EDITORIAL and review POLICIES
Overview
For journals and eBooks, the following publication policies are applied by Society of Education [ISO 9001: 2008]. Specifically, Society’s Journals adopts and strive to adhere to the following standards and requirements:
COPE - Committee on Publication Ethics
ICMJE - International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
WAME – World Association of Medical Editors
An author is an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of a manuscript. ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Individuals who participated in the development of a manuscript but do not qualify as an author should be acknowledged. Organizations that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged.
Whenever there is a need to make changes in the authorship of a manuscript or a published article, the changes will be implemented according to COPE specification. Only corresponding authors can make request for a change in authorship. Request should be made to the editor using the Changes in Authorship Form.
Further reading
ICMJE - Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors
COPE – flowcharts on Changes in Authorship
Authors should read the “Instruction for Authors” on the journal’s page before making a submission. Manuscript should be prepared according to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.
All authors should approve the final version of the manuscript prior to submission. Once a manuscript is submitted, it is therefore assumed that all authors have read and given their approval for the submission of the manuscript.
Contact information of all authors should be stated on the manuscript. Surname/Other names, affiliation, emails, and phone/fax numbers.
Declaration of Conflicts of Interest should be stated in the manuscript.
Authors should disclose all financial/relevant interest that may have influenced the development of the manuscript.
Reviewers should disclose any conflict of interest and if necessary, decline the review of any manuscript they perceive to have a conflict of interest. Editors should also decline from considering any manuscript that may have conflict of interest. Such manuscripts will be re-assigned to other editors.
Further reading
COPE - flowcharts on Conflict of Interest
ICMJE - Conflicts of Interest
STM – International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication
WAME - Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals
A submitted manuscript is a confidential material. SOE Journals will not disclose submitted manuscript to anyone except individuals who partake in the processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted). These individuals include editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors. However, in suspected cases of misconduct, a manuscript may be revealed to members of Academic Journals’ ethics committee and institutions/organizations that may require it for the resolution of the misconduct. SOE Journals shall follow the appropriate COPE flowcharts wherever necessary.
Further reading
ICMJE - Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process
STM - International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication
Misconduct constitutes violation of this editorial policy, journal policies, publication ethics, or any applicable guidelines/policies specified by COPE, WAME, ICMJE, and STM. Any other activities that threaten/compromise the integrity of the research/publication process are potential misconducts. Suspected cases of misconduct will be investigated according to COPE guidelines
Correction and retraction of articles
Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the editor of the journal. Editors will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published. When necessary, retraction of articles will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines
Further reading
ICMJE - Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction
COPE Guidelines
COPE Flowcharts
COPE retraction guidelines
WAME - Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals
STM - International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication
Plagiarism Prevention
Society of Education uses the iThenticate/Viper Plagiarism software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate/viper plagiarism software checks content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage of overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher’s Editorial Policies. Society of Education allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:
Low Text Similarity:
The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate/Viper. The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.
It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.
High Text Similarity:
There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15% similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.
Types of Plagiarism
We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:
- Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
- Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.
- Poor paraphrasing: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
- Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
- Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
- Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.
Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts:
Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal’s website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the particular journal.
Copyright and License
Editors/Authors who contribute in a SOE’s Journal/eBook will transfer copyright to their work to Society of Education. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all editors/authors have read and agreed to the content of the copyright letter.
Ethical Approval of Studies and Informed Consent
For human or animal experimental investigations, it is a prerequisite to provide a formal review and approval, or review and waiver, by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee, which should be documented in the paper. For investigations undertaken on human subjects, the manner in which the informed consent was obtained from the study participants (i.e., oral or written) should be stated in the Methods section.
Authors are encouraged to obtain patient consent when they use confidential case material. Consent is not necessary in the case of very brief case vignettes which do not contain identifying information or if the case material is disguised sufficiently to prevent identification of the patient.
In obtaining consent, the author(s) should discuss the purpose(s) of publication, the possible risks and benefits to the patient and the patient's right to withhold or withdraw consent. In the case of a minor patient, consent should be obtained from the parent(s) or guardian(s).
Standard Protocol on Approvals, Registrations, Patients Consents & Animal Protection
All clinical investigations must be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. Authors must comply with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org) with regard to the patient’s consent for research or participation in a study. Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers must not be mentioned anywhere in the manuscript (including figures). Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study.
Errata and Corrections in Published Articles
Authors and readers are encouraged to notify the Editor-in-Chief if they find errors in published content, authors’ names and affiliations or if they have reasons for concern over the legitimacy of a publication. In such cases the journal will publish an ERRATUM in consultation with Editor-in-Chief and authors of the article, and/or replace or retract the article.
REVIEW POLICY
The review process is an important aspect of the publication process of an article. It helps an editor in making decision on an article and also enables the author to improve the manuscript. SOE Journals operates a double blind review process.
Author(s) identity is removed from the manuscript and shielded from the reviewers during the review process. The reviewer is left with only the manuscript without any information that might enable him/her uncovers the identity of the author(s). Information removed includes the author(s) name, address/affiliation, country, phone/fax and email. Any information in the Acknowledgement and Declaration of Conflict of Interest that may lead to the uncovering of the identity of the author is also removed from the manuscript prior to sending it to reviewers.
Manuscripts are assigned to members of the editorial board of the journal or other qualified reviewers. Reviewers make one of the following recommendations:
· Accept As Is
· Requires Minor Corrections
· Requires Moderate Revision
· Requires Major Revision
· Submit To Another Publication Such As
· Reject on grounds of (Please be specific)
A Review Certificate is issued to reviewers after the review of the manuscript.
The review reports are sent to the authors. However, reviewers’ identity is removed from the review reports. The author(s) is left with only the review reports/recommendation without any information that might enable him/her uncovers the identity of the reviewers. A minimum of two review reports are required per manuscript.
On receipt of the author(s) revised manuscript, the original manuscript, the revised manuscript and the review reports are sent to the editor. The editor makes one of the following decisions:
· Accept
· The Manuscript Requires Improvement
· Reject
Only an editor has the authority to “Accept” or “Reject” a manuscript. If a manuscript is “Accepted”, an Acceptance Certificate is issued to the author(s) and the manuscripts are processed for publication.
If a manuscript is rejected, the authors are informed of the decision and no further processing is done on the manuscript.
If a manuscript requires improvement, it is sent to the author(s) with the editor’s recommendation for further revision. The editor makes a final decision on the revised to “Accept” or “Reject” the manuscript.
Flow Chart of Review Process:
