The Editor’s Responsibilities

• Establishing and maintaining quality of the journal by publishing quality papers.
• Promotion of freedom of expression within the cultural, constitutional/legal framework

Good practices

• Encouraging new ideas and suggestions for improving quality of Al-Mīthāq.
• Appling the process of blind peer review in its true letter and spirit.
• Promoting & implementing anti plagiarism & journal’s policy without institutional pressure.

Fair play and Impartiality

• Will ensure impartial evaluation of the content of research papers,
• Disregard the all discriminating factors during selection of articles, e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, etc. of author(s)

Confidentiality

• Confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the peer review process will be ensured
• Confidentiality of the participants of the research should also be ensured.
• Prior to publication, the content of the manuscript would be kept confidential

Editing and Formatting Guidelines

• Clear guidelines about preparing and formatting of a paper are available on Al-Mīthāq webpage.

The Review Process

• Articles are initially scrutinized and then go through double-blind peer review process.
• Sufficient guidelines along with a Reviewer’s Proforma are provided to reviewers.
• Sharing the reviewer’s comments with author and incorporation of suggested corrections.
• Referring troublesome cases to Advisory Committee.

Dealing with Misconduct

• Will encourages reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible misconduct.
• Confirmation of plagiarism through Turnitin and/or searching for similar titles etc.
• Will publish a corrigendum, remove and retract a plagiarized article.

Transparency

• Only one paper as a Principle Author should be published in the same issue.
• Editorial Board Members will only be limited to One paper per issue.
• Authorship & co-authorship policy will be strictly adopted.

Conflict of Interest

• The editors and reviewers will not edit a submitted paper for those author(s) and/or institution against which s/he has any conflicts of interest.

Disclosure

• will not use any unpublished information/data from the submitted research paper without the permission of the author(s)

 Publication Decisions

• Only shortlisted research papers relevant to the scope of the journal will be published after completion of the review process
• Acceptation or rejection of a paper will be based on academic standards.
• The Editor will justify the reason (s) of rejecting a research paper and will timely communicate the editorial decision to the author(s)

Procedure for Appeal

The Editor is responsible for establishing a proper mechanism for appeals launched against:

• The rejection of a research paper.
• Objections to publications causing harm to any party.
• Infringement of Ethical boundaries in any manner.