PUBLISHING ETHICS AND INTEGRITY

Kufa Journal for Agricultural Sciences is committed to peer review integrity and upholding the highest standards. To help us maintain these high standards, we provide guidelines for ethical publishing for authors, reviewers, and journal editors.

1. ETHICS GUIDANCE FOR AUTHORS

We ask all peer reviewers to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following our ethical guidelines they have agreed to review which include:

A-    Reviewers must give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication, and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, gender, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).

B-    Reviewers should declare any potential conflict of interest prior to agreeing to review a manuscript, including any relationship with the author that may potentially bias their review.

C-    Reviewers should mention in their reports that the manuscript has been cited the previous literature appropriately and if not, they should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

D-    Reviewers must keep the peer-review process confidential; information or correspondence about a manuscript should not be shared with anyone outside the peer-review process.

E-     Reviewers should provide a constructive, comprehensive, evidenced, and appropriately substantial peer-review report.

F-     Reviewers must avoid making statements in their report which might be construed as impugning any person’s reputation.

G-    Reviewers should make all reasonable effort to submit their report and recommendation in a timely manner, informing the editor if this is not possible.

H-    Reviewers should call to the journal editor’s attention any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or submitted manuscripts of which they are aware.

2. ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR PEER REVIEWERS

We ask all peer reviewers to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following our ethical guidelines they have agreed to review which include:

A-    Reviewers must give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication, and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, gender, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).

B-    Reviewers should declare any potential conflict of interest prior to agreeing to review a manuscript, including any relationship with the author that may potentially bias their review.

C-    Reviewers should mention in their reports that the manuscript has been cited the previous literature appropriately and if not, they should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

D-    Reviewers must keep the peer-review process confidential; information or correspondence about a manuscript should not be shared with anyone outside the peer-review process.

E-     Reviewers should provide a constructive, comprehensive, evidenced, and appropriately substantial peer-review report.

F-     Reviewers must avoid making statements in their report which might be construed as impugning any person’s reputation.

G-    Reviewers should make all reasonable effort to submit their report and recommendation in a timely manner, informing the editor if this is not possible.

H-    Reviewers should call to the journal editor’s attention any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or submitted manuscripts of which they are aware.

3. ETHICS GUIDANCE FOR EDITORS

We ask all journal editors to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical guidelines of Kufa Journal for Agriculture Sciences for that are worthy of peer review:

A- Editors should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence.

B- Editors should require reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.

C- Editors should have systems to ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected.

This mean the best practice for editors would include:

• Encouraging reviewers to comment on ethical questions and possible research and publication misconduct raised by submissions (e.g. unethical research design, protection of research subjects (including animals)
• Encouraging reviewers to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism
• Considering providing reviewers with tools to detect related publications( e.g. links to cited references and bibliographic searches)
• Sending reviewers’ comments to authors in their entirety unless they contain offensive
• Seeking to acknowledge the contribution of reviewers to the journal
• Encouraging academic institutions to recognize peer review activities as part of the scholarly process
• Monitoring the performance of peer reviewers and taking steps to ensure this is of high standard
• Developing and maintaining a database of suitable reviewers and updating this on the basis of reviewer performance
• Ceasing to use reviewers who consistently produce discourteous, poor quality or late reviews
• Ensuring that the reviewer database reflects the community for their journal and adding new reviewers as needed
• Using a wide range of sources (not just personal contacts) to identify potential new reviewers (e.g. author suggestions, bibliographic databases).

4. ETHICS FOR EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Editors should provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies and developments.

This mean best practice for editors would include:

• Regularly reviewing the composition of the editorial board
• Providing clear guidance to editorial board members about their expected functions and duties, which might include:

A - Acting as ambassadors for the journal

B - Supporting and promoting the journal

C - Seeking out the best authors and best work (e.g. from meeting abstracts) and actively encouraging submissions

D - Reviewing submissions to the journal

F - Attending and contributing to editorial board meetings.

G - Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal and without interference from the journal.

H- Consulting editorial board members periodically (e.g. once a year) to gauge their opinions about the running of the journal, informing them of any changes to journal policies and identifying future challenges.