The Journal of Economic Policy is committed to following and implementing the current guidelines and instructions of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its review, publication, and related processes. For more information, please visit this page: (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations).
The COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors are available in the following files:
(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf),
(https://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf).
All submitted articles are evaluated at the submission stage to meet the structural and subject principles of each journal. The matched articles will be gone under a double-blinded peer-review process by at least 3 reviewers who are selected by the Editorial Board members according to their field specialties. The Editorial Board members have the final responsibility to select the articles. Duties of editorial board, authors and reviewers are following:
Duties of Authors
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Authorship is a way of making explicit both credit and responsibility for the contents of published articles. Credit and responsibility are inseparable. The guiding principle for authorship decisions is to present an honest account of what took place. Criteria for authorship apply to all intellectual products, including print and electronic publications of words, data, and images. Journals should make their own policies on authorship transparent and accessible.
An 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.
- Reporting standards
- Manuscript must be certified as an original work by authors.
- Manuscript must be certified that has not previously been submitted published or even in under review process.
- All data used in the submitted paper must be certified that are authentic and real.
- The Journal is a peer reviewed scientific journal so that Authors must consider and follow editorial board and reviewer comments.
- Gift authorship is not allowed and authors mentioned in manuscript must have contributed to the registered article.
- Corresponding author is the main owner of submitted manuscript so she/he is responsible for the whole correspondence during the paper submission, correction and revision process.
- Any conflict of interest must be notified by authors.
- When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own submitted manuscript / published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
- Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have influenced their research.
- Any risks posed to humans or the environment as a result of the research must be clearly stated in the article.
- Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study along with the manuscript for review and editorial assessment, and they should be prepared to make the data publicly available when possible.
- Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest that could influence the results or their interpretation at the earliest possible stage (by submitting the conflict-of-interest form at the time of manuscript submission).
- If the work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that carry any unusual hazards in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.
- Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from human participants (when required). The privacy rights of human subjects must always be respected.
- Authors should acknowledge any individuals or organizations that provided financial support or contributed to the development of the research, and express their appreciation in the “Acknowledgments” section at the end of the article.
Duties of Reviewers
Peer review assists the Editor-in-Chief in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
- The confidentiality of manuscript information should be considered by reviewers.
- Explicit and clear opinions should be expressed about different parts of manuscript. Personal criticism of the author is also inappropriate by reviewers.
- Once the paper read, assessed or qualified by each reviewer, they may make a recommendation to the editor in chief regarding paper publication. They also should draw the editor in chief attention to similarity or overlap between the manuscript and other published paper based on their personal knowledge.
- Reviewers should fill journal review questions and score sheet to show weaknesses or strengths of the manuscripts.
- Previous relevant published research that has not been cited in the manuscript could also be introduced by reviewers to promote the paper qualification.
- Reviewer reviews his/her assigned article and judges it according to four categories: publish as is, publish with minor revisions, publish with major revisions, and reject.
- Reviewers have to remember that the final decision to accept or reject will depend on the comments from the Editor-in-Chief.
- Keep manuscript and review details secret.
Duties of Editorial Board
The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
An editor at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
- Editorial board should be main responsible of published paper in the Journal.
- The Journal is being constantly improved by editorial board.
- Decisions to accept or reject a paper should be based only on the importance of the paper topic, originality, clarity and its relevance to the journal aims.
- The quality of the published material must be ensured by editorial board.
- Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by at least two referees related to the paper topic. Related reviewers are selected by editorial board and finally editor in chief. Relevant reviewers could be also suggested by Authors to the Journal technical committee.
- The guidance to reviewers should be published and regularly updated on what the editorial board expected.
- Minor and major revisions, rejection or acceptance are editorial board decisions for each manuscript.
- Some legal requirements regarding the Journal copyright policies are needed for final paper acceptance.
- Based on journal regulations, there is no chance to reviewed rejected articles.
- Submitted manuscripts, the reviewers and author’s identities must be remained confidential while under review
- Errata pages or make corrections should be published by editorial board if needed.
- The editor-in-chief should not consider the matter resolved merely by rejecting manuscripts that are under accusation or have been proven to involve misconduct; they are obligated to pursue such cases to their final conclusion. At the same time, adequate opportunity must be provided for authors accused of publication or research misconduct to respond.
- The editor-in-chief is responsible for promptly retracting any published articles found to involve publication or research misconduct and for providing transparent notification to readers and the relevant indexing authorities.
- The editor-in-chief and the editorial board members are obliged to promptly review and publish corrections for articles in which errors have been identified, and to provide transparent information to readers.
- The editor-in-chief and editorial board members are expected to welcome reasonable and well-founded critiques of published articles.
Publisher's Duties and Responsibilities
- "Yazd University" is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
- Population Association of Iran is committed to maintain the integrity of academic and research records.
- Yazd University is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
- Yazd University, together with the Journal’s editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow taking place.
- Yazd University is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscripts and willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.
Violation of Publication Ethics:
- If at any stage of submission, peer review, editing, publication, or after publication in the Economic Policy-Making journal, any of the following cases is confirmed, it is considered publication and research misconduct, and the journal’s editorial board has the right to take appropriate legal and disciplinary action.
- Data Fabrication: Refers to reporting false information and presenting fabricated data or results as laboratory findings, experimental studies, or personal observations. Recording events that never occurred or swapping results from different studies are examples of this misconduct.
- Data Falsification: Refers to recording or presenting research results in a way that manipulates details of the research procedure or data collection process, or in which data are deleted or altered. It may also involve exaggerating minor findings to conceal more significant realities (“juicy quotes”) so that the results serve specific purposes or avoid scrutiny.
- Plagiarism: Refers to using ideas or essential parts of others’ work (without proper citation) in a way that suggests they belong to the author. Copying even a single sentence from another person’s article—or even from one’s own previously published work—without proper citation is considered plagiarism by the Economic Policy-Making journal. All submitted or published articles are screened using plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate; therefore, plagiarism is considered a serious violation of publication ethics.
- Ghostwriting / Contracted Authorship: Refers to a situation where an author (or authors) hires another person to conduct the research, and after minimal changes, publishes the work under their own name.
- False Attribution: Refers to falsely affiliating an author (or authors) with an institution, center, or academic/research group that had no role in conducting the research.
Process of Identifying and Addressing Research Misconduct
When the journal confirms any violation of its ethical principles, the following actions will be taken:
The first step by the Editor-in-Chief is to inform the editorial board through appropriate channels and to send a draft letter to the corresponding author requesting an explanation, while maintaining a non-judgmental tone.
If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and the misconduct appears serious, the case is referred to the editorial board. After consultation, the committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to prohibit future submissions by the author(s).
If the misconduct is not very serious, and after consultation with the editorial board, the Editor-in-Chief will send a warning letter to the author and remind them of the journal’s publication policies. If the article has already been published, the editor will ask the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
An official warning will be sent to the corresponding author, and any submissions currently under review by that author or their co-authors involved in the misconduct will be rejected.
The author will be prohibited from serving as a member of the editorial board or as a reviewer for the journal.
In critical cases, a formal notice will be sent to the author’s affiliated institution(s), and the authors will be banned from submitting manuscripts to the journal for five years.
In severe cases of fraud, an apology statement will be published in the journal and linked to the online article. The online article will also be marked with an apology notice and date.
Appeals
If authors disagree with the editorial board’s decision regarding their manuscript, they have the right to appeal. Authors wishing to appeal a decision must submit their request to the Editor-in-Chief.
In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will re-evaluate the manuscript along with the reviewers’ and editorial board’s comments, and will issue a decision regarding acceptance or rejection of the manuscript. If necessary, the manuscript may be returned to the authors for further revision or sent to a new reviewer for reassessment. In such situations, the final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief.
Authorship Changes
The journal’s editors generally do not consider authorship changes after manuscript submission. It is essential for authors to carefully determine the authorship list and the order of authors before submission and to provide a finalized authorship list at the time of initial submission.
Journal policy on authorship changes:
Any addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors in the authorship list must be done only before acceptance and only with the approval of the Editor-in-Chief.
Requests for authorship changes must be submitted by the corresponding author, who must provide the reason for the request along with written confirmation from all authors — including any authors being added or removed — stating their agreement with the change.
Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor-in-Chief consider authorship changes after acceptance.
Any unauthorized change in authorship may result in rejection of the manuscript or retraction of the article if it has already been published.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Declaration in Scholarly Writing
Authors must disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence in scholarly writing at the time of manuscript submission. The following guidelines apply only to the writing process, not to the use of AI tools for data analysis or deriving insights from data as part of the research process:
The use of generative AI and AI-based technologies in scholarly writing must be disclosed by adding a statement at the time of initial manuscript submission. This statement will appear in the published work and should be included in a new section prior to the References list. An example:
This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools such as those employed for grammar checking, spellchecking, or reference management. If no generative AI tools were used, no declaration is required.