Policy Document

Detail of Frequency of Publication
Archives of Educational Studies (ARES) is a biannual journal and publishes one volume with two issues per annum.

Timeline of Publication
The first Issue of the journal for the period of January-June is published at the end of June each year.Similarly, the second issue of the journal for the period of July to December is published at the end of December each year.

Authorship of the Paper
Archives of Educational Studies (ARES) is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic Journal envisioned for researchers in all fields of educational studies. It is essential to give name, designation & e-mail address, when submitting a manuscript. Articles must be written in good English. Submission of an article implies that the work: a) has not been published previously in whole or part b) is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, c) is approved by all Authors, d) if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in whole or part, in English or any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding Author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the Author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. The Manuscripts are to be submitted online. Stepwise guidance will be provided if needed. No other form of submission is accepted.

Originality and Plagiarism Policy
Plagiarism is defined as producing or re-producing a text, data in any form or idea without appropriate citation of the original sources. The plagiarism and manipulation of data such as images and audio or video recordings will not be accepted at any cost. A manuscript having plagiarism at any stage during the submission, review, or publication process will be rejected. A manuscript will be withdrawn or retracted by the journal if the plagiarism is reported or detected after the publication, and the editorial office will notify this on our webpage. The authors are recommended to avoid self-plagiarized content that is not properly cited and/or substantially re-produced.

According to the COPE Report (1999), “Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct” (p. 43). The images, audios, and videos are prohibited and considered highly unethical if they are subject to forging or adjusted in any form. An identification of manipulation in any form of qualitative or quantitative data during the review, publication process or after the publication would be rejected or retracted. The authors should report the results impartially and remain unbiased while discussing these results.

Peer Review Policy
The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. ARES utilizes a double-blind peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. In order to facilitate a blinded review process, we request that there not be any author identifying information within the main document of an "in progress" submission. Rather than removing citations, we recommend that authors change their names to "blinded" within the in-text citations and references section. Articles that are accepted for publication with blinded information will be corrected during the production stage of this process. The title page and author information also will be added before the article is published. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then make the final recommendation. Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of ARES will be reviewed.

Article Processing/Publication
Publication costs of the journal are covered by the University of Okara. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal and no fee is received for the publication at the moment.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Authors are required to include any declaration in file separate from the main text, after any acknowledgements, under the heading 'Conflicts of Interest.' and state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. If they have conflict of interests then mention there.

When making a declaration the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article have with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.

Any commercial or financial involvements that might represent an appearance of a conflict of interest need to be additionally disclosed in the covering letter accompanying your article to assist the Editor in evaluating whether sufficient disclosure has been made within the Declaration of Conflicting Interests provided in the article.

The editorial office attempts to take necessary measures to avoid any conflict of interest. Nevertheless, the reviewers are requested to examine the manuscript to see if they suspect a conflict of interest that may cause bias on their part. We expect from the reviewers to report such manuscripts so that alternative reviewers may be assigned for ensuring unbiased review reports and maintaining ethical values of publication.

Corrections and Retractions of Research Articles
The Journal will consider retractions, corrections or expressions of concern in accordance with COPE’S RETRACTION GUIDELINES. The journal follows these guidelines for retracting or correcting manuscripts when required. The journal’s editor will issue a corrigendum or an erratum if an error is made by the author/s or the journal respectively. We are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when required during the publication process.

Policy and Principles on Research Data
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

  • share your research data in a relevant public data repository
  • include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
  • cite this data in your research

Contribution of Authors
It is essential to give name, designation & e-mail address, when submitting a manuscript. Articles must be written in good English. All researchers who have made a basic contribution (data collection, data analysis, writing report etc.) to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. 

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. They may be individuals or organizations: public, commercial, or not-for-profit. 

Ethical Considerations for Publication
The journal adheres to ethical standards of publication and deals strictly with the inappropriate behavior of authors, editors, and reviewers according to the pre-determined guidelines. The Editorial Office is responsible for addressing the unethical issues as per the guidelines laid out by the journal. Regarding the issues on authorship, authors’ misbehavior, or ownership of the research data, the Editorial Office may seek help from an organization or institution to which the authors are affiliated.