OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING POLICY:

All articles published by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology(IJCS) are readily available and immediately accessible online upon publication and readers can read, download and/or print OPEN access articles without any charges.

All articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which allows the open distribution and reproduction in any means, provided that the work is perfectly cited.

Authors have the flexibility to publish a wide range of articles in International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS), e.g., short communications, full-length research and review articles, as well as supplements, conference proceedings, and case studies.

Authorship acknowledgments:

All individuals listed as authors must have devoted substantially to the conception, execution, analysis, or summarizing of the work and are required to indicate their particular contribution. The names and order of author’s list must be finalized before submission to the journal and no responsibility lies on International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) regarding authorship matters. Changes in the order of list of authors is not permissible once article has been submitted to IJCS until and unless a written request duly signed by all co-authors mentioning the appropriate reasons of such change is submitted to the journal. The responsibility of any change in the name will lie on Corresponding author of the manuscript. Any article with disputed authorship may not be published by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) until complete resolution of the issue and a written consent provided to the editor by corresponding author. Granting Guest or honorary authorship to some individual due to his/her position only (e.g., research supervisor, departmental head) is highly discouraged.

In addition to authors of the article, individual/company/institution who has substantially contributed to studying important intellectual content or was involved in drafting or revising the manuscript may be acknowledged at the end of the article before the References.

Mentioning of corresponding author(s) is mandatory for all submissions. Only corresponding author will communicate with journal regarding all article-publication matters. Being a corresponding author doesn’t renders seniority to an author rather, it is required for managerial responsibilities only.

Copyrights: Authors who publish in International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) retain copyright to their work. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering Letter or the Terms and Conditions.

All articles by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS)are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits free distribution and reproduction of published content in any medium provided that the work is properly cited. International Journal of Criminology and Sociology(IJCS)(Licensor) grants the author(s) a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and non-commercial perpetual license to exercise the below rights of their published article.

• The authors retain the copyright of their published article. They will also have the right to reproduce the article, to incorporate the article into one or more collective works, and to reproduce the article as incorporated in collective works;
• Create and reproduce Derivative Works for educational purposes;
• Distribute Copies;
• Any commercial application of the work, with prior agreement by the author, is however, exclusively granted to Lifescience Global.

Plagiarism Prevention: International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks the content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further examined for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher's Editorial Policies. International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be acknowledged for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:

Low Text Similarity: The text of every submitted manuscript is examined using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. This mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not neglected. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. Suppose the similarity level is above 5%. In that case, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the source of the copied material.

It is essential to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered plagiarized content if most of the article is a combination of copied material.

High Text Similarity: There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity, but 15 % similar text is taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are encouraged to thoroughly rephrase similar text and properly cite the original quote to bypass plagiarism and copyright violation.

Types of Plagiarism: We all understand that scholarly manuscripts are drafted after a careful review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

• Reproduction of others' words, sentences, ideas, or findings as one's own without proper acknowledgment.
• Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. The author practices a former publication in different paper without proper citation and acknowledgment of the original source.
• Poor paraphrasing, copying complete paragraphs, and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
• Verbatim copying of text without placing quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
• They are correctly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and, in both cases, cite the original source.
• Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, author technical terms and sometimes standard methods cannot be rephrased; therefore, Editors must carefully review these sections before deciding.

Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts:

In rare cases where published manuscripts are discovered to be plagiarized (including translations of an article previously published in another language) after its publishing by IJCS, it is subject to retraction from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Journal's Editor-in-Chief. Authors are notified about EiC decision and a 'Retraction Note' is published on the title of plagiarized manuscript's electronic version, along with a link to the original study.

Article Publication Charges Policy: 

International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) is committed to disseminate research and scholarly publications as widely as possible. It supports the principle that the results of publicly funded studies should be freely accessible in the public domain. Therefore, it adopts the policy of publishing through Open Access (OA).

However, open access publishing is not without costs. International Journal of Criminology and Sociology(IJCS)pays various expenses of journal production, its online hosting, and archiving in different databases by charging publication fee from authors and their research supporters for each article they publish in IJCS.

Data Fabrication and Manipulation:

International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) does not support any makeup of research findings/data to give a false impression. Manipulating images, removing unsupportive results, changing/adding/deleting data points etc. are all included in data fabrication and not allowed in submitted articles. However, proper technical manipulation of a complete image may be allowed for readability. Any type of such technical manipulation must be clearly mentioned in cover letter while submitting the article to the journal. Improper manipulation involving parts of the image is strictly forbidden. COPE guidelines are followed by all our editors to handle such falsifications discovered during, or after the publishing process.

Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission:

It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to the International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication, the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered.

Abstracts and posters of conferences, results presented at meetings (for example, to inform investigators or participants about findings), results from databases (data without interpretation, discussion, context, or conclusions in the form of tables and text to describe data/information where this is not easily presented in tabular form) are not considered before publication.

Authors who wish to publish translations of the articles that have been published elsewhere should ensure that they have appropriate permission(s), indicate clearly that the material has been translated and re-published, and show the primary source of the material. The Editor-in-Chief may request the related publications if he/she is concerned about overlap and possible redundancy.

Allegations of misconduct:

International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) will investigate if any form of misconduct is suspected in a submitted article. Editorial members/ editorial staff, as appropriate will be responsible for following up of such cases. Such articles are not only rejected but the submitting author is contacted first, for questions regarding any unfair actions. In case of no/unsatisfactory reply from authors International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) has the authority to contact their employers, institutions/organizations, or relevant regulatory body for investigating and resolving the issue. All steps are taken in the light of COPE’s directives.

All cases of misconduct are followed up till final settling of the issue. In rare situations of any allegation of ethical misconduct discovered and evidently proved in a post-published article by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS), investigation will be carried out and appropriate action may be taken by handling editor of the article, in consultation with EiC, which may include retraction/removal of the article from the journal’s website. The editorial staff bears the responsibility to follow up the cases of misconduct till final solution of the issue is achieved. The extremely unusual cases of evident misconduct may be directed to COPE team by EiC, in case that no guiding rules/flowcharts by COPE are available regarding such issues.

Disclaimer:

Responsibility for the content published by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS), including any opinions expressed therein, rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS)(on its behalf and behalf of its staff and members of its editorial board) disclaims responsibility for any injury and/or damage (whether financial or otherwise) to persons or property, resulting directly or indirectly from any ideas, methods, instructions, or products (including errors in the same) referred to in any content of International Journal of Criminology and Sociology(IJCS).

Article Withdrawal:

Only in rare cases where an article has significant errors which are compelling and unavoidable; or has been accidently submitted multiple times, withdrawal of an unpublished article by authors is permissible.

An "Article withdrawal Form” (available from editorial office of the journal) mentioning the reason for withdrawal; and signed by all co-authors will be needed for such request. As per policy, if the withdrawal of article is requested within the 48 hours of submission, no withdrawal penalty will be charged, however, if authors withdraw manuscripts during/after review; and acceptance, a withdrawal penalty will be applicable as the article may have caused the time waste of the editors, reviewers, and the editorial staff. Withdrawal will only be allowed after withdrawal penalty has been fully paid to the journal.

The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is highest authority solely responsible to take decisions on withdrawal policies.

Only if a manuscript has taken more than six months for review process, the authors have the right to withdraw their manuscript without paying any charges. Authors may not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received a formal letter notifying about the Manuscript Withdrawal from the editorial office.

To avoid time-waste of our publishing team, and the withdrawal penalties by authors we suggest our authors to be certain that the data and facts presented in the article are error free, and best practices in the publication ethics have been complied before submission to the journal.

Post-publication policies:

Errata, Corrigenda, and Corrections in Published Articles:

Authors and readers are advised to notify the Editor-in-Chief if they discover errors in published content, author's names, and affiliations or if they have reasons for concern over the legitimacy of a publication. In such cases, International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) will publish an ERRATUM or a CORRIGENDUM, in discussion with the Editor-in-Chief and authors of the article, and/or substitute or retract the article.


Article Retraction:

If manuscripts are published, having assigned certain information of volume/issue/page number, and it is found that there are infringements of professional ethical codes in their content, such as plagiarism, excess similarity with some other article, fraudulent use of data, etc., then such manuscripts are considered for retraction by relevant editors of IJCS.

A retraction note entitled "Retraction: [article title]" is published in the paginated part of the next scheduled issue of the journal and is also listed in the table of contents.

Editors may consider retracting a publication' if:

• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation)
• It constitutes plagiarism
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorization for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy)
• It reports unethical research
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (aka, conflict of interest) that, in view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.

Removal of Published Content:

In exceptional circumstances, if International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) finds that a published content is defamatory, breaches a third party’s legal rights, or is unlawful otherwise; if acted upon ,would be seriously risky to health; or receives a government/court order to remove the published content; it reserves the right to temporarily or permanently remove such article. Bibliography (title and authors’ names) will be retained and will be accompanied by a declaration briefly explaining the reasons for removal of the content.

Appeals and Complaints:

Generally, the editorial decisions are not reverted. However, authors who consider that their manuscript was rejected due to a misunderstanding or mistake may seek an explanation for the decision. Appeals must give sound reasoning and compelling evidence against the criticism raised in the rejection letter. A difference of opinion as to the interest, novelty, or suitability of the manuscript for the journal will not be considered an appeal. The EIC and other relevant editors will consider the request and their decision afterwards will be deemed final.

Acceptance of the manuscript for publishing is not guaranteed even if the journals’ concerned personals agree to reconsider the manuscript. The reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors and substantive revision.

Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal concerned. All appeals and complaints must be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

EDITORIAL RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW

PURPOSE

Generally, the functioning of the journal is supervised by an Editorial Board composed of distinguished and qualified researchers in the field, who contribute by inviting participation and offering expert opinions on the suitability of submissions. The Editorial Board includes the following key positions.

EDITORIAL RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW:

Editorial board members are expected to:

• Assess submissions based on the policy and scope of the journal
• Organize publication of thematic issues
• Provide editorials for thematic issues organized under their Guest Editorship
• Assist in identifying peer-reviewers suitable to a specific topic and provide second opinions on papers in case of reviewer's conflict
• Suggest appropriate conferences for the editors to attend
• Assist in the announcement of the journal amongst authors, readers, and subscribers; and encourage colleagues to submit their best work
• Suggest competent board members
• Carry out submitted manuscript peer-reviewing  
• Submit/Solicit review/research manuscript to the journal

Selection Criteria:

We believe that the Editorial Board plays an essential role in the progress of a journal, and the success of our journal owes a lot to our competent editorial board. 

Scholars from different regions worldwide are chosen for the Editorial Board to serve the journal with dedication and conviction.

The members are selected as per the following criteria:

· Geographical diversity
· Relevance of expertise
· specific number of publications to their credit
· Eminence as per their posts in key research institutes

Guest editors, previous authors, or peer-reviewers who have worked for the journal, or are endorsed by other board members may be considered for inclusion in the Editorial Board.

When invited to the editorial board, potential candidates must provide a brief description of their responsibilities and a clear statement that their post is voluntary and without remuneration.

PURPOSE

Generally, the functioning of the journal is supervised by an Editorial Board, which consists of distinguished and qualified researchers in the field who contribute by inviting participation and offering expert views on the suitability of submissions. The Editorial Board consists of the following critical positions.

Editor-in-Chief:

The Editor-in-Chief is primarily responsible for actions conducted for the journal. It maintains the right of final acceptance or rejection of manuscripts.

Associate Editor(s):

An Associate Editor is a managing editor who manages the processing of the manuscripts, which entail soliciting manuscripts from potential contributors, assessing the suitability of the manuscript related to its scope, managing the peer-review process, devising strategies for the progress of the journal, coordinating with the reviewers and board members, taking decisions on the revised submissions and occasionally assisting the Editor-in-chief for final acceptance or rejection of the manuscripts.

Editorial Board Members:

The Editorial Board consists of a committee of researchers with expertise in the relevant field, appointed by the journal's authorities. 

Editorial board members are expected to:

• Carry out peer-reviewing of submitted manuscripts
• Assess submissions based on the policy and scope of the journal
• Organize publication of thematic issues
• Invite new authors and submissions
• Provide editorials for thematic issues organized under their Guest Editorship
• Assist in identifying peer-reviewers suitable to a specific topic and provide second opinions on papers in case of reviewer's conflict
• Suggest appropriate conferences for the editors to attend
• Assist in the announcement of the journal amongst authors, readers, and subscribers and encourage colleagues to submit their best work
• Suggest competent board members
• Carry out submitted manuscript peer-reviewing  
• Submit/Solicit review/research manuscript to the journal

Selection Criteria:

We believe that the Editorial Board plays an essential role in the progress of a journal, and the success of our journal owes a lot to our competent editorial board. 

Scholars from different regions worldwide are chosen for the Editorial Board to serve the journal with dedication and conviction.

The members are selected as per the following criteria:

· Geographical diversity
· Relevance of expertise
· specific number of publications to their credit
· Eminence as per their posts in key research institutes

Guest editors, previous authors, or peer-reviewers who have worked for the journal, or are endorsed by other board members may be considered for inclusion in the Editorial Board.

When invited to the editorial board, potential candidates must provide a brief description of their responsibilities and a clear statement that their post is voluntary and without remuneration.

EDITORIAL RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW

PURPOSE

Generally, the functioning of the journal is supervised by an Editorial Board composed of distinguished and qualified researchers in the field, who contribute by inviting participation and offering expert opinions on the suitability of submissions. The Editorial Board includes the following key positions.

Editor-in-Chief:

The Editor-in-Chief provides overall academic and strategic leadership of the journal by defining its scope and editorial policies, ensuring a rigorous and ethical peer-review process, making final publication decisions, and maintaining high scholarly standards. The EiC oversees and guides the editorial board, ensures timely publication, fosters strong relationships with authors and reviewers, and actively works to enhance the journal’s visibility and quality.

Associate Editors:

Associate Editors manage the peer-review process for assigned manuscripts by selecting reviewers, evaluating reports, and making recommendations on publication decisions. They ensure timely, fair, and high-quality reviews while contributing to the journal’s academic standards, scope development, and visibility through active engagement with the research community.

EDITORIAL RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW:

Editorial board members are expected to:

• Assess submissions based on the policy and scope of the journal
• Organize publication of thematic issues
• Provide editorials for thematic issues organized under their Guest Editorship
• Assist in identifying peer-reviewers suitable to a specific topic and provide second opinions on papers in case of reviewer's conflict
• Suggest appropriate conferences for the editors to attend
• Assist in the announcement of the journal amongst authors, readers, and subscribers; and encourage colleagues to submit their best work
• Suggest competent board members
• Carry out submitted manuscript peer-reviewing  
• Submit/Solicit review/research manuscript to the journal

Selection Criteria:

We believe that the Editorial Board plays an essential role in the progress of a journal, and the success of our journal owes a lot to our competent editorial board. 

Scholars from different regions worldwide are chosen for the Editorial Board to serve the journal with dedication and conviction.

The members are selected as per the following criteria:

· Geographical diversity
· Relevance of expertise
· specific number of publications to their credit
· Eminence as per their posts in key research institutes

Guest editors, previous authors, or peer-reviewers who have worked for the journal, or are endorsed by other board members may be considered for inclusion in the Editorial Board.

When invited to the editorial board, potential candidates must provide a brief description of their responsibilities and a clear statement that their post is voluntary and without remuneration.