Publishing Ethics & Malpractice Statement
1. All submitted manuscripts are subject to strict peer-review process. High quality manuscripts are peer-reviewed by minimum two peers of the same field.During this review process identity of both the authors and reviewers are kept hidden to ensure unbiased evaluation. Now we have migrated to transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system. Identity of the authors and reviewers will be revealed to each other during this review process. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published with the papers. If reviewers do not want to reveal their identities, we will honour that request. In that case only the review reports will be published as ‘anonymous reviewer report’.
2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language. BOPAMS believes that no manuscript should be rejected only on the basis of ‘lack of Novelty’, provided the manuscript is sufficiently robust and technically sound. Too often a journal's decision to publish a paper is dominated by what the Editor/reviewer think is interesting and will gain greater readership — both of which are subjective judgments and lead to decisions which are frustrating and delay the publication. BOPAMS will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound. Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication by the readership (who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them).
3. With the help of the reviewers’ comments, FINAL decision (accepted or accepted with minor revision or accepted with major revision or rejected) will be sent to the corresponding author. Reviewers are asked if they would like to review a revised version of the manuscript. The editorial office may request a re-review regardless of a reviewer's response in order to ensure a thorough and fair evaluation. Reviewers who may have offered an opinion not in accordance with the FINAL decision should not feel that their recommendation was not duly considered and their service not properly appreciated. Experts often disagree, and it is the job of the editorial team to make a FINAL decision.
4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
5. Rejected papers are given the opportunity for a formal appeal. Appeal requests should be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be addressed to editorbopams@gmail.com with the word "appeal" in the subject line. If an author remains unsatisfied, he or she can write to the Editorial Office, citing the manuscript reference number. In all these cases, it is likely that some time will elapse before BOPAMS can respond, and the paper must not be submitted for publication elsewhere during this time. Authors should provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Academic Editor's comments. Authors should also be aware that priority is given to new submissions to the journal and so the processing of the appeal may well take longer than the processing of the original submission. If an appeal is rejected, further appeals of the decision will not be considered and the paper may not be resubmitted.
6. Articles may be rejected without review if the Editor considers the article obviously not suitable for publication.
7. The editor of the BOPAMS is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the BOPAMS should be published.
8. The editor may be guided by the policies of the BOPAMS's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
9. The editor confers with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
10. The reviewers evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
11. The editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
12. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. BOPAMS believes in constructive criticism. Reviewers are encouraged to be honest but not offensive in their language (Unnecessarily harsh words may be modified or removed at the editors' discretion). It is expected that the reviewers should suggest the authors on how they can strengthen their paper to make it acceptable. Comments of the reviewers should be sufficiently informative and helpful to reach a Editorial Decision. We strongly advise that a negative review should also explain the weaknesses of any manuscript, so that the concerned authors can understand the basis of rejection and he/she can improve the manuscript based on those comments. Authors also should not confuse straightforward and true comments with unfair criticism.
13. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions. Additionally we believe that one of the main objectives of peer review system is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’.
14. Manuscripts received for review are treated as confidential documents.
15. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention for any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
16. Authors of contributions and studies research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance.
17. Sufficient details of the methods/process should be provided inside the manuscript so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
18. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
19. Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication.
20. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
21. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Submission of a paper to this journal indicates that the author(s) have agreed the content of the paper. One author should be indicated as corresponding author for all publication related communications. All correspondence and proofs would be sent to the corresponding author, who will be treated as final representative voice for all authors regarding any decision related to manuscript, unless otherwise requested during submission. This journal would not be responsible for any dispute related to authorship of a submitted paper. Any change in the authorship (such as addition or deletion of author(s) or change in the sequence of author list) should be intimated to the editorial office through a letter signed by all authors before publication of the paper. In absence of any signed letter, approval of 'Galley proof' by corresponding author will work as 'certificate of final agreement of authorship'. Generally any change in the authorship after final publication, is not entertained.
22. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
23. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
24. It is compulsory for the authors to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.
25. The research must meet all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
26. By submitting the manuscript, the authors warrant that the entire work is original and unpublished; it is submitted only to this Journal and all text, data, figures/tables or other illustrations included in the research article are completely original and unpublished, and these have not been previously published or submitted elsewhere in any form or media whatsoever. All authors are responsible for the complete contents of their manuscript. The author(s) warrant that the work contains no unlawful or libelous statements and opinions and liable materials of any kind whatsoever, do not infringe on any copyrights, intellectual property rights, personal rights or rights of any kind of others, and does not contains any plagiarized, fraudulent, improperly attributed materials, instructions, procedures, information or ideas that might cause any harm, damage, injury, losses or costs of any kind to person or property.
