All submitted articles are evaluated at the submission stage to meet the structural and subject principles of each journal. The matched articles will be gone under a double-blinded peer-review process by at least 3 reviewers who are selected by the Editorial Board members according to their field specialties. The Editorial Board members have the final responsibility to select the articles.
The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. Following the ethical matters is one of the most important duties of Journal editorial board. This committee does not tolerate any plagiarism or publication malpractice. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher and the society of society-owned or sponsored journals.
Duties of editorial board, authors and reviewers are following:
Duties of Authors
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Authorship is a way of making explicit both credit and responsibility for the contents of published articles. Credit and responsibility are inseparable. The guiding principle for authorship decisions is to present an honest account of what took place. Criteria for authorship apply to all intellectual products, including print and electronic publications of words, data, and images. Journals should make their own policies on authorship transparent and accessible.
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
- Reporting standards
- Manuscript must be certified as an original work by authors.
- Manuscript must be certified that has not previously been submitted published or even in under review process.
- All data used in the submitted paper must be certified that are authentic and real.
- The Journal is a peer reviewed scientific journal so that Authors must consider and follow editorial board and reviewer comments.
- Gift authorship is not allowed and authors mentioned in manuscript must have contributed to the registered article.
- Corresponding author is the main owner of submitted manuscript so she/he is responsible for the whole correspondence during the paper submission, correction and revision process.
- Any conflict of interest must be notified by authors.
- When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own submitted manuscript / published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
- Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have influenced their research.
Duties of Editorial Board
The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
An editor at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
- Editorial board should be main responsible of published paper in the Journal.
- The Journal is being constantly improved by editorial board.
- Decisions to accept or reject a paper should be based only on the importance of the paper topic, originality, clarity and its relevance to the journal aims.
- The quality of the published material must be ensured by editorial board.
- Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by at least two referees related to the paper topic. Related reviewers are selected by editorial board and finally editor in chief. Relevant reviewers could be also suggested by Authors to the Journal technical committee.
- The guidance to reviewers should be published and regularly updated on what the editorial board expected.
- Minor and major revisions, rejection or acceptance are editorial board decisions for each manuscript.
- Some legal requirements regarding the Journal copyright policies are needed for final paper acceptance.
- Based on journal regulations, there is no chance to reviewed rejected articles.
- Submitted manuscripts, the reviewers and author’s identities must be remained confidential while under review
- Errata pages or make corrections should be published by editorial board if needed.
Duties of Reviewers
Peer review assists the Editor-in-Chief in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
- The confidentiality of manuscript information should be considered by reviewers.
- Explicit and clear opinions should be expressed about different parts of manuscript. Personal criticism of the author is also inappropriate by reviewers.
- Once the paper read, assessed or qualified by each reviewers, they may make a recommendation to the editor in chief regarding paper publication. They also should draw the editor in chief attention to similarity or overlap between the manuscript and other published paper based on their personal knowledge.
- Reviewers should fill journal review questions and score sheet to show weaknesses or strengths of the manuscripts.
- Previous relevant published research that has not been cited in the manuscript could also be introduced by reviewers to promote the paper qualification.
- Reviewer reviews his/her assigned article and judges it according to four categories: publish as is, publish with minor revisions, publish with major revisions, and reject.
- Reviewers have to remember that the final decision to accept or reject will depend on the comments from the Editor-in-Chief.
- Keep manuscript and review details secret.
*Note:
The Journal of Population Association of Iran (JPAI) is not a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) but we are committed to follow the standards and guidelines set out by COPE.