Ethical Standards & Policies
Ensuring a valuable quality of publication materials is an endeavour assumed by any academic network due to its intrinsic importance in maintaining a transparent publishing process. To this end, the Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics firmly attests to the quality of its journal-based materials via applying and observing an ethical publishing policy inspired from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The guidelines the journal applies cover editorial processes, peer-reviewing processes and all journal-based issues. It, therefore, sets a publication policy to preserve and disseminate an integral knowledge-spreading network to accommodate and preserve scientific research. The varied audience of the journal including authors, peer reviewers, journal editors, readers as well as sponsors should adhere to and consider the journal’s ethical policy as a frame of reference to proceed with the entire publication act.
Editorial Standards and Policies:
In recognising the responsibility of editors, the journal editors are held accountable for the materials published via the journal. This responsibility is inclusive of a set of standards indicating that editors should:
- Observe authorship and readership needs.
- Protect their editorial independence.
- Have realistic publishing processes.
- Respect the journal objective of good quality publishing.
- Protect intellectual ownership.
- Respect and corroborate the journal’s ethical standards.
- Uphold freedom of speech.
- Preserve a confidential reviewing process.
- Cooperate with all journal parties to observe and implement the publishing process and respect the ethical policy advocated.
- Take fair decisions and foresee their effects on the journal’s reputation and readership.
- Endeavour to ameliorate the journal and refine its output in light of rigorous scientific methods.
- Be up-to-date with upcoming relevant ethical standards and technologies.
- Exhibit flexibility towards publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies in relevant situations.
- Champion the aim of the journal in every publication act.
- Assess the process of peer-reviewing and publishing and feed back to the authors.
- Exhibit willingness to explicate the journal’s publication ethics to the audience.
- Revise the journal’s policies when needed for improvement motives.
The editorial board commits itself to be actively involved in ensuring the aforementioned standards, to clarify and promote the journal and its purposes, and to accurately observe the following policies
Reviewing Standards and Policies:
As known in academic circles, the responsibility to supply reliable, valid, unbiased, and interest-free information requires that particular ethical principles be observed and practiced by peer-reviewers. The reviewing process stipulates ethical and trustworthy conduct on the part of peer reviewers, who need to be aware of basic standards integral to this process. For this reason, and by drawing upon the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, reviewers in Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics are called upon to:
- Maintain an independent, transparent and confidential reviewing process.
- Review materials belonging to their own areas of expertise.
- Review materials in a defined time-frame.
- Preserve the integrity of any information obtained during the reviewing process.
- Assure a good quality and objective reviewing by divorcing themselves from any bias or interpersonal considerations.
- Inform the journal of any prospective competing interests susceptible to affecting the quality of the reviewing process and the quality of the manuscript being under examination.
- Assist editors in fair decision-taking operations.
Authorship Standards and Requirements:
Authors submitting their manuscripts to the Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics should be aware of the process punctuating the publication act in the journal system. They should equally:
- Provide original manuscript to the journal.
- Ensure that their manuscript has been exclusively uploaded to the journal system.
- Declare as well as respect intellectual property of others.
- State any financial support for their manuscript-based research.
- Supply materials on real and ethical data free from any bias and manipulation.
- Supply any ethical statement if the data is reutilised upon a permission note.
- Avoid self-plagiarism that is based on text recycling mainly (to use text parts in more than one publication of the same author as indicated in COPE Text Recycling Guidelines).
- Accept that their manuscript can be discarded in case of plagiarism or unethical and inflammatory input, given that all schools of thought and orientations are respected in Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics.
- Be aware of the scientific research methods and basics of their area of expertise and publication.
- Adhere to the journal’s ethical standards.
Publishers Standards and Policies:
Publishers who represent an integral committee of any publishing mechanism are instrumental in issuing, revising, assessing and adapting publication policies of Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics. Publishers need to provide support for all journal parties to ameliorate the journal’s output, ethical performance, and policies. In this regards, they ought to:
- Promote the journal’s standards and policies.
- Uphold free, transparent and fair editorial performance.
- Cooperate with all the journal parties (editors, editor in-chief, reviewers, authors, and readers) to observe academic norms and ethical standards.