Ethic Statement

Jurnal Wacana Sarjana follows COPE Core Practices for publication ethics. Nonetheless, Jurnal Wacana Sarjana considers this Core Practices alongside specific national codes of conduct for research and are not intended to replace these.
Allegations of Misconduct
Jurnal Wacana Sarjana thrives to avoid and handle allegations with a clear procedure for handling allegations. The journal takes seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication. We encourage any allegation of potential scientific misconduct should be reported immediately to the journal's editorial office at jws@ukm.edu.my.
We handle all types misconducts that include issues of authorship and contributorship, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, ethical conduct of research, data integrity, intellectual property, peer review process, post-publication issues, ethical sensitivity to racial and gender. We handle all these misconducts that involve the authors, the journal, the publisher, staff, reviewers, as well as editorial board.
The procedure for the management of complaints of misconducts should proceed with sensitivity, in the following manner:
1. The editorial office of the journal receives a complaint through email (jws@ukm.edu.my) that an article submitted to or published in the journal is suspected of containing research misconduct.
2. The complainant needs to clearly indicate the parties (e.g. authors, reviewers, editorial board members etc), the specific details of articles i.e article's title, author(s), issue & volume (if neccessary), and details of misconduct (s).
3. The editorial office will conduct an investigation, during which time the editor of the journal and the parties of the suspected article will be in contact.
4. The parties will be asked to provide an explanation with factual statements and any available evidence.
5. Misconduct complaint againts authors: If the parties accepts the misconduct complaint, the editorial office will take the following actions depending on the situation:In the case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article may be permanently retracted or rejected. Before making a decision, confirmation will be sought from the experts of the relevant institution or other authorities as required.
- If the article has been published, a retraction may be necessary to remedy the situation. However, there may still be disagreement concerning the appropriate wording of the description.
- If the misconduct is reported during the review process, the review process may be rejected or continue, with the author(s) making the relevant changes.
6. Misconduct complaint against non-author: If the parties accepts the misconduct complaint, the editorial office will take the following actions depending on the situation:
- The parties should be warned about his/her misconduct
- Moving the parties to a different team or role
- The parties should be suspended temporarily until futher notice
- The parties should be terminated from the Journal
7. The complainant will be informed of the outcome once the issue is resolved.
8. The complaint case will thereupon be considered concluded.

Duties of an Author
1. Authors have responsibility to ensure that only original manuscripts are submitted, and must not reproduce manuscripts that have been previously published in other journals.
2. Authors must not submit manuscripts to Jurnal Wacana Sarjana if the manuscripts are currently sent, being reviewed or considered by other journals.
3. Authors must not submit manuscripts that are being reviewed or considered by Jurnal Wacana Sarjana to other journals simultaneously.
4. Authors are allowed to publish their work elsewhere after receiving a formal rejection from Jurnal Wacana Sarjana or if their request to withdraw their manuscripts is officially accepted by the journal.
5. Authors must inform the Chief Editor of any inaccuracy of data in their published articles so that correction or retraction of the articles can be done.
6. Authors should make significant contributions and be held accountable for any shortcoming in their work.
7. Plagiarism: Authors should submit only original work that is not plagiarized, and has not been published or being considered elsewhere. Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research output in more than one journal or primary publication. A similar manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal concurrently as this constitutes as unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.The editorial office will do the plagiarism check for similarities of submitted manuscripts with existing literature.
8. Inclusion of fraudulent: Inaccurate statements are unacceptable. Work and/or words from other publications must be appropriately cited or quoted.
9. Reporting: Authors should state their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.The methods used in the work should be clearly and unambiguously described so that the findings can be repeated and confirmed by other researchers.
10. Conflict of Interest: A statement on conflict of interest must be included in the manuscript if authors receive any support that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.
11. Acknowledgement: All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
12. Authorship and collaboration: Name of authors listed in a manuscript should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the report. Only those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the work must be acknowledged or listed as contributors. It is the duty of the corresponding author to ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper. All co-authors must approve the final version of the paper and agree to the version of the paper before submission.
Role of a Reviewer
Evaluate Manuscripts
1. The primary role of reviewers is to evaluate manuscripts submission to journals based on the requirements of e-Bangi Journal, predefined criteria, and the quality, completeness and accuracy of the research presented.
2. Reviewers provide feedback on the paper, suggest improvements and make a recommendation to the editor about whether to accept, reject or request changes to the manusript.
3. Ensure the rigorous standards of the scientific process by taking part in the peer-review system.
4. Should ensure the originality of a submission and be alert to any plagiarism and redundant publication.

Uphold the Integrity
1. Uphold the integrity of the journal by identifying invalid research, and helping to maintain the quality of the journal
2. Conflict of Interest: Must disclose any competing interest before agreeing to review a submission.
3. Refuse to Review: Can refuse to review any submission due to a conflict of interest or inadequate knowledge.
4. Report Misconduct: Reveal any ethical misconduct encountered while reviewing to the Chief Editor for further action.
5. Must not discuss the content of the submission without permission.

Obligation
1. Fulfil a sense of obligation to the community and their own area of research.
2. Establish relationships with reputable colleagues and their affiliated journals, and increase their opportunities to join an Editorial Board.
3. Can help prevent ethical breaches by identifying plagiarism, research fraud and other problems by dint of their familiarity with the subject area.
4. Reciprocate professional courtesy, as authors and reviewers are often interchangeable roles – as reviewer, researchers "repay" the same consideration they receive as authors.

General Considerations
1. Reviewers must be professionals and courteous
2. Reviewers must be objective, constructive & specific
3. Read the whole manuscript before starting
4. Follow the journal's guidelines
5. Be consistent with your confidential comments to editors
6. Remember that your role is to assists the authors in improving the manuscript

Code of Conduct and Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors
General duties
1. Editors should be accountable for everything published in Jurnal Wacana Sarjana.
2. Actively seeking the views of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members about ways of improving their journal’s processes
3. Encouraging and being aware of research into peer review and publishing and reassessing their journal’s processes in the light of new findings
4. Working to persuade their publisher to provide appropriate resources, guidance from experts (e.g. designers, lawyers)
5. Supporting initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct
6. Supporting initiatives to educate researchers about publication ethics
7. Assessing the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behaviour and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behaviour and discourage misconduct
8. Ensuring that any press releases issued by their journal reflect the message of the reported article and put it into context

Relation with readers
1. Ensuring that all published reports and reviews of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers (including statistical review where appropriate)
2. Ensuring that non-peer-reviewed sections of their journal are clearly identified
3. Adopting processes that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting including technical
4. Editing and the use of appropriate guidelines and checklists
5. Considering developing a transparency policy to encourage maximum disclosure about the provenance of non-research articles3
6. Adopting authorship or contributorship systems that promote good practice (i.e. so that listings accurately reflect who did the work)4 and discourage misconduct (e.g. ghost and guest authors)
7. Informing readers about steps taken to ensure that submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased evaluation

Relation with Reviewers
1. Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal.
2. Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission.
3. New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.
4. A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.
5. Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
6. Editors should publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.
7. Editors should provide guidance about criteria for authorship and/or who should be listed as a contributor following the standards within the relevant field.

Bibliography
1. Can, İ. H., & Honca, M. (2022). Awareness of scientific publication ethics in higher education. International Journal of Ethics Education, 1-18.
2. Comittee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2017). Ethical guidelines for peer review. Retrieved from https://publicationethics.org/files/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-v2_0.pdf
3. Comittee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011).Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for hournal editors. Retrieved from, https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
4. Elsevier. (2022). The role of a Reviewer. Retrieved from, https://www.elsevier.com/reviewers/role
5. Jacob, M. A. (2019). Under repair: A publication ethics and research record in the making. Social Studies Of Science, 49(1), 77-101
6. Mullan, Z. (2022). How to write a helpful peer review report. Retrieved from, https://researcheracademy.elsevier.com/navigating-peer-review