Publication Ethics

The statement of ethics for Journal of Mathematics and Computing Science (JMCS), Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Kelantan. This statement was adapted from the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) covering the code of ethics for the chief editor, editorial board members, reviewers, and authors.

1. Duties of Authors

To be responsible for ensuring only new and original work is submitted. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted
To ensure the work produced has not been previously published in other journals.
To ensure submitted articles are not being reviewed or considered by other journals simultaneously. The articles are only allowed to publish after receiving a formal rejection from the journal or if the withdrawal request is officially accepted by the journal.
To inform the Chief Editor or the publisher of any inaccuracy of data in their published work so that correction or retraction of article can be done.
To make significant contributions and be held accountable for any shortcoming in their work.
To do corrections and improvement as commented by reviewers/editor.

2. Duties of Reviewers

To disclose any competing interest before agreeing to review a submission.
To refuse to review any submission due to a conflict of interest or inadequate knowledge.
To review all submissions objectively, fairly and professionally.
To reveal any ethical misconduct encountered while reviewing to the Chief Editor for further action.
To ensure the originality of a submission and be alert to any plagiarism and redundant publication.
To obtain permission from the publisher before disclosing the content of the submission.
To adhere to the time allocated for the review process and request for an extension to review the submission from the Chief Editor.

3. Duties of Editorial Board Members

The editor of this journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published, often working in conjunction with the relevant society. The editors must keep information pertaining to submitted manuscripts confidential and disclose any conflicts of interest. The editors must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. The editors are responsible for making publication decisions for submitted manuscripts and the editors review suspected incidents of plagiarism. Other duties are also as follows:

To assist the Chief Editor in the selection process of the manuscript to be published in the journal.
To evaluate the contents and language of the potential manuscript that have been selected by the Chief Editor.
To provide recommendations in terms of quality and suitability of the manuscript in accordance with the scope of journal.
To re-evaluate the manuscript that has been corrected by the author(s).
To give a suggestion of improvement for the Chief Editor to make a decision of selection.
To give feedback on the quality of the manuscript within any given time.
To assist in maintaining the highest standards of quality of the manuscript published with high ethics and competence.
To recommend manuscript of originality, quality with highest standards.
To assist to call and obtain manuscripts from colleagues, acquaintances, research scholars, and students etc. within or outside of the member's institution.

4. Duties of Chief Editor

a) Handling of submitted manuscript

Editor-in-Chief should evaluate the merit of a manuscript as soon as it is received. An acknowledgement with a reference number must be sent to the Authors once the manuscript is received. A manuscript deemed to be in good order must be sent to reviewers without delay.

b) Decision Quality and Objectivity

The Editor-in-Chief makes a decision whether to accept or reject a manuscript based on the reviewers’ recommendation, as follows:

Accept without revisions.
Accept with minor revisions to be made by the Authors.
Return to the Authors for major modifications; Authors are responsible to revise & resubmit for another round of reviews depending on the request of the reviewers.
Reject, with encouragement for resubmission; reasons for rejection must be given by the Editor-in-Chief
Reject Outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems, or if the work constitutes any unethical publishing behavior. The Editor-in-Chief must give the reasons for rejection.

The Editor-in-Chief has to provide the Authors with an explanation of the editorial decision on a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief should write high-quality editorial letters that integrate reviewers’ comments and offer additional suggestions to the Author.

In ensuring the objectivity of the editorial decision, editors must:

Take all competing interests into account during the review process and ensure that any relevant ones are declared in the published article.
Not publish commissioned or any other non-research articles if they are aware of a competing interest that, in their judgment, could introduce bias or a reasonable perception of bias.
Not consult reviewers who have competing interests that, in the editors’ judgment, could interfere with unbiased review.

c) Submission by Editorial Board Members

All manuscripts submitted to The Journal undergo a rigid double-blind review process including those received from the Editorial Board members. In addition, when making editorial decisions about peer-reviewed articles where an editor is an Author or is acknowledged as a contributor, The Journal will ensure that the affected editors exclude themselves from the publication process including the review process and decision on the manuscript. Although editors are allowed to submit manuscripts to The Journal, too many submissions from the Journal’s own Editorial Board are not allowed.

d) Editorial Conflict of Interest

When editors are presented with manuscripts where their own interests may influence their ability to make an unbiased editorial decision, they should hand over the handling of the manuscript to a suitably qualified editor in the board. The Editorial Board will appoint another suitable member to handle the manuscripts objectively, fairly and professionally free of personal biases that may affect his/her judgments.

e) Other duties are as follows:

To evaluate manuscripts fairly and solely on their intellectual merit.
To ensure confidentiality of manuscripts and not disclose any information regarding manuscripts to anyone other than the people involved in the publishing process.
To be responsible for deciding when and which articles are to be published.
To actively seek the views of board members, reviewers, and authors on how to improve/ increase the image and visibility of the journal.
To give clear instructions to potential contributors to the submission process and what is expected of the authors.
To ensure appropriate reviewers are selected/ identified for the reviewing process.
To ensure authors should submit only original work that is not plagiarized and has not been published or being considered elsewhere. Appropriate software may be used by the editorial office to check for similarities of submitted manuscripts with existing literature. Inclusion of fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements is unacceptable.
To ensure work and/or words from other publications must be appropriately cited or quoted.