Responsibilities of Editors

Decisions on publication

The editor is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal should be published. The editor's decision should be based on the importance of the research to the research community, its novelty, clarity of presentation, applicability, and impact, as well as correlation to the journal's aims and scope. Editorial decisions are based upon unbiased assessments of manuscripts without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or the authors' political alignment. The editor must be aware of libel, copyright, and plagiarism considerations.

Confidentiality

Editors may not disclose any information regarding a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other members of the editorial board, and the publisher when appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editors and editorial board members may not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts for their own research purposes without the author's express written permission.

Editorial Board

Editorial board members who submit work to the journal are not allowed to participate in the review process aside from their role as authors. They must declare any conflicts of interest, and no member shall seek to influence the review process.

 

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Editorial board contribution

The peer-review process is an integral part of the academic publication, as it helps the editor and editorial board assess the quality and legitimacy of a piece while offering the author(s) insight into how they may improve their work.

Promptness

Reviewers should notify the editor immediately if they feel unqualified to review a manuscript or cannot complete a review on time. This will assist the editor instantly in assigning the manuscript to another, better-suited reviewer.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts submitted for review are confidential and should not be disclosed to anyone except the reviewer and editor assigned to the review process. The reviewer should not be disclosed publicly later unless the editor permits the manuscript to be published elsewhere. To disclose this information compromises the trust between the authors, reviewers, and editors and places the author in a position of potential unscrupulous behavior later on. Without confidentiality, there are concerns of professional misconduct and a need for an appropriate and unbiased atmosphere.

Standards of Objectivity

Reviewers must be objective. The arguments presented in a work must be logically sound and supported. Reviewers should avoid personal criticism of the author.

Sources’ Acknowledgment

Reviewers must ensure all relevant published works are cited in the reference manuscript of the manuscript. Works with ideas taken from other published works must be cited as appropriate. If reviewers observe that the article under review is substantially similar to or overlaps with any other published manuscript, they must notify the editor.

 

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must not take any advantage of unpublished materials revealed during the peer-review process for personal benefit. Reviewers must recuse themselves from the review process if they have conflicts of interest stemming from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any authors, institutions, or commercial sponsors related to this journal or publication.

 

Responsibilities of Authors

Reporting Standards

Authors should be honest and objective about their findings, yet simultaneously provide a definitive assessment of the importance of the research. Manuscripts are supposed to present factual, falsifiable claims and findings so detailed in the steps taken that anyone could replicate the work. Furthermore, citations and bibliographies are required to give credit to the efforts of others and provide support for one's intention to try new efforts. Therefore, any embellishment, deception, or intentional omission runs against the ethics and the integrity of scholarship.

Data access and retention

Authors must submit the underlying research data for their manuscript during the review process. Such data should be publicly available when appropriate. If data cannot be made publicly available, authors must make it accessible to competent third-party investigators for a minimum of ten years post-publication. The ideal location for such accessibility is an author's institutional repository, a subject-based repository, or a recognized data repository. However, the author may choose not to provide access to such data when participant confidentiality requirements and legal or proprietary restrictions apply.

Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgement of sources

The author's responsibility is to ensure that all manuscripts are original. No unpublished work of authorship or previously plagiarized works may be utilized. All borrowed thoughts, writings, and findings should be cited, and those works cited that had the most impact upon this research should be acknowledged. Citing and crediting work not only avoids potential concerns of scholarly misconduct but also enhances the authenticity and credibility of the endeavor.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications

The submission must be original and not submitted to other journals for publication. If the work was already published and the author holds no more copyright, it is no longer original. If another journal is considering the work, it is not original. Therefore, any work submitted here is the author's since they will hold it as their own upon publication, as long as the work is used per Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows everyone else to share, transform, and build upon the work commercially and non-commercially, as long as proper attribution goes to the original author.

Paper’s authorship

The authorship criteria state that proposed authors meet the definition of authorship by making a significant intellectual contribution to the manuscript from conception and design to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Those who contribute significantly to a manuscript (however defined) are co-authors, and the co-authors' order denotes the contribution level. Thus, someone who has not contributed considerably should not be afforded authorship. The corresponding author ensures that all authors have reviewed and approved the submitted version before submission.

 Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors must disclose in the manuscript all financial or other relationships that could be viewed as having a potential conflict of interest. Authors must also disclose sponsorship.

 Fundamental errors in published works

If an author finds a mistake or inaccuracy in their already published work, they must inform the journal editor or publisher immediately. The author should work closely with the editor to correct the paper and issue an erratum.

Research Misconduct

The Iraqi Journal of Physics is against research misconduct and will pursue any and all means to prevent fraudulent research from being published in The Iraqi Journal of Physics. Research misconduct is not a universally applied term; however, in accordance with the Council of Editors, it falls under these three categories:

• Mistreatment of research subjects
• Falsification and fabrication of results
• Plagiarism

Falsification and Fabrication of data

Fabrication is the creation of data that was neither gathered nor analyzed. Falsification is the deliberate change of significant research data or findings. Falsification and fabrication can occur at any stage, from data collection to final publication. The Iraqi Journal of Physics tries to prevent, find, and address fabrication and falsification during the submission and peer review stages. Should any falsification or fabrication of data be determined, a retraction or manuscript withdrawal will occur. The Iraqi Journal of Physics abides by the Council on Editors' policy.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or abuse of another person's and/or entity's ideas, processes, results, or words without proper acknowledgment. There is also a form of plagiarism called self-plagiarism, whereby an author publishes the same article in multiple journals for personal gain without distinguishing where the article should be published. The Iraqi Journal of Physics uses various methods to detect plagiarism and follows the COPE guidelines in adjusting such unethical scholarly actions.
Adherence to these policies ensures the Iraqi Journal of Physics adheres to ethical publishing practices and research integrity.