ETHICS POLICY
This is the statement of ethics for Scientific Research Journal (SRJ) published by Universiti Teknologi MARA Press (Penerbit UiTM). SRJ aspires to select and publish, through double-blind peer-review. A guideline on SRJ code of ethics largely based upon the principles upheld by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It covers the code of ethics for chief editor, editorial board members, reviewers and authors.
DUTIES OF AUTHORS
- To be responsible of ensuring only new and original work is submitted. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted
- To ensure the work produced is factually accurate and contains no matter unfounded or illegitimate, and has not been previously published in other journals.
- To ensure submitted articles are not being reviewed or considered by other journals simultaneously. The articles are only allowed to publish after receiving a formal rejection from the journal or if withdrawal request is officially accepted by the journal.
- To inform the Chief Editor or the publisher of any inaccuracy of data in their published work so that correction or retraction of article can be done.
- To make significant contributions and be held accountable for any shortcoming in their work.
- To do corrections and improvement as commented by reviewers/editor and submit Copyright Transfer Agreement (as attached).
- To ensure that the manuscript does not violate any proprietary or personal rights of others (including, without limitation, any copyrights or privacy rights).
- To declare that no financial interest is gained in the subject matter of the manuscript, nor is affiliated with an organization or entity with a financial interest in the subject matter of the manuscript.
DUTIES OF REVIEWERS
- To disclose any competing interest before agreeing to review a submission.
- To refuse to review any submission due to a conflict of interest or inadequate knowledge.
- To review all submissions objectively, fairly and professionally.
- To reveal any ethical misconduct encountered while reviewing to the Chief Editor for further action.
- To ensure the originality of a submission and be alert to any plagiarism and redundant publication.
- To obtain permission from the publisher before disclosing the content of the submission.
- To adhere to the time allocated for the review process and request for extension to review the submission from the Chief Editor.
DUTIES OF EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
- To assist the Chief Editor in the selection process of manuscript to be published in SRJ;
- To evaluate the contents and language of the potential manuscript that have been selected by the Chief Editor;
- To provide recommendation in terms of quality and suitability of the manuscript in accordance with scope of SRJ;
- To re-evaluate the manuscript that have been corrected by the author/(s);
- To give suggestion of improvement for the Chief Editor to make decision of selection;
- To give feedback on the quality of the manuscript within the any given time;
- To assist in maintaining the highest standards of quality of the manuscript published with high ethics and competence;
- To recommend manuscript of originality, quality with highest standards;
- To assist to call and obtain manuscripts from colleagues, acquaintance, research scholars, and students etc. within or outside of the members institution; and
- To promote SRJ at appropriate platforms such as Conference of National and International Importance, Seminars, Symposium and Workshops.
DUTIES OF CHIEF EDITOR
- To evaluate manuscripts fairly and solely on their intellectual merit.
- To ensure confidentiality of manuscripts and not disclose any information regarding manuscripts to anyone other than the people involved in the publishing process.
- To be responsible to decide when and which articles are to be published.
- To actively seek the views of board members, reviewers and authors on how to improve/ increase the image and visibility of the journal.
- To give clear instructions to potential contributors on the submission process and what is expected of the authors.
- To ensure appropriate reviewers are selected/ identified for the reviewing process.
- To ensure authors should submit only original work that is not plagiarized, and has not been published or being considered elsewhere. Appropriate softwares may be used by the editorial office to check for similarities of submitted manuscripts with existing literature. Inclusion of fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable.
- To ensure work and/or words from other publications must be appropriately cited or quoted.
REPORTING
Authors should state their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation. The methods used in the work should be clearly and unambiguously described so that the findings can be repeated and confirmed by other researchers.
A good abstract should consist of introduction, problem statement, QUANTITATIVE results and QUANTITATIVE conclusion. Chemistry formula and equations are correctly typed. Any article that does not comply will be returned for either can be corrected or permanently rejected.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
A statement on conflict of interest must be included in the manuscript if authors receive any support that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
AUTHORSHIP AND COLLABORATION
Name of authors listed in a paper should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the report.
Only those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the work must be acknowledged or listed as contributors. It is the duty of the corresponding author to ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper. All co-authors must approve the final version of the paper and agree to the version of the paper before submission.
MULTIPLE OR REDUNDANT
Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research output in more than one journal or primary publication. A similar manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal concurrently as this constitutes as unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
PLAGIARISM AND SELF-PLAGIARISM
All works in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrication, or omission of significant material. Authors are expected to explicitly cite others' work and ideas, even if the work or ideas are not quoted exactly or paraphrased. Self-plagiarism (or ”redundancy”) can occur in at least two ways:
- Authors recycle portions of their previous writings by using identical or nearly identical sentences or paragraphs from earlier writings in subsequent research papers, without quotation or acknowledgement; or
- Authors create multiple papers that are slight variations of each other, which are submitted for publication in different journals but without acknowledgement of the other papers.
All submitted manuscript shall be checked on the similarity index using iThenticate, whereby, only those with similarity index of 30% or below shall be sent for peer review process.