Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Iraqi Journal for Applied Science (IJAS)

The Iraqi Journal for Applied Science (IJAS) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, and responsible scholarly publishing. The journal follows internationally recognized ethical principles and editorial best practices in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and other internationally accepted publishing standards.

All participants in the publication process—including authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and the publisher—are expected to adhere to these ethical principles.

Editors' Responsibilities

Editorial Independence

Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts solely on their scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, significance, clarity, and relevance to the journal's scope.

Editorial decisions are made without discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, institutional affiliation, political beliefs, religion, age, or personal characteristics.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff shall treat all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents.

Information concerning submitted manuscripts shall not be disclosed to anyone other than:

Authors
Assigned reviewers
Editorial advisors
Publisher (where appropriate)

Fair Review

Editors shall ensure that every manuscript receives a fair, unbiased, and timely peer-review process.

Editors may reject manuscripts that:

fall outside the journal's scope,
fail ethical requirements,
contain substantial plagiarism,
or demonstrate inadequate scientific quality.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors shall not use unpublished information obtained through submitted manuscripts for personal research or personal advantage.

Editors with conflicts of interest shall recuse themselves from handling the manuscript.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

Reviewers play a fundamental role in maintaining the scientific quality of the journal.

Reviewers are expected to:

provide objective and constructive evaluations;
maintain strict confidentiality;
complete reviews within the requested time;
identify relevant uncited literature;
report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, or research misconduct;
decline review invitations when conflicts of interest exist.

Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate.

Authors' Responsibilities

Originality

Authors must submit only original work.

Any use of previously published material must be properly cited.

Plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, image manipulation, and data manipulation are considered serious ethical misconduct.

Reporting Standards

Research must be reported accurately, transparently, and completely.

Methods should be described sufficiently to allow reproducibility whenever possible.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to:

conception or design,
data collection,
analysis or interpretation,
manuscript preparation,
critical revision.

All authors must approve the final manuscript before submission.

Multiple Submission

A manuscript must not be submitted simultaneously to another journal.

Duplicate submission or redundant publication constitutes unethical publishing behavior.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, or professional relationships that could influence the reported research.

If no conflicts exist, authors should state:

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Data Availability

Authors are encouraged to preserve research data and, whenever appropriate, make data available to readers in accordance with institutional, ethical, and legal requirements.

Corrections and Retractions

If authors discover significant errors after publication, they must promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief and cooperate in issuing corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions when necessary.

Similarity (Plagiarism) Policy

IJAS screens all submitted manuscripts using recognized plagiarism-detection software before peer review.

Editorial actions are generally based on the following similarity thresholds:

Similarity Index	Editorial Action
Less than 20%	Normally acceptable for review, subject to editorial assessment
20–30%	Returned to authors for revision and resubmission
Above 35%	Normally rejected

In addition, excessive similarity from a single source may result in rejection regardless of the overall similarity percentage.

Editorial decisions always consider the nature of the overlapping text rather than similarity percentages alone.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy

Authors may use artificial intelligence tools only to assist language editing, grammar improvement, or manuscript preparation.

Authors remain fully responsible for:

the accuracy of all content;
originality;
citations;
scientific conclusions;
ethical compliance.

AI systems cannot be listed as authors.

Any substantial use of generative AI during manuscript preparation should be disclosed in the manuscript.

IJAS reserves the right to request clarification regarding AI-assisted content whenever necessary.

Research Integrity

IJAS does not tolerate:

plagiarism;
fabricated data;
falsified results;
manipulated images;
citation manipulation;
paper mill submissions;
peer-review manipulation;
inappropriate authorship;
undeclared conflicts of interest.

Suspected misconduct will be investigated according to COPE recommendations.

Human and Animal Research

Research involving humans or animals must comply with internationally accepted ethical standards.

Where applicable, manuscripts must include:

ethics committee approval;
informed consent;
institutional approval numbers.

Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain the copyright of their published work.

Accepted articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, adaptation, and commercial reuse, provided appropriate credit is given to the original authors.

License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/