually and provide the consent in writing through emails.

Guest/Ghost Authorship

JISR-MSSE does not allow to provide the names of the guest/ghost author because such author/s make/s no significant contributions to the study, hence, do not qualify for authorship.

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Plagiarism Policy

The journal only accepts similarity reports generated in-house using Turnitin software provided by Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan and adheres to the guidelines specified by HEC which states that the manuscript should have a similarity index of less than 20% from all sources. Moreover, the article should not contain similar content of more than 4% from a single source and before submission should be removed from the institutional repository if submitted in the form of a thesis.

Further, JISR-MSSE does not accept self-plagiarism (Article/Manuscript/thesis submitted in repository usually in Turnitin by author or author’s institution)

whether it is from authors’ published or unpublished thesis or any form of work submitted by the author or any other institution in Turnitin repository or any other repository or database. The author is required to remove it from the repository before submission to Journal. For a detailed policy on plagiarism, please go through HEC Plagiarism Policy.

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Publication Fee Policy

JISR-MSSE does not charge any fee from the author in any form.

Article Processing Fee (APC): JISR-MSSE does not charge any article processing fees.

Submission fee: JISR-MSSE does charge any fee for submission.

Subscription fee: JISR-MSSE does not demand the author to subscribe to the printed copies of the published journal. All the authors whose papers are published in the JISR-MSSE journal can access the digital copy with an open access policy and two printed copies of issue containing published manuscript of author are sent to corresponding authors.

Waiver: JISR-MSSE does not have any financial earnings. All the expenses pertaining to the journal's management are managed by Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST).

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