Journal Policies

Allegations of Misconduct

All authors need to read the author’s instructions and ethics to adhere to the terms before submission. Even though authors are encouraged to suggest potential reviewers, their qualifications will be carefully checked before they are invited to review.

Report of research misconduct may be related to a published article or a manuscript under peer-review process. The procedure for the application and management of complaints of author misconduct should proceed with sensitivity, tact, in confidence, and in the following manner:

• The journal receives a complaint that an article submitted to or published in the journal is suspected of containing research misconduct.
• The complainant needs to exactly clarify the detail of misconduct; for example. If the misconduct is plagiarism, the plagiarized paragraph should be clearly highlighted, and the original and suspected articles should be referred to.
• The journal conducts the needed investigation.
• The author(s) will be asked to provide an explanation and provide evidences for to support their argument.
• In the case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation is given, the article may be rejected. Before deciding, confirmation will be sought.
• The complaint case will thereupon be considered concluded.

 

Complaints Procedure

It is important that every author of a contribution be credited as such. It is equally as important that a person not be named as an author when he or she is not.

 

What kind of complaints we will consider?

Complaint means a failure of process, or a severe misjudgment, or relates to author or reviewer misconduct. Complainant can be either authors, reviewers or readers. All complaints must be within the scope of the Al-I’lam Editorial Office’s remit – i.e. related to the content, policies or processes of the journal. We will not consider complaints where the complainant simply disagrees with a decision taken by the Editorial team.

 

How to make a complaint

Complaints should be emailed to jciocom@usim.edu.my. Please provide as much detail as possible and include supporting information where appropriate. If the complaint relates to any of the articles, kindly provide the title and DOI if it is already published and the manuscript ID number if it is unpublished.

 

How we handle complaints

Our objective is to cater all complaints within five working days. Our pledge is to provide a full response within four weeks. Wherever possible, complaints will be dealt professionally by the editorial staff following policies and guidelines, but will be escalated to the Editor-In-Chief where necessary. It is the right of the Editor-In-Chief to get an opinion by a third party over the issue, and make a final decision.

Should there is a complaint made against the Editor-In-Chief, an independent investigation will be conducted by two members of the editorial board aiming at establishing correct procedures followed. The decisions made will be based on academic criteria and that personal prejudice or bias will have no influence on the outcome.

 

Complaints or concern about author or reviewer misconduct

Concern may include, but are not limited to:

Suspicion of an ethical problem with a manuscript (including undeclared conflicts of interest, false ethical declarations, use of identifiable images without consent or use of copyright images without permission)

Suspicion of unethical image manipulation in a published article

Suspected manipulation of the publication process (including practices such as duplicate publication, self-plagiarism, salami-slicing or excessive self-citation)

We take allegations of misconduct very seriously and will investigate following COPE guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/misconduct

 

If your complaint is not satisfactorily resolved:

Should you feel the complaint made has not been completely addressed, you may refer it further. Complaints against editors may be referred to USIM Press as the publisher of the journal: penerbit@usim.edu.my, or Faculty of Leadership and Management, USIM as the body that manages the running of the journal: fkp@usim.edu.my.

Nonetheless, we operate a strict policy of editorial independence and complaints about editorial matters (rejections, retractions, appeals etc.) will be referred back to the Chief-In-Editor, whose decisions on such matters is final.