Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractices Statement

The following guidelines are fully aligned with the requirements of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and follow the recommended principles by HEC for the code of conduct. We at LGU encourage the use of best practices and evaluate all the publication malpractices. Lahore Garrison University takes full responsibility as a publishing body and carries its duties effectively during all the phases of publishing.

Publication Fee

Publication fee of approved papers: Rs. 10,000/-
Note: As per LGU revised policy (with effect from January 2023)

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Lahore Garrison University - Journal rules, policies and Ethical Guidelines for the Author(s)

Originality and Plagiarism

• It is the author(s)' responsibility to ascertain that she/he has submitted an entirely original work, giving due credit, by virtue of proper citations, to the works and/or words of other authors where they have been used.
• Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is not acceptable.
• Material quoted verbatim from the author(s)' previously published work or other sources must be placed in quotation marks.
• In case the manuscript has a similarity index of more than 19%, it will either be rejected or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of a conditional acceptance.
• Percentage of similarity from Self/Single source should be less than 5 percent.

Declaration

• Authors are required to provide an undertaking/declaration stating that the manuscript under consideration contains solely their original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal in any form.
• A manuscript that is co-authored must be accompanied by an undertaking explicitly stating that each author has contributed substantially towards the preparation of the manuscript in order to claim right to authorship.

Multiple Redundant and Current Publication

• The authors and editor must agree to the secondary publication, which must cite the primary references and reflect the same data and interpretation of the primary document.
• Concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources

• A paper must always contain acknowledgment of the work of others,  including clear indications of the sources of all information quoted or offered, except what is common knowledge.
• The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organizations and institutes who assisted the process of research, including those who provided technical help, writing assistance or financial funding (in the acknowledgment section).
• It is duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and properly cite the original publications that describe closely related work.

Authorship Credit

• It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to include the name(s) of only those co-authors who have made significant contributions to the work.
• The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research should be acknowledged for their contribution to an "Acknowledgement" section.

Images

• The author(s) should ensure that images included in an account of research performed or in the data collection as part of the research are free from manipulation,
• The author(s) must provide an accurate description of how the images were generated and produced.

Copyright

Authors may have to sign an agreement allowing the journal to reserve the right to circulate the article and all other derivative works such as translations.

Manuscript Acceptance and Rejection

• The minimum review period is 1-month and during this period the author(s) reserve the right to contact the Editor to ask about the status of the review.
• Once the review process has been completed, the author will be informed about the status of the manuscript which could either be an acceptance, rejection, or revisions. In the case of rejection, the author(s) reserves the right to publish the article elsewhere.
• In case of revisions, the author(s) must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised manuscript should, then, go through the process of affirmation of revisions and be accepted or rejected accordingly.
• In case of dissatisfaction over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.

 

Ethical Guidelines For the Reviewers

The Reviewers should:

• Inform the Editor, if they do not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review and s/he should inform the Editor immediately after receiving a request.
• Be responsible to act promptly and submit a review report on time.
• Immediately inform the Editor of any possible delays and suggest another date of submission for a review report.
• There should be no unnecessary delay in the review process, either by prolonged delay in submission of their review or by requesting unnecessary additional data/information from the Editor or author(s).
• Reviewers should consider the research paper as a confidential document and must not share its content on any platform except in the case where professional advice is being sought with the authorization of the Editor.
• Reviewers are professionally and ethically bound not to disclose the details of any research paper prior to its publication without the prior approval of the Editor.

Review Report

• The reviewer must explicitly write his/her observations in the section of 'comments' because author(s) will only have access to the comment’s reviewers have made,
• For writing a review report, the reviewers are requested to complete a prescribed form.

The reviewers should indicate the revisions clearly and comprehensively and show a willingness to confirm the revisions submitted by the author(s) if the Editor wishes so.