ETHICS’ POLICY

Preamble:

Investigators are expected to carry out their research work in accordance with the notions and codes of research conduct prescribed by the respective University, research funding agency, national and International regulatory bodies to accomplish a high quality research having integrity, reliability and validity. This would keep the researcher from the unpleasantness arising out of ethical issues or misconduct.

The Journal would firmly adhere to the following Policy of Ethics:

Swayamprakash Guidelines for Submission of Work for Publication:

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Swayamprakash Guidelines on Author’s Duties:

Authors of the research papers should be contributors to scientific research work in capacity of research guides or investigators or persons who have done extensive review of the subject under study. They would be held accountable for the research work submitted to the journal.

Authors are expected to critically scrutinize the final draft of the paper from the point of the content, language usage, results and conclusions and the publication guidelines before submitting for publication.
Authors should be ready to incorporate amendments suggested by the appointed reviewers and submit the revised paper in prescribed time frame.
Authors should submit the duly filled and signed ‘Authors’ Declaration’, without which the paper will not be included in the journal for publication.
Authors are allegedly responsible for the views and decisions expressed in the contribution.
In matter of any dispute concerning misconduct, all the authors will be held equally responsible.
According to COPE, certain Abstracting and Indexing services such as PubMed, insist on compliance with the ethical requirements of ‘Human and Animal Rights’ and ‘Informed Consent of study sample’ and make it mandatory for authors to declare compliance in their articles. We respect the same and require such declaration wherever necessary.

Swayamprakash Guidelines of the Peer Review Process:

Though the process of ‘Peer Reviewing’ is time consuming, it is necessary for identifying major errors and wrongdoings on the part of the authors at an early stage. Peer reviewing is normally done by those members of teaching and research fraternity of the given subject who are most knowledgeable and experienced.

Reviewing should be done by the subject experts identified by the editorial team who accept to do a proper assessment of the manuscript in a timely manner.
Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of peer review process and should not reveal any details of a manuscript, its content and review results during the peer-review process to anybody other than those who are actively involved in the peer review process.

Reviewers should not use any data obtained during the peer-review process for their own or anybody else’s or any institution’s advantage or disadvantage. Use discretion to keep secrecy.
Reviewers should always objectively review the manuscript without allowing their likes, dislikes, opinions, beliefs, ideas to influence the review process.
Reviewers should always give constructive remarks and refrain from making derogatory or defamatory comments.
Reviewers should undertake thorough review and not do just a superficial read-through.
Reviewers should assert if they find the information presented by author having potentially conflicting interests with the journal.
Reviewers should consider that the following misconducts are serious ethical issues:

Plagiarism (taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own such as data, text, or theories)
Data fabrication (Making up of research findings)
Data Falsification(Manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression)
Duplicate Submission (Submitting the same intellectual material to more than one publisher simultaneously)
Duplicate Publication (Publishing the same intellectual material more than once)
Redundant Publication (One study is split into several parts and submitted to two or more journals)

However, according to Springer and COPE’s ethics policy on plagiarism, for the review papers the above is not directly applicable. Review papers are expected to give a summary of existing literature. In such cases, authors should use their own words with exception of properly quoted and/or cited texts and the work should include a new interpretation.

Swayamprakash Guidelines for Confidentiality Policy:

Editorial board, authors and reviewers are required to keep all details of the peer review process of submitted manuscripts confidential. The peer review process is conducted anonymously without disclosing the identities of reviewers. Reviewers ought to maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. In case the reviewer wishes to seek opinion of colleagues regarding the manuscript, the reviewer must consult with the managing editor before hand and should reveal the names of any such colleagues in the final review report. The submitted manuscript, correspondence with the journal, review reports and other confidential material must disclosed to anyone without prior written consent of managing editor. It is the journal’s policy to keep reviewers names confidential. However, in case of a legal action journal cannot guarantee to maintain this confidentiality to disclose identity. Swayamprakash journal retain the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, journals and the authors’ institutions in cases of research misconduct.

Swayamprakash Guidelines on Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the unethical act of,

stealing and passing off the ideas or words of other person as one’s own,
using other person’s creation without crediting the source,
presenting an idea or product derived from an existing source as new and original,
failing to put a quotation in quotation marks,
copying majority of words or ideas from a source causing a duplication even when the source is acknowledged,
copying images from other websites to paste them into your own papers or websites,
making a video using footage from others’ videos or using copyrighted music as part of the soundtrack,
using a photograph or scan of a copyrighted image and use it in your publication or website, etc.

Self-plagiarism occurs when an author utilizes large part of his or her own previously published work without using appropriate references. This can range from getting the same manuscript published in multiple journals to modifying a previously published manuscript with some new data.

Swayamprakash journal is strictly against any act of plagiarism in any form. All manuscripts submitted for publication to Swayamprakash are verified for plagiarism using plagiarism software. Manuscripts found to be plagiarized during review process are not considered for publication in the journal. If the manuscript is found to be plagiarized beyond the acceptable limits, the concerned authors are banned for 3 years from publishing in Swayamprakash. In case manuscripts found to contain plagiarism after publication in Swayamprakash, it shall be removed from the website. The journal reserves its right to take any severe action, if recommended by the editorial board of Swayamprakash in a particular case of plagiarism.

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This ethics policy of the Journal is based on the ‘Principles of best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing’ put forth by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) to ensure the integrity of research publication.