PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

IJSER is committed to maintaining ethical standards for publishing and the quality of its papers.  Therefore, we expect all stakeholders, including authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers, to adhere to the ethical conduct guidelines. IJSER is specifically a peer-reviewed publication focusing on engineering sciences. This statement outlines the ethical conduct of all parties involved in the process of publishing an article to the journal. This declaration is based on globally recognized best practice guidelines for journal editors. IJSER is a collaborative effort among authors, journal editors, and peer reviewers. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to find consensus on the standards and principles governing ethical conduct, The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), https://publicationethics.org/.

 

Publication Malpractice Statement

Editor's Responsibilities

1. The editor selects the manuscripts submitted to IJSER for publication.
2. We consider the quality, originality, relevance, and readability of the papers. Furthermore, we emphasize policies that align with the editor's work roadmap while considering the journal's objectives and focus areas.
3. The editor must give authors clear and unambiguous instructions when preparing manuscripts for publication; these instructions are available on the journal's official website.
4. The editor is responsible for ensuring the confidentiality of the review process and protecting the names of reviewers.
5. The editor and the editorial board are committed to current legal texts regarding defamation and copyright infringement, and the editor is responsible for responding to any suspicion of ethical violation in published and unpublished manuscripts.
6. The editor has no personal or financial interests that could influence the decision-making process regarding articles eligible for publication. If the editor discovers a potential conflict of interest, the editorial board will be responsible for selecting reviewers and making appropriate decisions regarding the research paper.

Authors’ Responsibilities

1. The author(s) confirm that their manuscripts are original creations that have not been published before and are not currently being considered for publication anywhere, whether in physical or digital form.
2. The authors make sure to include all individuals who have made significant contributions as authors.
3. The authors undertake to refrain from violating the rights of third parties and to protect the publisher from legal liability in the event of any claims for compensation.
4. The authors bear full responsibility for the content of their articles and the accuracy of the results. They also ensure that they obtain permission from all parties involved to disclose the data publicly.
5. In case of using figures, charts, or text extracts published in other research, obtain permission from the copyright holders and provide documentation of this permission before submitting their papers.
6. The authors must adhere to ethical standards and avoid plagiarism while submitting their papers to IJSER. The authors confirm that the article is free of illegal comments and quotations and does not violate the rights of others.
7. When an author identifies a material error or inaccuracy in his or her published work, it is his or her responsibility to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and to cooperate with the editor to withdraw or correct the manuscript.

Protocols for Dealing with Unethical Behavior

We encourage all researchers to report any suspected unethical behavior to the editors or editorial board by providing the information or evidence required to initiate an investigation.

Investigation

The Editor-in-The chief will request information from section editors when making decisions about whether to initiate an investigation. Only those directly involved in the investigation should have access to any evidence during the investigation. We will continually provide accused persons with the opportunity to address any allegations made against them. If an investigation identifies misconduct, we will classify it as either minor or major.

Minor Misconduct

We will deal directly with individuals who engage in minor misconduct, to the exclusion of any other individuals involved.

The editorial board is responsible for communicating with authors or reviewers in cases where there is a minor issue of misunderstanding or incorrect application of academic standards. The author or reviewer receives a warning letter for a relatively minor act of misconduct.

Serious Misconduct

The editor-in-chief is responsible for making the appropriate decision on the next steps, considering the available evidence, after consultation with the section editors or, if necessary, a select group of specialists.

Publish a formal notice explaining the violation. It is advisable to notify the author’s affiliation of any misconduct by sending a formal email.

The journal will formally announce the retraction of such publications in accordance with the retraction policy. The option of raising the issue with a professional group or legal body for further examination and action is available.

When faced with unethical conduct, the editorial team will rely on the guidance and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),  https://publicationethics.org/.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in published works are independent of the views held by the editors and editorial team. Authors bear legal and ethical responsibility for the ideas conveyed in the works.

 

The peer review process

Policy Evaluation

IJSER is a scientific journal that follows a double-blind peer review process. The editorial board conducts an initial review of all submitted manuscripts and has the authority to either accept or reject them.

Once the editorial board is satisfied that the manuscript is consistent with the scope of the journal and meets the criteria for publication, the editor sends it to two peer reviewers suggested by the editorial board. The editorial board selects the reviewers of the submitted manuscripts based on their distinguished reputation and expertise in the relevant research area.

We select reviewers who hold the highest academic positions in teaching and research at universities. The editor and the editorial board determine the selection of reviewers. Annually, the journal enhances the list of reviewers by incorporating new additions.

Reviewers should not have any conflict of interest with respect to the authors. If there is any conflict of interest, the reviewers should notify the editor immediately. The reviewer should notify the editor if they lack the necessary qualifications to evaluate the submitted research in an article or if they are aware that they cannot provide an evaluation in a timely manner.

Upon receipt of the manuscript, reviewers should promptly submit their review to the editorial board within three weeks. Reviewers should conduct their reviews impartially. We consider it inappropriate to engage in personal criticism of the author. We ask reviewers to clearly express their opinions and provide supporting arguments. If the peer reviewer has any justified suspicions of plagiarism or ethical violations in the manuscript, they should notify the editor immediately.

Reviewers should inform the editor immediately if they have any valid suspicions or knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should find relevant published literature that the authors have not cited and notify the editor if they notice any significant similarities between the reviewed manuscript and any other published or under-reviewed paper. Reviewers should promptly inform the editor if they discover a simultaneous submission of an identical manuscript to another journal.

Manuscripts submitted for review should be considered confidential material. The editor distributes the peer review form and reviewer instructions to reviewers, who perform their reviews in a standardized manner while maintaining the anonymity of the author.

We ask the reviewer to provide details about the paper, such as its title, area of study, topic of analysis, structure of technique and analysis, and quality of literature used.

The reviewer must choose the appropriate paper category (either original scientific article or review article) in the Reviewer Conclusions section. The reviewer must then select one of the three available options:

1. We will publish the paper without any changes.
2. The publication of the work will require appropriate revisions and a relevant rationale.
3. Publication of the paper should not occur without sufficient justification.

The next section requires peer reviewers to provide their first and last names, professional titles, and the full name of the institution to which they are affiliated, as well as the location and date of the peer review. The Editorial Board maintains the confidentiality of this information and does not disclose it to the author of the manuscript under review. During the review process, reviewers work independently and without knowing each other’s identities. If a manuscript receives conflicting reviews, one positive and one negative, the editor will appoint an additional reviewer.

Authors who receive conditionally positive reviews should consider the comments provided by the reviewers. Alternatively, they have the option to withdraw their contributions and immediately inform the editor of their decision. Authors must submit revised manuscripts to the journal within 15 days of receiving feedback. The editor and editorial board finalize their evaluation of the manuscripts, considering the degree to which they have addressed the feedback.

 

Frequency of Publication

The IJSER Journal is published quarterly, with four issues per year.

 

For Authors Article

Submission Process

1. Respected authors should thoroughly understand the Author Guidelines, before submitting their manuscript for publication in our journal, IJSER.
2. Authors must create an account on our website to publish their work. This process involves completing five simple steps.

The IJSER Editorial Board will notify the author of any potential comments and accept their work for publication, depending on the decisions made throughout the peer review process of the article.

Authorship

Authorship refers to the act of creating or producing a written work, such as a book, article, or chapter. Only authors who made significant contributions to the submission should be authors. Note any significant contributions made by individuals other than the authors to the research project and manuscript creation in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

 

Citation Authors

should accurately reference sources that have had a significant impact on their research and articles. Authors must obtain express written permission from the source of the information before using any information from private conversations or correspondence when examining project components, manuscripts, and similar materials.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism refers to the act of using someone else’s work, ideas, or words without crediting them.

Plagiarism, which is the act of appropriating someone else’s ideas, words, or other forms of creative expression as one’s own, is a flagrant violation of scholarly ethics. Plagiarism can also include a violation of copyright law, which is subject to legal consequences. Plagiarism may include:

1. Plagiarism refers to the act of directly copying or paraphrasing passages from another author’s work without crediting them (for example, by using quotation marks), meaning that the copied section is not the original.
2. Plagiarism strictly prohibits the unauthorized copying of figures or tables from another person's work without giving credit or requesting permission from the original inventor or copyright owner. We carefully screen all entries for plagiarism. We will immediately reject any manuscript displaying blatant signs of plagiarism. In case plagiarism is detected in a research paper already published in IJSER, the author will be obliged to issue a written apology to the authors of the original article. Furthermore, the author will cease all future collaboration with the plagiarized research paper author.

 

Article Retraction Policy

We should preserve manuscripts published in the journal in their original form, without any changes, for as long as possible. Sometimes, certain circumstances may lead to the retraction of a previously published work. The primary motivation for retraction is to correct errors made during the pre-publication phase, with the aim of preserving the integrity of scientific research, rather than punishing the author.

Article retraction is necessary due to legal restrictions imposed on the publisher, copyright holder, or authors, as well as violations of professional ethical rules such as submitting the same work to multiple sources, making false claims of authorship, plagiarism, and using misleading data.

Many libraries and scientific organizations have established protocols for managing article retractions, and IJSER has implemented these procedures. The electronic version of the original article contains an HTML hyperlink to the retraction notice, which explicitly states that the original piece remains unchanged, except for the addition of a watermark to the PDF file on each page to indicate “withdrawn”.

 

Self-archiving policy

Whether it's the publisher's version or a PDF, authors can deposit their final version of the publication in institutional and non-commercial subject repositories. They may also publish it on their personal websites and social media sites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu.  You can publish this at any time after publication, provided it adheres to the Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license's terms of use. It is essential to acknowledge and respect the copyright and source of the publisher and include a link to the DOI of the article.

Authorship Rights

The Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license grants authors and users the permission to share, copy, and redistribute the material in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes. It also allows for the adaptation, remixing, transformation, and building upon the material for any purpose, including commercial ones.

 

The author(s) maintain copyright over all research articles published by IJSER.

 

The authors hereby grant the publisher the following privileges with respect to the text, its form, excerpts, or components:

1. You have the right to reproduce and publish the manuscript in physical form, including printing upon request.
2. You have the authority to translate the manuscript into various languages.
3. You have permission to reproduce the manuscript using technical methods or equivalents, such as photocopying, and you have the right to publish such copies repeatedly.
4. The author has the right to electronically or visually reproduce and distribute the text on various data carriers or storage media, including machine-readable or digital forms on data carriers like hard drives, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs (BD), minidiscs, and data tapes.
5. The author has the privilege of preserving the manuscript in databases, both online and offline, and he has the authority to communicate the text using various technical systems and methods.
6. The user has the right to make the text available to the public or to closed user groups upon request, using electronic devices such as displays or e-books.

The author grants permission to the publisher to publish the article, credit them as the original publisher when reusing it, and distribute it on all platforms. The authors retain the following rights:

1. You have the right to share printed or electronic copies of the article with others.
2. For both commercial and non-commercial purposes, users may include the article in full or in part in their lectures, publications, or subsequent edited volumes.
3. The employer's institution has permission to use the article for research or educational purposes.
4. Individuals have the right to publish an electronic version of the article on their own website or blog, the employer's website or repository, and on publicly accessible servers related to the topic.

When exercising these rights, authors must include full citation and clear acknowledgement of the original publication of the article in IJSER. Electronic versions of the accepted article must contain a hyperlink to the published version, as well as the following statement: You can access the approved version at:

https://ijser.aliraqia.edu.iq/index.php/IJSER/issue/archive

The link provided is the archive of the Al-Iraqia Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research (IJSER) hosted on the website https://ijser.aliraqia

The authors also grant unrestricted use of the article to any third party, if they indicate the original authors, citation details, and publisher, and include a hyperlink to an electronic version of the article that adheres to the journal's specific license. If you use the article in any medium, give proper form and content credit. This research paper entitled “Derived from the Author’s Article” is based on an article written by (name and surname) and published in the Al-Iraqia Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research (IJSER) in (volume and year). Users are required to include a copyright notice when reusing or distributing the material. They are also required to clearly indicate that the article is available under the Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license and provide a link to the applicable Creative Commons web page. The authors' moral rights, including the right to shield their work from derogatory treatment, remain unaffected by the Creative Commons license they attribute to them. Private and publicity rights of authors and other parties related to the article are unaffected. After approval of the submission and before publication, we will ask the author or corresponding author (in the case of manuscripts with multiple authors) to sign a security and copyright agreement.

Digital Archiving Policy

Al-Iraqia Journal for Scientific Engineering Research uses the archiving method for electronic backup and to ensure continuous access to the publication content.

Crossref Similarity

Check Our editorial originality check policy, known as a similarity check, allows our editors to compare the content of submitted papers for plagiarism. This is for editors seeking additional verification. Our members can actively participate in preventing academic and professional plagiarism by giving their editorial teams access to the powerful text comparison tool Turnitin.

Abstracting and indexing. Available resources include CrossRef, Google Scholar, ROAD (Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources), Bielefeld University Library, Directory of International Research Journals Indexing, and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).

Sponsors

College of Engineering, Al-Iraqia University, Baghdad, Iraq.