Publication Ethics

This is the statement of ethics for Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences (MJMS) published by Penerbit Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM Press). This statement was adapted from the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and covers the code of ethics for Editor in Chief, Editors, Reviewers and Authors.

1. Duties of Authors
• Have the responsibility of ensuring only new and original work is submitted.
• Must not reproduce work that has been previously published in other journals.
• Must not submit any articles that are being reviewed or considered by the journal to other journals simultaneously.
• Are only allowed to publish their work elsewhere after receiving a formal rejection from the journal or if their request to withdraw their work is officially accepted by the journal.
• Must inform the Editor in Chief or the publisher of any inaccuracy of data in their published work so that correction or retraction of article can be done.
• Should make significant contributions and be held accountable for any shortcoming in their work.
• Authors should avoid excessively citing their earlier works in order to inflate their citation count.
• Authors should also avoid self-citation that might violate the double-blind review process. If self-identifying information is unavoidable, the author should include the information in the manuscript's Acknowledgements (which are not forwarded to the reviewers) and also inform Associate Editor of MJMS.


2. Duties of Reviewers
• Must disclose any competing interest before agreeing to review a submission.
• Can refuse to review any submission due to a conflict of interest or inadequate knowledge.
• Review all submissions objectively, fairly and professionally.
• Reveal any ethical misconduct encountered while reviewing to the Editor in Chief or Editors for further action.
• Should ensure the originality of a submission and be alert to any plagiarism and redundant publication.
• Must not discuss the content of the submission without permission.
• Adhere to the time allocated for the review process and requests for extension to submit the review report to the Editors or Editor in Chief (if necessary).


3. Duties of Editors
• Actively contribute to the development of the journal.
• Act as ambassadors for the journal.
• Continuously support and promote the journal.
• Review any work assigned to them.
• Assign the reviewers who are expert in the manuscript's areas and avoid conflict of interest.
• All reviewers are informed of the journal's expectations.
• All manuscripts submitted to MJMS undergo the rigid double-blind review process, whereby authors do not know reviewers and vice versa. In addition, when making editorial decisions about peer-reviewed articles where an editor is an author or is acknowledged as a contributor, MJMS has mechanism that ensures the affected editors or staff members exclude themselves and are not involved in the publication decision.
• The editors should routinely assess all reviews for quality. In rare circumstances, an Editor may edit a review before sending it to an author (for example, to remove a phrase that would identify the reviewer) or not send the review to the Author if it is not constructive or appropriate.
• The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' review report.


4. Duties Of Editor in Chief
• Evaluate manuscripts fairly and solely on their intellectual merit.
• Ensure confidentiality of manuscripts and not disclose any information regarding manuscripts to anyone other than the people involved in the publishing process.
• Has the responsibility to decide when and which articles are to be published.
• Actively seek the views of editors, reviewers and authors on how to improve/ increase the image and visibility of the journal.
• Give clear instructions to potential contributors on the submission process and what is expected of the authors.
• Ensure appropriate reviewers are selected/ identified for the reviewing process.


5. Plagiarism
• Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior which is unacceptable.
• Authors should submit only original work that is not plagiarized and has not been published or being considered elsewhere.
• Appropriate softwares may be used by the editorial office to check for similarities of submitted manuscripts with existing literature. Inclusion of fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable. Work and/or words from other publications must be appropriately cited or quoted.


6. Reporting
• Authors should state their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation. The methods used in the work should be clearly and unambiguously described so that the findings can be repeated and confirmed by other researchers.


7. Conflicts of Interest
• A statement on conflict of interest must be included in the manuscript if authors receive any support that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
• Authors should not nominate individuals whom they know have already read and provided comments on the manuscript or a previous version of the manuscript since such knowledge would automatically violate the double-blind review process.


8. Authorship and Collaboration
• Name of authors listed in a paper should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the report. Only those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the work must be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
• It is the duty of the corresponding author to ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper. All co-authors must approve the final version of the paper and agree to the version of the paper before submission.


9. Multiple or Redundant
• Author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
• Authors must not submit to MJMS the same work, in whole or in part, to two places of publication at the same time, or at any time while the manuscript is under review, or has been previously published. It is also improper for an author to submit a manuscript describing essentially the same research to more than one place of publication, unless it is a resubmission of a manuscript rejected for or withdrawn from publication. Thus, an author may not submit to MJMS, a work that is in whole or in part under review elsewhere, nor submit to another publication outlet a work that is in whole or in part under review at MJMS.
• The manuscript must not have been previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere, either in whole (including book chapters) or in part (including paragraphs of text or exhibits), whether in English or another language.