Ethics Statement

Ethics Statement

The Al-Takamul al-Ma’rifi aims to ensure that best practice and ethical standards are maintained by journal editors, authors and reviewers. The editors and reviewers are required to assess manuscripts fairly and maintain confidentiality. Authors must ensure that research submitted to Al-Takamul al-Ma’rifi journal is their own original work and is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Conflicts of Interest Disclosure

Editors and editorial board members/reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers. In the event that this kind of conflict arises, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Authors too must disclose any conflicts of interest that could be considered as influencing the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. This information should be provided on submission.

Editorial Board Conflict of Interest

The Committee on Publication Ethics [COPE] states that there must be a clear statement regarding conflict of interest, including submission of papers to a journal. On its website there is a discussion regarding editors submitting to their own journal. It states:

“Provided every effort is made to minimise any bias in the review process by having another associate editor handle the peer review procedure independently of the editor (recognising that it would be impossible to remove bias completely), and the process is absolutely transparent, then this would be the most appropriate route to take. … As an extra precaution, if and when the article in question is published, the editor might like to publish an accompanying commentary showing how transparent the reviewing process had been” (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/case/editor-author-own-journal).

The Al-Takamul al-Ma’rifi adopts the following policy regarding submission of papers by members of the Editorial Board to any of its issues.

  1. The Editor-in-Chief may not submit a paper for review to any issue of the journal.
  2. The Editor and Associate Editors may not submit a paper for review to their own issue of the journal.
  3. The Editor and Associate Editors may submit a paper for review to an issue other than their own issue, but all due care and diligence will be taken to ensure the paper is anonymised, the reviewers are not aware of the author(s)’ identity(ies), and that a statement is made in that issue regarding the process to prevent the perception of cronyism.
  4. Members of the Editorial Board may choose to submit a paper for review to a special issue of the journal, but they must make this clear before submissions commence and they will then not be permitted an editorial or reviewing role for that special issue.
  5. An Editor, either alone or with his/her Associate Editors, may write an editorial/introduction for their issue of the journal with a statement that this is the views of the author(s) and has not been subject to peer review.
  6. The Editor-in-Chief may write a foreword for any issue of the journal with a statement that this is the views of the author(s) and has not been subject to peer review.