Policies of Publication Ethics and Malpractice

The Journal of Physical Education (JOPE) publications’ policy is based on the Committee of Publication Ethics - COPE guide. For more information, please visit the website https://publicationethics.org/

All followers, authors, reviewers, and editors must follow these instructions carefully when dealing with the Journal of Physical Education.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editorial and Publishers;

• Publication Decisions: The editorial board sole responsibility for the final approval of manuscript publication acceptance and the editor-in-chief is responsible for signing it after consulting editorial board members according to journal’s instructions policy.
• Transparency: The editorial board is obligated to take decisions concerning manuscript publication acceptance. This decision depends only on the submitted manuscript’s compliance with the journal’s condition and polies, and its scientific value regardless of gender, race, origin, sect, nationality and affiliation, and the journal is willing to publish the corrections, clarifications and retractions that include its publications when needed.
• Confidentiality: The editors and all journal employees are obligated to fully maintain author’s confidentiality, including personal information, and the confidentiality of the manuscript information except for information that are necessity and the authorized by the authors.
• Conflicts of Interest: All editors, reviewers and employees of the journal are not entitled to benefit from the results or data of any unaccepted manuscript for publishing in any way, except after obtaining a written permission from the original authors. 
• Appeals and complaints: The authors whose manuscripts are rejected by the reviewer have the right to appeal the reviewing decision, the editorial board has the right to consider the legitimacy of the appeal, and send the manuscript to a third reviewer in the field of specialization, or not.
• Punctuality: The Journal of Physical Education (JOPE) is obligated to publish its issues on time, every three months. 

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers;

• Contribution to Editorial Decisions: The reviewers contribute to assisting the editorial board in the decision of final manuscripts acceptance by providing objective recommendations, Furthermore they assist the authors in correcting their manuscripts. The editorial board is obligated to maintain the confidentiality of the authors and not to disclose their names except in the case of approval by the authors themselves.
• Promptness and Punctuality: According to reviewing of manuscripts instructions (Reviewers Guidelines), the reviewers are obligated to review the manuscript promptly within a period of time limited to (3) weeks from the date of receiving it. The candidate reviewer must inform the editorial board in the case of not being able to meet the reviewing date as soon as possible during the first week due to mismatch of specialization or lack of sufficient time; otherwise the reviewer will be changed.
• Confidentiality: The reviewers are obligated to confidentiality of the reviewing process and are not allowed to disclose or discuss the manuscript with anyone except the editorial board.
• Objectivity: The reviewers are obligated to objective standards of reviewing process depending on scientific facts and the journal’s reviewing guidelines, regardless of author’s gender, race, origin, sect, nationality and affiliation. The reviewers are also entitled to ask the authors for more details or information about any part of the manuscript.
• Acknowledgement of Sources: The reviewers are obligated to try to identify the fake sources or untrusted sources (some books and websites) or paragraphs of the manuscript that were stolen from similar manuscripts. Reviewers should inform the editorial board, as well as they should note that references in the manuscript text should match the ones in the bibliography.
• Conflicts of Interest: The reviewer is obliged to disclose to the editorial board about any conflicts of interest that makes him bias as a reviewer or he his review might be in the interest of specific persons or institutions, or personal relationship or any other interests.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors;

• Preparation Standards: Authors should follow the journal's publishing policy and manuscript writing style in terms of language, form, content, and citation, they also should avoid plagiarism in all its forms, which is a serious infringement of publication ethics. (See journal publication policy by clicking here).
• Concurrent Publication and Republish: Authors should avoid the concurrent publication of the manuscript by submitting it to more than one journal or conference in the same time, or submitting a manuscript for republication after being published in another journal. 
• Authenticity and Plagiarism: The authors should submit authentic manuscript using the right citations, avoiding plagiarism and keeping other authors rights.
• The Manuscript Authors: The names of manuscript’s authors must be determined by the persons who actually contributed to preparing it whether in the idea, design, implementation and writing. The author who submitted the manuscript for publication is responsible and acts as a coordinator with the journal. The manuscript will not be considered for review until filling out the two pledges forms and resending it to journal (Approval of the Authors declaration statement and Copyright).
• Disclosure and Conflict of Interests: Authors should clearly disclose financial support or any other support provided to them for the purpose of completing the manuscript, they should also explain the role of the Sponsor institution implementation of the manuscript if such a case exists
• Notification of Fundamental Errors: Authors should report significant errors or inaccuracies in their published manuscripts at any time they disclose it, and they should cooperate with the editorial board in order to correct the error or undo the manuscripts.
• Malpractice Statement: In case of documented violations of one or more of the Malpractice which include Plagiarism, Citation Manipulation, Improper Author Contribution or Attribution, Data Fabrication and Falsification, Duplicate Publication and Concurrent Publication and Republish, The editorial board will take the following actions: 
• Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript
• Setting the names of the author (s) participating in the manuscript on the black list for period of (3) years from the date of reported malpractice.
• According to above paragraph, any new manuscript submitted by any punished author (s) will not be accepted before the end of the specified period, whether the research is single or collaborative.
• Any new collaborative manuscript that contains any name of the punished authors will not be accepted even if there are new authors who are not listed in black list.
• The Journal of physical Education reserves its legal right to prosecute in accordance with applicable Iraqi law.