Ethical virtues are very precious, timeless and inevitable to ensure the right choices in ethical dilemmas thus leading to transparency and establishing/maintaining the professional standards. Keeping in view the importance of publication ethics, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has provided Ethical Guidelines for Journals and instructed its all recognized/accredited journals to adopt these guidelines with true essence. JRSS is strictly adhering the ethical guidelines set by HEC and advise authors, editors and reviewers of JRSS to follow and enforce these ethical guidelines.

Ethical Statement

The Journal of Research in Social Sciences (JRSS) addresses the highest standards of both critical academic review and professional publishing judgment. JRSS is meant to institutionalize and maintain the professional standards of all the publications in general and of the journal in particular. JRSS ensures the HEC recognized standards by reflecting the quality research of the author (s) and the affiliating institution as well the expertise and research skills of the reviewers.

Impartiality:

It falls in the premise of the Editor to ensure the originality of work from author along with to encourage the reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible research and publication misconduct. JRSS works on impartial basis for publication of articles beyond any political philosophy, race, religion gender, ethnic and citizenship. It encourages all types of complaints made on your observation regarding any misconduct through emails.

Confidentiality:

Confidentiality is the key value of JRSS, Editor ensure the co Confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the process of double-blind peer review is duly followed while keeping the information on the paper strictly between the editorial team, reviewers and the authors.

Transparency:

As per HEC Policy the members of the Editorial Board are not allowed to publish either as a principal author or co- author.

Disclosure of Information and Conflict of Interest:

Use of data / materials in unpublished material by the publisher requires the written permission of the original author. All information obtained after the peer review process must be kept confidential and cannot be used for personal purposes.

Publishing Ethics for Editors

• It is the editor's responsibility to ensure a fair and impartial double-blind review process for all submitted articles.
• Editors are responsible for evaluating all articles submitted in accordance with adamic merit only e.g., Confirm importance, timeliness, relevance, originality and clarity.
• Editors ensure that reviewers are selected based on the expertise associated with the submitted manuscript.
• Editors are responsible for any of the articles posted to the journal based on the legal requirements currently in force regarding verification of the study in question, relevance to researchers, scholars, readers, reviewer’s comments including responsible for deciding whether to publish.
• Editors are responsible for any of the articles posted to the journal for Copyright infringement and plagiarism.
• The Editor-in-Chief discusses these processes and decisions with editors, consultants, and / or experts.
• The editors and management staff will not disclose any information about a submitted article to anyone other than the corresponding author, editorial reviewers, potential peer reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher as necessary. An unpublished material disclosed in a submitted article will not be used by any editor in his/her own research.

Publishing Ethics for Reviewers

• Reviewer should notify the publisher if you do not have the necessary expertise to perform the evaluation, and notify the publisher as soon as you receive your request.
• Each manuscript submitted for peer review will be treated as confidential document by the reviewers
• Blind Review peer review should be conducted objectively.
• Reviewer need to articulate their views along with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers must identify related publications that are not cited by the author.
• Reviewers are asked to fill out one or more prescribed forms to create a report.
• Reviewers can write a short summary in the first section of the review to help both editors and authors. This summary should include the evaluator's final decision and the conclusion of a complete review.
•  When a reviewer makes a decision regarding a study, it must be clearly marked as “rejected”, “accepted without revision”, or “needed to be revised” to indicate the reason for each decision.

Publishing Ethics for Authors 

• It is the author's responsibility to ensure that the manuscript has been peer-reviewed / edited by an English expert before submitting to JRSS.
• Authors ensure that reference and citation styles are adhered to according to the APA Guidelines (latest version).
• Authors add bibliography at the end of the manuscript to confirm the citation style used in the text.
• The correspondent confirms that the manuscript has not been submitted and / or checked for publication elsewhere.
• Correspondent authors ensure that there are no conflicts of interest between the lead author and co-authors.
• The correspondent must ensure that the manuscript is not plagiarized or similar. Data and ideas from other sources are properly cited in accordance with international standards.
• Authors / co-authors must comply with and ensure international standards of research ethics.
• When submitting your manuscript, you must provide the full details of the authors belonging to one or more institutions.
• The author of the correspondence warrants that once a manuscript has been accepted for review, it will not be posted / published elsewhere unless rejected by JRSS.
• Authors must provide a signed contract / commitment that allows JRSS to reserve the right to distribute articles.
• It is the author's responsibility to read the author's guidelines carefully and ensure that all JRSS requirements and conditions are met before submitting the manuscript.
• It is the author's responsibility to do a bibliographic search and correctly cite the original publication that describes the closely related work.
• It is the author's responsibility to ensure that s/he has submitted the completely original work. Legitimate recognition of the work and / or the words of others in which they were used, with appropriate citations.
• If the manuscript similarity index exceeds 19% according to the HEC guidelines, the manuscript will be rejected.