Al-Azva RESEARCH JOURNAL
Policy Document
Frequency of Journal : Bi-annual
Recognition : HEC recognized
Indexation : ISI, IRI, Ebsco host,Research Bib, ICI
Category : Y
Volume, issue (Up till 2021) : Vo. 36, no. 56
ISSN (online) : 1995-7904
ISSN (print) : 2415-0444
The authors should provide their names, email addresses, phone number(s), present position/title besides the names of the universities/colleges on the title page of the manuscript to facilitate academic review and production.
Only those manuscripts will be considered for publication that have not been previously published anywhere nor is under consideration elsewhere.
While giving Endnotes, please keep in mind the following requirements.
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
All submitted manuscripts are reviewed through 'double-blind' peer review process that means the identities of the authors are kept confidential from the reviewers, and vice versa. To make this possible, anonymized version of the manuscript are sent to referees.
Submitted papers are first considered by the editor after submission. Papers that do not fall within the scope of the journal are 'desk-rejected'. In addition, papers that fail to meet a minimum threshold for quality and originality are also rejected without being sent out to the reviewers.
The standard procedure of an initial editorial review by the internal editorial committee consists of the content, scope, formatting, citations according to recommended Style, i.e., Chicago Manual of Style, and is usually completed in three to four weeks.
Papers passing through this initial editorial scrutiny are then typically sent out to minimum two referees (one national and two international). ". If one or more of these turn down the invitation to provide a review, other referees will subsequently be appointed. The authors will be informed when Editors decide further review is required. All publication decisions are made by the journal’s Chief Editor on the basis of the referees’ reports (reviewers report).
Please bear in mind that the peer review process takes another two- three months. Therefore, the contributors are expected to bear with us as we complete the process to ensure, that the Al-Azva adheres to the highest quality standards.
In case if a manuscript is found to be plagiarized (see plagiarism policy) after publication, the Chief Editor will conduct a preliminary investigation, maybe with the help of a suitable committee constituted for the purpose. If the manuscript is found to be plagiarized beyond the acceptable limits, the journal will contact the author’s Institute / College / University and Funding Agency, if any.
We are advising all the author(s), do not submit the same paper to multiple journals. Author(s) should wait for the review status of the paper.
The Editor reserves the right to copy-edit and make necessary amendments to the submitted text. The editor also reserves the right to modify or omit material if deemed unsuitable for publication. However, all responsibility for opinions expressed in articles as well as the precision of stated facts rests with the author and not with the editors of the Al-azva.
https://www.hec.gov.pk/english/services/faculty/Plagiarism/Pages/default.aspx
This Journal’s publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is loosely based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).
Al-Azva follows an open-access publishing policy and all articles are free to access. Any submission to Al-Azva must be original, that is, neither published previously nor accepted/under consideration for publication elsewhere. On acceptance of a manuscript, the corresponding author on the behalf of all co-authors will sign and submit a Copyright and Author Consent Form.
The author(s) shall be solely responsible for any information written/informed/reported in the submitted manuscript. It is the author's responsibility to obtain signed permission from the copyright holder to use and reproduce text, illustrations, tables, etc., published previously in other journals, electronic or print media. Articles can be reproduced, distributed, derived and may be used commercially_ provided the original work is properly cited. Author(s) possess the full rights of their published articles.
Al-Azva follows the licensing agreements by Creative Common Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). This indicates that you are free to:
Share -copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided that you follow license terms.
Al-Azva supports a range of author benefit policies with respect to providing authors with an e-print and the opportunity to purchase offprints. E-prints are sent out automatically to the corresponding authors of the published articles ahead of print and in print issues. A link is provided allowing the author to download the article directly from the Al-Azva journals’ website and forward the link onto their co-authors. Please refer to the manuscript submission guidelines for the policy of the Al-Azva journals in submitting or publishing your article. You agree to the terms and conditions of the privacy policy by using the website. We may make changes in the privacy policy in the case of exceptional circumstances. We recommend that to check the privacy statement regularly to keep you updated about such changes. You have to exit the site immediately if you don’t agree to any term and condition of privacy statement.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest:
A Declaration of Conflicting Interests policy refers to a formal policy a journal may have to require a conflict of interest statement or conflict of interest disclosure from a submitting or publishing author.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) that: “Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.”
Many scholars, researchers, and professionals may have potential conflicts of interest that could affect their research. As a result, the journal requires a formal declaration of conflicting interests enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated published article. A potential conflict of interest may arise from relationships, allegiances, or hostilities to particular groups, organizations or interests, which may influence one’s judgments or actions excessively. The issue is particularly sensitive when such interests are private and/or may result in personal gain.
All manuscripts submitted to the journal are evaluated fairly and are not necessarily rejected when any competing interests are declared.
Examples of conflicts of interest might include the following, although it is not an exhaustive list: Having received fees for consulting.
Having received research funding.
Having been employed by a related company.
Holding stocks or shares in a company that might be affected by the publication of your paper.
Having received funds reimbursing you for attending related symposia, or talk.
If there are other interests that the reasonable reader might feel has affected your research you may also wish to declare them. (Please note that it is not expected that details of financial arrangements be disclosed when a competing interest is declared.)
Upon identification of any conflict of interest, the editors may require more information from the author that may include the following:
The Authors are required to fill and sign the Copyright and Author Consent Form upon submitting the manuscript.
The same obligations equally apply to the editors or guest editors writing an editorial for the journal. When you are submitting or publishing your article in a journal which requires you to make a Declaration of Conflicting Interests, please include such a declaration at the end of your manuscript after any Acknowledgements and prior to the Funding Acknowledgement, Notes (if relevant) and References, under the heading 'Declaration of Conflicting Interest'. If no conflict exists, please state that 'The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest'.
*Please note, a Conflict of Interest Statement will not appear in journals that do not require a declaration of conflicting interests. Where a declaration is required the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article have with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for- profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.
Authors who discover errors in articles they have published should have the corresponding author contact the journal’s editorial office with a detailed description of the correction that is needed. Corrigenda (corrections of author’s errors) and errata (corrections of publisher’s errors) will be published at no charge to the authors. Requests for corrections that affect the interpretation or conclusions of a published article will be reviewed by the editors. An article may be retracted when the integrity of the published work is substantially undermined owing to errors in the conduct, analysis, and/or reporting of the study. Violation of publication or research ethics may also result in a study’s retraction. The original article is marked as retracted but a PDF version remains available to readers, and the retraction statement is bi-directionally linked to the original published paper. Retraction statements will typically include a statement of assent or dissent from the authors. In exceptional circumstances, the editorial office reserves the right to remove an article from the journal’s online platforms. Such action may be taken when (i) the editorial office has been advised that content is defamatory, infringes a third party’s intellectual property right, right to privacy, or other legal rights, or is otherwise unlawful; (ii) a court or government order has been issued, or is likely to be issued, requiring removal of such content; (iii) content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risk to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. Bibliographic metadata (e.g. title and authors) will be retained and will be accompanied by a statement explaining why the content has been removed.
Authorship credits may only be given to those who have made a substantial contribution in constructing the article.
The corresponding author of the article holds the responsibility to give credits to the co-authors that are significantly involved in the work. Also, the corresponding author should make sure that all the co-authors have approved the final submission and ready-to-publish version of the article. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research should be acknowledged for their contribution in an "Acknowledgement" section.
The authors are fully responsible to provide the names of the authors upon submitting the article to the journal. Once the article is accepted for publication, any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of the authors’ names will not be entertained unless approved by the journal’s editor. To request such a change, the corresponding author must provide the journal’s editor with: (a) the reason for the change in the author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement, along with the confirmation from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances and with considerable reason/s will the editor may consider the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the editor considers the request, the processing of the manuscript for publication will be put on hold. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests may not be entertained by the editor.
It the responsibility of the authors to have a mutual agreement on the order of the authors before submitting the article to the journal. Any such disagreements must be ruled out before the submission.
The “guest” author makes no significant contributions to the study, hence, do not qualify for authorship. The Al-Azva journals do not allow the appearance of guest authorship on the articles.
Because authorship should be transparent and requires public accountability, it is not appropriate to use pseudonyms or to publish scientific reports anonymously. In extremely rare cases, when the author can make a credible claim that attaching his or her name to the document could cause serious hardship (e.g., a threat to personal safety or loss of employment), a journal editor may decide to publish anonymous content.
In the Acknowledgments section, authors may wish to include the names and contributions of those whose involvement in a study did not qualify them for authorship (because of the journal policy) but have contributed to the article in some way.
"Ghost" and/or "Guest" author phenomenon has been common in the traditional listing of research papers. This has been raising inappropriate authorship practice in which some individuals did not have an actual input in the experiment. For this, the journal highly recommends that only authors who have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript shall be listed individually in the submitted manuscript (including students and lab technicians).
Articles that are found to have been published elsewhere, or are under consideration for publishing elsewhere, will be considered as "duplicated" material. In case the author(s) have used their own previously published work (or work that is currently under review), they are asked to cite the previous work and indicate how their submitted manuscript offers novel contributions and adds value differently (from the previous work).
Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations in order to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will be considered as a "citation manipulation"-containing material.
Al-Az̤vā by Sheikh Zayed Islamic Centre, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.