Policies and Ethics

Policies and Ethics

Informatics Journals is a Sustainable Publisher – we encourages Digital Publishing, have adopted Green Open Access and are also an Eco-friendly publisher

Informatics Journals follows the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy to promote Open Publishing.

• Our Editorial Boards are Diverse in composition.
• Authors can include identity markers in the demographic studies for a more inclusive research.
• Article Processing Charge waivers are provided as per journal policy to Low-income Researchers.

We encourage public engagement in the scientific findings and also to boost the impact of research.

We have mandated our Authors to deposit the raw data in trusted repositories such as Figshare, Dryad or Institutional Repositories. The standardized metadata in these repositories will help other researchers’ access and reuse data when needed.

Reuse of such data by other researchers helps to replicate findings, conduct secondary analyses and by doing this, the accountability is built and scientific research is verifiable.

Research work which impacts or influences policy, technology etc, has a high impact and encourages applied research with practical benefits. Authors are encouraged to update the journal about any recognition to their research that has influenced

• Policies
• Technology
• Practice
• Practical Benefits from Applied Research

JOURNAL POLICIES

Journal of Information and Knowledge recommends that authors follow the Recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

I Open Access Policy

II Submission Policy

There is no Charge/Fee for submitting manuscripts to Journal of Information and Knowledge. It is completely FREE.

III Peer-review Policy

All the manuscripts submitted to Journal of Information and Knowledge will be subjected to Double Blind Peer Review process. The Double Blind Peer Review is practiced with the intention that there is a fair review to help improve the research submission.

• Double Blind Peer Review--- Authors are kept anonymous. Reviewers will not know who the author is for the manuscript assigned to them. Likewise the author will not be aware of who the reviewer is for their manuscript.
• The manuscript will be reviewed by two suitable experts in the subject area of the submission.
• The review reports from both the reviewers will be considered while deciding on acceptance/revision or rejection of a manuscript.
• Editor-In-Chief (EIC) will make the final decision, based on reviewer’s comments.
• EIC can ask one or more editorial board members for their suggestions upon a manuscript, before making the final decision.
• Associate editors and review editors provide the administrative support to maintain the integrity of peer review process.
• Authors need to make the necessary changes based on review comments before it is considered for acceptance.
• Canvassing in any form, at any stage of the article will lead to rejection of the manuscript.
• Duration of review process from the time the manuscript is assigned to a reviewer, would be close to 45 working days.
• The article accepted for publication will be queued for the next issue of publication.

IV Licensing Policy

CC BY-NC-ND

This license enables re-users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in un-adapted form only, for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:

BY: credit must be given to the creator.
NC: Only non-commercial uses of the work are permitted.
ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.

V Archiving Policy

This journal utilizes the Library of Congress system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration..

VI Advertisement Policy

Currently there is no policy to accept advertisements. However, if the publishers along with the editorial team decide to accept commercial advertisements, a policy would be drafted appropriately.

VII Informed Consent

Informed consent is a process where in the health care provider educates a patient about the risks, benefits and also of any alternatives for a given procedure or intervention. The patient must be competent to make a voluntary decision. The Informed Consent is ethical as well as a legal obligation for medical practitioners. The Informed Consent Form is signed by the patient where in the entire procedure/intervention details are outlined.

All authors/Researchers submitting original research work which discusses about patient case studies, should obtain their consent prior to submitting the research work for review. The detailed set of consent form(s) as the case maybe should be submitted along with the manuscript. Each consent form should contain the clause of voluntarily consenting for the Procedure/intervention/making their case available to public as the case maybe.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) supports international ethical standards related to research and publication of research that relate to vulnerable groups and individuals. Examples of standards include WMA Declaration of Helsinki-Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (affirmed July 2018), The Belmont Report, and Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. These standards require that vulnerable populations and individuals from these populations receive specifically considered protections by all involved in the research enterprise, such as researchers and their teams, research sponsors and funders, the relevant research ethics approval committees, authors, editors, reviewers and publishers. (Source: The protection of vulnerable groups and individuals | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics)

Research involving vulnerable populations, such as children, older adults, and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, necessitates stringent ethical considerations to ensure the protection and well-being of participants. The journal is dedicated to upholding the highest ethical standards and requires all studies involving vulnerable populations to adhere to these comprehensive guidelines.

Research involving MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and agricultural professionals presents unique ethical and methodological challenges, particularly when participants are from vulnerable populations. The journal requires all studies involving MOOCs to adhere to these comprehensive guidelines to ensure the ethical conduct of research.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Journal of Information and Knowledge (JIK) is an electronic Double Blind peer reviewed journal upholding the highest standards. Informatics Journals, as a publisher adopts COPE’s best practice guidelines for dealing with ethical issues. The Journal Members (Editors, Editorial Board Members and the Editorial Manager) have consented to adopt the COPE as it meets the purpose and objective of the Journal.

The following is a summary of COPE’s international standards for authors of scholarly research publications and describes responsible research reporting practice.

• The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
• Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
• Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
• Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere.
• Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
• The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals' contributions to the work and its reporting.
• Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.

Articles not in accordance with publication ethics will be removed from publication if detected at any time. Plagiarism and research fabrication such as making up of data, manipulation of existing data, tables etc. and ethical clearance on the use of humans or animals for the study will also be checked. The journal reserves the right to use plagiarism detecting software to screen submitted papers at any time and suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing will be reported immediately.

I Authors Responsibility

• Their work is original
• Must not have been published elsewhere
• Other authors, contributors or sources should be appropriately credited
• They are responsible for language editing before submission
• Their work has not been copied or plagiarized in whole or part from any other work
• The financial support and conflict of interest for the project / research work if any should be disclosed
• They are obliged to notify the editor if any error or inaccuracy is discovered and cooperate with the editor to correct the same

Articles should be submitted using online procedures. Simultaneous publication in more than one publication is a breach of publication ethics.

II Editor's Responsibility

• The submitted manuscript undergoes Double-blind peer review before publishing
• They will strive to prevent any conflict of interest between the author and editorial and review personnel
• All the information related to the submitted manuscript is kept confidential prior to publishing

III Publisher Responsibilities

• Published content is not manipulated or changed.
• Authors, Editors and Reviewers adhere to their responsibilities and work flow.
• Appropriate consent is sought from authors prior to publishing the content.
• There is no Copyright or License violations.
• All content is published in accordance to the Policy and Ethics statement of the Journal.

IV Reviewers Responsibility

• Reviews the manuscript and provides suitable comments for improvement
• Promptness in notifying the editor about his inability to review the manuscript
• Maintains confidentiality about the manuscript obtained for review, by not discussing with others
• Standards of Objectivity preserved by reviewing the manuscripts objectively with clear views and supporting arguments and without any personal criticism
• Acknowledgement of Sources
• All References not cited by author should be removed. All citations should be accompanied with any previously reported observation, derivation or argument.
• The editors should be intimated for any overlap of the reviewed manuscript with any other published paper.
• Disclosures and Conflict of Interest – manuscripts having conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or any other relationships or connections with institutions connected to the paper will not be considered.

V Manuscript Withdrawal Policy

Authors must abide by these policies after submission of their manuscript.

• Authors must provide their consent to publish their manuscript prior to peer-review process. Withdrawing an already confirmed manuscript after it has been accepted would attract a minimal article handling charge.
• If the author withdraws the article after acceptance of the manuscript and payment has also been made, there will be NO REFUND of the Article Processing Charge (APC) already paid.
• If a Manuscript is withdrawn over indexing issues, NO REFUND will be made.

VI Waiver Policy

• JIK may grant the partial/full waiver in article processing charges to those authors who are unable to pay the APCs due to financial crisis.
• Only the authors from low income countries can apply for waiver.
• Waiver is applicable for one article per year for each submitting author.

Please send your waiver requests to editor@informaticsglobal.ai

VII Copyright Policies

All the articles published are distributed under a Creative Commons license. The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright of their work. For Informatics Journals to Publish and Disseminate research articles, we only require the Publishing Rights. This can be done by a Transfer of Publishing Rights only to Informatics Publishing Limited, authors retain the rights to share and use their work.

VIII Disclaimer

The author(s) of each article appearing in this Journal is/are solely responsible for the content thereof; neither the JIK nor its editors or publisher or anyone else involved in creating, producing or distribution assumes any liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in the Journal, nor shall they be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising out of the use of JIK.

IX Plagiarism

For every Journal, the peer review process is at the heart of the success of publishing. As part of our commitment to the protection and enhancement of the peer review process, The JIK would like to ensure that all published articles are within the accepted level of plagiarism. The Journal uses the very well and widely accepted Plagiarism Detection tool, iThenticate. All submitted Manuscripts are first subjected to Plagiarism check and then the Publishing cycle begins.

In case, plagiarism is detected during review/editorial process, such manuscript(s) will be rejected immediately and we can also consider other steps depending upon the seriousness of the case. If the plagiarism is proven after publication, such manuscript(s) will be removed from our website and appropriate announcement will be placed in this regards. Further, "JIK" can bring such instances in notice of author's funding agencies, author's institutes (where they work) and to the original authors whose work has been plagiarized. Please report the plagiarism to editor@informaticsglobal.ai

X Animal & Human Rights

While reporting experiments on human subjects, you should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional). While reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether you adhered to the guidelines of an institution, national research council governing the care and use of laboratory animals.

XI Generative AI author policies

With the rise in Generative AI and AI assisted technologies, a few policies have been developed to provide transparency and guidance to authors, reviewers, editors as well as to the readers.

For authors

• Scientific or Research writing using Generative AI or AI assisted tools
• The analytical insights drawn using AI tools from the Research Data does not form a part of this policy
• Generative AI or AI assisted tools should be used only to further improve the language and readability of the work.
• While using such tools, there has to be Human intervention to assess and decide the suggested changes etc. This is essential as AI can at times provide changes or information which can be incorrect or maybe biased too. The author/s will be responsible ultimately for the content of the work.
• Authors should disclose the use of AI and AI-assisted tools in their work, A statement to that effect has to be mentioned in the Manuscript. This is essential as it ensures transparency and creates a trust amongst all.
• Ai and AI- assisted tools cannot be declared as an author or co-author for a manuscript. This cannot be cited too. Authorship, creates an ownership and responsibility for the content that is being published. Each author is responsible to answer any questions raised about the work.
• Figures, images and any other art work – use of AI or assisted AI is not permitted. Even altering or Image manipulation is strictly disallowed. If however, the AI or AI-assisted tool has been used for any imaging and even interpretation, the same has to be described in the methodology section and attributed in the associated figure, image etc.

For reviewers

• Peer Review using AI and AI-assisted tools.
• The manuscript assigned for reviewing is confidential. So, the reviewers cannot upload a portion of this document or whole of it into any AI tools as this is in violation of the authors’ confidentiality and also proprietary rights. Additionally I the manuscript contains any personal information, it is a breach of data privacy.
• The report generated by a peer reviewer is equally confidential. As, it may contain confidential information about the manuscript. So, reviewers have to refrain from uploading the document into any AI tools, even to improve language and readability.
• Reviewers are responsible for the scientific review they provide and this can be attributed to a human being. AI or AI-assisted tools cannot be used to review a scientific paper, since the critical thinking, assessment are all out of scope for a tool. There also could be incorrect technology generated. Reviewer is responsible and accountable for the review report and review of the content.

For editors

• Editorial process using AI and AI-assisted tools.
• Every Manuscript submitted to the journal is a confidential proprietary document. Editors should not upload the whole or part of the manuscript into any AI or AI-assisted tool and thus violate the confidentiality and Proprietary right of the Author.

XII Corrections and Retraction Policy

As per COPEs best practice guidelines.