Publication Ethics:

      Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure reliable and high-quality scientific research publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that researchers receive credit for their work and ideas.

Plagiarism:
      All articles published by IJSMS are committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarised from manuscripts by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will incur a plagiarism penalty.

Duplicate Submission:
      Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission sanctions. If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they are required to cite the previous work and indicate how the submitted manuscript offers novel contributions beyond those of the previous work.

Improper Author Contribution or Attribution:
      All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

Redundant Publications:
      Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles.

Citation Manipulation:
      Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will incur a citation manipulation penalty.

Data Fabrication & Falsification:
      Submitted manuscripts that are found to have either fabricated or falsified experimental results, including the manipulation of images, will incur a data fabrication and falsification penalty.

Penalty:
      In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies of IJSMS, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal published by IJSMS, the following rules will be applied:
• Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript.
• Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by IJSMS by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript.
• Prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions to IJSMS, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in combination with any other authors. This prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 2 years.
• There is a prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of IJSMS.

      In cases where the violations of the above policies are found to be particularly offensive or flagrant, the publisher reserves the right to impose additional restrictions beyond those described above.

Repository policies:
Policies describing who can use the services, what type of content is held, and the terms and conditions of access and preservation actions.

Content policy: what is held in our repositories
1. The IJSMS Research Explorer and the IJSMS Research Archive are journal repositories for the International Journal of Science and Management Studies (IJSMS).
2. The IJSMS Research Explorer holds information on current research activity, including staff, projects, and publications.
3. The IJSMS Research Archive contains documents which are of sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by the library but which are not controlled by commercial publishers. Holdings include full-text digital doctoral theses, master’s dissertations, project reports, briefing papers, and out-of-print materials.

Submission policy: who can deposit items
1. Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the International Journal of Science and Management Studies (IJSMS) or their delegated agents.
2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
3. Administrators only vet items for the eligibility of authors and depositors and for relevance to the scope.
4. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.
5. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publisher's embargo period has expired.
6. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
7. If administrators receive proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

Data policy: what you can do with our content
1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
2. Copies of full items generally can be:
- reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium
- used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the content is not changed in any way
3. Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.

Metadata policy: what you can do with our metadata
1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given.
3. The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.

Preservation policy: how we will try to make content remain accessible
1. Items will be retained indefinitely, and we will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
2. Regularly back up its files according to current best practice.
3. The original bit stream is retained for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats.
4. Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.
- Proven legal violation or plagiarism
- National Security
- Falsified research
5. Items are allocated a checksum to facilitate the detection of alterations.