Policies

The following policies apply to JEMSPRO unless stated otherwise.

Overview

Journal of Economics, Management Science and Procurement (JEMSPRO) adheres to the publication policies as outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It is a requirement for authors, editors and reviewers to comply with the following best practices in publication ethics: 

1. Authorship and Contribution
In principle, the journal adopts the recommendations on rightful authorship of articles for humanities and social sciences. The journal has zero-tolerance to honorary authorship. Scholars must meet the following criteria for co-authorship: 

  1. The scholar must contribute substantially to the formulation, writing and analysis of scientific work.
  2. The scholar must contribute to either the drafting or revision of the manuscript and approved the final draft before submission.
  3. The scholar must accept full responsibility for the research work unless stated otherwise.

The above criteria must be met for submitted manuscripts to JEMSPRO. For scholars that do not meet the criteria, they can be credited in the Acknowledgement section of the manuscript.

2. Data Sharing and Reporting Guideline
JEMSPRO is an open-access journal meaning that the published work by the journal is readily accessible by other scholars for secondary analysis and further use. Authors have the responsibility of ensuring that data and material on the published research work are readily accessible for authors to make it easier for replication of the study results. Authors are required to inform the publisher when submitting the manuscript if there are any restrictions to availing the data utilized in facilitating the study.

3. Conflict of Interest
Conflict of interest refers to both financial and non-financial interest that has the potential of undermining the integrity of a publication, through direct influence on the judgement of the author (s) concerning an objective presentation of data, analysis and interpretation of findings. Conflicting financial interests are as follows:

  1. Funding – It includes support (offered to research in the form of salaries, equipment and meeting expenses) by an organization that can potentially gain or lose financially through the publication of the research work. The author (s) has the responsibility of disclosing the role of the funder of the research in the conceptualization, collection of data, preparation of the manuscript and deciding the publisher.
  2. Employment- Current (while engaging in the research work) or anticipated employment in a particular organization that has the potential to either gain or lose financially through the publication of the research work.
  3. Personal financial interest – It includes shares in firms that might gain or lose financially through the publication of the research work, reimbursements from organizations that may either be positively or negatively impacted by the research work or the value of patents that may be impacted by the publication

Application to authors
The corresponding author must disclose any conflict of interest during the submission of the manuscript, via the declaration in the submission contact form. Since the journal utilizes double-blind peer review, the existence of competing interests will be masked by the Editor-in-Chief to prevent the disclosure of the identity of authors from reviewers. If a confidentiality agreement bounds authors from disclosing competing interests, they will be required to state this while submitting the manuscript. Where applicable, the published research work will include a statement of the competing interests.

Application to Editors
JEMSPRO editorial board members must declare any interests financial or otherwise that may influence their editorial practices. Failure to declare competing interest, the editorial member (s) will be subjected to disciplinary action.

4. Intellectual  Property
Unless stated otherwise, the author (s) retain the copyright of research work published by JEMSPRO. For an article to be published by JEMSPRO, authors are required to grant the publisher the rights to publish their research work in any specified format or language for any legal purpose. The published work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Authors are free to post their published research work on their websites or that of their institution. 

5. Similarity
Plagiarism is the deliberate attempt of an author to use another's work without permission or acknowledgement. Plagiarism ranges from self-plagiarism when an author duplicates their prior published research work without adequately referencing, to author (s) copying and pasting large amounts of text and passing it off as their own. Submitted manuscripts will undergo a similarity test before proceeding to the review process. As well, JEMSPRO will scan and compare submitted articles with the CrossCheck database. If plagiarism becomes evident after publication, JEMSPRO may correct or retract the article depending on the level of plagiarism and the general integrity of the published research work.

6. Corrections and Retractions
In line with the JEMSPRO publishing policies, the journal corrects and retracts research work post-publication. Once JEMSPRO is indexed with CrossRef, it will incorporate the Crossmark button on the online PDF of the published research work and the HTML. Crossmark will make it possible for readers to tell if the version of the research article they are reading is the latest. A click of the Crossmark button will give readers information on the amendments made to the published research work. The journal may correct errors made by the author (s) that may affect their reputation or the overall integrity of the published work. In the same way, changes may be made for errors made by JEMSPRO that may affect the reputation of the author or journal and the overall integrity of the published article. Finally, an addendum is published if supplementary information that is essential to the readers understanding of the published work become known post-publication.

7. Guidelines for Reviewers
The review of submitted manuscripts is done by independent reviewers that are experts in the academic field of the authors. The reviewer has a vital role in assessing the suitability of the manuscript for publication with JEMSPRO and offering suggestions that would improve the overall quality of the manuscript. As highlighted in JEMSPRO's service charter, manuscripts will undergo quality and relevance check by the editorial board. The next step is the invitation of reviewers via e-mail. The invitation will include the abstract of the manuscript so that they can gauge if they are suitable to review the manuscript in question. Reviewers that accept the invitation are required to e-mail the editor-in-chief for the full manuscript. Reviewers must sign an agreement form not to disclose any information about manuscripts that they are reviewing. Reviewers will be required to complete the review process in two weeks, and inform the editor-in-chief if they require an extension of the deadline. Reviewers must adhere to the following:

  1. Only agree to review manuscripts in their area of expertise.
  2. Uphold confidentiality and be unbiased in reviewing manuscripts.
  3. In line with the principle of confidentiality, they must dispose of the manuscript they have reviewed.
  4. They should decline to review a manuscript if they encounter any conflict of interest. v. Review the manuscript on time as per JEMSPRO's service charter.

8. Research Ethics
JEMSPRO upholds the ethical conduct of research work. In that regard, authors must adhere to the following:

  1. For research work involving humans and animals, it is a must for authors to provide evidence of adherence to national standards of conducting such research.
  2. Authors must provide evidence that relevant bodies have approved their research, especially authors conducting studies involving animal experiments.
  3. For research work that involved humans, the author (s) must provide evidence of informed consent from the participants.
  4. If authors conducted experiments involving animals, they should clearly state the measures they undertook to reduce discomfort and pain for the animals.
  5. If editors feel they require supplementary information from authors, they should request such information.
  6. Editors have the right to reject manuscripts that do not meet the standards for publication by JEMSPRO.

9. How to report misconduct
Authors are encouraged to direct complaints against the journal for any issue(s) that arises during the publication process to the e-mail: complaints@jemspro.org.