Open Access Policy

IPICS 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.

Copyright Statement

The content of the IPICS Journal is copyrighted in accordance with the Copyright Ordinance 1962 of Pakistan. If it is not stated otherwise, it is possible to view, print and copy the contents of these pages, but exclusively for non-profit and research purposes.

It is not permitted to take away any copyright related information included in the materials that one prints or downloads. The papers in the IPICS Journal can only be used under the condition of correct citation.

Privacy Policy

IPICS Journal respects the privacy of its readers and contributors, and is committed to protecting personal date of individuals in accordance with its Privacy Policy.

Who Are We?

IPICS Journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal on Pakistan, Iran and the Caucasus Studies published by the Rehmat and Maryam Researches (an academic research-oriented non-profit based company registered by the SECP).

What Personal Data Do We Collect?

Personal Information about Authors

All digital publications of the IPICS Journal contain personal information about the authors of individual articles, specifically their names, institutions they are affiliated to, email contacts, and photographs. By submitting their manuscripts, the authors give their agreement to the IPICS Journal publisher to publicly release their personal data.

Who Do We Share Your Data with?

We do not share your data with any third-party service. However, the content of IPICS Journal’ digital publications is shared with external citation databases for indexation purposes. It is also shared with libraries or other archives

In all these cases, IPICS Journal only administrates your data.

How Long Do We Retain Your Data?

If you are signed up for the IPICS Journal’ Newsletter, your email address and its metadata are retained until you unsubscribe from our mailing list. For users registered on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that kind of information.

What Rights Do You Have over Your Data?

You can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Contact Information

For further queries about our privacy policy, or to request the removal of, or a change to, your personal information, contact us at rehmatandmaryam@gmail.com and CC your mail to editor@rmrpublishers.org

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

IPICS Journal’ acknowledges, honors and applies all standards of Publication Ethics.

Publication Ethics

IPICS acknowledges, honors and applies all standards of publication ethics in accordance with general consensus as promulgated in HEC‘s Code of Conduct for Journal, and other catalogues of ethical standards. IPICS refuses plagiarism of any kind.

By the very act of submitting articles to IPICS, authors affirm that their contents are original and their article had neither been published elsewhere, nor it is under review for publication anywhere. The following duties are obligatory for authors, editors, reviewers and the publisher of the IPICS.

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards: Authors of research studies should present an accurate account of their original research, whether theoretical or empirical, as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable.

Originality and plagiarism: Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works and they appropriately refer to works and/or words of other authors.

Remember; By submitting a manuscript to the journal, it is understood that it is an original manuscript, unpublished work and is not submitted elsewhere. Plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author’s own work, in whole or in part without proper citation is not tolerated by the journal. Plagiarism appears in various forms such as copying the same content from the other source; most commonly from the internet, copying elements of another author’s paper such as figures, tables or illustrations that cannot be considered as common knowledge.

Self-plagiarism is also not allowed. Journal defines self-plagiarism as the intentional or unintentional reuse of one’s own copyrighted work without citing the original source. However, this policy doesn’t apply to the manuscripts presented/appeared in any conference proceeding from the author’s side and an explicit reference is made.

Plagiarism Check

Firstly, Journal checks plagiarism with the software recommended by HEC Pakistan. Secondly, it is checked manually by the team IPICS. If plagiarism is detected by the editorial/advisory board member, reviewer etc., at any stage of article process- before or after acceptance, during editing or at a proofreading stage, we will inform the same to the author(s) and will ask them to reconsider the content or to cite the references from where the content has been taken. HEC Pakistan has already set the acceptable limit of similarity index produced by the TURNITIN i.e. 19%. If the similarity with different sources is more than 19% but less than 25% (With single-source not exceeding 5%), we prefer to send back the manuscript to the author and ask him to resubmit the paper after fixing that problem. But, if more than 25% of the paper is plagiarized, the article may be rejected and the same is notified to the author.

Plagiarism Detected after Publishing

Sometimes, TURNITIN appears not very much efficient regarding the detection of plagiarism from the papers written in Urdu. In that case, if the plagiarism is detected manually and reported with proof after publishing, IPICS will conduct an investigation. In case if plagiarism is found, the paper may be formally retracted. The editor will write to the author(s), author(s)’ institute and/or funding agencies about that and the paper containing the plagiarism will be marked “Plagiarism Detected after Publishing” (or similar statement) on each page of the PDF Copy. Moreover, author(s) will be banned for the next issues of IPICS as well as for the other journals published under Rehmat and Maryam Researches until resolving this issue.

Plagiarism Undertaking

The authors must declare that their work is original at the time of submission. For this, an undertaking/acknowledgment form has been given in the Article Submission Form, stating that author(s) has not plagiarized any material and if found guilty he/they shall be solely responsible and IPICS reserve the right to take action against him/them. Author(s) is required to submit that form duly signed and stamped at the time of manuscript submission by Email to the IPICS. It’s clearly stated that in IPICS Plagiarism Policy, if a paper has multiple authors, not only the principal author but also all the authors would be bound to take the responsibility of the plagiarism so they all would be required to submit the said undertaking/acknowledgment. While, in case of plagiarism found, author(s) would not only be blacklisted or banned from the journal but their names will also be displayed publicly on the journal website.

Procedure for Appeal

Author(s) may appeal to the editor in case of;

• The rejection of a research paper during blind peer review process.
• Notifying plagiarism in the paper and blacklist or banned the author(s)
• Someone’s report of misquoting him/her in a paper.
• Objections to publications causing harm to any party.
• Infringement of Ethical boundaries in any manner.
• Extracting any part of the research from someone’s thesis/dissertation without provable permission.
• Objection of someone other than the author(s) as he/she was also the part of this research/project but his/her name is not mentioned in the author(s) list.
• Research traces as the part of someone’s already finalized work, academic achievement or similar.
• Misuse of any reference until it is not interpretation, discourse analysis or personal assessment drawn from the referred material.

Remember; author(s) have 20 days to address any objection, concern, report or complaint. Otherwise, or however, Unsatisfied and/or unjustified answers authorizes the editorial board regarding taking a decision to

• Notify traced issue/plagiarism on each page of your paper.
• Published a note about issue along with the title of your paper.
• Blacklist or banned the author(s) involving in violation of publication ethics and other policies defined by the journal, and publicized their names on journal website.

Data access and retention: In case of research studies of empirical nature authors should provide raw data related to their manuscripts for editorial review, and they also must retain such data.

Multiple publications: Manuscripts based on the same research are usually published exclusively in only one journal. In case of an update or extension of a previously published article, a reference to the original publication ought to be explicitly acknowledged.

In justified cases, the Editorial Team may decide to publish a manuscript that had been previously published in another media, either in its original or modified form. Such cases include, for instance, an extraordinary contribution to human understanding of the matter provided by the article. Then an explicit reference to the original publication is made in the re-published paper along with copyright acknowledgements.

Acknowledgement of sources: Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in their articles and refer to all publications they had been working with.

Authorship of the paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study.

Disclosure of financial support and conflicts of interest: Authors should disclose any conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results of their manuscript. Sources of financial support for the article should be also disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works: If at any point of time, authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in submitted manuscript or published work, then the error or inaccuracy must be reported to the Editor-in-Chief without delay.

Duties of Editors

Publication decisions: The Editor-in-Chief is authorized to accept, reject, or request modifications to all articles submitted to IPICS.

Review of manuscripts: Two reviewers are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief from the internal database of reviewers for double-blind review based on the topic and character of the reviewed academic papers and research studies. Reviewers are obliged to make an explicit and reasonable recommendations to publish the manuscript in its present form, or to modify it or to reject it.

Fair play: Manuscripts are evaluated solely on their scholarly merit without regard to authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or views.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: IPICS fully respects evaluations of its reviewers and makes its decisions as follows:

• If both reviewers recommend publishing the manuscript, it is accepted.
• If both reviewers recommend not publishing the manuscript, it is rejected.
• If one or both reviewers recommend making a revision of the manuscript, the author(s) is asked to re-elaborate it. The revised manuscript is reviewed repeatedly by the same reviewers.
• If reviewers significantly diverge in their conclusions, the final decision on acceptance or rejection of the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief.

Editors must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than its authors and reviewers or potential reviewers. Unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts must not be used in favor of anyone who has a view of the manuscript.

Confidentiality: The Editor-in-Chief must ensure that information regarding authorship of manuscripts is kept confidential. In order to do so, in manuscripts assigned for reviewing all identification data on their authors are removed. The relationship between authors and reviewers is anonymous on both sides.

Development: Editors should strive to meet the needs of readers and authors, continually improve the journal, ensure the quality of the published material and protect freedom of expression.

Duties of Reviewers

Double-blind review: The Editor-in-Chief is authorized to appoint two reviewers for double-blind review of academic papers and research studies who are experts in the given field and come from different institutions than the author of the submission.

Promptness: If it is not possible for a reviewer to complete a review of a manuscript within the time limit of 60 days, the Editor-in-Chief appoints another reviewer.

Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors is kept confidential.

Acknowledgement of sources: Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research, both theoretical or empirical. The Editor-in-Chief is immediately notified about any kind of similarity with any other published paper of which reviewer has knowledge and had not been acknowledged by the author(s).

Standards of objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Any kind of personal criticism of the author(s) is unacceptable. Reviewers are obliged to express their views explicitly and support them by relevant arguments.

Conflict of interest: Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to the manuscripts.

Duties of Publisher

The publisher respects privacy of authors and reviewers, protects intellectual property and copyright, and fosters editorial independence.

Peer Review

Peer Review Process

Academic papers, books’ reviews along with each sort of research studies are peer-reviewed by two experts in the given field who evaluate the significance, originality, placement within the current state of research, clarity, relevance, formal requirements and language quality of the manuscript. On the basis of the double-blind review process, the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision whether the text is published or not.

In manuscripts assigned for reviewing all identification data on their authors are removed. The reviewers are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief from the internal database of reviewers based on the topic and character of the reviewed manuscript.

The author(s) is notified about the results of the review process as well as the decision of the Editor-in-Chief via email. This process can be repeated two times before the paper is either finally accepted or rejected.

There is a time limit of 07 days for the reviewer to process the review of a manuscript, and 05 days for the author(s) to revise it.

IPICS fully respects evaluations of its reviewers and makes its decisions as follows:

• If both reviewers recommend publishing the manuscript, it is accepted.
• If both reviewers recommend not publishing the manuscript, it is rejected.
• If one or both reviewers recommend making a revision of the manuscript, the author(s) is asked to re-elaborate it. The revised manuscript is reviewed repeatedly by the same reviewers.
• If reviewers significantly diverge in their conclusions, the final decision on acceptance or rejection of the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief.

Procedure for Appeal

Author(s) may appeal to the editor in case of;

• The rejection of a research paper.
• Objections to publications causing harm to any party.
• Infringement of Ethical boundaries in any manner.

Information

For Readers

We encourage readers to provide their worthy feedback regarding publications or any edition. It will assist us in polishing the journal standards more in terms of quality and productivity. See the journal’s Privacy Statement, which assures readers that their name and email address will not be used for other purposes or publicized in this regard.

For Authors

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the aims and scope of the journal as well as open access policy, copyright statement, privacy policy, publication ethics and publication malpractice statement, peer review process, and author guidelines. It will assist you in submitting your paper in an easiest way through Paper Submission section. In case of any query, you may ask at rehmatandmaryam@gmail.com and CC your mail to editor@rmrpublishers.org

For Librarians

We encourage research librarians to list this journal among their library’s electronic journal holdings. As well, it may be worth noting that this journal’s open access policy and open access system is suitable for libraries to host for their faculty members to use with journals they are involved in editing.