Statement

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT: TORB

The Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement of The Journal for Education Law and Education Policy (Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid, TORB) is based on the guidelines and standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As such, this journal follows the next two documents: Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors and Code of conduct for journal publishers. The relevant responsibilities/duties and expectations of authors, reviewers, and editors of the journal are as detailed below. You should however always refer to the two documents listed above for full details.

Responsibilities of Authors

By submitting a manuscript to TORB, the author(s) authorize that the manuscript is their own, original work and that it has neither been published previously nor is currently being considered for publication (in part or in full) elsewhere in any journal. authors also warrant that the sources of any ideas and/or words in the manuscript that are not their own have been properly attributed through appropriate citations and/or quotes.

Authors should not be supposed to normally submit or publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in multiple journals. Such redundant publications are considered as constitute unethical publishing behavior, and if discovered may result in a manuscript under consideration will be rejected, or a published article will get retracted.

Authors of the manuscript should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. The scientific data should be represented accurately in the manuscript. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references so as to permit the others to replicate the work for their respective further research. The fabrication of results and the making of fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and may cause the rejection or the retraction of a manuscript or published article.

The manuscript should contain the details of all the commercial software, hardware, or other product used. The authors should also disclose the sources of financial support for the research in the manuscript.

Authors will be solely responsible for obtaining the written permission so as to include any images or artwork for which they do not hold copyright in their articles, or to adapt any such images or artwork for inclusion in their articles so as to avoid any ambiguity. Authors will be solely responsible for obtaining the written ethical permissions so as to carry out any research related to animals and/or human subject studies.

The authors’ names should be listed in the article in order of their contribution with respect to the article, and all authors will be responsible for their own contributions. Only those individuals who have made a substantive contribution should be listed as authors; those whose contributions are indirect or marginal (e.g., colleagues or supervisors and heads of research institutes/centers/labs) should be addressed in an “Acknowledgments” section in the article. The corresponding author must ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the article, and that all listed co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the article and agreed to its publication.

If in case, authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in an article of his/hers that has been already published by TORB he/she has an obligation to promptly notify the editors and cooperate with them to correct the article or retract it, as per case may be or whatever be appropriate.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

The reviewers perform work for TORB on a volunteer basis. The reviewers are free to decline the invitations to review a particular manuscript at their discretion because of any reason (e.g., workload and/or other commitments, timeframe). The reviewers should not be supposed to accept the manuscript for review assignments for which if they feel unqualified. The reviewers who have accepted manuscript assignments shall be committed to submit their reviews within the time span.

All the manuscripts received for review must be treated as a confidential document, and must not be disclose or discussed with any others except the editorial office of TORB. The reviewer must keep manuscript confidential and not supposed to be used for any sort of personal advantage.

The reviewers are encouraged to express their views clearly, explaining and justifying all recommendations made by them in such a manner so that authors should not feel personal criticism while sending the review report. It should always be seen as an attempt to provide detailed and constructive feedback in order to improve their work done, even if the manuscript is, in their opinion, not suitable for publication.

Reviewers should identify in their reviews that the relevant published work that has not been cited by the author(s), together with any such instances wherein proper source has not been provided.

The reviewers are encouraging to immediately inform if incase, there is any major resemblances between a manuscript under consideration and with other published articles or papers of which they are aware.

Responsibilities of Editors and Editorial Board

The editor is the main communicator between the reviewers, authors and publisher. The editor is the key factor who deals with any received information, complained or misconduct by the author or reviewer. The editor’s decision is final in acceptance or decline of a manuscript for publication.

The Journal has a editorial board whose members are recognized experts in the field and this is confirmed. The full name and affiliations are provided in the Journal, as well as the contact information of the editorial board. These are also on the website.

Manuscript decision

The editor is responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication, which can be ensured with the help of concerning reviewer and authors. Editor adopts processes that encourage accuracy, significance, originality, completeness and clarity of research work.

Fairness and Reliability

The editor’s decision should solely depend on scientific merit, relevancy to the subject, scope of the journal rather on financial, racial, ethnic origin etc... of the authors

Secrecy

Any manuscript received for review must be treated as confidential document. The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Confession and conflicts of interest

Submitted work in form of manuscript must not be used in any form by editor's own work. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members. Editor must be guided by the COPE flowcharts in cases of suspected misconduct or disputed authorship.

Errata/Retraction of manuscript

When authentic errors in published work are pointed out by any person, which do not make the work invalid, editors should publish errata pages or make corrections as soon as possible. If the error provides the work or substantial parts of it invalid, the paper should be retracted with the reason of retraction.

The editor of TORB has ultimate responsibility for deciding if a manuscript submitted to the journal should be published, and in doing so is guided by the journal’s policies as determined by the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor may consult with the Associate Editor and other members of the editorial team, as well as with reviewers, in making publication decisions.