Publication Ethics

• Alzaytoonah University of Jordan (ZUJ) follows clear ethical standards for publication to ensure high-quality scholarly work and strengthen public trust in published research. Accordingly, the university applies this policy to all its journals in alignment with the best-practice guidelines outlined in the core principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This policy should be read alongside the authors’ and reviewers’ guidelines. ZUJ adheres to a rigorous process to detect and prevent unethical conduct. Recognized experts are selected to manage this process, ensuring the production of reliable and accurate manuscripts that present valuable findings and practical contributions. The university strictly enforces compliance with these professional guidelines (see Section 3). All submitted manuscripts must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere (such as in other journals or conference proceedings).
• Each ZUJ journal adopts specific, clear authorship criteria as outlined in the “For Authors” section. Authors and co-authors must adhere to these criteria and confirm that all those who meet authorship requirements are listed accordingly.
• Authorship: Published work must be attributed to one or more authors who are complied with authorship standards. A description of each author contribution should be summarized in a statement titled "Authors Contributions.
• Authorship Problems: To handle authorship problems; editors refer to COPE
• Fund and Support: Authors are requested to disclose any received fund or support from individual or organization in the "Acknowledgment" section
• Peer-review Process: To ensure robust, objective, confidential, transparent and free of conflicts of interest peer-review process, ZUJ adopts the international policies of peer-review process (i.e. single-blind or double-blind, reviewers selection, conflict of interest, response time).
• Reviewers Selection: Authors have to provide the list of the potential reviewers in their cover letter and the uploading system. ZUJ has the right to adopt the same list of provided reviewers or switch to another.
• Peer-review Conflict of Interest: Any conflict of interest should be reported directly to the editors as soon as receiving the invitation to review manuscripts.
• Confidentiality during Manuscript Handling: To ensure utmost confidentiality; ZUJ’s editors don’t share Manuscripts with any third party except the peer reviewers.
• Manuscript Handling Time: Strictly rules are adopted by ZUJ’s editors to ensure timely process and update authors of any possible delays
• Publication Ethics: Research integrity is at the top of ZUJ’s priorities; so they make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any breach of the ethical code.
• Misconduct: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any practices of data fabrication, authorship abuse, falsification, image manipulation, unethical research, plagiarism, biased reporting, duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest.
• Fabrication, Falsification and Image Manipulation: All ZUJ journals make every effort to identify, detect and prevent data fabrication, falsification and image manipulation by implementing advances image processing system. Except for some cases where it is necessary to manipulate image, and in this case adores have to explain where manipulation has been done.
• Plagiarism: Editors take all steps to ensure submitted manuscripts are original. The similarity rate must not exceed 20%. If the percentage exceeds this threshold, the Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the submission.
• Duplicate Submission: Editors work diligently to ensure that manuscripts have not been published elsewhere by detecting and preventing simultaneous or duplicate submissions. If such misconduct is identified, ZUJ applies strict measures, including withdrawing the article from the journal website and banning the researcher from future submissions.
• Sanctions: If any violations of the publication ethics or professional codes are detected, then strict action is taken, according to ZUJ s procedures for dealing with unethical behavior as follows:• A warning letter to the author covering the misconduct.• Immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript.• Probation period is applied to all responsible authors regarding any further submission to ZUJ journals.• Probation period is applied to all responsible authors regarding serving as referees/reviewers for ZUJ journals.• Publication of a formal notice detailing the misconduct.• A professional letter to the chairman of the authors or reviewers department or funding agency.• Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal.• Reporting the case and outcome to a professional organization or higher authority for further investigation and action.• Further sanctions may be imposed, if violations of the above policies are found to be serious.
• Editors and Board Members as Authors: ZUJ’s journals adopt well defined procedures and police to exclude editors from publication decisions when they are authors.
• Conflicts of Interest: To ensure objectivity in the review procedure, editors and peer reviewers are requested to disclose that there is no any conflict of interest.
• Libel and Defamation: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any certain language or expression either in the manuscripts or peer reviewer reports that would lead to legal action for defamation and negligent misstatement.
• Editorial Independence and Commercial Issues: To ensure a formal relationship between the editors and the publisher (ZUJ), each ZUJ’s journal adopted polices and established mechanism to avoid biased decisions that financially influenced by authors.
• Academic Debate: Comments or constructive criticism of any published work are allowed by all ZUJ’s journals. If such practice occurred, authors are informed to respond before the comments are published.
• Appeals: To appeal against editorial decisions, authors refer to the international based mechanism that is adopted by ZUJ.
• Corrections: ZUJ welcomes authors or readers to notify the journal editorial office if any errors discovered in the published work. If such occurred, editors and authors are notified to correct theses errors, then an erratum will be published in an issue in the same journal.
• :Research Ethics in Journal Articles -. Human Rights, Privacy and Confidentiality: Outcomes of clinical trials studies must be officially registered with public health authority in the country. Otherwise, authors are requested to a letter of explanation. -. Cultures and Heritage: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect and prevent publishing any images or texts that related to religious or historical events that could be offensive to some social groups. -. Reporting Guidelines: ZUJ’s editors and peer reviewers make every effort to ensure that the necessary information is available in the submitted manuscripts for the purpose of evaluation by readers.