Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

International Journal for Quality Assurance follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Therefore, all parties involved in the publishing process (authors, reviewers, editors and publishers) are obliged to accept and agree upon the standards of ethical behavior.

Duties and responsibilities

Duties of Editors

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to IJQA will be published. Editors are guided by the editorial policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Editors reserve the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects, and reserve all rights to make stylistic and grammatical changes. The editorial staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication between three and six months from the date of the manuscript submission.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editor-in-Chief must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If the Editor-in-Chief 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 paper shall be made by the Vice Editor- in-Chief or the Editorial Board.

Editors and editorial staff must not use unpublished materials and contents disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.

Confidentiality

The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain. Editors and editorial staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process.

Duties of Authors

Authors warrant and pledge that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, authors also warrant that the manuscript will not be published elsewhere after the publication in IJQA in any language without the consent of the publisher ("publication" excludes "self-archiving", please see the Self-archiving policy section below). Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes misconduct resulting in its elimination from consideration by IJQA.

If the author chooses to withdraw the article after it has been assessed, the author shall reimburse the Journal with the cost of reviewing process.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to IJQA are written with ethical standards in mind.

Authors should note that the submitted manuscript must be formatted correctly using the instructions presented at the Preparation Guidelines of the Manuscript Section. Manuscript submissions which are not formatted correctly will be returned to authors. Authors are not allowed to change their names after peer-reviewed.

Duties of Reviewers

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

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

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

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editorial staff without delay.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Reviewers 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 Editor without delay. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.

Objectivity

Reviews must be conducted objectively, and personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also 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 fragment (for example, using quotation marks);

• 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. Please note that all manuscripts submitted for publication to IJQA is checked for plagiarism after submission and before being peer reviewed.

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected.  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.

Peer review

Electronic submission of manuscripts as MS Word document via OpenConf System is a must. IJQA OpenConf is a management system that automates the paper submission and the whole reviewing process. It can be accessed via IJQA website at www.ijqa.zu.edu.jo/eng/.  Criteria for acceptance will be appropriateness to the field of the Journal, taking into account the merit of the content and presentation. Number of pages is limited to 15. However, where excessive length reflects an unclear line of argument, the manuscript will be rejected. Manuscripts should be clearly written and included a short abstract written in English and another one in Arabic on the first page, with a translated title. Key words should be included as well at the end of the abstract.

Manuscripts will be refereed in the manner customary with scientific journals before being accepted for publication. Upon receiving a manuscript, 3-4 members of the Editorial Board will examine it and if the paper is out of scope of the journal or does not meet the basic criteria for a journal article, it will be immediately rejected without further review. Otherwise, the Editor-in-Chief will solicit reviews from at least two external referees. Based on the reviews, the Editor will make the decision on manuscript acceptance, or solicit additional reviews if the decision is unclear.

In case of high discrepancy between opinions of reviewers, three core Editorial Board members will be assigned the task of consolidating the reviews.

Retraction policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of the paper.

Open access policy

IJQA is an Open Access journal, and your publication will remain digitally available for free under Creative Commons license. All articles can be downloaded free of charge.

Self-archiving policy

IJQA allows authors to deposit author's post-print (accepted version) and publisher's version/PDF in an institutional repository and noncommercial subject-based repositories, such as arXiv or to publish it on an author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and/or departmental website, at any time after publication. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided.

Copyright

Once the manuscript is submitted to the journal, authors shall assign copyright to the publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for publication by the journal, all rights shall be retained by the author(s).

Privacy Statement

IJQA ensures the security and protection of the personal information it processes. Names and email addresses entered in the journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of the journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.