The journal of Library and Information Science Research is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and complies with the highest ethical standards in accordance with ethical laws.

Journal's Membership link

 

 

The ethical policy of the journal of Library and Information Science Research is based on COPE's best practice guidelines for journal editors. Editorial Board, reviewers, and authors are encouraged to study these guidelines and address any questions or concerns to the journal of Library and Information Science Research's Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Mohsen Nowkarizi: mnowkarizi@um.ac.ir 

 

Duties and Responsibilities of the journal of Library and Information Science Research’s Editors

http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

 

1.  The Editors should evaluate the content of submitted manuscripts whether are in the scope of the journal or not and also should recommend expert reviewers based on their integrated recognition of specialized reviewers.

2.   The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for making the decision to accept or reject the submitted manuscripts to the journal, considering the judgment of the editorial board’s members, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism with other editors and reviewers.

3.   The Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers and authors.

4.   The Editors should disclose and avoid conflict of interest. In such circumstances, they will ask another editorial board member to handle the manuscript.

5.  The Editors, especially the Editor-in-Chief should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues. The editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.

6.   The Editor-in-Chief follows the COPE Flowcharts when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct. If, on the investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.

7.   The Editors must not disclose information about submitting manuscripts to anyone as appropriate until published.

8.   Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the Editor-in-Chief or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

9.   Editors should give fair consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to country, race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s). Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of this journal.

10.   The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of the journal of Library and Information Science Research’s Reviewers

http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf

 

1.    The Reviewers should provide comments that help editors to make decisions on whether the submitted manuscript is to be published or not.

2.    The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts, that they are invited to review.

3.    The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions. They should immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review, so that alternative reviewers can be invited.

4.    The Reviewers who feel that are not qualified to review the assigned manuscript or are unable to provide a prompt review, should notify the Editor-in-Chief and excuse themselves from the review process. If they know any other expert reviewers, they may suggest them to the Editor-in-Chief via a dedicated email/comments section in the Reviewer Dashboard.

5.   The Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Editor-in-Chief, nor discuss any information from the manuscript without permission. This applies also to the invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

6.   The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage.

7.    The Reviewers' comments against invited manuscripts should be technical, professional, and objective.

8.     The Reviewers should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments which assist the author in improving the manuscript.

9.     Reviewers should identify the relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation.

10.   The reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other publications of which they have personal knowledge.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of the journal of Library and Information Science Research’s Authors

https://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf

1. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal.
2. Authors are requested to submit manuscripts with sufficient details and references to permit others to replicate the work.
3. Authors may be asked to provide the original date of their study for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable.
4. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript has been approved by all co-authors.
5. Only those who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content.
6. All authors must read the Article submission checklist before being submitted.
7. Authors should at the earliest stage disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript (by uploading the Conflicts of Interest Form along with the manuscript submission).
8. The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript describes completely the original work and is free from any aspect of plagiarism. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism prevention software for similarity checks.
9. Authors must clearly identify in their manuscript, if their work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent.
10. If needed, Authors should state in their manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants and that the privacy rights of human participants have been observed.
11. In the case of the "Need Revision" decision, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner and, revise and re-submit their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.
12. Authors are requested to clearly identify who financially supported the research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work at the end of their manuscript under the “Acknowledgements” section.
13. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
14. All authors agree to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the Journal’s editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
15. Under the open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright to their content but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
16. When the author(s) discover(s) a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the Journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript.
17. All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review with the journal of Library and Information Science Research are subject to screening, using the Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics and in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of the journal of Library and Information Science Research’s Publisher

https://publicationethics.org/core-practices

1. "Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM)" is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
2. FUM is committed to maintaining the integrity of academic and research records.
3. FUM is monitoring the ethics of the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
4. FUM, together with the Journal’s editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow taking place.
5. FUM is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involved in the submitted manuscripts and is willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.
6. FUM Business Model: FUM as the publisher supports the Journal for each published issue by paying a defined budget according to its published annual rank in the Portal of Scientific Journals of the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology for costs including those pertaining to setup and maintenance of the publication infrastructure, routine operation of the Journal, processing of manuscripts through peer-reviews, editing, publishing, maintaining the scholarly record, and archiving.

 

Violation of Publication Ethics

https://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf

 

The Editorial Board of the journal of Library and Information Science Research acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable in any of its forms:

1.   Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by the journal of Library and Information Science Research as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with the journal of Library and Information Science Research are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (e.g. iThenticate). Thus, plagiarism is a severe violation of publication ethics.

2.  Simultaneous Submission: Care should be taken to ensure that the work has not been published elsewhere, in any language, and does not simultaneously submit to other journals.

3.   Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more articles, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.

4.   Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.

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

6.    Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation implies excessive citations in the submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.

7.   An improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Remember to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

 

Handling Misconduct Cases

https://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf

 

The Editorial Board of the journal of Library and Information Science Research takes the necessary measures to examine the incoming papers on their originality, reliability of the contained information, and correct use of citations.

If any of the unethical publishing behavior is detected by the Journal Editorial Board or by one of the reviewers, the first action is to inform the Editor-in-chief by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.

If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Committee on Publication Ethics, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the TMJ publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.

If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems 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 sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions.

Sanctions: In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors, and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to the journal of Library and Information Science Research for 5 years.

 

Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

This journal allows debate post-publication on the journal’s site, through the "Send comments about this article" section to the editor up to one month before final publication. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising, or retracting articles after publication depend on the content of the received comment and if the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors, they will be shown under the reference section of the articles pages.

Complaint Policy

If the authors disagree with the editorial decision on their manuscripts, they have a right to appeal. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the journal of Library and Information Science Research. In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial, and peer reviewers' comments and gives his/her decision for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief may, if so required, send the manuscript to a new handling editor for a fresh editorial review and a new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such a case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.

How to Make a Complaint

The procedure to make a complaint is quite simple. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail to: infosci@um.ac.ir

All complaints will be acknowledged within three working days.