JULACE: Journal of the University of Namibia Language Centre

Ethical Statement

The Journal of the University of Namibia Language Centre (JULACE) is an international, scholarly, open-access, peer-reviewed, bi-annual publication. The journal aims at providing a publishing avenue especially for emerging academicians, researchers and scholars in the fields of language, linguistics, and related disciplines such as translation, literary and other cultural studies such as film. JULACE welcomes the original articles, book reviews, other review articles, think pieces, and short fiction/poems. JUALCE follows the best practices defined in “Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics” (2014) and by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) (1999) for editors.

JULACE publishes exclusively unpublished papers. By submitting a manuscript the authors confirm that it is the result of their own original work for which they accept scientific and ethical responsibility (especially with respect to plagiarism, forgery of data, multiple reporting or publishing identical research results, abuse of authorship, or any other form of academic misdemeanour). Additionally, by submitting a manuscript, the authors confirm that the same manuscript has not been published or submitted for publishing elsewhere. Publication is free of charge for authors submitting the articles.

To maintain the quality, we follow the double-blind peer reviewing methods to ensuring the quality and fair policy of publication. JULACE is open to views and suggestion of authors and editorial board members to improve the journal quality. Our team follows different processes, which encourages accuracy and clarity of research paper and including the technical editing if required. We ask authors to confirm that ethical and legal approval was obtained prior to the start of the study, and state the name of the body giving the approval.

JULACE ensures that all published papers and reviews of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers and that the peer-review process is fair, unbiased and timely. The editor preserves anonymity of reviewers is preserved and the editor has the responsibility to ensure that all information regarding manuscripts submitted to JULACE remain confidential. Reviewers and editors will not use information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person’s or organization’s advantage or to disadvantage or discredit others. The editor’s decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication are based only on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal; but not to authors’ sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. Editor’s decisions will not be affected by the origin of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors.

To handle misconduct, JULACE also has measures in place to handle misconduct. A misconduct contains the following issues in a research paper:

• Redundant Publication in submitted/published manuscript
• Plagiarism in submitted/published manuscript
• Fabricated data in submitted/published manuscript

If any misconduct information is submitted by reviewer or reader, our team plans to investigate the issue to collect evidence for the scenario. Once we found enough evidence(s) to prove the misconduct was true, the author is informed about their misconduct to get their clarification on the matter. If our author accepts the misconduct we provide the original reference for the text and inform the reader about the issue. When author fails to provide enough evidence(s) to prove his/her work or denies the misconduct, we have the right to reject his/her article from our journal, in case if already published then we have the right to remove the article from our website. In case of author fails to communicate, we proceed to contact their institution to raise the issue of misconduct to get their reviews.

To handle changes of authorship, JULACE notes of the authorship changes that are concerned in the following conditions:

• Request to add a corresponding author before publication of the manuscript.

• Request to remove a corresponding author before publication of the manuscript.
• Request to add a corresponding author after the publication of the manuscript.
• Request to remove a corresponding author after the publication of the manuscript.

To change the authorship of an article we process the following steps:

• Ask to provide a valid reason(s) for changing in the authorship of the manuscript.
• We ask from all authors if they agree on the change of authorship details. If all agree the authorship will be changed.
• If not all authors agree, the article will be suspended until all authors agree to change in authorship details.
• In case if the article already published and author do not agree on the change in authorship, their institution will be asked to resolve the issue of their authorship if the excluded author wish to proceed.

References

Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics. (2014). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

Committee of Publication Ethics. (1999). Guideline on good publication practice. Retrieved from https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/1999pdf13.pdf