Publication Ethics of Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.)

The Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.) confidently upholds the highest standards of integrity by adhering to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for transparency and best practices. All participants readers, authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to strictly follow these ethical standards. For further details, please visit http://publicationethics.org.

 The Ethics Policy of the Kirkuk J. Sci. is responsible for determining the eligibility of research papers submitted for publication in each issue.

 

Kirkuk J. Sci. ensures that:

1. All editorial decisions on submitted manuscripts are made blind and are final.
2. Manuscript selection is based solely on expert evaluations, free from any commercial influences.
3. There is a full commitment to maintaining the integrity of academic records and rigorously checking for plagiarism and fabricated data.
4. It actively monitors the ethical conduct of all involved parties and is prepared to issue updates or retractions as needed.

 

Editors' Responsibilities and Duties:

1. The editors of the Kirkuk J. Sci. have complete authority to accept or reject any manuscript.
2. The editors of the Kirkuk J. Sci. evaluate submitted manuscripts based on their originality, significance, clarity, validity, and relevance to the journal's scope. These evaluations are made without regard to the author's gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, political beliefs, religion, or institutional affiliation.
3. The editors of the Kirkuk J. Sci. required to maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts throughout the review process and prior to publication.
4. The editor-in-chief, in consultation with the editors and other reviewers, must decide whether or not submitted manuscripts will be published.
5. The editors should protect the reviewers' anonymity and confidentiality.
6. The editors, while making efforts to address the needs of both readers and authors, are committed to upholding standards of academic integrity.
7. The editors must clarify and resolve any potential conflicts of interest.
8. Editorial members should make decisions based solely on scientific merit.
9. Editors hold the responsible for investigating allegations of data fraud and plagiarism. They must issue retractions and clarifications when needed.
10. Editors of the Kirkuk Journal of Science must not disclose any information regarding submitted manuscripts to anyone else other than the author, potential reviewers, editorial advisors, and the publisher as appropriate.
11. Editorial members may not use disclosed material in unpublished manuscripts submitted to the journal without express written consent.

 

Reviewers' Duties and Responsibilities:

1. The peer-review process is utilized to assist the editor in decision-making.
2. Reviewers should provide authors of submitted manuscripts with objective, professional, technical and scientific feedback to enhance the quality of the article. Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate.
3. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality regarding the received manuscripts.
4. Reviewers are responsible for ensuring that their opinions are well-supported.
5. Reviewers should submit their comments on time to facilitate the decision-making process.
6. Reviewers are prohibited from using any knowledge gained during the peer review process for their own benefit.
7. Reviewers must prepare their report by themselves, unless they have permission from the journal to involve another person. They must also not impersonate others during the review process.
8. Reviewers must not use artificial intelligence tools to generate manuscript review reports, including LLM based tools like ChatGPT.
9. Reviewers should report any significant similarities or overlaps between the manuscript they review and any other published work they are aware of.
10. Reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest and refrain from reviewing the manuscript if such a conflict exists with any author, company, or organization.
11. Reviewers should verify that relevant published works referenced in the manuscript are properly cited in the references section. They should also indicate whether any arguments or observations drawn from previous publications are supported by the relevant sources.

 

Authors’ duties and responsibilities:

1. Manuscripts submitted to Kirkuk J. Sci. must be written in English and follow correct grammatical and language rules.
2. The submitted manuscript must be original and not have been published elsewhere in any language or format unless they are an extension of the former work with appropriate citation or quotation, and must not be under consideration in another journal.
3. The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal during the peer-review and publication process.
4. The corresponding author must have permission from all other authors to act as a correspondent with the editorial office.
5. The manuscript requires approval from all co-authors, and the corresponding author is responsible for obtaining this approval.
6. Authors are committed to participating in the peer review and responding to comments.
7. Authors must ensure that affiliated institutions approve the submitted manuscripts.
8. All authors should verify that they have read the final checklist before submitting it to Kirkuk J. Sci.
9. Manuscripts submitted to the Kirkuk J. Sci. are subject to a plagiarism check. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publishing ethics.
10. The withdrawal of a manuscript may happen before the issuance of the acceptance letter unless it contains errors or is submitted twice.
11. Authors must indicate the entity that funded their research and/or manuscript preparation and acknowledge the founder's or sponsor's involvement in any aspect of the work.
12. All authors must disclose any conflicts of interest that could affect the results or interpretation of the manuscript.
13. Upon submission of a manuscript, authors retain rights to the published material. Upon publication, they permit the use of their work under a [CC BY] license, which allows anyone to download, print, and copy the content, provided the original authors and source cited.
14. When authors discover serious errors or inconsistencies in their published work, they must immediately notify the journal editor or publisher to withdraw or correct the manuscript.
15. The corresponding author must sign a Authorship Form to be legally responsible for the journal's ethics and privacy policy.
16. Ethical approval must be obtained prior to conducting a study involving humans or animals. All relevant institutional and national regulations must be adhered to during experimentation.

 

Transparency principles

1. Name of the journal: Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.) is unique and not easily confused with another journal.
2. Peer review: The Kirkuk Journal of Science is a double-blind peer-review published in print and electronic form, Covering all aspects of science. 
3. Author/access charges: The journal is open access; a database of published articles is available to everyone for free. However, authors must pay a publication fee after acceptance (100,000 Iraqi dinars).
4. Governing body: Kirkuk Journal of Science has a broad editorial board with respectable experience in various scientific fields covering journal scope. 
5. Contact information: Contact information for Kirkuk Journal of Science provided.
6. Website: The site guarantees high ethical and professional standards.
7. Publication Schedule: The journal publication period is mentioned on the website.
8. Identifying and responding to allegations of research misconduct: The editors take reasonable steps to identify and prevent misconduct research papers from being published including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and falsification/fabrication of data, among others.
9. Archiving: The journal's plan for electronic backup and maintaining access to journal content is outlined. See Archiving Policy.
10. Conflicts of interest: Authors are kindly requested to indicate whether or not there are potential conflicts when submitting their articles to the Kirkuk Journal of Science, this will be declared in the body of the published paper.

 

Publishing Ethics Offenses

1. Plagiarism: is the act of claiming someone else's ideas, writings, data, or images as your own. The Kirkuk Journal of Science considers it plagiarism if you take even one line from another author's paper or one of your own that has already been published without proper citation, therefore, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. All manuscripts under review or published with Kirkuk Journal of Science are subject to screening using a plagiarism detection software ITheneticate.
2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Fabrication is the addition or creation of data, observations, or characteristics that never occurred during experiments or data collection. Falsification is the act of changing, deleting, manipulating, or removing some research observations, data, or graphics to support a desired claim or hypothesis.
3. Duplicate publication: refers to using of essentially the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, and conclusions in two or more articles without complete cross-referencing.
4. Inaccurate Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have contributed significantly to the research described in the publication and given their approval for all statements made in it. Remember to include students and lab staff among those who made a significant scientific contribution.
5. Simultaneous Submission: This procedure is referred to as simultaneous submission when a manuscript (or substantial portions of a document) is submitted to a journal while it is under consideration by another journal.
6. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications entail the improper division of research findings into multiple pieces, frequently as a result of the need to fill out one's academic résumé.
7. Citation Manipulation: Citation manipulation occurs when a submitted manuscript contains excessive citations that add nothing to the article's scientific content and are only included to boost the number of citations to a certain author's work or publications published in a particular journal. This type of scientific misconduct leads to misrepresenting the importance of the work and journal.
8. Sanctions: If there are documented violations of any of the above policies, the following rules will be applied, above mentioned policies
   • The manuscript that violates the rule is immediately rejected.
   • Immediate rejection of other manuscripts submitted by any of the co-authors of the infringing manuscript.
   • All authors of the infringing publication will be prohibited from submitting new work for at least 36 months, whether alone or in collaboration with other authors.
   • None of the authors are permitted to serve on the Kirkuk Journal of Science Editorial Board.

 

Handling Misconduct Cases

The editor of Kirkuk J. Sci.  shall follow COPE's guidelines in dealing with allegations of research misconduct. Once the Kirkuk Journal of Science confirms a violation of publication ethics, a set of decisions will be made, 

1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of Kirkuk Journal of Science by providing copies of the relevant documents and a draft letter to the corresponding author, asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
2. If the corresponding author's explanations are unacceptable, and it seems that serious unethical conduct has occurred, the matter is referred to the Editorial board via the Editorial Office. After deliberation, the editorial board will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions.
3. If the violation is less serious, the Editor may send the author a letter of disapproval and a reminder of the Kirkuk Journal of Science's publication policies. If the manuscript has already been published, the Editor may ask the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
4. A notification will be sent to the corresponding author. Any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons co-authored under review by the Kirkuk Journal of Science will be rejected immediately.
5. The authors are prohibited from being reviewers or members of the Kirkuk Journal of Science editorial board. The Kirkuk Journal of Science retains the right to take additional actions.
6. In severe situations, notifications will be sent to the authors' affiliations.
7. If an article is retracted due to substantial fraud, a retraction notice will be printed in the journal and linked to the article in the online edition. A "retracted" label with the retraction date will also appear on the web version.

 

 Ethics in Human and Animal Studies

1. Human Studies

All studies are expected to comply with the requirements of the US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (45 CFR Part 46) and adhere to the general ethical principles of the Declaration of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. In particular, both statements should be confirmed in the methods section of the manuscript. Human participants' privacy rights must always be protected. Ethical approval must be acquired before any research is done. When the journal editorial office requests further information, authors must be able to supply it.

 

2. Animal Studies

All animal studies are recommended to follow ARRIVE reporting guidelines (PLoS Bio 8(6), e1000412,2010) for the design, analysis, and reporting of scientific research, and authors should clearly explain such guidance has been followed in their submitted manuscripts. Sex and other characteristics of animals that may influence results must be described. Additionally, we suggest following the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals (2020), which include recommendations for the best practices in veterinary medicine for animal anesthesia and euthanasia.