Publication Malpractice Statement

Strategic Studies follows the ethical guidelines for publishing prescribed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and following points are also available on their websites, too. 

Ethical Guidelines for the Editor

• The Editor of a research journal should be responsible for:
• Establishing and maintaining quality of the journal by publishing quality papers in his/her journal.
• Promotion of freedom of expression within the cultural, constitutional/legal framework.
• Providing integrity and credibility of the research contributions,
• Maintaining ethical standards of their journal,
• Providing corrigendum for any correction, clarification and apologies where required.
• Encourage new ideas and suggestions of authors, peer reviewers, members of editorial board and readers for improving quality of his/her journal.
• The Editor should only shortlist research papers which have relevance to the scope of the journal clearly stated in the Journal, using his /her judgment, but without any personal bias.
• Apply the process of blind peer review in true letter and spirit.
• Promote innovative findings in respective field and publishing them on priority.
• Promote anti plagiarism policy.
• Educate contributors (authors) about ethical practices in research, and implement  the journal’s policy without institutional pressure and revise the policy from time to time.
• The Editor must ensure that the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal comprises prominent scholars of the field who can adequately promote the journal and may appoint members for a prescribed duration and add or revise constitution of the Board if required.
• The Editor should inform new board members about ethical guidelines and their expected role and update the Editorial Board members about development, challenges and any changes made in the journal policy.
• The criteria for the selection of research papers must be impartial and the Editor should select academically and scientifically sound articles.
• The Editor should disregard the discriminating factors, e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, cultural sentiments, political affiliation, seniority and/or institutional association of the author(s) while selecting articles for publication.
• The Editor must ensure confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the process of double-blind peer review,
• Information pertaining to a research paper should not be disclosed by the Editor to anyone except the author(s) and reviewer(s).
• The Editor should prepare clear guidelines about preparing and formatting of a paper and print these guidelines in each issue of the journal.
• The guidelines should cover information related to ‘content’ and ‘format’ of a research paper.
• Any preferred manual of style (e.g. APA, Chicago Manual, MLA Style, etc) should be declared as a policy decision.
• The Editor should encourage reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible research and publication misconduct (e.g. inappropriate research design, incomplete detail on participant’s consent, data manipulation, and presentation).
• The Editor should encourage reviewers to comment on the validity of submitted research paper and identify ‘subtle (simply copy-paste)’ and/or ‘blatant (paraphrasing)’ type of plagiarism, if, practised by the author(s).
• The Editor should confirm plagiarism (carry out objective check through Turnitin) and/or searching for similar titles to the submitted research paper, and
• The Editor should be prepared to publish a corrigendum, remove and retract a plagiarized article if it comes to his/her knowledge subsequent to its publication.
• The Editor must not use any unpublished information/data from the submitted research paper without the permission of the author(s).
• Any information received after the peer review process must be kept confidential and not used for personal gains.

 Ethical Guidelines for the Author(s)

Strategic Studies expect from authors to follow the following points align with the HEC ethical guidelines. The following ethical guidelines are obligatory for all author(s) violation of which may result in application of penalties by the editor, including but not limited to the suspension or revocation of publishing privileges.

• It is the author(s)’ responsibility to ensure that the research report and data contain adequate detail and references to the sources of information in order to allow others to reproduce the results.
• Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
• It is the author(s)’ responsibility to ascertain that s/he has submitted an entirely original work, giving due credit, by virtue of proper citations, to the works and/or words of others where they have been used.
• Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is not acceptable.
• Material quoted verbatim from the author(s)’ previously published work or other sources must be placed in quotation marks.
• As per HEC’s policy, in case the manuscript has a similarity index of more than 19%, it will either be rejected or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of a conditional acceptance.
• Authors are required to provide an undertaking / declaration stating that the manuscript under consideration contains solely their original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal in any form.
• A manuscript that is co-authored must be accompanied by an undertaking explicitly stating that each author has contributed substantially towards the preparation of the manuscript in order to claim right to authorship.
• It is the responsibility of the corresponding author that s/he has ensured that all those who have substantially contributed in the manuscripts have been included in the author list and they have agreed to the order of authorship.
• Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or publication except if is a re-submission of a rejected or withdrawn manuscript.
• Authors must respect the privacy of the participant of research and must not use any information obtained from them without their informed consent.
• Authors should ensure that only information that improves understanding of the study is shared.
• Authors must ensure that in instances where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, explicit and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.
• In the case of the demise of a participant, consent must be obtained from the family of the deceased.
• If any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process, the author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor.
• The author(s) should ensure that images included in an account of research performed or in the data collection as part of the research are free from manipulation.
• The author(s) must provide an accurate description of how the images were generated and produced.
• Authors may have to sign an agreement allowing the journal to reserve the right to circulate the article and all other derivative works such as translations.
• The review period can last between 1-2 months or longer and during this period the author(s) reserve the right to contact the Editor to ask about status of the review.
• Once the review process has been completed, the author will be informed about the status of the manuscript which could either be an acceptance, rejection or revisions. In the case of rejection, the author(s) reserves the right to publish the article elsewhere.
• In case of revisions, the author(s) must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised manuscript should, then, go through the process of affirmation of revisions and be accepted or rejected accordingly.

Ethical Guidelines for the Reviewers

The Reviewers should inform the Editor, if they do not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review and s/he should inform the Editor immediately after receiving a request.

• Be responsible to act promptly and submit review report on time.
• Immediately inform the Editor of any possible delays and suggest another date of submission for a review report, and
• Not unnecessarily delay the review process, either by prolonged delay in submission of their review or by requesting unnecessary additional data/information from the Editor or author(s).
• The reviews should be objectively carried out with a consideration of high academic, scholarly and scientific standards.
• All judgments should be meticulously established and maintained in order to ensure the full comprehension of the reviewer’s comments by the editors and the author(s).
• The reviewer may justifiably criticize a manuscript but it would be inappropriate to resort to personal criticism on the author(s), and
• The reviewers should ensure that their decision is purely based on the quality of the research paper and not influenced, either positively or negatively, by any personal, financial, or other conflicting considerations or by intellectual bias.
• The data included in the research paper is confidential and the reviewer shall not be allowed to use if for his/her personal study.
• A reviewer must declare any potentially conflicting interests (e.g. personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious). In such situation, s/he will be required to follow the journal’s policies.
• If the reviewer feels unqualified to separate his/her bias, s/he should immediately return the manuscript to the Editor without review, and justify to him/her about the situation.
• Reviewers should consider the research paper as a confidential document and must not discuss its content on any platform. 
• If the reviewer suspects that the research paper is almost the same as someone else’s work, s/he will ethically inform the Editor and provide its citation as a reference.
• If the reviewer suspects that results in the research paper to be untrue/unrealistic/fake, s/he will share it with the Editor,
• If there has been an indication of violating ethical norms in the treatment of human beings (e.g. children, female, poor people, disabled, elderly, etc), then this should be identified to the Editor.
• For evaluating originality, the reviewers should consider the following elements:
• Does the research paper add to existing knowledge?
• Are the research questions and/or hypotheses in line with the objective of the research work?
• The reviewers should read the “Methodology” section in detail and make sure that the author(s) has demonstrated the understanding of the procedures being used and presented in the manuscript.
• Further questions to be addressed are whether: the organization of the research paper is appropriate or deviates from the standard or prescribed format?
• The reviewer must explicitly write his/her observations in the section of ‘comments’ because author(s) will only have access to the comments reviewers have made,
• For writing a review report, the reviewers are requested to complete a prescribed form (s).
• It is helpful for both the Editor and author(s) if the reviewer writes a brief summary in the first section of the review report. This summary should comprise the reviewer’s final decision and inferences drawn from a full review.
• Any personal comments on author(s) should be avoided and final remarks should be written in a courteous and positive manner.
• Indicating any deficiencies is important. For the understanding of the Editor and author(s), the reviewers should highlight these deficiencies in some detail with specificity. This should help justify the comments made by the reviewer.
• When a reviewer makes a decision regarding the research paper, it should be clearly indicated as ‘Reject’, ‘Accept without revision’, or ‘Need Revision’ and either of the decisions should have justification.