Publication Policies

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

All ACCENTS Journals are dedicated to following best practices on ethical matters, errors and retractions. ACCENTS follows all the ethical principles of scholarly open access publishing to ensure and maintain public trust in the research published for the benefit of humanity and research development. It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for the authors, editors, reviewers and publisher. These standards are based on COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Duties of Editors:

• Editors of ACCENTS journals have the complete authority to accept / request modification or reject the manuscripts based on the overall reviewers' decision.
• Editors must ensure that the initial screening and plagiarism checking is performed for each manuscript submitted.
• Editors must ensure that each manuscript received by ACCENTS journals is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.
• Editors, editorial board member, reviewers and editorial support team must ensure that any information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.
• Editors must not use any unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript in an editor's own research work without the express written consent of the author.

Duties of Reviewers:

• Reviewers must ensure that any information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.
• Declare any conflict of interest where reviewers are able to identify authors or research projects.
• Notify the editor if, for any reason, it is not possible to carry out reviewing duties in the due time.
• Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Any similarity or overlap between the manuscripts under review or with any other paper of which the reviewers have personal knowledge must be promptly reported to the editor.
• Ensure that the feedback provided by you is constructive and fair. Reviewers should provide their feedback with supporting arguments.

Duties of Authors:

• The submitted manuscript must be the original work of the author. There is no plagiarism and duplicity.
• The submitted manuscript has not been previously published and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Author should ensure that the same research work will not publish in more than one journal.
• The other works should be cited in proper way indicating sources of the same.
• Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contribution must be listed as co-authors. Authors also ensure that all the authors have read and approved the final version submitted
• If the authors discover any serious mistake in his/her own published manuscript, it is the author's duty to notify the concerned journal promptly and cooperate to correct it.
• Sources of funding and any conflicts of interest should be notified to the journal.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of taking another person's published articles, conversation or even idea and treating it as your own. This includes part or whole information from web pages, books, email messages, interviews, articles and artworks etc. Even with citation, copying huge mass of text authored by others is not admissible. Whenever you take information from other's work, it is necessary to indicate the source of the information within your manuscript with proper citation and inclusion of the source in the reference section. Our authors are required to take extreme care in avoiding any form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is against the professional ethics, it is our responsibility to avoid plagiarism.

Crossref Similarity Check

The ACCENT Social and Welfare Society is a member of Crossref Similarity Check. All submitted manuscripts screened through Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate software for the detection of the instances of overlapping and similar text in the manuscripts. We are depositing all of our DOI-assigned content in the Similarity Check database also.

All ACCENTS journals will take necessary action when plagiarism has been found to have occurred according to the type of plagiarism. All the authors of the concerned manuscript are individually and collectively responsible for the plagiarism. ACCENTS has a separate team for this type of investigation, they are responsible for the investigation of each claim of plagiarism at the highest priority for resolution and action.

Actions in case of plagiarism

• A notice about this perpetrate act is send to all the authors and their institutions and want their justification in the due time frame.
• If the plagiarism is proved by the investigation team the paper will remove immediately and it is replaced by a retraction note.
• ACCENTS recommends black listing of all the author's involved in this manuscript from future publication in ACCENTS journals.

Corrections and Retractions

ACCENTS expects authors to make any significant changes to their work at the revision stage, prior to acceptance.

As a publisher, it is our responsibility to uphold the integrity of the submitted and published record. Therefore, minor amendments that do not influence the scientific comprehension of the paper, such as formatting changes, slight grammatical corrections, typographical mistakes, or wording preferences, may be declined if proposed after publication to avoid any inconsistencies.

Authors who discover an error in their published article must contact the journal as soon as possible using the contact details listed on the journal’s homepage.

The corresponding author/author will be responsible for communicating the details of the error to the journal. The journal Editor will review the proposed correction. They may subject the proposed correction to further peer review. The corrections may be sent for additional peer review. The Editor will decide the best method to amend the article and may consult with the journal’s editorial board to make a final decision.

A corrigendum/ erratum will be published if it is necessary to correct an error or omission that does not impact the integrity and findings of the article. It will be linked to the article that it corrects.

Retractions are considered in cases of evidence of unreliable data or findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, alleged fraud, and unethical research. ACCENTS Journals will conduct an investigation following COPE retraction guidelines. If the investigation reveals valid concerns, the authors of the concerned manuscript will be contacted via email and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the specific circumstances and the severity of the issues identified, ACCENTS Journals may take several actions, including, but not limited to:

1. If the manuscript is still under peer review or under consideration by the ACCENTS Journal and has not been published, it may be rejected.
2. If the manuscript has already been published online, actions may vary based on the nature and severity of the infraction:

• An erratum may be published and linked to the original article.
• An editor's note may be published alongside the article.
• In severe cases of misconduct, such as fraud or ethical violations, the article may be retracted.

The original manuscript will remain on the platform, except it will feature a watermark on each page of the article PDF indicating "retracted." The specific reasons for these actions will be detailed in the published erratum, correction, editor's note, editorial expression of concern, or retraction notice. These measures are communicated to the authors and their respective institutions to ensure transparency and accountability.

Removal of Published Content

ACCENTS Journals reserves the right to remove an article from our online platform under certain circumstances. Removal will occur if an article is subject to a court order, infringes on others' legal rights, is defamatory, or poses a serious health risk. Although the article itself will be removed, bibliographic metadata, such as the title and authors, will be retained and accompanied by a statement explaining the reason for the article's removal.

Copyright Policy

All papers in ACCENTS journals are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY). This license allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, even commercially as long as the original work is properly cited. ACCENTS journals authors retain the copyright of their work under the CC-BY license. Authors can publish their extended version of the published work with the proper citation of the published work.

Author(s) agree to the following terms.

• Author(s) will hold the copyright of their manuscript.
• The submitted manuscript is original and it is the author's work.
• This manuscript has not been published in the same form elsewhere.
• The manuscript is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
• All authors of this research paper have directly participated in the planning, execution, or analysis of this study. They have read and approved the final version submitted and take public responsibility for the work.
• A copyright permission is obtained for materials published elsewhere and which require this permission for reproduction. The manuscript does not violate any existing copyright.
• The final published version can be archived in institutional or other repositories.
• The authors are the sole responsible for the opinions/comments/ideas expressed in the manuscripts. The staff and members of the advisory/editorial/reviewer board of ACCENTS journals do not take the responsibility of the opinions/comments/ideas made by the authors.

Peer review appeal procedure

ACCENTS journals follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on appeals to journal editor decisions and complaints about a journal's peer review process. Authors have the right to appeal against the decision taken on their manuscript but there should be strong technical evidence and justification in response to the comments.

For appeal

Author has to submit a rebuttal letter to the editor via the journal email. The letter should include the strong technical evidence and justification in response to the editor and reviewers comments. The appeal must be filed within one month of receiving the final decision letter.

The editor will consider your appeal and the editor's decision is final. If your appeal is granted, your manuscript will undergo further assessment by the different reviewers according to the Journal's peer review policy. The handling editor appointed will also different. The editor will make a final decision on your manuscript based on the review reports.

Policy last updated: 21 June 2024