Policies

The following policies apply to all journals published by Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development. Please read these policies in full before submitting your article, to ensure you’ve correctly followed all the requirements.

1- Peer Review Process

The journal employs a double-blind peer review to all submitted manuscripts, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. A more in-depth description of our peer review process is below.

Initial In-house Assessment Stage
When the manuscript arrives at the editorial office of the journal, the editor-in-chief carries out an initial in-house assessment of the received manuscript based on the suitability of the topic according to the journal’s aims & scope, the author’s adherence to the journal’s guidelines (word count, language clarity, and format), research quality, the importance of the topic and relevance to the journal’s readership. If the manuscript does not pass these initial checks, the author will be contacted to revise their manuscript according to the journal criteria; however, the editor-in-chief might reject the manuscript immediately. Rejected manuscripts at this stage have serious flaws, are insufficiently original, have poor language, or do not fall within the aims and scope of the journal. Authors whose manuscripts are rejected at this stage will be informed directly. This rejection can enable a fast decision if the manuscript is not suitable for the journal, enabling the author(s) to submit the paper to another journal quickly.

Peer Review Stage
When the manuscript has passed the desk review stage, it will then be delivered to two reviewers who are experts in the field of the submitted manuscript. The reviewers are initially invited to review the manuscript by sending them the abstract of the manuscript. Upon acceptance to review the manuscript, the reviewers are sent the full text of the manuscript and requested to do the review within 2 to 3 weeks as a maximum to submit their reports to the editor-in-chief. The reviewers are also required to disclose potential conflicts of interest if any, that may affect the outcome of the double-blind reviewing process.

The reviewers are provided with an evaluation form requesting them to judge the manuscript in terms of the paper novelty, originality, valuable contribution to the existed field of study, ethical aspects, scientific misconduct, the structure of the article submitted and its relevance to authors’ guidelines, references provided to substantiate the content, literature review, design and methodology, clarity of findings and discussion, documentation and references. The reviewers are also required to include general and specific anonymous comments to the author(s). If the two reviewers are in disagreement in their judgment on the suitability of the paper for publication, the second round of peer review may be initiated. Each online review report should conclude with a final recommendation for the submitted paper, which can be one of the following:

(a) accepted without any changes; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication
(b) accepted with minor revisions; means that the manuscript is acceptable for publication once it is revised in response to the reviewers’ concerns.
(c) accepted with major revisions; means that substantive inadequacies in the manuscript, such as data analysis, the main theory used, and rewriting of paragraphs, need to be revised.
(d) rejected, means that the manuscript is not acceptable for publication or the given reviews relate to fundamental issues.

Revision Stage
Once the manuscript is received with notations of minor or major revisions, it will be sent to the author with a manuscript evaluation form. If the manuscript is accepted with minor revisions, author(s) will be given one week to make the corrections. For manuscripts accepted with major revisions, two weeks will be allotted for revision.

Final Decision Stage
At this stage, the editor will look through the resubmitted manuscript to make sure that the author(s) has revised the manuscript in response to the reviewers’ comments. At this stage of the final decision, the author(s) may be required to make further revisions, or the manuscript might be rejected if the author(s) did not adequately carry out the revisions suggested by the reviewers.

Copyediting, Layout Editing and Proofreading Stage
Once the manuscript is accepted by the editorial team, it will undergo a copyediting, layout editing and proofreading process to ensure the linguistic quality of the manuscript. After the editing stage is finished, authors are requested to double-check the PDF file of the final version before online publication.

Complaints Policy
The journal strives to deal with to and resolve all complaints as soon as possible. The procedures followed by the journal to handle and resolve complaints aim to be fair for authors filing complaints and for those being complained about.

Appeals against editorial decisions
In case an author would like to challenge an editorial decision, he or she should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. After the appeal is made by the author, the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, peer reviewers' comments and reach a decision for accepting or rejecting the manuscript. If required, the Editor-in-Chief may send the manuscript to new referees for peer review. The Editor-in-Chief's decision is final in such cases. All submitted complaints will be acknowledged within two working days.

2- Plagiarism Policy

Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development strives to maintain academic integrity in publishing. All manuscripts submitted to the journal will be screened for plagiarism by the plagiarism checker “Turnitin” at the following points in time:

1. Upon receipt of the submission
2. When the author(s) submits the finalized manuscript after peer review
A manuscript will be rejected immediately if considered by the editorial office to be plagiarized or self-plagiarized.

A report of plagiarism will be handled as follows:

1. The complainant contacts the editorial office of the journal in which the published article suspected of plagiarism appeared.
2. The complainant indicates which sections have been plagiarzed by clearly referring to both the original and suspected articles.
3. The editorial office conducts an investigation, during which time the editor of the journal and the corresponding author(s) of the suspected article will be in contact.
4. The corresponding author(s) will be asked to provide an explanation.
5. If the author(s) of the suspected article accepts the complaint of plagiarism, an erratum or retraction is necessary to remedy the situation. However, there may still be a disagreement concerning the wording of the description.
6. In the case of nonresponse within the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article may be permanently retracted.

3- Retraction Policy

The journal strongly believes in maintaining and protecting the integrity of the academic record. Manuscripts formally published in the journal are considered as the “Version of Record”. Very rarely, when the scientific information in a manuscript is significantly undermined, it becomes obligatory for the journal to publish corrections to, or retractions of manuscripts published on the journal website, at the discretion of the editor-in-chief.

Article Corrections
Contributors are encouraged to report errors related to the accuracy of published information in their manuscripts. Errors that impact the manuscript considerably will be considered only. Corrections are made at the editor-in-chief’s discretion. The correction procedure is based on the publication stage of the manuscript. Corrections will be published under corrections and addendum in an upcoming issue of the journal.

Article Retractions
The manuscript published in the journal may be retracted due to scientific misconduct in some circumstances such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, fraudulent use of data or plagiarism. Concerned authors are required to submit a signed statement form to the editorial office before a manuscript can be retracted. The retractions are decided on a case by case basis by the editor in consultation with the authors and the reviewers of the manuscript. A retraction notice will be published and linked to the original manuscript being corrected and a link to the retraction page will be placed on the article published earlier.

Article Removal
In extremely exceptional circumstances, it may be mandatory to remove the published manuscript from the journal website. This may happen if the manuscript is found to be defamatory or infringing on other’s legal rights leading to a court order. Under such circumstances, the whole manuscript will be removed and replaced with a screen stating that the manuscript has been removed due to legal reasons.

Article Replacement
If the manuscript is found to include inaccurate data which may pose a serious health risk if acted upon by others, the authors of the original manuscript may wish to retract the manuscript and replace it with a corrected version. In this case, the above procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the manuscript retraction notice will contain a link to the corrected manuscript together with a history of the document.

Article Withdrawal
The manuscript can be withdrawn by the author(s) or the publisher. The manuscript can be withdrawn at any time before it is officially published online. If the authors request withdrawal of their manuscript, a signed withdrawal request letter will be required to reach to the editorial office prior to the withdrawal of the manuscript. The publisher can withdraw the manuscript if it is found to violate the ethical publishing guidelines of the journal such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, multiple submission, fraudulent use of data or bogus claims of authorship. In such a case, the PDF version of the manuscript will be removed and replaced by a note that the manuscript has been withdrawn formally.

4- Informed Consent Policy

The data and information of individuals (e.g., information obtained through a doctor–patient relationship) must be handled with the highest levels of confidence and discretion. It is therefore almost always necessary for authors to obtain written informed consent from any patients described in case reports and from those who are the subject of photographs. However, a report may be published without explicit consent if it meets all three of the following conditions: it is of great significance to public health (or is important in some other way); consent would be unusually difficult to obtain; and a reasonable individual would be unlikely to object to publication.

5- Conflict of Interest and Competing Interests

Conflict of interest is a situation in which financial or other personal interests are likely to make professional judgment and objectivity bias and untrustworthy.

- Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

- Authors should—at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript)—disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any).

6- Confidentiality

- Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

- Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

7- Appeals and Complaints and Misconduct

Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development journals follow Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on appeals to journal editor decisions and complaints about a journal’s editorial management of the peer-review process.

Appeals, complaints, or allegations of misconduct will be taken with utmost seriousness, regardless of whether those involved are internal or external to the journal, or whether the submission in question is pre-or post-publication. If an allegation is made to the journal, it must also be passed on to the publisher, who will follow guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on how to address the nature of the problem.

Should an individual wish to submit an appeal, complaint or raise an issue of potential misconduct regarding the journal or its content, they should contact that editor in chief and/or the publisher to explain their concerns.

The journal does not tolerate abusive behaviour or correspondence towards its staff, academic editors, authors, or reviewers. Any person engaged with the journal who resorts to abusive behaviour or correspondence will have their contribution immediately withdrawn and future engagement with the journal will be at the discretion of the editor and/or publisher.

8- Open Access Policy

Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development (KCRD) firmly believes in research publications that can be immediately accessed by scholars, policymakers, students, and the general public, in a matter of seconds. All journals under the KCRD are Open Access and free to be downloaded.

The journal is an open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

9- Waiver Policy

The journal is a self-supporting organization and does not receive funding from any institution/government. Hence, the management of the journal is solely financed by the handling fees received from authors. The manuscript handling fees are required to meet operations expenses such as manuscript processing, editing, publishing, online availability, internet services, Webhosting, application development and support, etc. Being an open access journal, the journal does not receive payment for subscriptions as the journal is freely accessible over the internet. the journal provides immediate, worldwide free access to all published manuscripts. Readers can view, download, print, and redistribute any article without any financial barrier, enabling greater distribution of an article.

Authors are required to pay a fair manuscript handling fee for the processing of their articles. However, there are no submission charges. Authors are required to make payment only after their manuscripts have been accepted for publication.

We do not want fees to prevent the publication of worthy work!

At Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development we understand that some authors, students or institutions may have limited funding for their research activities. Thus, we have instituted a generous waiver system that may ease the payment of the manuscript handling fee when their researchers choose to publish their manuscripts in our journal. Our primary goal as stated in our mission is to accelerate the dissemination of knowledge through the publication of high-quality research articles. We are continually pursuing this goal, without putting an undue financial burden on researchers or their institutions.

The journal offers APC waivers to papers whose corresponding authors are based in countries classified by the World Bank as low-income economies as of July 2020.

Please request your waiver or discount at the point of submission.

10- Policy Copyright and Licensing Policy

1- Copyright
As an open-access the journal follows the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which states that:

you are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms

- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

2- Publishing Rights
The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also, it allows the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.

By submitting an article for review, the author(s) recognizes that the submitted article has not been published (the form of journal article, thesis, or other published means), nor reviewed for publication in other journals. The Editors reserve the right to decline a submission if proven to not be an original article.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

11- Digital Archiving Policy

The journal aims to preserve all the published content on digital repositories. In order to follow that, the journal commits to submit the metadata of all its manuscripts to LOCKSS as we have recently implemented the use of the OJS (Open Journal System). This service is free for OJS users and we are further discussing the process with other repositories such as RePEc. This is to ensure the availability of the published scholarly content by the journal to the community despite any accidental loss of data in its personal archival records. The journal has further ensured that the metadata of all of its open access journals is compatible with all the well-known repository services and their digital crawlers may regularly collect it for record and preservation. Besides, the journal also assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to all its issues and the contents to facilitate reaching their permanent links on the internet.

12- Advertising Policy

Guidelines for advertising

1. All advertisements are subject to the approval of the publisher or editor. However, the publisher or the editor shall not unreasonably withhold such approval.
2. Advertising is separate from content. Advertisers and sponsors should have no advanced knowledge of our editorial content, nor should the editors shape content to accommodate advertising. Advertisers do not influence any of the publishers’ editorial decisions or advertising policies.
3. The appearance of an advertisement in the publisher’s journal is neither a guarantee nor an endorsement of the given product, service, company, or of the claims made in such advertising by the publisher, society, or editorial partner.
4. Advertising that appears in the publisher’s journal will be clearly distinguishable from editorial content.
5. Publisher’s advertising sales representatives have no control over, or prior knowledge of, specific editorial content before it is published.
6. Advertisers have no control or influence over the results of searches a user may conduct on the publisher’s journal. Search results are based solely on the functionality available through our search software (e.g., keywords or natural language) and user-defined criteria (e.g., displaying the most recent or most relevant items first).
7. In consideration of the publication of an advertisement, the advertiser and the agency, jointly and severally, agree to indemnify and hold harmless the publisher, its officers, agents, and employees against expenses (including legal fees) and losses resulting from the publication of the contents of the advertisement, including, without limitation, claims or suits for libel, violation of privacy, copyright infringement, or plagiarism.
8. All advertisements must clearly and prominently identify the advertiser by trademark or signature.
9. Any reference to the publisher or it products or services in advertisements, promotional material, or merchandising by the advertiser or the agency is subject to the publisher’s prior written approval for each such use.
10. The publisher is not responsible for any damages, including but not limited to actual, direct, incidental, or consequential damages, for errors in displaying an advertisement.
11. The publisher will not be bound by any condition, printed or otherwise, appearing on any insertion order or copy instructions when such conditions conflict with the conditions set forth in this policy statement.
12. In the event of nonpayment, the publisher reserves the right to hold the advertiser and/or its advertising agency liable for such monies as are due and payable to the publisher.
13. Any use of publication trademarks or copyrighted material for links to and from the website must be approved, in advance, by the publisher. Any such unauthorized linking is prohibited.
14. All advertisements for recruitment or employment must be nondiscriminatory and comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Advertisements of this nature that discriminate against applicants based on sex, age, race, religion, marital status, or physical handicap will not be accepted. Non-U.S. recruitment advertisers are required to confirm in writing that they are equal-opportunity employers.
15. Advertised products must comply with the regulations in the country where the advertisement will be seen.
16. The publisher does not release personally identifiable data on the users of our websites or email service to advertisers.

13- Disclaimer

The views or opinions expressed in this Journal are those of the authors and contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of this Journal, the editors, the editorial board, or the publisher of this Journal, Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development.