Journal Policies

Journal Policies

This is the statement of ethics for APJ published by Penerbit Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin Malaysia (UniSZA Press). This statement was adapted from the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and covers the code of ethics for Editor-in-Chief, editorial board members, reviewers and authors.

Article Assessment

All manuscripts are subject to approval by the editor. Prerequisite that the manuscripts complete peer review and satisfy the standard of academic excellence. Peer reviewers' identities will remain anonymous to the authors. Authors are allowed to mention excluded reviewers in their cover letters. However, the handling editor is not obliged to honour this information due to editorial requirements in peer review.

Our Research Integrity committee may consult experts and the academic editor beyond standard peer review for the case of submission with severe ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications before imposing appropriate actions. This action also includes but is not limited to recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to proceed for further submission consideration.

Plagiarism

The use of any words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution is prohibited. Authors must cite relevant sources at the point they are used, limit the reuse of wording, and attribute or quote the resources in the text.

The Asian People Journal utilises the Turnitin Similarity Report to recognise submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts. 

If the manuscript is proven to be plagiarised from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, the editor has the right to reject the manuscript. The authors may incur sanctions, and any published articles may need to be amended or revoked.

Duplicate Submission and Redundant Publication

The Asian People Journal considers only original, unpublished content, including contents of articles written in a language other than English. The content of articles that were previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered.

Authors are advised to withdraw manuscripts submitted to the Asian People Journal if the manuscript was submitted elsewhere. Manuscripts that are found to have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere may be revoked, and the authors may incur sanctions.

If the content of the manuscript was taken from the author's previously published work or work under review, that previous article must be cited in the submitted manuscripts. The authors must clarify how the submitted manuscript differs from the previous one. Reuse of the authors’ own words outside the Methods should be attributed or quoted in the text. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission if the reuse of authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording requires permission from copyright holders.

The Asian People Journal will consider extended versions of articles published at conferences. It required that the authors declare this information in the cover letter and the previous version be cited and discussed. Also, there is significant new content, and any necessary permissions are obtained. 

Manuscripts that are found to be redundant publications may result in rejection. Manuscripts that went through the inappropriate division of study outcomes into more than one article (salami slicing) may request to merge submitted manuscripts and the correction of published articles. Authors may incur sanctions, and the article may be revoked if the publication is found to be a duplicate of the same or a very similar article.

 

Citation Manipulation

Editors and reviewers are prohibited from demanding authors to include references merely for manipulation purposes. Such as increasing their citations or an associate’s work, increasing the journal citations, or going to another associated journal. 

Fabrication and Falsification

Any fabricated or falsified results and manipulated images will not be tolerated. The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles may incur sanctions, and published articles may be revoked.

Authorship and Acknowledgements

Authors who made a significant scientific contribution to the manuscripts must be listed. All listed authors must have made a notable scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript, approved its claims, and agreed to be an author.

Anyone who is not an author who contributed to the research or manuscript preparation should be acknowledged with their permission. The journal will not consider submissions by anyone other than one of the authors.

Conflicts of Interest

Any issues apart from research that could be reasonably perceived to influence the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment must be declared to avoid a conflict of interest (COI). The declaration must be made to facilitate an informed decision on whether or not the potential conflicts of interest influenced the research. Usually, this declaration will not stop work from being published, nor will it always prevent someone from being involved in a review process.

Authors can discuss with the editorial office if they are unsure of declaring a potential interest. The editorial office may reject any submission with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed. Published manuscripts may need to be re-assessed, have a corrigendum published, or, in severe cases, be retracted.

Conflicts include the following:

• Financial—funding and other payments, goods, and services received or expected by the authors associating with the subject of the work or from an organisation with interest in consequence of the work
• Affiliations—being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organisation with interest in consequence of the work
• Intellectual property—patents or trademarks held by someone or their organisation
• Personal—friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections
• Ideology—beliefs or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work
• Academic—competitors or someone whose work is critiqued

AUTHORSHIP AND COLLABORATION

Name of authors listed in a paper should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the report. Only those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the work must be acknowledged or listed as contributors. It is the duty of the corresponding author to ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper.  All co-authors must approve the final version of the paper and agree to the version of the paper before submission.

MULTIPLE OR REDUNDANT

Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research output in more than one journal or primary publication. A similar manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal concurrently as this constitutes as unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.