Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Journal of System and Management Sciences is committed to publishing and widely disseminating high-quality contents. It is critical that the editorial operations of JSMS be governed by rigorous ethical standards that are both transparent and fair. We recognize that the scholarly publishing ecosystem is complex and includes editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers. Our expectation is that all involved have a shared understanding and acceptance of JSMS’s policies on publication ethics and malpractice. Our policies are closely aligned with COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Core Practices document, COPE Core Practices.

Particularly,

Editor's responsibilities

Publication decisions
It is the responsibility of the editor to make a decision upon which of the papers submitted to the journal be published. The editor will evaluate manuscripts without any discrimination upon the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. Any decision made upon the submitted paper is based on the paper’s relevance to the journal's scope, significance, originality and clarity, and validity of the study. Of course, ethical issues like copyright infringement and plagiarism must also be considered.
Confidentiality
Any information about a submitted manuscript MUST NOT be disclosed by the editor or the editorial board members to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
The editor or the members of the editorial board MUST NOT use any unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Authors' responsibilities

Reporting standards
Authors must present their original research work with an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. Authors should make sure sufficient details and references be contained in their paper to allow other researchers to replicate the work, which is methodologically replicable. JSMS does not accept/consider any fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior in the submissions.
Data access and retention
A data access statement should be provided by the authors in case that the raw data of their study be requested to provide for the editors or readers of their published work. Accessibility of such data to other competent professionals should be ensured for at least five years after publication.
Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources
Only entirely original works should be submitted. Authors must cite or quote the others’ work in an appropriate way. Any publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work MUST also be correctly and precisely cited.  All submissions must be checked for plagiarism with a similarity report (i.e. iAuthentic, Turnitin etc.) before going to fast check process by the EiC. Submission with similarity index higher than 20% will not be considered until the authors make necessary changes to reduce the similarity of their papers.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication
JSMS strictly does not allow multiple, redundant or concurrent publication. We strongly regard it as unacceptable to submit the same study to JSMS while submitting to other journals being considered or under review. Papers having been published elsewhere MUST NOT be submitted. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it.

Authorship of the paper
Authorship is very serious. For JSMS, only those who have made significant contribution like conceptualization, research design, execution and/or interpretation of the reported research work should be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author should make sure no uninvolved person be listed. Only one corresponding author is allowed for JSMS. He/she must verify that all co-authors have agreed to its final version of the paper for publication in JSMS.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Financial or other substantive conflicts of interest which may affect the results or interpretation of the paper must be stated and disclosed by the author(s) in their paper (usually the end of the paper). A statement about the financial support for the project should be disclosed if there is any.

Fundamental errors in published works
When a significant error or inaccuracy has been found in his/her own published work, the author MUST notify the editor/publisher immediately and take necessary and prompt action to work with the editor to retract or correct the paper, usually in the form of an erratum.

Policy on informed consent for human subjects

All research papers submitted to the Journal of System and Management Sciences involving Human Subjects must be conducted in accordance with accepted ethical and professional standards. Specifically, If the work involves the use of human subjects, a statement clearly declaring that all procedures had been conducted according to relevant laws and institutional guidelines and under the approval of appropriate institutional committee(s) must be presented in the paper by the author(s). In addition, a statement in the paper should be included in the paper saying that the authors have obtained informed consent for experimentation with human subjects. All privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

For human subjects, the author(s) MUST ensure that the work described has been conducted according to The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. 

Authors should obtain suitable and appropriate consents, permissions and releases if he/she wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals. Moreover he/she should retain a copy of written consents. If necessary, the EiC keeps the right to request the author to submit a copy of the consents.

Reviewers' responsibilities

Contribution to editorial decisions
Solid and convincing reviewer comments are essential for the editor and the editorial board to make editorial decisions. In addition, suggestions from the reviewers are very important for the authors to improve the paper.
Promptness
Reviews must be conducted in a prompt manner to ensure the publication schedule be matched. Editors should carefully select appropriate reviewers who are qualified to review the submission in a prompt way. If he/she cannot promptly review the paper, he/she should inform the editor and the review process must be withdrawn.
Confidentiality
All manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents which must not be disclosed to or discussed with third parties unless authorized by the editor.
Standards of objectivity
Reviewers should conduct the review objectively. All personal criticism about the author(s) should not be include and deemed as inappropriate. Reviewers should present their views on the research paper clearly with supporting and convincing arguments.

Conflicts of interest
The reviewers MUST NOT have any conflict of interests with any of the authors in the paper(s) he or she reviews, that is, he/she should be have anything overlap (for example, same affiliation in the past 5 years, co-authorship with any of the authors, working relationship with any of the authors and so on). Reviewers are not encouraged to ask the authors to cite their papers either.