Ethics of Publication

Middle Eastern Culture and Religion Issues (MECRI) is committed to maintain the standards of publication ethics and support ethical research practices, referring to the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). MECRI is strictly against double publication and plagiarism. Articles submitted to MECRI  should not be submitted to other journals elsewhere. If detected allegations of misconduct, the editorial teams will investigate the author. If the readers knew or notified of a potential break of publication ethics, MECRI encourages you to inform the journal editors and staff as soon as possible.

FOR AUTHOR

Editors must adhere to the following guidelines:

MECRI expects all published articles to contain clear and accurate attribution of authorship. It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that all authors that contributed to the work receive fair acknowledgment and that the order of authors reflects the individual contributions. Where authors employ the services of third party agencies before submission for instance in language editing or article formatting/preparation, they must ensure that all services comply with the following guidelines:

Attribution and acknowledgment

The authorship must be based on the following 4 criteria:

  1. Giving substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, interpretation of data for the work; and
  2. Drafting the work or revisiting it critically for important intellectual content; and
  3. Giving final approval of the version to be published.
  4. Being accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the article submission, peer review, and typically ensures that all the journal's administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration, documentation, and gathering. The corresponding author should be available after publication to respond to the critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the article for publication. Some large multi-author groups designate authorship by a group name, with or without the names of the individuals. When submitting an article authored by a group, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and identify the group members who can take the credit and responsibility for the work as authors.

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of the activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are the acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group or general administrative support and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. “clinical investigator”) or specified (e.g. “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “collected data”).

Article Submission

MECRI takes every effort to ensure that editors, peer reviewers, and journal administrators treat all the submission respectfully. MECRI expects that all individuals submitting articles to the journal abide by established publishing standards and ethics. In proven cases of misconduct, the action taken will vary, but could result in one or more of the following:

  1. Retraction of published work.
  2. Publication of or a correction or statement of concern.
  3. Refusal of future submission.
  4. Notification of misconduct sent to an author’s local institution, superior, and/or ethics committee.

Redundant publication

MECRI evaluates submissions on the understanding that they have not been previously published in or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. The editors will keep a clear record of all communications between authors, editors, and peer reviewers regarding the submissions they handle. These records are carefully stored and may be used to facilitate investigations into possible cases of misconduct.

Plagiarism

MECRI evaluates submission on the understanding that they are the original work of the author(s). We expect that the references made in the article to another person's work or idea will be credited appropriately. Re-use of text, data, figures, or images without appropriate acknowledgment or permission is considered plagiarism, as is the paraphrasing of text, concepts, and ideas.

Defamation

Whilst striving to promote freedom of expression wherever possible, MECRI aims to avoid publishing anything that harms the reputation of an individual, business, group, or organization unless it can be proven to be true. We take all possible measures to ensure that published work is free of any text that is, or may be considered to be libelous, slanderous, or defamatory.

Fair Editing and Peer Review

All participants in the publishing process are encouraged to adhere to established principles of ethical publishing. This extends from authors to journal editors, reviewers, journal administrators, and publishing staff.

1. Editorial independence

Editors have full editorial independence. They need to have clearly defined processes and policies for the handling of contributions by the editor or members of the editorial board to ensure that, where appropriate, these submissions receive an equivalent level of peer review to any other submission.

2. Peer reviewers conduct

Articles are reviewed by two independent experts in the relevant area. The reviewers make a scientific assessment and a recommendation to the editors. Reviewers remain unknown to authors. The Handling editor considers the manuscript and the reviewers’ comments before making a final decision either to accept, accept with revision or to reject a manuscript.

3. Confidentiality

Unless otherwise specified, MECRI expects editors and reviewers to handle all submissions as confidential. If a reviewer wishes to delegate the review or seek the opinion of a colleague on a specific aspect of the paper, they are expected to clear this with the editor in the first instance.

4. Peer-review fraud

It is the responsibility of the lead author to ensure that only genuine reviewers and reviewer contact details are put forward. Any suspected or alleged instances of authors submitting fabricated reviewer details will be thoroughly investigated. If such allegations are proven, the article in question will be immediately rejected or, if already published, retracted. The journal would typically notify the authors’ institutional or local ethics council and may also impose a ban on further submissions from the author group.

 

FOR EDITOR

Editors must adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal.
  • Editors must treat all submitted papers as confidential.
  • Editors should inform peer reviewers about this Misconduct.
  • Editors should encourage peer-reviewers to consider ethical issues raised by the research they are reviewing.
  • Editors should request additional information from authors if they feel this is required.
  • Editors should exercise sensitivity when publishing images of objects that might have cultural significance or cause offense.
  • Editors should inform readers if ethical breaches have occurred.
  • Editors should encourage peer-reviewers to decline peer-review request if they identify a conflict of interest with the manuscript.
  • Editors may assign peer-reviewers suggested by authors but should not consider suggestions made by authors as binding.
  • Editors should mediate all exchanges between authors and peer reviewers during the peer-review process (i.e. prior to publication). If agreement cannot be reached, editors should consider inviting comments from additional peer reviewer(s) if the editor feels that this would be helpful.
  • Decisions by editors about whether or not to publish submitted manuscripts must not be influenced by pressure from the editor's employer, the journal owner, or the publisher.
  • Editors should publish corrections for discovered errors that could affect the interpretation of data or information presented in a manuscript.
  • Editors should expect allegations of theft or plagiarism to be substantiated and should treat allegations of theft or plagiarism seriously.
  • Editors should keep peer-reviewers’ identities from authors. If peer-reviewers’ identities are revealed, editors should discourage authors from contacting peer-reviewers directly, especially when misconduct is suspected.
  • Editors should reserve the right to reject manuscripts if there is a doubt whether appropriate procedures have been followed. If a paper has been submitted from a country where there is no ethics committee or institutional review board, editors should use their own experience to judge whether or not the paper can be published. If the decision is made to publish a paper under this circumstance, a short statement should be included to explain this situation.
  • Editors should ensure timely peer-review and publication for manuscripts they receive, especially where findings may have important implications.
  • The Editorial Board is responsible for making publication decisions based on the reviewer’s evaluation, policies of the journal editorial board and legal restraint acting against plagiarism, libel, and copyright infringement.

 

FOR REVIEWER

Reviewers must adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. All manuscripts are reviewed fairly based on the intellectual content of the paper regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenry, or political values of the authors.
  2. Any observed conflict of interest during the review must be communicated to the editor.
  3. All information pertaining to the manuscript is kept confidential.
  4. Any information that may be the reason for a publication rejection must be communicated to the Editor.
  5. The duty of confidentiality in the assessment of a manuscript must be maintained by expert reviewers, and this extends to reviewers’ colleagues who may be asked (with the editor’s permission) to give opinions on specific sections.
  6. Submitted manuscript should not be retained or copied.
  7. Reviewers and editors should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations unless they have the authors’ permission.
  8. Reviewers should provide speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased, and justifiable reports.
  9. Reviewers assigned to an article will comment on the following items:
    • The importance, originality, and timeliness of the study
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the study design and data analysis for research papers or the analysis and commentary for essays
    • Writing, organization, and presentation
    • The degree to which the findings justify the conclusion
    • The article's relevance, usefulness, and comprehensibility for the Journal’s target audience.

Initial Review

  1. Read the abstract to be sure that you have the expertise to review the article. Don’t be afraid to say no to reviewing an article if there is athe good reason.
  2. Read information provided by the journal for reviewers so you will know: a) The type of manuscript (e.g., a review article, technical note, original research) and the journal’s expectations/parameters for that type of manuscript.; b) Other journal requirements that the manuscript must meet (e.g., length, citation style).
  3. Know the journal’s scope and mission to make sure that the topic of the paper fits in the scope.
  4. Ready? Read through entire manuscript initially to see if the paper is worth publishing- only make a few notes about major problems if such exist: a) Is the question of interest sound and significant?; b) Was the design and/or method used adequately or fatally flawed? (for original research papers); c) Were the results substantial enough to consider publishable (or were only two or so variables presented or resulted so flawed as to render the paper unpublishable)?
  5. What is your initial impression? If the paper is: a) Acceptable with only minor comments/questions: solid, interesting, and new; sound methodology used; results were well presented; discussion well formulated with Interpretations based on sound science reasoning, etc., with only minor comments/questions, move directly to writing up review; b) Fatally flawed so you will have to reject it: move directly to writing up review; c) A mixture somewhere in the range of “revise and resubmit” to “accepted with major changes” or you’re unsure if it should be rejected yet or not: It may be a worthy paper, but there are major concerns that would need to be addressed.

 Full-Content Review

  1. Writing: Is the manuscript easy to follow, that is, has a logical progression and evident organization?
  2. Is the manuscript concise and understandable? Any parts that should be reduced,
  3. Eliminated/expanded/added?
  4. Note if there are major problems with mechanics: grammar, punctuation, spelling. (If just a few places aren’t worded well or correctly, make a note to tell the author the specific places. If there are consistent problems throughout, only select an example or two. Don’t try and edit the whole thing).
  5. Abbreviations: Used judiciously and composed so the reader won’t have trouble remembering what an abbreviation represents.
  6. Follows style, format, and other rules of the journal.
  7. Citations are provided when providing evidence-based information from outside sources.