PUBLICATION ETHICS

Conflict of interest

Conflict of interest (COI) exists when there is a divergence between an individual’s private interests (competing interests) and his or her responsibilities to scientific and publishing activities such that a reasonable observer might wonder if the individual’s behavior or judgment was motivated by considerations of his or her competing interests” Authors should disclose all financial/relevant interest that may have influenced the development of the manuscript. Reviewers should disclose any conflict of interest and if necessary, decline the review of any manuscript they perceive to have a conflict of interest. Editors should also decline from considering any manuscript that may have conflict of interest. Such manuscripts will be re-assigned to other editors.

Confidentiality

A submitted manuscript is a confidential material. Academic Journals will not disclose submitted manuscript to anyone except individuals who partake in the processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted). These individuals include editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors.  However, in suspected cases of misconduct, a manuscript may be revealed to members of Academic Journals’ ethics committee and institutions/organizations that may require it for the resolution of the misconduct.

Originality and Plagiarism

All manuscripts must be original. No manuscript will be considered which has already been published in the proceedings of a conference, published in another journal or is being considered by another journal. However, when work described in conference proceedings is substantially revised and extended, it will be considered for publication. By submitting a manuscript, authors certify that the article is not being considered for publication nor has it been published elsewhere.

The journal uses Turnitin software to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are scanned against the Turnitin database to verify originality. We accept the similarity index if it is less than 20%.

Correction and retraction of articles

Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the Editor- in - Chief of the journal. Editors will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published.