1. Policies
  2. Policies

Policies

 

Peer Review Process

Peer review in IJIMAI is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'. Manuscripts that span a wide range of scientific interests are considered, but only if results and conclusions are scientifically justified and not misleading. Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by external experts.

If the Editor determines that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, he/she assigns the manuscript to a maximum of 3 external reviewers for peer-review. The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation of one of the following actions to the Editor:

  • Publish Unaltered
  • Consider after Minor Changes
  • Consider after Major Changes
  • Reject: Manuscript is flawed or not sufficiently novel

When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

  • Publish Unaltered
  • Consider after Minor Changes
  • Consider after Major Changes
  • Reject
     

How long will it take to process my proposal?: Authors should hear the outcome within 8 weeks. When a paper is submitted to be considered in a Special Issue, please consult the specific schedule in the Call for Papers.

If the Editor recommends “Publish Unaltered”, the manuscript is accepted for publication. 

If the Editor recommends “Consider after Minor Changes” or “Consider after Major Changes", the recommendation is communicated to the authors. The authors are expected to revise their manuscripts in accordance with the changes recommended by the reviewers and to submit their revised manuscript in a timely manner. The authors must attach a detailed response stating how the revision requests of referees have been addressed in the new version of the manuscript. Once the revised manuscript is submitted, together with the responses to reviewers' comments, it may be sent to the previous or new reviewers, for another round of reviews.  The Editor can then make an editorial recommendation which can be “Publish Unaltered”, “Consider after Minor Changes”, "Consider after Major Changes" or “Reject.”

If the Editor recommends rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate. Also, if two of the reviewers recommend rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate. A rejected paper cannot be sent to the journal anymore, even if it is improved.

The editorial workflow gives the Editors the authority in rejecting any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results. The Editor cannot assign himself/herself as an external reviewer of the manuscript. This is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by one or more external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal.

The peer-review process of this journal is a single blind peer review process. Therefore, the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers. To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the reviewers from being known. This involves the editors and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

  1. The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.
  2. With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
  3. With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.

Submission and review process

BPMN Review Process

Ethics

This journal reject papers that raise concerns about possible misconduct. The most common forms of scientific misconduct include (following are based on an excellent ORI publication online avaible at http://ori.hhs.gov/plagiarism-0 -- 26 Guidelines at a Glance on Avoiding Plagiarism -- ) :

  • Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without crediting their true source, and representation of them as one's own original work. The plagiarism checker Turnitin is used to detect plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to IJIMAI. If plagiarism is detected before or during the peer-review process, the paper is rejected. If plagiarism is detected once a paper has been published, this will be removed from the journal website and the author's institution will be informed about the plagiarism fact.
  • Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published; or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
  • Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
  • Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.
  • Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

    Authors must comply with this policy ethics. The submission form includes acceptance of these rules.

 

Use of Inclusive Language

Authors should use inclusive language. Inclusive language acknowledges diversity and expresses respect to all people. Here are some guidelines to help in the use of inclusive language.

We suggest to apply gender neutrality by using plural nouns, such as students, clients, they, etc., avoiding the use of “he”, “she”, or “he/she”.

The words “sex” and “gender” should be used properly. Sex-related biological or physiological characteristics should be mentioned as “sex” rather than “gender” characteristics, as gender refers to how individuals perceive and understand themselves and how they want to interact with the society.

Content should avoid descriptors that refer to personal attributes such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability, and health condition unless it is relevant for the research described.

Last, content should not mean that one person is superior to another based on gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and should not assume religious, political or any kind of beliefs of any reader.

 

Copyright

Authors transfer copyright of the article to the publisher UNIR and agree that the article will be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported License, which permits to make digital or hard copies of the work, share, link, distribute, remix, transform, and build upon the work, giving the appropriate credit to the Authors and IJIMAI, providing a link to the license and indicating if changes were made.

 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

 

Archiving

This journal utilizes the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to register permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

 

Articles and Submissions Processing Charges

IJIMAI does not ask for articles processing (APC) or submissions charges.

 

Cookies Policy

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Privacy Policy

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Legal Notice

Click on this link to read the Legal Notice of UNIR.