Al Wusul: The Arab Journal of Open Science Policies and Practises

Ethics and Policies

At KnE Publishing, we aim to ensure everything we publish is ethically sound and complies with the policies and principles set out by:

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
• Council of Science Editors (CSE)
• European Association of Science Editors (EASE)  
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)

We ask that all our authors comply with the following standards:

Authorship and Correspondence

An author is someone who has made significant contributions to the study’s conception or design, acquisition and interpretation of data, drafting of the paper or revision of important intellectual content, and the final approval of the work.

• An Author Contribution Statement is required for all manuscripts. The contributions of each person designated as an author must be specified in this. Each author’s entire name, as it appears in the author list, must be included in this declaration. The Author Contributions statement should be anonymised because the journal is double-blind peer-reviewed.
• The journal follows COPE’s Guidelines on Authorship and AI Tools and does not consider an AI tool as the author of a paper. Authors who use an AI tool for writing their manuscript, producing images or graphical elements of the paper, or collecting and analysing data must disclose clearly in the Materials and Methods (or similar) section of the paper how and which AI tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
• Authorship changes: Al Wusul follows COPE’s Guidelines for Changes in Authorship – Before Publication – this includes additions, deletions and changes in the order authors are presented in the paper. Requests must come from the corresponding author with an explanation for the change. Any change in authorship requires consent from all authors.
• In submitting their work for consideration, authors offer a personal guarantee that the work does not infringe on any existing copyright.
• All authors assume full responsibility for all parts of the research and commit to investigating and resolving any questions regarding the integrity, objectivity and validity of the manuscript and its findings. We encourage all authors and those involved in the editorial process of the manuscript to familiarise themselves with COPE’s Guidelines on Authorship Disputes.
• The corresponding author agrees to handle all submissions and resubmissions before the acceptance of the manuscript, answering any queries post-publication regarding any aspect of the manuscript and its findings and signing official documents on behalf of all authors – with their permission.

Affiliations

Affiliations should include the institution(s) where the reported research was conducted and/or approved.

Duplicate Publications and Self-Plagiarism

Any manuscript submitted must be an original piece of work which has not been published anywhere else in a current or similar form.

• If a substantial portion of the manuscript has been published elsewhere, then that journal editor needs to provide permission for its re-use, and this must be acknowledged in the new work and declared to the journal editor on submission.
• Any manuscript submitted must not be currently under consideration with any other journal or publisher. This does not include any deposits of a preprint on the author’s website or a preprint archive.
• For manuscripts based on a thesis, the content of the thesis must be rephrased in line with the journal’s style guide. If the thesis has been published, the author must inform the journal editor about this and acquire permission from the publisher.
• Authors must avoid self-plagiarism by acknowledging and citing any previous work from which they use information.

Data Availability

Al Wusul strongly encourages authors to make the datasets on which the paper’s conclusions rely available to editors, reviewers, and readers without undue restriction wherever possible. Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in their work that describes whether data are available and where to find them. In circumstances when research data is not publically available due to legal or ethical considerations, this should be clearly disclosed in the Data Availability Statement, along with any access requirements. Whether or if authors share their research data has no bearing on their decision to publish.

 
Data Transparency

We encourage authors to keep an accurate recording of all data and supporting materials mentioned in the manuscript to facilitate clear understanding, verification and replication in the research.

Preprint Policy

Al Wusul supports the sharing of research via preprint servers, and our authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article.

Authors must not transfer or assign copyright when sharing the preprint version of their manuscript, or make it available under an exclusive licence (i.e. the preprint must be open access).

Al Wusul accepts articles previously available as preprints, provided the authors retain copyright in their work during the preprint process. However, this must have taken place prior to submission to the journal, and the author must notify the journal of the existence of the preprint at the time of submission.

The manuscript cannot be submitted to the preprint server while undergoing peer review by the journal.

The revised manuscript, following peer review, cannot be submitted to the preprint server after peer review until the decision to accept or reject the article has been made.

If the manuscript is not accepted, the author can submit to preprint servers. However, if the article is accepted for publication, the author cannot submit this version to the preprint servers (but to ensure precedence and protection of intellectual property, the author can still submit a pre-peer review version of the article to a preprint server at this point). 

If accepted for publication by the journal, the preprint version should be linked to the final published article.

The author guarantees to liaise with the preprint server to ensure the published version of the record link is added to the preprint server website. Including the following:

• citation details for the version of the record (published in Al Wusul)
• a link to the version of the record (using the DOI for the version published in Al Wusul)
• wording such as:

“This is the version of the article before peer review or editing, as submitted by an author to [NAME OF JOURNAL].  Knowledge E Publishing is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it.  The version of the record is available online at [FULL DOI] [MENTION IF TITLE HAS CHANGED AND INCLUDE NEW TITLE HERE]“

Peer Review

Al Wusul follows the Ethical Guidelines of Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics. The Journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance. Although the peer-review process’ efficiency is one of the Journal’s indicators, there is no guarantee of a specific time for a decision to be made. 

• Al Wusul uses a rigorous double-blind peer-review model by at least two independent external reviewers. The double-blind peer-review process means that neither the authors nor the reviewers are aware of each other’s identity during the process. The peer-review process takes place prior to publication and is facilitated by the Journal.
• The editors mediate all interactions between reviewers and authors. The reviews are owned by the journal and are not published. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the publication process, including final acceptance decisions, approval of Guest Editors and special issue topics, and new Editorial Board members.
• Reviewers are expected to communicate any signs of research misconduct or manipulation and support the journal in investigating any misconduct claims. Based on reviewers’ reports, the journal decides whether to reject the submission, return with minor or major suggestions for improvements, submit to a different journal or accept.

Plagiarism

Al Wusul does not tolerate any type of plagiarism, including but not limited to self-published work, published and non-published material, images, text and downloads from websites.

• All manuscripts submitted to the journal are screened for plagiarism using the Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate. 
• We strongly suggest that authors do not modify or manipulate any images used in the manuscript, especially when modifications may lead to falsification or manipulation of results.
• Fraudulent results may result in a retraction following a thorough investigation of the claims of misconduct.
• Manuscripts containing any form of plagiarism will be rejected. Policies outlined in the Retraction section will be imposed if plagiarism is detected following publication.

Conflicts of Interest

All conflicts of interest (including financial, personal, academic, and/or ideological) must be declared upon submission. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. It should be noted that editors and reviewers are likewise responsible for disclosing any conflicts of interest.

The journal follows the COPE flowcharts for the following scenarios of suspected nondisclosure of conflicts of interest:

• When a reviewer suspects undisclosed conflict of interest in a submitted manuscript
• When a reader suspects undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article

Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions

To address issues involving serious ethics or integrity concerns, the journal follows ICMJE and COPE guidelines. In line with that, Al Wusul publishes three types of post-publication notices: Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions.

Corrections

Corrections are issued if the errors are minor and do not alter the results or conclusion of the reported research. If an author is found to have made an error, the journal will issue a corrigendum, and if the journal’s editorial team is found to have made an error, they will issue an erratum.

Corrigenda and Errata are assigned DOIs and linked to the original articles.

Expressions of Concern (EoC)

Expressions of Concern (EoC) are issued by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief if they have substantial doubt about the honesty and integrity of a published article. An EoC is published as a PDF and linked to the original article, similar to an Erratum or Corrigendum. After an EOC is published, the article may be corrected or retracted.

Retractions

Al Wusul follows COPE’s Retraction Guidelines. As such, a retraction may be considered in cases of:

• A significant unintentional error (miscalculation or experimental error) invalidates the findings or conclusions of the authors.
• Fabricated or falsified data, or other misconduct
• Figure or image manipulation
• Plagiarism
• Copyright infringement
• Redundant publication: Publication of the findings elsewhere without proper attribution or permission
• Use of unethical research practices in conducting the study
• Identification of a primary competing interest which was not disclosed and is thought to have potentially influenced the results or their interpretation

In extreme circumstances, the journal may remove an article from its website. Such events include legal obligations like a court order, privacy infringements, endangerment of an individual or the general public, and defamation.

Grievance Procedure

Al Wusul draws from the guidelines presented by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to Manage Complaints and Disputes. Should a complaint and/or dispute arise, they may be directed to publishing@knowledgee.com.

Integrity of Record

Al Wusul maintains a record of all its metadata, including article titles, author information, volume, issues and page numbers, etc. The journal ensures that the metadata is accessible to all within a jurisdiction without violating the law of the land and modifying the research content to suit geographical, linguistic or cultural diversity. In the event of a retraction or correction, when the journal needs to alter the publication record in any way, Al Wusul preserves the indexing and accessing information as much as possible.

The journal applies the same principles to marketing and does not modify or manipulate the representation of the academic record of the article in its marketing activities.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used for the stated purposes of this journal.

Upon publishing, all authors will be automatically registered for content alerts from the publication. To stop receiving the alerts, authors can subsequently unsubscribe through the link provided in the email.

These email addresses will not be made available to any other party.