Below are the essentials of International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS)’s publishing ethics for all groups involved in its publishing process:
Authors' Ethical Responsibilities:
- Originality: Authors have the responsibility of ensuring that all works in the manuscript are original and free from any kind of plagiarism.
- Ethical Approval: If the work involves human participants, taking approval from relevant ethical committee must be mentioned in the article.
- Informed consent: A statement about obtaining participants’ consent to participate, and later publish the work should always be a part of the articles which involve studies on human participants. Authors must ensure that participants have been de-identified appropriately, and anonymity has been maintained while publishing the research. If the study is waived by the ethics committee/review board for such consent, this should also be explicitly mentioned in the article.
- Duplicate publication: The work should not have been published elsewhere (including in any other language) or submitted to any other journal(s) at the time of submission to International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS).
- Racism: Unnecessary ethnic/racial labelling has been avoided.
- Conflict of Interest: Any possible conflict of interest needs to be acknowledged.
- Acknowledgement and Permission: Proper acknowledgments to others’ work must be provided (of any individual, company, or institution).If some content of the article has been used from other sources, adequate permission must be obtained and clearly mentioned in the article.
- Authorship: Only those who have made any substantial contribution to the presentation or organization of the submitted work should be listed as 'Authors.' At the same time, other contributors should be acknowledged. At least one of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author.
- Post-publication complaints: If authors detect some significant error in their published manuscript by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS), it is their responsibility to immediately contact the journals team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The assigned editor will then handle the authors’ concerns and resolve the issue.
Editors' Ethical Responsibilities:
- Editors-in-Chief of International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) are responsible for making critical editorial decisions on all peer-reviewed articles submitted in their journals.
- Although every effort is made to ensure that all published content by International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) is final and reliable to cite, we held our editors responsible for maintaining the transparency of the academic research and record. Therefore, if any case of retraction, rectification, and erratum arises, editors should give special attention to publish the respective note.
- The editor should exclude every sort of conflict of interest (financial/non-financial) for the article that they handle. They are ethically required to declare any conflict of interest that may impact decision- making process and refrain themselves from handling such article. An alternate editorial board member will be given the task to handle the article where any conflict arises. Assessing manuscripts for their scientific quality and intellectual content is their major responsibility. They are ethically required to make unbiased decisions free from any discrimination of race, gender, geographical origin, or religion of the author(s).
- The editor should evaluate all manuscripts factually based on their academic merit and free of any commercial or self-interests.
- The editors should maintain the confidentiality of every submission, and not disclose any information regarding submitted manuscripts before their final publication.
- Promoting research righteousness must be preserved.
- If an editor suspects any misconduct in research, he/she should start its prompt and detailed investigation with respective authority. Editor must follow up the case asking relevant editorial staff till final resolution of the issue.
- Any suspicious activity during peer-review should also be resolved with diligence. Editors are encouraged to contact EiC of IJCS regarding any issue that arises during peer review process. EiC will then seek guidance from COPE guidelines regarding the matter.
- International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) editors are advised to manage any Competing interest issues during handling of an article according to COPE’s directives.
- Editorial board members or editors of IJCS must declare their involvement with the journal if they wish to submit their own article to the journal. To handle such submissions the Journal Editor will appoint another member of the Editorial board considering the least chances of competing interest.
- Guest Editors’ own research to a special issue that they are leading is permissible however, they should clearly declare a conflict of interest upon submission. Such submissions will be handled by an alternate member of the editorial board or the Journal Editor.
- Editors of IJCS are not allowed to use Generative AI to generate decision letters, or summaries of unpublished research.
Reviewers' Ethical Responsibilities:
- Reviewers of International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) are responsible to provide a timely, detailed, constructive, and unbiased evaluation of all manuscripts that they review.
- They must include in their reports whether the manuscript’s writing is relevant, and appropriately concise but clear.
- All reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the complete review process.
- Reviewers should immediately notify the handling editor of the manuscript about any financial or personal conflict of interest. They may decline to review the manuscript where such a conflict exists.
- Reviewers should pay attention to ethical concerns while reviewing the. In case of suspected unethical publishing practices, such as any ethical violation of participants of the study, or any considerable similarity between a previously published article and the manuscript under review should be immediately reported to the handling editor.
- All reviewers are instructed to follow COPE guidelines while reviewing the articles.
- Reviewers inappropriately using Generative AI tools to generate review reports are not generally invited to review for the journal, however if editors discover such use after reviewers have completed the review process, such review reports will not be considered for taking final decision of the manuscript.
Publisher's Ethical Responsibilities:
International Journal of Criminology and Sociology(IJCS) is dedicated to work with journal editors, defining clearly their relevant roles to ensure appropriate decisions regarding publication procedures and maintaining the transparency of editorial decisions.
International Journal of Criminology and Sociology (IJCS) ensures the integrity, autonomy, and originality of each published article concerning:
- Publication ethics and honesty
- Conflict of interests
- Confidentiality
- Timely publication of content
