Author, Reviewer and Publisher Responsibilities

Authors' responsibilities:

• To keep accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript using correctly the Journal interface, and to supply or provide access to these data, on reasonable time line. Where appropriate and where allowed by employer, funding body and others who might have an interest, to deposit data in a suitable repository or storage location, for sharing and further use by others;
• To be aware that the paper proposals should contain original work that was not published in other journals; papers presented at international conferences may be accepted pending standard Journal review procedure;
• To confirm that the manuscript as submitted is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere. Where portions of the content overlap with published or submitted content, to acknowledge and cite those sources;
• To confirm that all the work in the submitted manuscript is original and to acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources. To obtain permission to reproduce any content from other sources;
• To accept that they should respond in a special statement available on the journal interface to the critical observations, remarks, and suggestions of the reviewers;
• To declare any potential conflicts of interest (e.g. where the author has a competing interest (real or apparent) that could be considered or viewed as exerting an undue influence on his or her duties at any stage during the publication process);
• To notify promptly the journal editor or publisher if a significant error in their publication is identified. To cooperate with the editor and publisher to publish an erratum, addendum, corrigendum notice, or to retract the paper, where this is deemed necessary;
• All submitted papers are subject to strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper and they will make a recommendation to accept, reject, or modify the manuscript;
• The reviewing of manuscripts is an essential step in the publication process. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, significance, originality, readability and language;
• The possible decisions include acceptance, acceptance with revisions (minor or major), or rejection;
• If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted;
• An author should make no changes to a paper after it has been accepted. If there is a compelling reason to make changes, the author is obligated to inform the Editor directly of the nature of the desired change. Only the Editor has the final authority to approve any such requested changes;
• Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editor. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his or her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor and cooperate to retract or correct the paper;
• Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed;
• The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism;
• No research can be included in more than one publication (Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications).

Reviewer Responsibilities:

For the quality standards IJPEFS follows the fourth version of a Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing released combinedly by the The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) for scholarly publications (https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/principles-transparency-best-practice-scholarly-publishing.pdf).

• Please make sure the article belongs to your specialization and if not, we request you to inform the editor as well as you are welcome to recommend the alternate reviewers. Also, the reviewers can decline the invitation if you are preparing the similar manuscript and if you have already reviewed the same manuscript at different journal.
• The reviewers should not be a co-author or collaborator with any of the authors mentioned in the manuscript. Also, the person working at the same institution cannot be a reviewer.
• Please make sure there is no financial/nonfinancial conflict of interest
• Reviewers are requested to complete the review within a stipulated time and if they find any difficulty, they may contact the editor for extension of time.
• Irrespective of religion, race, country and political beliefs the reviewers should perform review in an ethical manner
• Using vulgar comments should be avoided. Reviewers’ comments should be an aid for improving the author’s work.
• The reviewers should not impose the authors to cite their published articles.
• Reviewers are suggested to provide the following comments/decisions based on the manuscript quality
  • Accept
  • Accept with Minor Revision
  • Accept with Major Revision
  • Reject
• In case of major revision, the revised manuscript will be once again sent to the reviewers for their final comments/suggestions.
• According to COPE guidelines the reviewers respect the confidentiality of the peer review process ( https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf)
• Also, we suggest the reviewers to go through COPE guidelines for more information ( https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_guidelines_for_peer_reviewers_0.pdf )
• Reviewers are requested to (download) and use the reviewer form and use it for review purpose and are encouraged to provide their comments in the review form. Alternatively, they can mention/highlight their comments in the review file without mentioning their identity.

Benefits
1 Reviewer certificate will be provided once the review is done.
2. We assist the reviewers to get their Web of Science Reviewer recognition for their completed review.

Publisher Responsibilities:

• Both Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief, on behalf of which it publishes, shall ensure that the good practice is continuous to the standards delineated above.