IRAQI JOURNAL OF DESERT STUDIES - Publication Ethics

The ethical policy of IJDS is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with IJDS Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with IJDS. The ethical policy of IJDS is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit (COPE).

For Publisher

Duties and Responsibilities

IJDS is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.
IJDS is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
IJDS is committing to maintain the integrity of academic and research records.
IJDS is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
IJDS is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscript.
IJDS is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Principles of Transparency

Peer review process: IJDS is a double-blind peer reviewed electronic and print biannual publication concerned with all aspects of desert studies. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site.(Peer Reviewer).
Governing Body: IJDS has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors is provided on the journal’s Web site (Editorial Board).
Contact information: Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of IJDS (Contact Us).
Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles are available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost. Besides, the authors should pay article publication fee which is 150,000 IQ or 100 US $.
Copyright: Journals made clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published. Upon acceptance of manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a "Journal Publishing Agreement (Copy Right Agreement)".
Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
Web site: A journal’s Web site (Iraqi Journal of Desert Studies) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
Name of journal: The Journal name of Iraqi Journal of Desert Studies (IJDS) has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.
Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to IJDS through Conflict of Interest Disclosure form.
Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated (Iraqi Journal of Desert Studies).
Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is clearly indicated (Iraqi Journal of Desert Studies).

Violation of Publication Ethics

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation, is considered by IJDS Journals as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with IJDS are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. Plagiarism is powered by the Turnitin. For a searchable list of all journals in the database, please visit: https://www.turnitin.com

Data Fabrication and Falsification:

Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.

Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.

Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross-referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.

Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.

Improper Author Contribution or Attribution:

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

Citation Manipulation:

Citation Manipulation is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.

Sanctions

In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied:

Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript.
Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript.
Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript.
Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal.

For Editors

Duties and Responsibilities

The Editors of the journal should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
The Editors of the journal should have the limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Respecting confidentiality

In most cases, editors should only consider publishing information and images from individual participants/subjects or patients where the authors have obtained the individuals’ explicit consent. Exceptional cases may arise where gaining the individuals’ explicit consent is not possible but where publishing such information or image can be demonstrated to have a genuine public health interest. In cases like this, before taking any action, editors should seek and follow counsel from the book/journal owner, AOSIS and/or legal professionals. In the case of technical images

For Reviewers

Duties and Responsibilities

The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in taking the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make decision on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage.
The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

For Authors

Duties and Responsibilities

Manuscripts must be submitted in English and Arabic should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere, and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors.
In order to sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others.
It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
A copy right release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript.
All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with IJDS are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.
All authors must ensure that all authors have read the submission final checklist before being submitted to the IJDS.

Originality: Researchers should:

Adhere to the accepted publication requirements that submitted work should be original and has not been published elsewhere in any language without express citation and acknowledgement of the previously published work.
Adhere to and follow all applicable copyright laws and conventions. Copyright material, e.g. tables, figures or extensive quotations, should be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement.
Properly acknowledge and reference relevant previous work and publications, both by other researchers and the authors’ own. The primary literature should be cited where possible.
Properly acknowledge data, text, figures or ideas originated by other researchers, and these should not be presented as if they were the authors’ own work. Original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.
Inform editors if findings have been published previously or if multiple reports or multiple analyses of a single data set are under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors should provide copies of related publications or work submitted to other books/journals.
Not claim originality if others have already reported similar work in part or as a whole, and credit should always be given to the work and findings of others that have led to their findings or influenced them in some way.

Honesty: Researchers should:

present their results honestly and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation;
present research images, e.g. micrographs, pictures of electrophoresis gels, without them being modified in a misleading way.
follow applicable reporting guidelines.
provide sufficient detail and describe their methods clearly and unambiguously and with reference to public sources of information, in order to permit others to repeat the work and confirm the findings. Data should always be reported accurately and never be manipulated, with any problematic data also treated accordingly.
present reports of complete research. They should not omit inconvenient, inconsistent or inexplicable findings or results that do not support the authors’ or sponsors’ hypothesis or interpretation.
alert the editor promptly if they discover an error in any submitted, accepted or published work. Authors should cooperate with editors in issuing corrections or retractions when required.
represent the work of others accurately in citations and quotations.
not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
identify any hazards inherent in conducting the research. (for example, radiographs, micrographs), editors should ensure that all information that could identify the subject has been removed from the image.

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.