OPEN ACCESS POLICY:

To make knowledge easier to reach global readers Zeal Press has chosen Open access policy for publishing all of its journals. Through this approach, readers from every corner of the world may get access to our published articles with any fee/subscription barrier. Our Open Access Policy means that the authors grant the ZEAL PUBLISHER a comprehensive and unalterable right to distribute their published scholarly articles for any non-commercial purpose. All articles published in ZEAL Press open access journals are peer reviewed and upon acceptance will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. This permits anyone to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided that the original source is appropriately cited.

Plagiarism Policy:

“Any unacknowledged copying of text from other published material or authors’ own published work, as well as misquoting original text, results, ideas or authorship is regarded as Plagiarism.”

Zeal Press highly condemns and never accepts plagiarism in any submission to its journals. We consider all below unethical actions as plagiarism, although this list is not exhaustive.

• Deliberate copying and presenting someone else work word for word, wholly or partly, without permission and due acknowledgment of the original source.
• Though not copying word for word but, reproducing others’ ideas without prior permission or original source acknowledgment; the practice of paraphrasing.
• Text-recycling: Reproducing some portions of own work and submitting it as a new publication without properly citing the previous work falls in the definition of Text-recycling, and is considered a malpractice; creating duplication of the data in the academic literature.
• Using images from a website or other copy righted-articles without permission.

For dealing with plagiarism whether detected before or after publishing of an article COPE guidelines are followed by Zeal Press. For complete understanding and details below flowcharts by COPE may be viewed:

https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/plagiarism-submitted-manuscript-cope-flowchart.pdf

Zeal Press holds the right to reject or retract the manuscripts if plagiarism detected before or after publishing of the manuscripts, respectively; and to contact or inform the authors’ institutions about the detected plagiarism according to COPE’s guidelines stated in Retraction guidelines | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

Preventing Plagiarism:

We suggest our authors to give special attention to below points in order to avoid plagiarism in their submitted articles.

• Referencing the source and putting quotation marks around the word-for-word copied text if literal copying is direly needed, and seeking appropriate permission where applied.
• Keeping a good record of used sources while researching and the places where these are used it in your manuscript.
• fully acknowledging and properly citing the original source of material in your submitted manuscript
• Paraphrasing is only acceptable if proper reference of the source has been provided and the intended meaning are retained, even after changing of words by the author.
• To refrain from text-recycling, proper mentioning of previously published paper should be made, even if you are reusing something in your own new words; also the authors should avoid excessive self-citation of their own work.
• Make certain of not citing advertisements or advertorial material.

Peer Review Policy:

 Zeal Press makes it mandatory that all submissions to its journals undergo the peer review process. At least two independent and expert reviewers from the relevant field will be involved in this review.

First of all, the submissions are reviewed by the journals’ staff for their completeness and then are sent to a member of editorial board to assess its suitability for the journal and further peer review. The editorial members for this early assessment are chosen based on the absence of any conflict of interest (an editor with least conflict of interest may be chosen if all editorial members have a conflict of interest in one way or the other).

Editors are expected to select the reviewers for an article based on their expertise, previous performance, repute in the field and conflict of interest with the submission. A speedy, yet diligent, and rational review is highly appreciated and always expected for all the submissions. In case of reviewers’ names suggestion by the authors, the editorial member will independently verify the conflict of interest and suitability of the reviewer for the article. Every article is reviewed by at least one reviewer, not recommended by the authors. The authors sometime may request to include/exclude specific reviewers for the peer review of their articles. Such request may be considered by the journals’ editorial board however, the editors hold the final authority to take decisions on the choice of peer reviewers for assessing the manuscript.

Of note, Zeal press journals are open for submission by their own editorial members, however such submission are evaluated by external field experts and reviewers at all stages of publication. With the aim of maintaining transparency in our publication process no details/comments about these submissions are shared with any board member of the journal. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is responsible for final acceptance/ rejection of these articles but a third party expert opinion is also sought in this regard.

Zeal Press believes that diversity of reviewers brings forth best possible constructive critique therefore, gender, race and geography of reviewers is considered while choosing a reviewer for a submission.

To ensure the high quality of review process, all articles go through a double-blind peer review where identities of both authors and reviewers are hidden from each other. Also, as the communication between editors and peer reviewers may contain confidential information these are not shared with third parties.

To resolve issues regarding suspected misconduct during peer review process Zeal Press follows https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/peer-review-manipulation-during-review-cope-flowchart.pdf

Authorship Principles:

The significant contributors to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study should be included as authors of the manuscript. Zeal Press takes no responsibility regarding the authorship matters including their names or the order of the authors’ list. In case of articles where we find firm evidence of dispute regarding any authorship matter, Zeal Press reserves the right of not publishing that article until complete resolution of the dispute and provision of a written agreement by all authors to that settlement. The participants, who have contributed in certain substantive aspects of the research project, should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. In case of manuscript submission by a group of researchers, at least one of them should be identified by name as the corresponding author and for being responsible for communications related to manuscript publication and responding to inquiries, if any, about the published article.

The find guidance about authorship matters we recommend our authors to have a look at 2003pdf12_0.pdf (publicationethics.org)

Corresponding Authorship

The corresponding author is the author responsible for communicating with the journal for publication related matters. Being a corresponding author means to ensure that all authors agree to be the co-authors, accept their order of names as listed in the submitted article and agree on the content of the article and its submission to the journal for publication and have approved the final version of the paper.

PRIVACY POLICY:

Zeal Press values your personal information and protecting your privacy throughout our relationship remains our priority. During the submission process we require your name, e-mail address, current institution or organization affiliation, designation or any other relevant information such as your area of expertise, postal address, and contact number etc. However, we make sure that your information will not be disclosed to any irrelevant contact other than the editor, reviewers (only if required) or other staff related to the publication process of your submission.

Also the manuscripts submitted to us are treated as confidential documents and neither shown nor discussed with others, except as authorized by the Editor in Chief.

The current privacy policy has last been updated in July, 2021. ZEAL PRESS reserves the right to change this policy at any time without prior notification. Visiting our webpage from time to time will keep you informed about any changes that may take place.

Copyright Ownership:

At Zeal Press , for all of their published work authors reserve the ownership of copyright for their article, but allow the readers to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in the journals by Zeal Press provided the original authors and source are appropriately cited.

Zeal Press encourages that all Submissions to its journals should be the authors’ original work and its copyright is not previously owned by anyone, elsewhere. We welcome genuine and innovative work along with a strong encouragement for cross- disciplinary approaches. It is the corresponding authors’ responsibility to check for possible copyright conflict with the copyright holder and agree to our Publication Ethics.

Conflict of interest:

“A competing interest/conflict of interest is something that actually interferes with, or may be seen as an interfering factor in the presentation, peer review, editorial handling, or publication of a submitted article. Competing Interest may be present in the form of financial, nonfinancial, professional or personal perspectives.”

A conflict of interest may arise when the author or author’s institution may have a financial, non-financial, and personal or any other association with the publisher or the people involved in the publishing process, which may influence integrity of the author’s work. Authors should declare any conflict of interest at the time of submission of manuscript or at the earliest possible stage after its recognition.

The conflicts should be included at the end of the manuscript, before the references, under the heading of “Conflict of Interest”. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, and allowances, paid expert testimony, past and present affiliations or other funding.

If any conflict of interest is suspected, it should be reported to the Zeal Press or Editor.
The mention of such interests does not make the manuscripts unethical but they should be acknowledged. In case of no conflict, the authors are required to include this in their manuscripts as well, clearly stating “The authors declare no conflict of interest”.

For resolving issues regarding conflicts of interests Zeal Press editors are instructed to work in line with https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/u7140/Discussion_document__on_handling_competing_interests.pdf

Disclaimer:

Zeal Press clearly mentions that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements in its journals are the sole responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. The Society’s officers, agents, Editors, and the Editorial Board accept no responsibility or liability for the consequences of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion, or statement. Though we try our best to make sure that no inaccurate/misleading data or statements are published in our journals, any use of the published content is at users’ own risk and Zeal Press is not supposed to accept any liability arising from such use. However, policy of article’s removal is followed by our journals if article is found to cause serious and immediate risks to health if practiced. For further details see our post-publication policies.

Acknowledgment of Financial support

In case of funding provided by the institutional or government authorities for the research reported in the article, all such sources of funding should be duly acknowledged and disclosed at the end of the article. If funding sponsors had any role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results; it must be declared in this section.

Digital Data Preservation:

Zeal Press takes full responsibility for the online presence of each published article. To ensure the fulfillment of our commitment in cases of unforeseen events, the content of all journals has been deposited and archived in LOCKSS through the PKP Preservation Network.

We also offer authors having a liberal self-archiving policy, which permits authors to self-archive their accepted manuscript in any institutional/disciplinary/state repository shortly after its first online publication.. However, due acknowledgment must be given to the original source of publication provided through a link to the published article on the journal's/ Zeal Press website.

Licensing Policy:

Zeal Press has adopted open-access publication policy to increase the global visibility of scholarly content. Our open access policy enables readers to directly approach the articles published by Zeal Press without any subscription/financial barriers. Zeal Press articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. This license allows our readers to share, distribute, adapt and reproduce our published content in any format/medium (but only for its non-commercial use) after a suitable credit/ citation to our authors and publishing source is provided.

Our authors keep intellectual property rights of their articles (including research data); and attribution rights for their published work. They are free to share their article with anyone provided it contains the DOI link to its version in our journal’s archive.

Zeal Press Authors have the right to use their articles for scholarly but non-commercial uses such as:

• Distribution of their articles to known researchers/colleagues for their personal use
• Inclusion of their article in a thesis or dissertation that is not aimed for commercial publishing
• Distribution for academic teaching
• use in a successive compilation of their works
• Extending the Article to give it a book form
• Preparing any noncommercial derivative works

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements:

If some dataset has been used in your research article which has some impact on the conclusion of your article, such data may be necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of your research by a reader therefore, Zeal press strongly suggests that such data must be available to all readers (if not restricted due to some justifiable reason). Such data may be included in the main article as additional supporting files, or they may be deposited in publicly available data repositories(in which case persistent identifiers such as digital object identifiers (DOIs) or data accession numbers assigned by the repository must be provided) while submitting the article. Some general repositories like figshare and Dryad may be used where required.

As Zeal Press journals follow the policy of double blind peer review, in case the authors need to provide the reviewers an access to their data (via supplementary information/data on request) it should be ensured by submitting author that the authorship in the data is also blinded. Authors may find repositories which provide services for such blinding or, may assist in masking the authorship of a data.

Zeal Press encourages its authors to also provide a statement of Data availability in their article. These statements should provide information about where data supporting the reported results of the article may be found. If possible and applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study may be provided. Authors may also mention in their Data availability statements that their data are available on request from the authors; or no data are available, whatsoever appropriate.

The Data Availability statements can be presented in any of the following forms ( a combination of more than one may be given as required for multiple datasets):

1. The datasets produced during and/or analyzed during this study are available in the repository.
2. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the present study are not publicly available due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but may be provided by the corresponding author on reasonable request.
3. The generated/ analyzed datasets of the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
4. All data used/generated during this study are included in this published article [as supplementary information files].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS/CONTRIBUTERSHIP:

If Authors of an article submitted to Zeal Press journals want to acknowledge anyone (individual/company/institution) who contributed significantly in studying important scholarly content or was involved in article’s drafting or revision, an acknowledgment note may be included in the end of the article before References. However, Zeal Press discourages the guest or honorary authorship granting exclusively based on official positions (e.g., research supervisor, departmental head) is strongly discouraged. For more information on authorship please see our Authorship Principles above.

DATA FALSIFICATION/FABRICATION:

Any form of data falsification/ fabrication such as makeup of original research findings/data is not permitted in any submission to Zeal Press journals. Different forms of this fabrication may include, but are not limited to, manipulating original images, removing unsupportive research findings, changing/adding/deleting data points in illustrations etc. Although, some technical manipulation of a complete image (not partial) may be carried out for better readability which needs to be explicitly mentioned in a cover letter accompanying the submitting article. Zeal press Editors are expected to follow COPE guidelines while discovering any data falsifications in a submitted manuscript. For further details see,

• Suspected fabricated data in a submitted manuscript

Even if detected in articles already published by Zeal Press data fabrication issue is given prompt attention and such cases are resolved according to COPE’s following guidelines:

• Suspected fabricated data in a published article

Post Publication Policies:

Article Correction:         

Zeal Press’s staff works efficiently to make sure that the articles published in our journals are final and reliably citable. However, if an author discovers a significant error of scientific importance in his/her article that may influence the reliability of the published content, he/she is responsible for immediately inform the journal or publisher via email. The editorial staff will convey such matters to editors who will look into this to measure the extent of correction and it’s subsequent impact. Authors are supposed to cooperate with editors for replying to all queries that may be asked by the editors. Suitable course of action will be taken by editors where a correction is imperative after receiving its approval from the EIC of the journal to maintain the integrity of scholarly record and transparency of our publication services readers are informed about any such correction by a post-publication Erratum/Crrigendum perminently linked to the original article. In some cases, where publisher considers that errors may adversely affect the publication record or the reputation of the journal.

COPE’s guidelines are followed in all such cases. Details may be found at https://publicationethics.org/case/how-correct-published-paper

Article Retraction

 In cases of highly significant post-publication issues such as errors in the conducting/analyzing/reporting of the study; Infringements of professional research ethical codes, for example multiple submission, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, deceptive use of data through data fabrication by the authors, Zeal Press reserves the right to retract the articles. In such rare cases the original article will be marked on the journal’s website as “retracted” though, a PDF version will be available for readers with a brief retraction statement linked to the original article.

Article Removal:

Policy of article’s removal is followed by Zeal Press journals if any published article is found to cause serious and immediate risks to health when practiced, infringes on someone’s legal rights, is defamatory or unlawful in any way or is discovered as a duplicate publication (which also includes earlier publication in any language other than English). Only the title and authors’ names of the removed article will be displayed on the journal’s website, with a brief note, openly available to all readers, shortly describing the reasons for its removal.

Allegations of misconduct:

Any form of suspected ethical misconduct in submitted articles is diligently investigated by Zeal Press editorial members/ editorial staff, as appropriate. The editors are supposed not only to reject such articles but initially contact the authors for inquiring about such unfair actions. In case of no/unsatisfactory reply from authors their employers, institutions/organizations, or relevant regulatory body may be contacted regarding the issue. All steps are taken in the light of COPE’s directions as can be seen in https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-problem-in-submitted-manuscript-cope-flowchart.pdf

All cases of misconduct are followed up till final settling of the issue. In rare situations of any allegation of ethical misconduct raised for a post-published article by Zeal Press journals, investigation will be carried out and appropriate action may be taken, if proved with evidence,by handling editor of the article which may include retraction/ removal of the article from the journal. In case of complicated cases, handling editor may consult other editorial board members or EIC to make final decision. The editorial staff is given the responsibility to follow up the case of any misconduct till solution of the issue is finally achieved. The extremely unusual cases of evident misconduct may be directed to COPE team by EIC if no guidelines/flowchart can be found throwing light on such issues.

Appeals & Complaints:

If authors want that the decision of rejection of their article should be reconsidered, they may send their appeals at ([email protected]). Your appeal will be conveyed to the handling author of your article for consideration. Appeals may take time to be responded as the priority is given to the active submissions to the journal. The final decision on appeals will be taken after consultation with the journal’s editorial team.

The authors will be informed about the final decision on their appeals, and in case of reasonable appeals they will be notified about how their manuscript will be handled again.

Authors’ complaints about very long delays in processing of their articles; unethical conduct of reviewer/ editor may be submitted at ([email protected]). Complaints of delays in processing are considered by the handling editor of the manuscript together with a member of journal’s staff. The complainant and the relevant participant from journal’s team will be provided with appropriate feedback for improving our processes and procedures. Appropriate course of action will be taken by Editorial board members against the complaints of ethical misconduct; and the complainant will be given a feedback in minimal possible time needed for the necessary investigations.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy

Can be viewed via this link.