Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics Statement

The ethics policy of the Sawa Journal of Humanities is based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is consistent with the code of conduct issued by the editorial board of the Sawa Journal of Humanities. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors must follow these ethics policies when dealing with the Sawa Journal of Humanities. The journal's ethics policy is responsible for determining which of the research papers or exemplary research articles submitted to the journal may be published in its issues. For information on this matter of publishing and on ethical guidelines, please visit https://publicationethics.org/

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

1- The journal is committed to ensuring that decisions made by the editorial board regarding scientific research are final.

2- The journal undertakes to ensure that decisions on submitted research are made solely on the basis of professional judgement and will not be influenced by any commercial interests.

3- The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the academic and research record.

4- Ethics in the journal are monitored by the editor-in-chief, the associate editors, the members of the editorial board, the reviewers, the authors and the readers.

5- The journal always checks submitted research for plagiarism and fraudulent data.

6- The journal is always prepared to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions concerning its publications when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

1- The editors of the journal must have full authority to reject or accept a paper.

2- The editors of the journal must maintain the confidentiality of submitted papers under review until they are published.

3- The editor-in-chief, together with the members of the editorial board and the reviewers, must decide whether a submitted paper will be published or rejected.

4- The editors of the journal must maintain the confidentiality of the reviewers.

5- The editors of the journal must disclose any conflict of interest and seek to avoid it.

6- The editors of the journal must maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.

7- The editors of the journal must be prepared to investigate cases of plagiarism and fraudulent data, and be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

8- The editors of the journal should be concerned with the intellectual content of papers only.

9- The editors of the journal must not disclose any information about a submitted paper to anyone other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher, as appropriate.

10-Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted paper must not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the express written consent of the author.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

1- The journal's reviewers must assist the members of the editorial board in reaching publication decisions on submitted papers.

2- Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the papers sent to them for review.

3- Reviewers must provide their comments in a timely manner so as to help the members of the editorial board decide whether submitted papers will be published or not.

4- Reviewers must treat papers received for review as confidential and must not use information obtained through reviewing these papers for personal advantage.

5- Reviewers' comments on each paper must be technically, professionally and objectively substantiated.

6- Reviewers should not review papers in which they have identified a conflict of interest with any of the authors, companies or institutions.

7- Reviewers must disclose any conflict of interest and seek to avoid it.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

1- The paper is to be submitted in English and must be written in accordance with correct grammar and appropriate terminology.

2- A paper must be submitted on the understanding that it has not been published elsewhere and is not currently under consideration for publication by another journal or any other publisher.

3- The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all other authors have approved the publication of the paper.

4- In order to sustain the peer review system, authors are committed to taking part in the review process by reviewing papers submitted by others.

5- Authors are also responsible for ensuring that research originating from a particular institution is submitted with the necessary approval of that institution.

6- It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.

7- Authors are required to state clearly who provided financial support for conducting the research and/or preparing the paper, and to describe briefly the role of the funding institution/sponsor in any part of the work.

8- In the case of papers with more than one author, the corresponding author must sign the consent form of all authors before the paper is accepted for publication, so as to be legally responsible with respect to the journal's ethics and privacy policy.

9- Under the open access licence, authors retain copyright of their content, and anyone is permitted to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and/or copy the content provided that the original authors and source are properly cited.

10- All authors agree to allow the corresponding author to act as the correspondent with the editorial office in reviewing the editing and proofreading of the paper.

11- When an author (or authors) discovers an error or inaccuracy in his or her published work, it is the author's duty to notify the editor-in-chief of the journal or the publisher promptly in order to retract or correct the paper.

12- All authors should be aware that papers submitted, under review or published in the journal are subject to screening with plagiarism detection software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.

13- All authors must ensure that every author has read the final submission checklist before submitting to the Sawa Journal of Humanities.

Principles of Transparency

1- Double-blind review mechanism: papers in the Sawa Journal of Humanities undergo confidential double-blind review, meaning that the author does not know the identity of the reviewer and the reviewers do not know the identity of the author.

2- Editorial board: the Sawa Journal of Humanities has a very strong editorial board whose members are recognised experts in the subject areas included in the journal's scope.

3- Article processing charges: the journal is a fully open access journal, and the full text of published papers is accessible to everyone free of charge through the journal's website. In addition, authors are required to pay an article processing charge of 100,000 Iraqi dinars for accepted papers.

4- Copyright: the journal has made clear the type of copyright under which the authors' works will be published.

5- Identification and handling of allegations of research misconduct: the editor-in-chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers in which research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation and data falsification/fabrication, among others.

6- Website: the journal's website contains complete information about the journal to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

7- Journal name: the journal's name, Sawa Journal of Humanities, and (SJHS) are unique and cannot easily be confused with another journal

8- Conflict of interest: authors are required to state, through the conflict of interest disclosure form, whether or not any potential competing interests exist when submitting their articles to the Sawa Journal of Humanities.

9- Publication schedule: the periodicity with which the journal is published is clearly indicated.

10- Archiving: the journal's plan for electronic backup and for preserving access to the journal's content is clearly indicated .

Violations of Publication Ethics

1- Plagiarism: the deliberate use by a person of another person's ideas or other original material as if they were his or her own, even where a sentence was previously used by the same researcher and published in other journals without appropriate citation, is considered plagiarism by the Sawa Journal of Humanities. All papers under review or published in the Sawa Journal of Humanities are subject to screening with plagiarism prevention software. Accordingly, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.

2- Data fabrication and falsification: data fabrication means that the researcher did not actually carry out the study but made up data or results and recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means that the researcher carried out the experiment but manipulated, changed or omitted data or results from the research findings.

3- Simultaneous submission: simultaneous submission occurs when a paper (or substantial sections of a paper) is submitted to a journal while it is already under consideration by another journal.

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

5- Redundant publications: redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study results into several articles, most often as a result of the desire to inflate the academic curriculum vitae.

6- Improper author contribution or attribution: all listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research and approved all of its claims. Do not forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

7- Citation manipulation: citation manipulation includes excessive citations in a submitted paper that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and are included solely for the purpose of increasing citations of a given author's work or of articles published in a particular journal. This misrepresents the importance of the work and of the particular journal in which it appears, and is therefore a form of scientific misconduct.

8- Sanctions: in the event of documented violations of any of the above policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (1) immediate rejection of the infringing paper; (2) immediate rejection of every other paper submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing paper; (3) a ban of no less than 36 months on all authors from making any new submissions to any journal, either individually or jointly with other authors of the infringing papers; and (4) a ban on all authors from serving on the editorial board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct

Once the journal has confirmed a violation of its publication ethics, the Sawa Journal of Humanities addresses the ethical concerns diligently by following the standard practice for the particular issue, as described below.

1- The first action of the journal's editor is to inform the editorial board of the Sawa Journal of Humanities by providing copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author requesting an explanation in a non-judgemental manner.

2- If the author's explanation is unacceptable and it appears that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via the editorial board. After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is serious enough to warrant a ban on future submissions.

3- If the infringement is less severe, the editor, on the advice of the Publication Committee, sends a letter of reprimand to the author and reminds the author of the publication policies of the Sawa Journal of Humanities. If the paper has been published, the editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.

4- Notification will be sent to the corresponding author, and any work submitted by the author responsible for the violation will be rejected by the journal.

5- The authors are prohibited from serving on the editorial board of the Sawa Journal of Humanities or acting as reviewers for the journal. The journal also reserves the right to take further action.

6- In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the authors' affiliated institutions, and the authors will be barred from submitting their work to the journal for 5 years.

7- In serious cases of fraud that result in the retraction of the paper, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked "Retracted" with the date of retraction.

Allegations of Misconduct

The Sawa Journal of Humanities is highly sensitive to research misconduct and uses all available means to prevent the publication of flawed research. Although there is no universal definition of research misconduct, the journal's board of editors broadly defines research misconduct in three categories of actions and behaviours.

The Sawa Journal of Humanities uses this definition of misconduct in its handling of the matter and strictly follows the publication ethics flowcharts in dealing with research misconduct, as follows:

1- Mistreatment of research subjects

2- Falsification and fabrication of data

3- Piracy and plagiarism

Protection of Human Rights

The Sawa Journal of Humanities does not publish manuscripts that do not include a statement on the protection of the rights of human subjects. Normally, the journal requires a statement that the research has been reviewed by an institutional review board, either in the Materials and Methods section or in the Acknowledgements section.

Falsification and Fabrication of Data

Fabrication is defined as taking data from other research without collecting the scientific data. Falsification is defined as manipulating research materials in order to reach a favourable result. Fabrication and falsification can occur at any stage of research (in the field) up to the publication of a paper, where citation misuse can occur (citing a reference when the reference does not support the argument). The Sawa Journal of Humanities seeks to identify any kind of fabrication or falsification at all levels of manuscript processing, from initial screening to the comprehensive evaluation of the revised paper and even after the paper has been published. Reporting any fabrication or falsification is an ethical duty of our authors, co-authors, reviewers, editors and readers. In any case of falsification or fabrication, the journal reserves the right to retract the fabricated or falsified material. The journal follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics to the letter in dealing with fabrication and falsification.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as the appropriation of another person's ideas, results or words. Another category of plagiarism is self-plagiarism, when an author publishes his or her own ideas, data and text in different journals when there is no need for such duplication.

Duplicate or redundant publication, or "self-plagiarism", occurs when a work, or substantial parts of a work, is published more than once by the author(s) of the work without appropriate attribution or justification for the overlap. This may be in the same language or in a different language. We do not support substantial overlap between publications unless there is editorial agreement that this enhances academic discourse; the author has obtained permission from the original publication; and an acknowledgement and citation of the original source are included in the article.

The Sawa Journal of Humanities uses all means to detect plagiarism. For quality assurance, papers in which the plagiarism rate exceeds 20% of the text will be returned to the author to remove the similarities and reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. The journal strictly follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics in dealing with plagiarised articles.