Prelude

Society and change is an international peer-reviewed and open access journal committed to ensuring the highest standards of publication ethics. All parties involved in the process of publishing (editors, reviewers, authors, and the publisher) have to agree upon standards of declared ethical behavior. The Journal states the principles of Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers by COPE.

Duties and Responsibilities of Key Parties

Duties of Editor/ Editor-in-Chief/Guest Editor

Editorial Independence

Editor-in-Chief will evaluate submitted manuscript solely based on the academic merit and Journal’s scope without any regard to author’s race, gender, sex, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, belief, political and or institutional affiliation. The decision of publication in terms of time and journal issue is entirely over the Editor-in-Chief and the decision to edit, publish, revise or reject is not to be determined by government policies or agency.

Confidentiality 

Editor-in-Chief and editorial staff will ensure the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, except corresponding others, reviewers, other editorial staff and publishers.

Conflict of Interest 

Editor-in-Chief and editorial staff will not disclose or use entire or any part of the submitted manuscript for their own or other’s research without the explicit written consent from author. Editors will reconsider themselves from evaluating the manuscripts in case they have competing, mutual, or other relationships/connections with some of the publishers, businesses, or organizations associated with the manuscript.

Publication Decision

Editor-in-Chief will ensure that all the submitted manuscript will go through double blind peer-review process, where reviewers will be relevant subject matter expert. Upon receiving the recommendation from reviewers, Editor-in-Chief will decide whether the manuscript will be published in Journal or not. And the issue of plagiarism, copyright infringement and duplicate submission will be check thoroughly before the final decision of publication.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decision

Peer-reviewers will assist Editor-in-Chief to decide which manuscript will be published or not using recommendations ranged from accepted for submission, revision required to rejected.

Promptness

Any peer reviewer who feels uncomfortable with the manuscript review timeline should immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief about the inconvenience.

Confidentiality

Reviewers will consider to-be reviewed manuscript as confidential document and must be treated with confidentiality; reviewer must not discuss or show to others except author for the purpose of improving the manuscript and others authorized by Editor-in-Chief.    

Standard of Objectivity

Reviews should be done fairly, and the inspection should come with clear supporting arguments so that authors can use them to further improve their manuscript.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should look for similar published work that the writers haven't mentioned. Every assertion that is an inference, derivation, or point that has previously been published should be preceded by a recommended citation style. Every substantial resemblance or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript whether published or unpublished of which the reviewer has personal information should be reported to the editors.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Any reviewer who has competing, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Complain

If reviewer have any complaint relating to the journal, they should be as early as possible directed towards the Editor-in-Chief of “Society and Change”.

Duties of Authors

Submission Standards

Authors should submit only their own research work; ensuring accurate work is presented in the paper. The paper should have adequate details and preferred reference style formatting, enabling the guarantee of replicability of the paper. 

Data access and retention

Authors are advised to provide raw data/metadata of their study with or without the manuscript upon asking by editorial board, and ensuring accessibility of those data for a certain period of time for competent professionals.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must ensure before submitting the manuscript into journal that the work is entirely original and does not contain any material previously published or written by a third party, except where this is appropriately cited through full and accurate referencing. Any significant piece of work which helped to determining the nature of the study should also be cited, and finally the Paper must not contain any form of plagiarism.

Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication

Authors should not submit the same manuscript in more than one journal for publication, and they should refrain from submitting already published paper, this rule also applies for the paper which has accepted for publication in another or same journal.

Authorship of the manuscript

Only the contributing individuals who meet the criteria of authorship should be listed as author, they must made significant contribution to the concept, data collection, design, analysis or interpretation of study, drafted or revised the manuscript critically and finally give their consent for submission.

Other individuals who contributed by editing, providing technical support or by any means which does not fit the criteria of authorship should be acknowledged in “Acknowledgements” section.

The corresponding author should ensure the above mentioned godliness is strictly followed.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

At early stage, authors should disclose any conflict of interest that might be relevant and crucial for considering the manuscript for publication. Conflict of interest can be ranged from financial assistance, honoraria, grant or funding, employment, consultancies, paid expert opinion, personal or professional relationship, and institutional affiliation or by any other means of connection between publisher and Editor-in-chief or the organization.

Access and Copyright

Society and Change Journal follow double-blind peer review process. The editors choose reviewers for each article submitted, taking into account the reviewers' expertise, competence, feedback from writers or other editors, and prior experience reviewing articles. For an initial review, any proposal submitted for publication is read by at least one editor. The paper is submitted to two reviewers for inspection if it complies with editorial standards and meets a minimum consistency standard. A double-blind peer review process is used in Society and Change Journal. The aim of the review process is to provide writers with a professional opinion on their work. If appropriate, a critique may provide writers advice about how to develop their articles.

Publication schedule/ frequency

Society and change is an international double blind peer-reviewed and open access journal of social science, starting from 2007 it publishes 4 issues per year.

Access and Copyright

Society and Change is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. With the license CC-BY-NC, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone use, reproduce, display or disseminate as long as it original author is properly attributed and the use is for non-commercial purpose only.

Penalties

In case of intentional double submission is confirmed

• The review process will be terminated.
• The reason should be sent to reviewers, editorial boards, and authors.
• All authors’ name will be marked as a blacklist, and these authors cannot submit any paper to all Osder publication journals for 1 year

In case of intentional double publication

• This will be reported to the editorial board and author(s).
• This will be sent to the publisher published the same (or very similar) paper.
• Paper will be removed according from archive.
• All authors’ names will be marked as a blacklist, and these authors cannot submit any paper to all Osder publication journals for 2 consecutive years.

In case of any form of plagiarism is confirmed

• This will be reported to the editorial board and authors.
• This will be sent to the publisher who published the same or similar paper.
• Paper will be removed from archive.
• All authors’ names will be marked as a blacklist, and these authors cannot submit any paper to all Osder publication journals for 3 consecutive years.