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

The Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.) follows COPE’s Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and COPE’s Core Practices. These ethical guidelines must be followed when dealing with Kirkuk Journal of Science by readers, authors, reviewers, and editors. The Kirkuk Journal of Science Ethics Policy responsible for determining research papers submitted to the journal that is eligible to be published in the concerned issue. Please visit  http://publicationethics.org for more information about this publication and ethical guideline. 

Publishers Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Kirkuk Journal of Science Undertakes to ensure that editorial judgments on submitted manuscripts are blind.
2. Kirkuk Journal of Science ensures that the selection of submitted manuscripts will be based solely on expert opinion and won't be influenced by any commercial interests.
3. Kirkuk Journal of Science pledges to maintain the accuracy of academic and research records.
4. The submitted manuscripts are continually checked by Kirkuk Journal of Science for instances of plagiarism and false fabricated data.
5. The editor-in-chief, associate editors, editorial board members, reviewers, authors, and readers participate in the ethics monitoring of Kirkuk Journal of Science.
6. Kirkuk Journal of Science always ready to provide updates, explanations and retractions on his articles when necessary.

Responsibilities and Duties of Editors: 

1. The full authority to accept or reject a paper should rest with the journal's editors.
2. The confidentiality of submitted articles shall be protected by the journal's editors while they are being reviewed or before they are published.
3. In consultation with other editors and reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief should decide whether or not to publish each paper that is submitted.
4. The editors should protect the reviewers' anonymity.
5. As they work to accommodate readers' and authors' requirements, the editors must uphold the standards of academic integrity.
6. The editors should clarify and resolve any potential conflicts of interest.
7. The editors must limit themselves to intellectual content only.
8. The editors should consider allegations of data fraud and plagiarism as well as publish retractions, clarifications, and apologies when necessary.
9. Information regarding submitted papers may only be disclosed to the author, reviewers, editorial advisors, and the publisher when necessary.
10. Editorial board members may not use disclosed materials in unpublished research papers submitted to the journal except with explicit written approval.

Reviewers Duties and responsibilities:

1. Reviewers should support the authors of the submitted manuscript with their unbiased technical and scientific comments and feedback to improve the quality of the article.
2. Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the articles they receive.
3. Reviewers should submit their comments in a timely manner so that the editors can decide in which issue the submitted manuscript will be published.
4. Reviewers are prohibited from using the knowledge they have acquired during the peer-review process for their benefit.
5. Any conflicts of interest should be declared and attempted to be avoided by reviewers. If reviewers discover a conflict of interest with any author, company, or organization, they should refrain from reviewing the article in question.

Authors duties and responsibilities:

1. When submitted, manuscripts must be in English only and follow correct grammatical and vocabulary rules.
2. The paper must receive the consent of all co-authors, and the corresponding author is in charge of making that happen. The corresponding author must have permission from all other authors to act as a correspondent to the editorial office, inspecting the edited manuscript.
3. The research submitted must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under consideration in another journal.
4. Authors commit to participating in peer review and responding to the comments.
5. The responsibility for making sure that manuscripts issued by a certain institution are submitted with the institution's approval rests with the authors.
6. A requirement for manuscript submission is that authors authorize manuscript edition and redaction.
7. The founder (sponsor) of the research and (or) the preparation of the paper must be identified by the authors, and their involvement in any aspect of the work must be briefly described.
8. The corresponding author must sign a copyright release form (in case of multiple authorships, the form must be signed by all authors) to be legally responsible for the journal's ethics and privacy policy.
9. An open-access license allows anybody to download,  print, copy the content as long as the original authors and source are correctly cited. 
10. When authors find serious errors or inconsistencies in their published work, they must immediately tell the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript.
11. The Kirkuk Journal of Science uses tools to check submitted publications for plagiarism. A severe breach of publishing ethics is plagiarism.
12. Before sending their work to Kirkuk Journal of Science, authors should make sure they have reviewed the final submission check list.

Transparency principles

1. Peer-review: Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.) is a double-blind peer-review published in print and electronic, Covers all aspects of science. 
2. Governing body: Kirkuk Journal of Science has a broad editorial board with standable backgrounds from various scientific fields includes journal scope. 
3. Contact information: Contact information of Kirkuk Journal of Science provided.
4. Author/access charges: Author/Access Charges: The journal is open access; database of published articles is available to everyone for free. However, authors must pay a publication fee (100,000 Iraqi dinars).
5. Copyright: The type of copyright under which an author work published explained in previous sections. Upon manuscript acceptance, authors asked to complete a journal publication agreement form.
6. Identifying and responding to allegations of research misconduct: The Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent misconduct research paper being published including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and falsification/fabrication of data, among others.
7. Name of the journal: Kirkuk Journal of Science (Kirkuk J. Sci.) unique and not easily confused with another journal.
8. Website: The site guarantees high ethical and professional standards.
9. Publication schedule: The journal publication period stated on the website.
10. Archiving: The journal's plan for electronic backup and maintaining access to journal content is outlined.
11. Conflicts of interest: Authors are kindly requested to indicate whether or not there are potential conflicts when submitting their articles to Kirkuk Journal of Science, this will be declared in the body of the published paper.

Publishing Ethics Offenses

1. Plagiarism is when someone purposefully presents another person's thoughts or other creative content as their own. Without the required reference, 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. All submissions that are being reviewed or published in Kirkuk Journal of Science must pass a plagiarism check using ITheneticate Therefore, plagiarism is a grave breach of publication ethics.
2. Duplicate publication refers to the use of essentially the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, and conclusions in two or more articles without complete cross-referencing.
3. 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 already being considered by another publisher.
4. Falsification of data: Falsification of data refers to the researcher's creation of data or results and recording or reporting of the manufactured material, rather than actually conducting the study. Falsification of data refers to the conduct of an experiment but manipulation, alteration, or omission of data or outcomes from the research findings.
5. Citation manipulation is when a manuscript is submitted with an excessive number of citations that do not add to the scholarly content of the piece and are only there to boost the number of citations to a specific author's work or to articles that have been published in a specific journal. This results in misrepresenting the significance of the particular work and publication in which it appears, which is a type of malpractice in science.
6. 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.
7. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications entail the improper division of research findings into a number of pieces, frequently as a result of the need to fill out one's academic résumé.
8. Sanctions: The following actions will be taken in the event that any of the aforementioned policies are violated and are published in any journal, whether or not the violations took place there,
   • The manuscript that violates the rule is immediately rejected,
   • Rejection without delay of every subsequent submission that any of the authors of the infringing paper has submitted to a journal,
   • All authors of the infringing publication will be prohibited from submitting new work to any journals for at least 36 months, whether alone or in collaboration with other authors.
   • The exclusion of all authors from editorial board membership for any journal.

Handling Misconduct Cases

Once Kirkuk Journal of Science confirms a violation against publication ethics, a set of decisions will be made

1. The Kirkuk Journal of Science Editorial Office must be notified as the first step by the journal editor providing the corresponding author a draft letter, copies of the relevant documents, and a nonjudgmental request for an explanation.
2. The issue is forwarded via Editorial Office to the Publication Committee if the author's explanation is unacceptably inadequate and it appears that substantial unethical behavior has occurred. Following discussion, the Committee will determine whether the situation is bad enough to justify prohibiting future submissions.
3. If the violation is less serious, the Editor may, at the Publication Committee's recommendation, send the author a letter of reprimand 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 set the record straight.
4. A notification will be provided to the corresponding author, and any work by the offending author or any work that they coauthored and is currently being reviewed by Kirkuk Journal of Science will be rejected without delay.
5. The authors are not allowed to serve on the editorial board of the Kirkuk Journal of Science or as a reviewer for it. The Kirkuk Journal of Science retains the right to take additional actions.
6. In severe situations, notifications will be sent to the authors' affiliations and they will be forbidden for five years from submitting their work to Kirkuk Journal of Science.
7. In the event that 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.