Publishing Ethics / Policies

"Central Asia" is an open access journal, believes that scientific findings should be fully documented, and data be made as open and available as possible. We believe that authors should always receive the appropriate credit for their works. And we endeavour to maintain trust in scientific findings among all end-users, including the public.

                                                                         Ethical Policies

1) Authorship and Contribution

Authorship should be attributed to personnel with significant contribution to the study, manuscript drafting, and holding responsibility for the authenticity. General supervision or financial support shall not suffice the authorship. Contribution of each author shall clearly be stated and contributing authors shall not be changed without prior written consent from the existing authors.

Authors’ Responsibilities

The authors of each manuscript are asked to confirm that:

   1) The manuscript has not been previously published or submitted elsewhere;

   2) They made a significant contribution to the work and approved the final version of the manuscript;

   3) Their work complies with ethical standards;

   4) They are 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;

   5) They have obtained all necessary permissions to publish any figures or tables in the manuscript, and assure that the authors will pay for Article Processing Charges (APC) if applicable.

2) Misconduct, Complaints and Appeals 

Policy and Process

The below procedure applies to appeals to editorial decisions, complaints about failure of processes such as long delays in handling papers and complaints about publication ethics. The complaint should in first instance be handled by the Editor-in-Chief responsible for the journal and/or the Editor who handled the paper. If they are the subject of the complaint please approach the in-house publishing contact at  asc@uop.edu.pk 

Complaint about Content / Appeal against rejection
The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor considers the authors’ argument, the reviewer reports and decides whether
          - The decision to reject should stand;
          - Another independent opinion is required
          - The appeal should be considered.
The complainant is informed of the decision with an explanation if appropriate. Decisions on appeals are final and new submissions take priority over appeals.

Complaint about processes, e.g. time taken to review

          The Editor-in-Chief together with the Handling Editor (where appropriate) and/or in-house contact (where appropriate) will investigate the matter. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback. Feedback is provided to relevant stakeholders to improve processes and procedures.

Complaint about publication ethics, e.g., researcher's author's, or reviewer's conduct
          The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor follows guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics. The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor may ask the publisher via their in-house contact for advice on difficult or complicated cases. The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor decides on a course of action and provides feedback to the complainant. 

3) Journal Policies on conflicts of Interest / competing interests

To ensure transparency in the research conduction, writing and publication, the authors, peer reviewers and editors have to declare conflicts of interest regarding financial aspects, academic competitions, and relationships during writing, reviewing and publishing the manuscripts. Details of sponsors along with their roles and access to data should be clearly stated.

"Central Asia" believes in independent Peer reviewers. For peer review, the publisher selects reviewers from a different institution to the authors and has no substantial shared collaborations or publication history. Any such potential competing interests, whether real or perceived, should be declared to the subject editor. Our subject editors will always be guided by the peer reviews, but the decision to publish a manuscript rests with the subject editor and the editor in chief.

4) Data Sharing and Reproducibility

We encourage authors to make their data as open as possible by one of the following methods:

  1. Provide a (DOI) link to the original data or
  2. code in a data repository as part of the manuscript.
  3. Provide a link to where the data can be purchased.

The publisher believes that, all data associated with the research in a manuscript should be easily accessible, findable and Reusable, where possible. It enabling other researchers to replicate and build on that research. We strongly encourage authors to deposit the data underpinning their research in appropriate repositories.

For submissions of manuscripts to "Central Asia", any data required to understand and verify the research must be made available on submission.

5) Ethical Oversight 

Ethical oversight is by the editor in chief, any member of editorial / advisory team and the external board. Issues can be raised and discussed by individuals during meetings of the editorial team, advisory panel and the external board. "Central Asia" will follow the procedures outlined by COPE to deal with all ethical issues as they arise.

6) Intellectual Property

This section describes policies for handling copyrighted material, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, text recycling, duplicate and redundant publication. Suspected violations of intellectual property will be taken seriously and handled according to the COPE guidelines.

Further, it is the corresponding author’s responsibility to obtain permission to use published copyrighted material, and state the license and permission in the main text or figure caption(s). It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the manuscript does not contain any confidential or copyrighted information without express permission for its use.

7) Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Central Asia encourages debate after articles being published. The authors should submit a letter to the editor mentioning Post-publication corrections which will be published alongside the original article.

Corrected manuscripts will be published alongside the original manuscript, so readers can always find the most up-to-date version. All versions will be permanently available and linked to the same DOI.

                                                                          Editorial Policies

  • Open Access Policy

Central Asia is an open-access journal which means that all contents are freely available without charge to the users. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles but only for non-commercial purposes, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Opinions and view expressed in the articles published in Central Asia are exclusively those of the authors and shall not be attributed to the Centre.

 

  • Plagiarism Policy

The journal is following the plagiarism policy of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. To verify the originality of articles submitted to Central Asia, all submitted manuscripts are scanned and compared with the Turnitin database. If plagiarism is detected by the editorial board member, reviewer, editor etc., in any stage of article process- before or after acceptance then we will alert the same to the author(s) and will ask them to rewrite the content to cite the references from where the content has been taken. If more than 19% of the paper is similar- the article is rejected and the same is notified to the author.

  • Copyright Policy

Authors retain the rights without any restrictions to freely download, print, share and disseminate the article for any lawful purpose. It includes scholarly networks such as Research Gate, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, Academia.edu, Twitter, and other academic or professional networking sites. Users are permitted to read, copy, print, distribute, download, search, or link the complete texts of the articles or use them for any other lawful purpose (to comply with Directory of Open Access Journal).

  • Peer Review Policy

The Journal complies with well-established peer review processes and tries to maintain high publishing standards. Upon submission of a manuscript, on OJS the document undergoes a preliminary open (un-blinded) review in the office of the editor. The document is either accepted for further review or sent for revision back to the authors, or rejected at that time.

Once passed through the initial desk review, the article is sent to 2 reviewers, a local and an international. During this process, all the relevant information about the authors and reviewers is kept confidential. The journal is under no obligation to send submitted manuscripts for review, and under no obligation to follow reviewer recommendations, favourable or negative at all times. The editor of a journal is ultimately responsible for the selection of all its content, and editorial decisions may be taken by issues unrelated to the quality of a manuscript, such as suitability for the journal. Editor can reject any article at any time before publication, including after acceptance, if concerns arise about the integrity of the work.

  • Submission of manuscript

The manuscript should be submitted through journal website which is using the Online Journal System (OJS). The article should have the following format:

  • The abstract should be structured with word count of not more than 250 words.
  • The fonts should be times new roman, with size 12, and spacing of 5, with justified margins in MS office format.
  • Manuscript size should be in the range of 5000 to 6000 words.
  • The text/s of the articles should be in British style of English writing.
  • The Journal follows Turabian Style of Citation.

 

  • Confidentiality

The editorial board in no way should publicize the work of a researcher in any form unless it is published. They should not publicize the comments and critique given by reviewers. Similarly, the reviewers are bound to keep the confidentiality of the work of researchers during and after the review. The work of researchers and the critique should never be discussed or exemplified in forums. The confidentiality of the researchers should be maintained in every possible way when the documents are sent for review.  The only situation where confidentiality needs to be breached is when a situation of fraud or misconduct is found during the review process or after publication. Still, the authors and sometimes the reviewers, have to be notified.  

  • Correspondence

Correspondence for submitting an article in Central Asia will be through a corresponding author. The duties of a corresponding author have already been presented in a previous section.

  • Fee submission process

The Journal charges Rs. 5000/- as paper processing fee since its last issue Central Asia No. 89 Winter 2021. The fee should be submitted as bank draft/online payment through account to " Director Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar Account (IBAN) no: PK56NBPA4048673165 (Branch code: 0388 / National Bank of Pakistan, University campus branch, Peshawar, Pakistan) at the time of submission the manuscript.

 

Roles of Editorial Board, Editors and Members

The editorial board of Central Asia is following the Higher Education Commission (HEC) policy for research journals. The roles of the editorial board for Central Asia are mentioned below:

 

The Roles of the Editorial Board are

  • To offer expertise in their specialist area. 
  • To advise on journal policy and scope.
  • To work with the Editor to ensure ongoing development of the journal. 

 

 Editor

The criteria for selection of  Editor are:

  1. Expertise and experience in the specialist field related to the journal.
  2. Senior research position with equivalent experience in research and scholarship
  3. Publication record of a number of articles and /or books (usually in / related to the specialist field)
  4. A reviewer for an international or national peer reviewed journal
  5. Enthusiasm to undertake the Editor role

It is not necessary to fulfill all the criteria to become an editor.

The roles of Editor are:

  1. The key role of a journal`s editor is to promote scholarship in the specialist field associated with the journal, whilst also promoting the journal as the best journal to publish in.  For any journal, the editor will need to encourage new and established authors to submit articles and set up a reliable panel of expert reviewers. Editors are also responsible for offering feedback to reviewers when required and ensure that any feedback to authors is constructive.
  2. An editor should also familiarize themselves with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ‘Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors’.
  3. Editor may have to make all the decisions regarding which articles to accept or reject for publication.
  4. To evaluate the research articles presented for publication
  5. To help the editorial board in policy making
  6. To help the editorial board in smooth publishing
  7. To communicate with reviewers and collaborate with external agencies for relevant purposes

 Managing editor / Assistant Editor

The roles of managing editor are:

  1. To help the editor to achieve the above-mentioned goals.
  2. To communicate with the authors, reviewers, publishers and other agencies for smooth running of the journal.
  3. To communicate with funding and regulating agencies (HEC and others) for grants and accreditations.

 

Editorial Advisory Board:

Editorial advisory board members consist of national and international senior academicians, specialists, researchers, clinicians and others in subject area to help the current editorial board in designing, implementing and evaluating policies regarding upgrading the quality of research work. These people also share best practices to help the editorial team to refine their research work.

 

Contact information

The office of managing editor or editor should be contacted anytime in working hours or can be contacted through their emails for correspondence.

Editor: asc@uop.edu.pk

Managing/Assistant Editor: sahargul_uop@yahoo.com

Contact: 091-9216764

References:

  • Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE) guidelines
  • SCOPUS
  • https://geusbulletin.org/index.php/geusb/ethics