Research Misconduct Policy
IJIRG has a systematic protocol to deal with allegations of misconduct, whether before publication or after the publication of a manuscript.
To deal with issues of misconduct, IJIRG has an Ethics Advisory Panel, which consists of,
a). A team of senior researchers and experts associated with IJIRG as Editors in different fields.
b). A team of experts in legal and corporate affairs, who provide suggestions to other members of The Ethics Advisory Panel on issues, which require legal/corporate communications.
c). IJIRG senior publication team at the Editorial Office, which manages communication between a and b and executes decisions put forward by the Ethics Advisory Panel.
When a complaint is received, IJIRG senior publication team communicates with the members of the Ethics Advisory Panel to seek their counsel. The Ethics Advisory Panel carefully reviews the case and advises on ethical issues and decisions, as per core practices and guidelines of COPE. https://publicationethics.org/core-practices
- Data Fabrication/Data Falsification
Recommended Action:
In case of any claim/complaint/findings related to the Data Fabrication or Falsification, the journal will communicate the complaint to the corresponding author and ask him to provide his justifications (if any), or if he fails to defend, the journal will involve his institution or the company in which he is employed. The overall matter will be dealt with according to the protocols recommended by the COPE.
- Duplicate Submission/Publication and Redundant Publication
IJIRG recommends its authors to avoid duplicate or redundant submissions/publications. The submitted manuscript should be original and should not have been submitted previously to any other journal. Checking for duplicate articles is a simple comparison of the relevant texts in both articles of concern. This can be a simple side-by-side comparison by the journal editor for simpler forms of duplicate publication or a more thoughtful analysis by the editor if the same research or a single research project has apparently been inappropriately written as separate articles. The overall case will be dealt with according to the protocols of COPE.
- Duplication of Text and/or Figures (Plagiarism)
If the complaint is related to plagiarism, IJIRG senior publications team will compare the referred text to that of the manuscript on a word-to-word basis. If significant overlapping is observed, then the Editor-in-chief of the journal will be consulted. The Editor-in-chief may involve other members of the Editorial Board or external reviewers. After careful consultation, IJIRG senior publications team will write to the corresponding author of the manuscript, summarizing the complaint and requesting them to provide a reasonable explanation. If they are unable to provide a reasonable explanation, then the team will write to the institution/company they are associated with. The overall cases will be handled according to the protocols recommended by the COPE.
- Authorship Issues
Authors must provide a final list of authors at the time of submission, ensuring the correct sequence of the names of authors, which will not be considered for any addition, deletion or rearrangement after final submission of the manuscript. If a change is essentially required, it can only be done on an Editor’s approval, for which the Editor-in-chief must receive the following from the corresponding author:
- The reason for a change in the author list and the sequence.
- Confirmation is a prerequisite from all the co-authors for any amendment or removal.
If the manuscript has already been published online, requests approved thereafter by the Editor-in-chief will result in an erratum or corrigendum.
- Undeclared Conflict of Interest (CoI)
The complainant is made aware that CoI matters cannot be investigated unless the journal Editor-in-chief informs the corresponding (or complained-about) author (through due process) and possibly the institution or company at which the research took place.
The overall cases will be handled according to the COPE guidelines.
- Suspected Manipulation of Peer Review/Bias of Peer Review
IJIRG asks reviewers to declare and mention any conflict of interest that could affect the standard of the peer review and could result in a biased decision. This includes professional affiliations. The reviewers are also advised not to use the information of any manuscript for their own interest until or unless that work gets published.
In case of any claim or complaint against a reviewer, journal will communicate the complaint to the reviewer and ask him to provide his explanation. If the reviewer fails to defend the assertions in the complaint, IJIRG will involve his affiliation or employer. The overall matter will be dealt with according to the recommended policies of COPE.
- Manipulation of Citations
Journal has a centralized system for identifying excessive self-citations when such a case arises. Authors are recommended to provide a reasonable justification, and then after consultation with the Editor-in-chief, the final decision is made on a case-to-case basis. IJIRG discourages the Editors and Reviewers from recommending the citation of their own/peers’ previous work just to gain false citation. Such cases are dealt with as per standard protocols of COPE.
- Violation of Research Ethics
In the communication to the author in question, journal’s Editor-in-chief is requested to indicate whether the matter is likely to be referred to the institution or company where the research took place. Ethical issues will be handled according to the protocols of COPE: