Policy Document

Chapter I: Preliminary

  1. Short title and commencement: This policy shall be called “JPOLAS Policy” and the document shall be called “JPOLAS Policy Document”. It shall come into force at once.
  2. Frequency of the Journal: The journal shall be published in 4 issues per volume which will be published quarterly. The publication date of the issue shall be the last day of each quarter.
  3. Scope of Journal: The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:
  1. Communication: The journal welcomes papers on various fields of communication, including but not limited to mass communication, media communication, digital communication, organizational communication, interpersonal communication, international communication, health communication, political communication, and intercultural communication.
  2. Political Science: The journal welcomes work from political theory, public administration, public policy, political methodology, political economy, law, gender studies, political psychology, environmental politics, gender and politics.
  3. Social Sciences: The journal encourages research in the areas of social sciences, such as anthropology, economics, education, Law, international relations, psychology, and social work and management.
  4. Humanities: The journal invites papers on various disciplines of humanities, such as art history, literature, philosophy, religion, and theology.
  1. Aims and Objectives: The Core Aims and Objectives of the journal include:
    1. The journal seeks to publish original research articles, review articles, case studies, book reviews, film, theatre and media production reviews, and empirical insights into the above-mentioned areas. The articles should be based on rigorous research methodologies, provide new knowledge or ideas, and contribute to the advancement of the relevant fields. The journal also encourages interdisciplinary research and welcomes articles that address the intersections of communication, social sciences, and humanities.
    2. To advance research in the realm of communication, media, politics and society.
    3. To promote the publishing of high-quality theoretical and empirical research scripts.
    4. To develop global networks among academicians, researchers and professionals for interaction and cooperation.
    5. To encourage different genres in creative and research writing.
    6. To enhance the diversity, multiplicity, and miscellany of the research on society in general and any other legal purposes. All current/previous issues and complete articles can be viewed or downloaded from JPOLAS's website.

Chapter II: Policies

  1. Open Access Policy: JPOLAS provides immediate open access to all its published contents on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
  2. Copyright and Licensing:
    1. The authors will retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes.
    2. All works published is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License.
    3. Readers are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

  1. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as one follow the license terms.
  2. Under the following terms:
  1. Attribution — One must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . One may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses one or his use.
  2. Non-Commercial — One may not use the material for commercial purposes .
  3. No additional restrictions — One may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
    1. Notices: One do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where his use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation .
    2. No warranties are given. The license may not give one all of the permissions necessary for his intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how one use the material.
    3. Readers may “Share-copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format” and “Adapt-remix, transform, and build upon the material”. The readers must give appropriate credit to the source of the material and indicate if changes were made to the material. Readers may not use the material for commercial purposes. The readers may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
  4. Digital Archiving Policy: This journal utilizes LOCKSS and CLOCKS systems to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.
  5. Self-Archiving Policy: Authors are permitted to deposit any version of their work in any institutional or subject repository:
    1. Preprint
    2. Author’s Accepted Manuscript
    3. Version of Record
    4. No embargo is applicable.
  6. Data Sharing Policy: It is desired that authors deposit their data in SPSS, Excel, or any other spreadsheet in any public repository and share the link under this heading at the end of the submitted work.
  7. Plagiarism Policy:
    1. Plagiarism is the representation of language, text, thoughts, ideas, or expressions of some other authors as one’s own original work. It also includes self-plagiarism, which includes duplicate/ redundant publication, text recycling, and salami slicing. JPOLAS follows COPE, ICMJE, & HEC (Higher Education Commission), Pakistan guidelines, standards, and policies regarding plagiarism.
    2. JPOLAS checks the similarity index by using TURNITIN software and the reports are conveyed to the authors if it is up to 40%. If it is >40%, it is declined without further processing. HEC does not allow an overall similarity of more than 19% and from a single source of more than 5% for the authenticity of the work. Authors may submit the similarity report as a supplementary file if they have already checked it. The attempt of plagiarism is academic dishonesty. If it is proved after the article is published, it will be retracted and the authors may be debarred permanently or temporarily and the parent institution may be intimated for departmental proceedings against the author as per HEC policies. If it is proven before the publication, the current article will be rejected and the authors may be debarred for one or more years for future submissions in this journal.
  8. Peer Review Policy: JPOLAS is a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal. Each manuscript is presented to two reviewers who are experts in the field; one inside the country and another from an industrialized developed country. The comments of reviewers are shared with the authors for incorporation in the manuscript. The revised manuscript is further evaluated by the respective section editors and finally by the chief editor. If accepted, authors are accordingly informed and the manuscripts are kept for publication. In case of rejection, authors are accordingly informed and the manuscripts are archived.
  9. Appeals Process:
    1. The readers, authors, reviewers, or any other person may submit a formal appeal through the official email (editor@jpolas.com) of the journal regarding any problem, including but not limited to any conflict, delays in review or publishing or article processing charges or rejection of manuscripts to the Chief Editor. The case will be referred for examination/ investigation to the Appeals Committee of the Editorial Board/ Advisory Board to give recommendations to the Board for decision in the light of the Core Practices of COPE, COPE Guidelines and Policies of WAME, and Council of Science Editors and HEC. The Committee is comprised of;
      1. Editor in Chief
      2. Editor; and
      3. Senior Most Members of the Editorial Board

The committee shall take the decisions by simple majority.

  1. Complaints Process: The readers, authors, reviewers, or any other person may submit a formal complaint through the official email (editor@jpolas.com) of the journal regarding any publication misconduct on the part of the author, reviewer, or Editor/ Editorial Board to the Chief Editor. The case will be referred for examination/ investigation to the Complaints Process Committee of the Editorial Board/ Advisory Board to give recommendations to the Board for decision in the light of the Core Practices of COPE, COPE Guidelines and Policies of WAME, and Council of Science Editors and HEC. The appeal committee as constituted under Section 12 shall act as the complaint committee.
  2. Publication Ethics: Publication ethics of the Journalism, Politics and Society (JPOLAS) shall be as follows;
    1. Ethics Approval, Informed Consent, and Data Confidentiality: All research involving human participants must be conducted under the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Informed consent must be obtained from all participants before they participate in the research. The confidentiality of all research data must be protected.
    2. Data Manipulation and Research Fraud: Researchers must not manipulate or fabricate data, or engage in other forms of research fraud. They must also avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism.
    3. Simultaneous Submission: A manuscript must not be simultaneously submitted to more than one journal.
    4. Duplicate Publication: A manuscript must not have been published previously, or be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
    5. Self-Citation: Authors should avoid excessive self-citation.
    6. Ethics With Authorship: Authorship should be based on the following criteria:
      1. substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work;
      2. substantial contributions to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; substantial contributions to the drafting of the manuscript; or

         3. Substantial contributions to the revision of the manuscript critically for important intellectual                       content. All authors should have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript.

        4. Conflicts of Interest: Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could bias their                 work.

  1. In addition to these general ethical principles, JPOLAS also has specific guidelines for the publication of research involving animals and human subjects. These guidelines can be found on the journal's website
  2. Acknowledgments: This journal encourages acknowledgment of contributions to research work where authorship is not justified. The ICMJE guidelines state: ‘All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments, and what they did should be described’. All those whose contribution is acknowledged should be aware of it. Acknowledgment should include technical help, data collection, and assistance in writing and departmental head that only provided general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.
  3. Number and order of authors: The number of authors is not restricted, but it should not be disproportionally more than the work done. The order of authors should be based on the contribution to the work. Number and order should be mutually agreed by all authors.
  4. Principal and corresponding authors: The one with the most contribution should be the principal/ first author. A principal author may himself be the corresponding author or he may designate another author for it with mutual consensus of all the authors.
  5. Informed consent & maintaining the confidentiality of research participants
    1. The authors must obtain appropriate consents, permissions, and releases when they wish to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in their work to take care of the Data Protection and Privacy Laws of the concerned country/region.
    2. Each individual, or the individual's legal guardian, or another person with legal authority to act on the individual's behalf who appears in any video, recording, photograph, image, illustration, or case report (or in any other identifiable form) is made aware in advance of the fact that such photographs are being taken or such video, recording, photograph, image, illustration or report is being made, and of all the purposes for which they might be used, including disclosure in any work or product. That individual, legal guardian, or person with legal authority must give his/her explicit written consent. If such consent is made subject to any conditions (for example, adopting measures to prevent personal identification of the person concerned), the journal must be made aware in writing of all such conditions. Written consents must be retained by the author and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to this journal on request.
    3. The form of written consent must comply with each requirement of all applicable Data Protection and Privacy Laws. Particular care should be taken with obtaining consent where children are concerned (in particular where a child has special needs or learning disabilities), where an individual's head or face appears, or where reference is made to an individual's name or other personal details.
    4. In the case of a child, if parents or guardians disagree on the use of the images of that child, then consent should be deemed not to have been given and those images should not be used. It is also important to ensure that only images of children in suitable dress are used to reduce the risk of images being used inappropriately.
    5. Even if consent has been obtained, care must be taken to ensure that the portrayal and captioning of the individual concerned are respectful and could not be seen as denigrating that individual.
    6. Authors have to satisfy the editors that “informed consent to participate” was sought from all adult subjects or from parents/guardians of the subjects less than 16 years age.
    7. Patients’ and research subjects’ names, initials, hospital or social security numbers, date of birth, or other personal or identifying information should not be used.
    8. Images of patients or research subjects should not be used unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent/ guardian) has given written, informed consent for publication. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Editors may ask to provide written consent.
    9. Informed consent is necessary when there is any doubt regarding anonymity.
    10. When masking the subjects, the authors should ensure the editors that scientific meaning is not distorted.
    11. Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified, e.g. X-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides, or laparoscopic images, provided that these do not contain any identifying marks and are not accompanied by text that might identify the individual concerned.
    12. If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned.
    13. Authors should follow the CARE guidelines for case reports.
  6. Editorial Process: JPOLAS follows a systematic review and publication policy. It follows a double-blind peer review policy. The article is sent to two reviewers who are experts in their respective fields to review the paper in light of the journal’s guidelines and features of a quality research paper. If the reviewers suggest any changes, the same suggestions are forwarded to the authors to ensure the quality of the articles and after that, revised articles are accepted. The publication process is as follows:
    1. The submitted manuscript is acknowledged within 24 hours of receipt.
    2. The manuscript/paper is sent to two reviewers without the name and affiliations of the author(s). The review process takes a maximum of 4 weeks.
    3. The review reports are collected from the reviewers and the executive editor sends the review reports to the authors including all terms and conditions of the publication.
    4. If the paper is accepted, the executive editor sends positive response to the authors. If the paper is accepted subject to modification, the executive editor will send the review reports to the authors including a formal request to modify the paper by seven days as per the suggestions of the reviewers. The executive author sends the modified paper to the same reviewers of the said paper to justify the modifications. If the paper fails to satisfy the reviewers, then the article is said to be finally rejected. The journal does not proceed with the said paper. However, in case of minor changes, the editorial board may consider the paper for further modifications.
    5. The accepted paper is processed for publication (soft copy) upon the successful completion of the journal’s terms and conditions. The acceptance letter is issued within five days after the acceptance of the article.
    6. Proof Reading: Before publishing the processed article, the executive editor sends it to the author for final proofreading.
    7. The paper is published online first. The executive editor will notify the authors about online publication with a necessary download link. The authors may request any correction in the published paper (in case of extremely important changes) within three days of online publication.
    8. The journal is published in print form within one week after the online publication.

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