Best Practices

The journals published by Sukkur IBA University platform follow best practices that are applicable to all involved in publishing scholarly literature. These best practices are developed in line with specific national and international codes of conduct for research and are not intended to replace these.

Following are the areas covered under best practices:

1. Allegations of Misconduct

The following procedure will be followed in case of any complaint/allegation of misconduct.

Gather information: Who is making the complaint or raising the issue and who should then become involved?

  • External editor and internal publishing contact should always coordinate.
  • If complaints come into Sukkur IBA University through any source other than the publishing contact, the publishing contact should be contacted immediately.

Ultimately, who is the decision-maker regarding how to resolve and handle the complaint?

  • External journal editor (or society-owner for society journal):
    • As to the merits of the claim (plagiarism, scientific procedures, the context of the dispute, prior reported research, the background of parties).
    • Possibly in conjunction with other co-editors, members of the editorial board or society, peer reviewers, experts in the field selected by the editor.
    • Possibly in conjunction with the "other journal" editor or publisher (especially for multiple publication issues).
  • Sukkur IBA University may need to be involved to help document the dispute and its resolution and to provide specialist support from time to time:
    • Use the procedures outlined in this document.
    • The professional judgment of publishing contact or their manager about what "best practices" are with respect to the complaint made and its resolution.
    • Professional advice of one kind or another (Obtain an opinion from an external expert or Legal adviser).

When is an ethics complaint a "legal" matter that requires Sukkur IBA University legal review/support?

  • The “obvious” times:
    • Formal legal complaint or brief filed in court.
    • Letter from an attorney representing an "aggrieved" party.
    • A complaint is made about the infringement of a legal right such as copyright, moral rights, or a right of privacy.
  • The less obvious times:
    • Plausible (from a scientific perspective) conflicting claims from several parties which cannot be resolved by the editor through the methods and procedures outlined herein (suggesting that significant factual investigation will be required).
    • Where comment is made in a notice, expression of concern, corrigendum, or retraction that might be considered defamatory (this is automatically reviewed in the case of retractions).

Documenting the complaint/dispute

The publishing contact should always help the editor to record and document the claim. Inter alia they should:

  • Prepare an incident report with all factual questions (who, what, when, where, why) dealt with.
  • For plagiarism and duplicate publication issues obtain the respective texts/articles.

Due process for our authors

When the complaint is made against our author, the general rule will be that the journal editor should contact the author about whom a complaint has been made and the author is given the opportunity to respond/comment. The editor may decide on the basis of the author's response (e.g. if the author is responsive, articulates a clear and convincing position - and may draw inferences from the opposite as well).

Involve other bodies or agents?

Consider whether there are other bodies or agents that could or should be involved (if after some degree of investigation, there seems to be some merit in the complaint and the complaint seems one that would be more easily (and reasonably) investigated and solved by that other institution. Such institutions could include:

  • For plagiarism and duplicate publication, the other publisher or journal involved in publishing the other text.
  • For authorship and fraud claims, the institutions where the research was conducted.
  • For bias or unfair/inappropriate competitive acts, institutions that employ the alleged wrong-doer.
  • For the conflict of interest disclosure matters and violation of research standards, funding agency or employing institutions.
  • COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) does take on some matters, often more high-profile cases when other avenues are documented as failed.
  • Note that we will not necessarily be bound by a finding of an institution or agency if such finding is not deemed reasonable by the editor (or does not appear to us to be reasonable).

Responsibility to our authors

Although these procedures generally assume that it is our publication and author or co-authors who are complained about, it is possible that our authors will raise a complaint with us about another publication or author:

  • Usually, this should be a contact made by the journal editor to the editor of the other journal directly.
  • Procedures to be followed generally mirror the procedures outlined herein.

Remedies

  • In many cases, the communication of the complaint to the author and/or the authors' institution will in and of itself be considered a significant sanction.
  • Other remedies (these are not exclusive) may include (in order of severity):
    • Publication of a notice, corrigendum, or erratum in a future issue (which could also take the form of an "expression of concern").
    • Formal retraction of the article (watermarking the article to indicate it has been retracted and publication of a notice as to the reason.
    • The formal removal of the article (the actual deletion from the electronic record, a remedy suggested only for material that invades a subject’s privacy or could cause serious harm).
    • Publication of an editorial concerning the ethical issues raised and the journal’s decision concerning the issues.
    • The decision by the editorial board on future submissions by the author or author group.
  • All sanctions should be considered and weighed carefully by the editor-in-chief.

Caution regarding defamation claims

In carrying out any investigation, great care should be taken to act fairly and objectively and not to defame any author (or complainant) in any way, which could give rise to legal liabilities, including damages. To avoid defamation claims by authors, the following guidelines should be taken into account in the investigation:

  • Any inquiries of an author’s institution should be made in terms of an “alleged” or “apparent” violation. The inquiries should clearly state the facts and the allegation without premature judgment of the author’s culpability.
  • Information should be gathered carefully while imparting as little information as possible about the suspicion or accusation. To assist with information gathering, PERK provides form letters to use in investigating claims of unethical behavior.

2. Authorship and Contribution

All the journals published by Sukkur IBA University require to submit the credit statement during the submission process.

Credit offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to the published work.

  • The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the descriptions are accurate and agreed upon by all authors.
  • The role(s) of all authors should be listed, using the relevant categories.
  • Authors may have contributed in multiple roles.
  • Credit in no way changes the journal’s criteria to qualify for authorship.

Credit statements should be provided during the submission process and will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper as shown further below.

Term

Definition

Conceptualization

Ideas: formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims

Methodology

Development or design of methodology; creation of models

Software

Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components

Validation

Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs

Formal analysis

Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data

Investigation

Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection

Resources

Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools

Data Curation

Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data, and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse

Writing - Original Draft

Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)

Writing - Review & Editing

Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary, or revision – including pre-or post-publication stages

Visualization

Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation

Supervision

Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team

Project administration

Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution

Funding acquisition

Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication

Sample Credit author statement:

Zhang San: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software Priya Singh.: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Wang Wu: Visualization, Investigation. Jan Jansen: Supervision.: Ajay Kumar: Software, Validation.: Sun Qi: Writing- Reviewing and Editing,

3. Conflict of Interest/Competing interest

All the journals published by the Sukkur IBA University platform require to sign statement from Authors, Editors, and Reviewers for potential Conflict of Interest/Competing interest. Such statement is signed by Authors, Editors, and Reviewers during submission, editorial, and review process, respectively. 

4. Data and Reproducibility

All the journals published by the Sukkur IBA University platform encourage data availability and sharing for scientific use. Thus, the authors are required to opt for one or more than one out of the following data availability statements in the submitted paper:

  • The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].
  • The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).
  • The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON(S) WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
  • The data that support the findings of this study are available from [THIRD PARTY NAME] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [THIRD PARTY NAME].

5. Ethical oversight

All the journals published by the Sukkur IBA University platform need to mention whether the consent was taken from the subjects/government/community or relevant authorities for the use and disclosure of information that may involve the publication on a vulnerable population, research on animals, human subjects and confidential data. 

6. Post-publication discussion and corrections

The final version of the article after the editor's approval is shared with all authors of that article before publication to report any corrections required before the final publication on the journal website.