Publication Ethics Policy

CASS strictly follows the HEC’s Ethical Guidelines for Journals prepared by Prof. Dr. Rukhsana Kausar, Director Institute of Applied and Clinical Psychology, University of Punjab, Lahore.

Ethical Guidelines for Editors

The Editor plays a central role in upholding the journal’s professional and ethical standards. Each published article reflects the scholarly quality of its author(s) and affiliated institution, i.e. CASS. Accordingly, the Editor is responsible for overseeing all stages of the publication process, from manuscript submission to final publication, and adapting the following guidelines becomes the prime responsibility of the editor in this process.

Editor’s Responsibilities

To uphold the academic quality of the journal in accordance with international norms
To promote freedom of expression within applicable cultural, constitutional, and legal frameworks
To ensure the integrity, credibility, and transparency of published research,
To address the needs of authors, reviewers, and readers,
To maintain and enforce the journal’s ethical and publication standards,
To issue corrigendum for any correction, clarification and apologies where required to preserve the scholarly record.

Quality practices include, to:

Encourage constructive ideas and suggestions from authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and readers to enhance journal quality
Apply the double-blind peer review process rigorously and in its true spirit
Prioritise the publication of high-quality, innovative research within the journal’s scope
Enforce a robust anti-plagiarism policy to safeguard academic integrity
Educate authors on ethical standards and best practices in research and publication
Implement editorial policies independently, free from institutional influence, and review them periodically to ensure ongoing relevance and rigour

Formation of Editorial Board

JASS maintains an Editorial Board comprising nationally and internationally recognised scholars with established expertise in their respective fields.
Editorial Board members are appointed for a defined tenure, with the Board’s composition reviewed and revised as required.
The Editor regularly communicates with the Editorial Board regarding developments, challenges, circulation status, submission trends, and the peer-review process.
The journal endeavours to maintain approximately 75% contributions from local authors while actively encouraging submissions from international scholars.
All new Editorial Board members are formally briefed on ethical guidelines and role expectations, with periodic updates provided to existing members.
Quality of the paper and its smooth functioning requires to conduct the meetings of the Editorial Board on regular basis (at least twice a year) by the Editor.

Fair play and Impartiality

Manuscripts submitted to JASS are selected based on academic merit, scientific rigour, originality, and relevance, and are evaluated fairly and without bias.
Receipt of manuscripts is acknowledged promptly, each submission is assigned a unique reference number, and decisions are communicated to the author(s) in a timely manner.
Discriminatory factors, including gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, cultural background, political affiliation, seniority, or institutional association of the author(s), are strictly disregarded.

Confidentiality

The Editor maintains confidentiality of authors and reviewers during double blind peer review process.
Manuscript information is shared only with authors, reviewers, and the editorial board.
The Editor protects research participants’ personal information and provides confidentiality guidelines to authors.
Manuscript content remains confidential before publication; neither Editor nor reviewers share or use it.

Editing and Formatting Guidelines

Each issue of the JASS includes clear and detailed guidelines on the content, structure, and formatting of research papers. These guidelines specify the journal’s preferred manual of style, formally adopted as a policy decision, and require all submissions to comply with the prescribed standard.

Review Process

The journal clearly declares details of its peer review process on its website and policy document
The Editor ensures that all published manuscripts undergo a double-blind peer review
The Editor ensures that peer review is fully masked in both directions by removing all author-identifying information from manuscripts prior to review.
The Editor provides reviewers with clear guidelines, including information on the review process, and a standard reviewer evaluation form.
The Editor ensures that the peer review process is timely, non-discriminatory, objective, and conducted to high professional standards.
The Editor maintains a robust system to ensure the confidentiality of manuscripts under review.
The Editor communicates reviewers’ comments to authors promptly and ensures that required revisions are addressed faithfully and comprehensively by the authors.
The Editor regularly evaluates peer review practices and implements improvements where necessary.
The Editor maintains and updates a database of qualified and competent reviewers, drawing on multiple sources beyond personal contacts.
The Editor refers complex or disputed cases, such as conflicting reviewer recommendations, to the Advisory Board for fair and amicable resolution.

Dealing with Misconduct

The Editor encourages reviewers to comment on ethical considerations and any potential research or publication misconduct, including inappropriate research design, insufficient information on participants’ consent, data manipulation, or misleading presentation.
The Editor encourages reviewers to assess the scholarly validity of the submitted manuscript and to identify both subtle plagiarism (direct copy–paste) and blatant plagiarism (paraphrased reproduction), where present.
The Editor verifies suspected plagiarism by conducting an objective similarity check using Turnitin and by reviewing closely related or overlapping titles.
The Editor takes appropriate corrective action when plagiarism is identified, including the publication of a corrigendum or the removal and retraction of the article, whether identified before or after publication.

Transparency

The Editor ensures that a maximum of one article per author appears in an issue, whether as principal author (first or corresponding) or as co-author.
The Editor prohibits publication of articles authored by Editors or Editorial Board members.
Authorship should only be given to those individuals who have substantially contributed to the research.

Conflict of Interest

In case of any author(s) and/or institution against which the Editor shares the conflict of interest (e.g. resulting from competitive, collaborative and/or professional standing), the author holds the priority as per JASS policy. Similarly, the Editor applies the same policy while giving guidelines to the reviewers and Editorial Board members.

Since HEC does not allow the work of the Editor or any member of the Editorial Board, a clear cut policy is followed by JASS. In fact, the Editor publishes an updated version of the list of common interests from time to time (e.g. financial, academic and/or any other type) for all Editorial Board members and editorial staff.

Disclosure

The Editor cannot use any unpublished data or information from submitted manuscripts without the author(s)’ permission.
The Editor keeps all information received during and after the peer review process confidential and does not use it for personal gain.

Publication Decisions

The Editor shortlists research papers based on relevance to the journal’s scope, applying professional judgment without personal bias.
The Editor accepts or rejects manuscripts after peer review, revision, and assessment of quality and validity.
Acceptance or rejection is based solely on merit, academic standards, and the journal’s professional requirements.
The Editor may also provide clear reasons for rejection, including:
Out of Journal’s scope
Insufficient depth
Major design, analysis, writing, or formatting errors
Misconduct or conflicts (e.g., plagiarism, copyright infringement, legal issues, fabricated data, authorship disputes)
The Editor communicates editorial decisions to authors in a timely manner.
The Editor should not reverse decisions independently in favour of or against authors.

Establishing a Procedure for Appeal

The Editor is responsible for establishing a proper mechanism for appeals launched against:
- The rejection of a research paper.
- Objections to publications causing harm to any party.
- Infringement of Ethical boundaries in any manner.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors

The following ethical guidelines are obligatory for all author(s); violations may result in penalties imposed by the Editor, including but not limited to the suspension or revocation of publishing privileges.

Reporting Standards

It is the author(s)’ responsibility to ensure that the research report and data contain adequate detail and references to the sources of information in order to allow others to reproduce the results.
Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

It is the author(s)’ responsibility to ascertain that s/he has submitted an entirely original work, giving due credit, by virtue of proper citations, to the works and/or words of others where they have been used.
Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is not acceptable.
Material quoted verbatim from the author(s)’ previously published work or other sources must be placed in (single) quotation marks.
As per HEC’s policy, in case the manuscript has a similarity index of more than 19%, it will either be rejected or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of a conditional acceptance.

Declaration

Authors are required to provide an undertaking / declaration stating that the manuscript under consideration contains solely their original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal in any form.
Manuscript withdrawal may be requested within seven days of submission, subject to the Editorial Board’s discretion and formal confirmation. A withdrawal request becomes effective only upon receipt of an official letter/email from the Editor/Editor-in-Chief. To safeguard workflow integrity, withdrawal is strictly prohibited once the manuscript has entered the peer-review stage.
Authors may submit a manuscript previously published in abstracted form, for example, in the proceedings of an annual meeting, or in a periodical with limited circulation and availability such as reports by the Government agencies or a University.
A manuscript that is co-authored must be accompanied by an undertaking explicitly stating that each author has contributed substantially towards the preparation of the manuscript in order to claim right to authorship.
It is the responsibility of the corresponding author that s/he has ensured that all those who have substantially contributed in the manuscripts have been included and they have agreed to the order of authorship.

Multiple, Redundant and Current Publication

Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or publication except it is a re-submission of a rejected or withdrawn manuscript.
Authors may re-publish previously conducted research that has been substantially altered or corrected using more meticulous analysis or by adding more data.
The authors and editor must agree to the secondary publication, which must cite the primary references and reflect the same data and interpretation of the primary document.
Concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources

A paper must always contain proper acknowledgment of the work of others, including clear indications of the sources of all information quoted or offered, except what is common knowledge.
The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organisations and institutes who assisted the process of research, including those who provided technical help, writing assistance or financial funding (in the acknowledgement).
It is duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and properly cite the original publications that describe closely related work.

Authorship Credit

Authorship of the work may only be credited to those who have made a noteworthy contribution in conceptualisation, design, conducting, data analysis and writing up of the manuscript.
It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to include the name(s) of only those co-authors who have made significant contributions to the work.
The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspect of the research should be acknowledged for their contribution in an “Acknowledgement” section.

Privacy of Participants

Authors must respect the privacy of the participant of research and must not use any information obtained from them without their informed consent.
Authors should ensure that only information that improves understanding of the study is shared.
Authors must ensure that in instances where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, explicit and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.
In the case of the demise of a participant, consent must be obtained from the family of the deceased.

Data Access and Retention

If any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process, the author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor.

Images

The author(s) should ensure that images included in an account of research performed or in the data collection as part of the research are free from manipulation,
The author(s) must provide an accurate description of how the images were generated and produced.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

The potential and relevant competing financial, personal, social or other interest of all author(s) that might be affected by publication of the results contained in the manuscript must be conveyed to the editor.
The author(s) should disclose any potential conflict of interest at the earliest possible stage, including but not limited to employment, consultancies, honoraria, patent applications/registrations, grants or other funding.
All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed alongside a brief overview of the role played, if any by the responses during various stages of the research.

Copyright

Authors may have to sign an agreement allowing the journal to reserve the right to circulate the article and all other derivative works such as translations.

Manuscript Acceptance and Rejection

The review period can last between 1-2 months or longer and during this period the author(s) reserve the right to contact the Editor to ask about status of the review.
Once the review process has been completed, the author will be informed about the status of the manuscript which could either be an acceptance, rejection or revisions. In the case of rejection, the author(s) reserves the right to publish the article elsewhere.
In case of revisions, the author(s) must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised manuscript should, then, go through the process of affirmation of revisions and be accepted or rejected accordingly.
In case of dissatisfaction over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.

Ethical Guidelines for the Reviewers

Preamble:

Review of the manuscript by reviewers is not only an essential component of formal scholarly engagement, but is also a fundamental step in the publication process as it aids Editor in the editorial decision-making. It also allows author(s) to improve their manuscript through editorial communications. Scholars accepting to review a research paper have an ethical responsibility to complete this assignment professionally. The quality, credibility and reputation of a journal also depend on the peer review process. The peer review process depends on the trust, and demands that a reviewer is supposed to fulfill ethically. These professionals are the momentum arm of the review process, but they may be performing this job without any formal training. As a consequence, they may be (especially young professionals) unaware of their ethical obligations. Following are the guidelines for the reviewers to ensure they provide their valuable services in a standardised manner.

Suitability and Promptness

The Reviewers should:

Inform the Editor, if they do not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review and s/he should inform the Editor immediately after receiving a request.
Be responsible to act promptly and submit review report on time.
Immediately inform the Editor of any possible delays and suggest another date of submission for a review report, and
Not unnecessarily delay the review process, either by prolonged delay in submission of their review or by requesting unnecessary additional data/information from the Editor or author(s).

Standards of Objectivity

The reviews should be objectively carried out with a consideration of high academic, scholarly and scientific standards.
All judgments should be meticulously established and maintained in order to ensure the full comprehension of the reviewer’s comments by the editors and the author(s).
Both reviewers and author(s) in rebuttal should avoid unsupported assertions,
The reviewer may justifiably criticise a manuscript but it would be inappropriate to resort to personal criticism on the author(s), and
The reviewers should ensure that their decision is purely based on the quality of the research paper and not influenced, either positively or negatively, by any personal, financial, or other conflicting considerations or by intellectual bias.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

A reviewer should not, for the purpose of his/her own research, use unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript, without the approval of the Editor.
The data included in the research paper is confidential and the reviewer shall not be allowed to use it for his/her personal study,
A reviewer must declare any potentially conflicting interests (e.g. personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious). In such situation, s/he will be required to follow the journal’s policies.
A reviewer should be honest enough to declare conflicts of interest, if, the research paper under review is the same as to his/her presently conducted study.
If the reviewer feels unqualified to separate his/her bias, s/he should immediately return the manuscript to the Editor without review, and justify to him/her about the situation.

Confidentiality

Reviewers should consider the research paper as a confidential document and must not discuss its content on any platform except in cases where professional advice is being sought with the authorisation of the Editor, and
Reviewers are professionally and ethically bound not to disclose the details of any research paper prior to its publication without the prior approval of the Editor.

Ethical Considerations

If the reviewer suspects that the research paper is almost the same as someone else’s work, s/he will ethically inform the Editor and provide its citation as a reference.
If the reviewer suspects that results in the research paper to be untrue/unrealistic/fake, s/he will share it with the Editor,
If there has been an indication of violating ethical norms in the treatment of human beings (e.g. children, female, poor people, disabled, elderly, etc.), then this should be identified to the Editor, and
If the research paper is based on any previous research study or is replica of an earlier work, or the work is plagiarised for example, the author has not acknowledged/referenced others’ work appropriately, then this should be brought in the Editor’s knowledge.

Originality

For evaluating originality, the reviewers should consider the following elements:

Does the research paper add to existing knowledge?
Are the research questions and/or hypotheses in line with the objective of the research work?

Structure

If the layout and format of the paper is not according to the prescribed version, the reviewers should discuss it with the Editor or should include this observation in their review report. On the other hand, if the research paper is exceptionally well written, the reviewer may overlook the formatting issues. At other times, the reviewers may suggest restructuring the paper before publication. The following elements should be carefully evaluated:

If there is serious problem of language or expression and the reviewer gets the impression that the research paper does not fulfill linguistic requirements and readers would face difficulties reading and comprehending the paper. The reviewer should record this deficiency in his/her report and suggest the editor to make its proper editing. Such a situation may arise when the author(s)’ native language is not English.
Whether the data presented in the paper is original or reproduced from previously conducted or published work. The papers which reflect originality should be given preference for publication.
The clarity of illustrations including photographs, models, charts, images and figures is essential to note. If there is duplication then it should be reported in the review report. Similarly, descriptions provided in the “Results” section should correspond with the data presented in tables/figures, if not then it should be clearly listed in the review report.
Critically review the statistical analysis of the data. Also check the rational and appropriateness of the specific analysis.
The reviewers should read the “Methodology” section in detail and make sure that the author(s) has demonstrated the understanding of the procedures being used and presented in the manuscript.
The relationship between “Data, Findings and Discussion” requires a thorough evaluation. Unnecessary conjecture or unfounded conclusions that are not based on the presented data are not acceptable.
Further questions to be addressed are whether: the organisation of the research paper is appropriate or deviates from the standard or prescribed format?
Does the author(s) follow the guidelines prescribed by the journal for preparation and submission of the manuscript?
Is the research paper free from typographical errors?

Review Report

The reviewer must explicitly write his/her observations in the section of ‘comments’ because author(s) will only have access to the comments reviewers have made,
For writing a review report, the reviewers are requested to complete a prescribed form.
It is helpful for both the Editor and author(s) if the reviewer writes a brief summary in the last section of the review report. This summary should comprise the reviewer’s final decision and inferences drawn from a full review.
Any personal comments on author(s) should be avoided and final remarks should be written in a courteous and positive manner,
Indicating any deficiencies is important. For the understanding of the Editor and author(s), the reviewers should highlight these deficiencies in some detail with specificity. This should help justify the comments made by the reviewer,
When a reviewer makes a decision regarding the research paper, it should be clearly indicated as ‘Reject’, ‘Accept without revision’, or ‘Need Revision’ and either of the decisions should have justification.
The reviewers should indicate the revisions clearly and comprehensively, and show willingness to confirm the revisions submitted by the author(s), if Editor wishes so, and
The final decision about publishing a research paper (either accept or reject) rests with the Editor and it is not reviewer’s job to take part in this decision. The editor will surely consider reviewer’s comments and have a right to send the paper for another opinion or send it back to the author(s) for revision before making the final decision.