Editorial Policy

Oversight and Editorial Responsibilities

The journal has two boards: the International Advisory Board and the Editorial Board. The International Advisory Board consists of seven acclaimed professors internationally represented to ensure integrity, international standards, and credibility through advises, suggestions, and comments on the quality of the journal. The Editorial Boardin which the Editor-in-Chief is a member  on the other hand comprises of academics from Addis Ababa University whose responsibility mainly is to monitor the publication  workflow and ensure the quality of the journal. The term of membership in the two boards is five years. The Editorial Board meets at least twice a year to discuss and decide on the acceptability of manuscripts for publication. Submissions are subject to pre-assessment before they are sent for assessment proper. The Editor-in-Chief in consultation with other Editorial Board members as necessary ensures that the referee team evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias. He/she must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If he/she feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by a committee assigned by the editorial board. 

The Editor-in-Chiefis governed by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Associate Editor-in-Chief is responsible for verifying manuscripts have fully and convincingly addressed  referee team’s questions and suggestion before they are published. S/he also carries out activities of the Editor-in-chief in his or her absence. The Editorial Board Staff will inform authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within six months from the date of the manuscript submission.

The Managing Editor collects manuscripts from contributors, acknowledges the receipt of them, and checks for plagiarism in consultation with the Editor in-Chief. It is also the responsibility of the Managing Editor to gather review and submit to the Editorial Board for approval. S/he also sends manuscripts selected for publication for typesetting, checks that those manuscripts are properly typeset, and submit them to the publisher.

The Editorial Board members cannot use unpublished materials that are part of the submitted manuscripts without written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Manuscripts submitted to EJoBS undergo double blind review process. The Editorial Board shall take all necessary measures to ensure that the referees remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers.

Authors’ Responsibilities

Authors are required to guarantee that their manuscriptis their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and results in removal of the manuscript from consideration by EJoBS. Posting of preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior to publication, but authors should disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

 

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is toEJoBS's advantage: it often helps the Editorial Board select more appropriate referees. 

 

In case a submitted manuscript is part of aproject, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in a footnote.

 

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by EJOBS’s Editorial Policies. It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to EJoBSare written with strict obedience to ethical standards. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded claims or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. EJoBS will not be held responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

Reporting standards

 

EJoBS affirms is dedication to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow interested peoplereplicate the study. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit the referee team and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it - e.g. provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the authors’ guideline before submitting their manuscripts. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

 

Authors are solely responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. They need toassert that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of gathering, processing and sharing data.

 

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere need to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

 

Authorship

Corresponding authors should make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section. 

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 7thedition .In order to be mentioned in the author list one must have:

  • made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • contributed to the drafting the work, or revising it critically for important scholarly content; AND
  • provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND
  • agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

The degree of contribution shall be determined by the order in which the names appear, unless indications are given by the authors to the contrary.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted only if a justifiable explanation is provided to the Editorial Board and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Acknowledgment of sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their work. Information obtained in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. For this purpose, we recommend the format proposed in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone presents another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following: 

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragmentusing quotation marks.
  • Copying one’s own previous work with outmentioning source.
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder. 

All submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism. We use Turn-it-in to check for plagiarism. Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism which exceeds the limit set in Anti-Plagiarism Policy Framework of Addis Ababa University, which is 30% will lead the Editorial Board to make a statement of the plagiarism and to provide a reference to the plagiarized material, and finally  reject the submission. In such cases the Editor-in-Chief will contact the institution(s) with which the author is affiliated and/or the funding agencies. If the level of plagiarism though below 30% is significant the editorial board will request the author(s) to rectify the matter.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the Journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction Policy section.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other forms of  substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No competing interests were disclosed’.

A competing interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of competing interests include (but are not limited to):

  • individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
  • individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
  • official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
  • political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from commercial organizations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies, should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘Competing interests’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief and cooperate with them to retract or correct the paper.

ORCID

The journal optionally asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). If authors have ORCID, ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the right author receives the right credit for their work. 

Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder. 

 Referees’ Responsibilities 

Referees  are required to provide written, convincing, and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript. 

The referees assess a manuscript for its compliance with the requirements of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly rigor.

The review should instruct the authors on how they can strengthen their manuscript to the point where it may be acceptable. As far as possible, a negative review should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript, so that authors whose submissions are rejected can understand the basis for the decision and see in broad terms what needs to be done to improve the manuscript for publication elsewhere.

Referees should alert the Managing Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Referees should bring to the attention of the Managing Editor relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Managing Editor to the observed similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Referees should also alert the Managing Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Referees must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Managing Editor without delay.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials that are part of submitted manuscripts without the written consent of the authors. Referees should keep information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts confidential and must not be use them for personal gain.

Peer Review

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The peer review is used to make decision on the acceptability of the manuscript and, in relevant cases, to suggest to authors what they need to do by way of revision.

The choice of referees is at the discretion of the Editorial Board. The proposed referees must be experts in the subject area of the manuscript. Referees must not be from the authors own institution. Nor should they have recent joint publications with any of the authors. 

A submitted manuscript is initially tested for plagiarism and can pass to a preliminary assessment only if it fulfils the minimum requirement set by Addis Ababa University on plagiarism. Should it fail to meet minimum standards, it will be automatically rejected. If a submitted manuscript meets standards for plagiarism, it passes through preliminary assessment by the Editorial Board members before it is sent to referees. To save time for authors and referees, only those manuscripts that seem most likely to meet the editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by in the preliminary assessment to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review. The decision will be based on the preliminary assessors' reports and acceptance of the Editorial Board.

EJoBS uses double blind peer review process in which both the authors and the referee team are kept unknown to one another. 

Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to the Editorial Board's readership are sent for formal review, typically to two referees (accepted if supported by both). If there is disagreement between the referees on their verdict, the manuscript will be sent to a third reviewer whose position will help make the final decision. Sometimes a manuscript will be at first sent to more than two people for review if special advice is needed (for example on statistics or other technical issues). When referees agree to assess a paper, the Editorial Board considers this a commitment to review subsequent revisions.

The Managing Editor asks referees to submit their reviews  within four to five weeks. If referees do not submit their reports at the anticipated time without adequate reason, they will be informed that EJoBS will be forced to replace them by other reviewers.

The Editorial Board makes a decision based on the reviewers' comments and suggestions, from among several possibilities:

  • accept, with or without editorial revisions;
  • require the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached;
  • reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission; and
  • reject outright, typically on grounds of ack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.

The Board tries to evaluate the strength of the arguments raised by each referee and author, and may also consider other information not provided by referees. The board may return to referees for further advice, particularly in cases where they disagree with each other, or where the authors believe they have been misunderstood on points of fact. The Board, therefore, asks that referees should be willing to provide follow-up advice as requested. The main purpose of the consultation with the referees in this case is to give authors fair hearing. However, a resubmitted paper will not be sent back to the referees if it seems that the authors have made a serious work to address the criticisms.

Referees of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. During the review process, the Managing Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript.

The Editorial Board shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. In cases in which a review of a referee is convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Members of the Editorial Board are permitted to submit their own papers to EJoBS.In such cases the concerned person(s) will be excused during deliberation of their manuscript or they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paperand another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. 

Post-Publication Discussions

EJOBS encourages post-publication debate either through letters to the Editor-in-Chief, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer.

Use of Large Language Models and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools

EJOBSconforms to the recommendations of  theAmerican Psychological Association Publication Policy on Authorship and AI tools.

When AI is used in the drafting of the submitted manuscript authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI in the manuscript (which tool was used, extent of its use and for what purpose), preferably in the methods section. However, the AI tool used cannot named in the authors’ list.

In cases in which AI is used to produce the manuscript, authors will be urged to upload the out of the AI as a supplementary material to the submission.

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of any content generated by tools based on large language models and generative AI and they must ensure that the cited references are correct and that the submission is free from plagiarism.

Editorial Board members and referees must uphold the confidentiality of the peer review process. Editorial Board members should not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Referees must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports.

Procedures for dealing with complaints and appeals

Anyone may inform the Editorial Board members at any time of suspected unethical behavior or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to initiate an investigationinto the matter.

Investigation

  • The Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation. 
  • During an investigation, all evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those involved in investigating. 
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them. 
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious. 

Minor Misconduct

Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

  • Communicating to authors/referees whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred. 
  • A warning letter to an author or refereeconcerningfairly minor misconduct. 

Major Misconduct

The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, and, when appropriate with a small group of experts should make a decision regarding the action to be taken using the evidence available. The following are the possible measureswhich can be used separately or jointly:

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct. 
  • Sending a formal letter to inform the author's (or referee’s) head of department or employer of any transgression
  • Announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When dealing with complaints and appeals, the editorial team will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE COPE): https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts. 

Retraction Policy

Articles can be retracted by author(s) or the Editorial Board. Author(s) may initiate the retraction in cases in which they identified they have made honest errors such as due to the mixing up of samples or faulty use of a scientific tool or equipment. The Editorial Board can also retract a published article upon learning transgression of the legal restrictions of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, illegitimate  use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, unethical research  or any major misconduct

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly mentioned in the Retraction notice. In the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

Research Data Policy

EJOBS requests authors to share research data that are required for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or enhance the published manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary. We accept supporting software applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound or video clips, large appendices, data tables and other relevant items that cannot be included in the article.

Authors may submit data together with the manuscript through our journal management system. In this case, the data will be made available to referees and published once the manuscript is accepted for publication online Authors shall use Adis Ababa University Research Data Repository (https://rdr.aau.edu.et)  to store their data. Each data file will be assigned a DOI, enabling the data to be cited the same way as traditional publications. Note that these materials will not be copy-edited or typeset: their appearance and format is entirely the author's responsibility.

Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results of their study and analyses of the data. This includes details of any software, instruments and other tools used to process the results. Where possible, the tools and instruments themselves should also be provided. 

For some reasons such as demands for confidentiality, protection of security, protection of personal informationdata may not be openly shared. However, authors are urged to allow access to their data for reviewers as well as the Editorial Board to validate the claimed results.

Ethical and Security Considerations

If data access is restricted for acceptable reasons, the author(s) should include in their manuscript:

  • a statement describing the kind of restriction such as who can have access to the data and on what basis  and
  • if applicable the position taken or the statement made by the concerned Institutional Review Board (IRB) or an equivalent organ.

Data protection issues

Where it is not possible to store data in anonymous way, they should not be shared in order to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given written consent that their identifiable data can be made publicly accessible.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

  • an explanation of the data protection concern;
  • any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
  • where applicable, all necessary information necessary for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

When depositing data for a submission, the below should be considered:

  • The data must be deposited under an open license that permits unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licenses should only be used if a valid reason (e.g., legal) is present.
  • The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
  • The deposited data must have been labeled in such a way that a 3rd party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file). 
  • Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research subject should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian). 
  • A ‘Data Accessibility Statement’ should be added to the submission, prior to the reference list, providing the details of the data accessibility, including the DOI linking to it. If the data is restricted in any way, the reasoning should be given. 

Open Access policy

EJOBS is an Open Access journal. All of its content are available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

EJOBS does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages. 

Self-Archiving Policy

Authors can deposit author’s preprint, author’s postprint (accepted version) and publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based and general-purpose repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior to or during the submission process, at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)licence.

Metadata Policy

The journal metadata are freely accessible to all, and freely reusable by all, under the terms of the Creative CommonsUniversal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.  EJOBS assumes no liability for errors or omissions within the manuscript itself. EJoBS may seek proofread of final articles by author(s): The journal reserves the right to refuse publishing. 

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