2.Duties of Reviewers

2.1.Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of the scientific endeavour. Management & Economics Research Journal shares the view of many that all scholars who wish to contribute to the scientific process have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.

2.2.Promptness

Any invited reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

2.3.Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

2.4.Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

2.5.Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.

2.6.Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Any invited reviewer who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors (i.e. affiliated with the same institution), companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Editors-in-chief, editors, and reviewers should attempt to recognize and avoid all real or potential conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety.

• - Editors and reviewers should recuse themselves from handling the peer review of any manuscript for which they have a conflict of interest or might be perceived as having a conflict of interest. This includes manuscripts from colleagues at their home institutions, close collaborators, recent mentors, and current and recent students.
• - Editors and reviewers should avoid processing manuscripts in which they have a financial interest that could potentially influence their recommendations.
• - Editors and reviewers should avoid processing manuscripts if they have had a previous connection to the research, such as having advised the authors or having read a draft of the manuscript.
• - If editors or reviewers have a strong theoretical or personal bias in regard to a manuscript’s topic or author(s) that they perceive, upon honest reflection, could interfere with their objective evaluation of the manuscript, they should withdraw from the editorial review process.
• - Even if prospective reviewers feel confident that the existence of one or more of these potential conflicts of interest would not intrude upon their objectivity, they should protect the credibility of the review process by avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest and decline to review the manuscript.
• - If editors or reviewers are aware of previous work that is directly germane to the work being reported, they may recommend that the author consider the inclusion of such material in the manuscript. However, editors-in-chief, editors, and reviewers should not take advantage of their positions in a self-serving fashion. In regard to their own publications, editors-in-chief, editors, and reviewers may suggest to an author that citation of their own work might be appropriate in the author’s manuscript, but insisting on or coercing the inclusion of such citations is inappropriate.

2.7. Honest Play

Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

3.Duties of Authors

3.1.Reporting standards

Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, while editorial 'opinion' identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

3.2.Data access and retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

3.3.Originality and plagiarism

Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from "passing off" another's paper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

3.4.Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication

Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable.

3.5.Authorship of the manuscript

3.5.1.Why Authorship Matters?

Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for published work. The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors, but also that contributors credited as authors understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for what is published.

Because authorship does not communicate what contributions qualified an individual to be an author, some journals now request and publish information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in a submitted study, at least for original research. Editors are strongly encouraged to develop and implement a contributorship policy. Such policies remove much of the ambiguity surrounding contributions, but leave unresolved the question of the quantity and quality of contribution that qualify an individual for authorship. The Management & Economics Research Journal has thus adopted criteria for authorship that can be used by all journals, including those that distinguish authors from other contributors.

3.5.2.Who Is an Author?

The Management & Economics Research Journal recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• - Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
• - Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
• - Final approval of the version to be published;
• - Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

The individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria and ideally should do so when planning the work, making modifications as appropriate as the work progresses. We encourage collaboration and co-authorship with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted. It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institution(s) where the work was performed, not the journal editor, should be asked to investigate. The criteria used to determine the order in which authors are listed on the byline may vary, and are to be decided collectively by the author group and not by editors.

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal editor. To request such a change, the editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of the addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.

Only in exceptional circumstances will the editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the editor will be made via an erratum.

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the Management & Economics Research Journal recommends that editors send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group authors. They will also be expected as individuals to complete disclosure forms.

Some large multi-author groups designate authorship by a group name, with or without the names of individuals. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and clearly identify the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors. The byline of the article identifies who is directly responsible for the manuscript, and Management & Economics Research Journal lists as authors whichever names appear on the byline. If the byline includes a group name, Management & Economics Research Journal will list the names of individual group members who are authors or who are collaborators, sometimes called non-author contributors, if there is a note associated with the byline clearly stating that the individual names are elsewhere in the paper and whether those names are authors or collaborators.

3.5.3.Non-Author Contributors

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are the acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g."Participating Investigators"), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors", "collected data", "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript").

Because acknowledgment may imply endorsement by acknowledged individuals of a study’s data and conclusions, editors are advised to require that the corresponding author obtain written permission to be acknowledged from all acknowledged individuals.

3.6.Disclosure and conflicts of interest

As part of the manuscript submission process, authors are required to disclose any real or potential conflicts of interest that could be seen as having an influence on the research (Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include (financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript). All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed "including the grant number or other reference number if any".

Sources of outside support for research, including funding, equipment, and supplies, must be named during the submission process (and questions to that effect will be presented online to authors as part of the article submission process). In addition, authors must disclose any financial or other nonprofessional benefit(s) that might result from the publication of the manuscript and that reviewers or readers might consider to have affected the conduct or reporting of the work.

If the author is uncertain about what might be considered a conflict of interest, he or she should err on the side of full disclosure by reporting the potential conflict when requested to do so during submission. Information about conflicts of interest may be made available to reviewers at the editor’s discretion. The role(s) of the support organization, if any, in the collection of data, in its analysis and interpretation, and in the right to approve or disapprove publication of the finished manuscript also must be detailed during the submission process. If a support agency claims the right to approve/disapprove publication, the author should have completed this process by the time of manuscript submission.

If, in the editor’s judgment, the author has a real or potential conflict of interest, that conflict must be acknowledged with a disclosure statement on the first page of the article. Authors will be informed of this decision before acceptance.

3.7.Acknowledgement of sources

Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as reviewing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.

3.8.Peer review

Authors are obliged to participate in the peer-review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of "revisions necessary", authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

3.9.Fundamental errors in published works

When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper. For guidelines on retracting or correcting articles, please go to Guidelines for withdrawing a manuscript.

4.Duties of Publisher

4.1.Handling of unethical publishing behaviour

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

4.2.Access to journal content

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining our own digital archive. To learn more, please visit Copyright and Licensing.

5.Editors and journal staff as authors

Editors board members should not be involved in editorial decisions about their own scholarly work. Manuscripts from editors or employees of the journal, must have procedures in place for ensuring fair peer review in these instances. Management & Economics Resaerch Journal adopted policies for handling submissions from editors, members of their editorial boards, and employees:

• -Editors and journal staff should be made aware that they will be treated like any other author. They will not be given special treatment.
• -Editors and editorial team members are excluded from publication decisions when they are authors or have contributed to a manuscript.
• -Editors should generally not communicate directly with the authors and that is especially important if a member of the editorial board is among the authors. Thus they will not be given special treatment.
• -The review process must be made as transparent and rigorous as possible.
• -Provided every effort is made to minimise any bias in the review process by having another associate editor handle the peer review procedure independently of the editor, and the process is absolutely transparent.
• -The editor sends the manuscript out for review without any names on it.
• -As an extra precaution the editor might like to publish an accompanying commentary showing how transparent the reviewing process had been.