Policies

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

Journal management:

Upon receiving the initial submission in Zeal Press journals, the authors receive an email acknowledging receipt of their article submission. The editorial staff first of all checks that all mandatory requirements, described in Author’s Guidelines, are fulfilled by the authors. After the submission goes through this phase successfully, it is sent to an editorial board member of the relevant journal. The journal editor reviews the article initially to see if it meets the minimum criteria for consideration, scholarliness, and topic suitability. If it does not, article is not approved for peer review and the author is notified by email with a brief explanation why the article cannot be considered for further publication process. If it does meet minimum criteria, the editor approves it for peer reviewing.

The handling editor selects at least two specialist reviewers, one of whom may be a member of the editorial board. The reviewers are chosen based on their knowledge in the relevant field and consent is sought first whether they would be interested/able in reviewing the article in a given time frame. Special attention is given to any possible conflict of interest at this stage and reviewers are provided with an opportunity to regret from reviewing an article where they discover any competing interest with the author/content of the article. Editors are supposed to keep them updated about the Editorial policies of the journal and work accordingly.

Reviewers are requested for their written report within the given time frame (generally, one month of receipt of the article). Reviewers are suggested to read guidelines for peer reviewers of the journal and adhere to these. Only the editor/peer review coordinator will ever know who the reviewers are.

Upon receiving the reports from reviewers, the handling editor or editorial board makes the final decision about acceptance/rejection for publication. If the manuscript needs improvements, these are detailed and the article is sent back to author for revision. This decision is based on the quality of the manuscript, reviewers’ recommendations, and the number of manuscripts already accepted in the journal. The authors are notified about editor’s decision for their manuscript via email.

A deadline for the revision can be suggested by the editor. Once the revised article is submitted, the editor decides whether to approve the article for final publication or to send it to one or both of the original reviewers for their follow-up evaluation and approval. If still more work is required by the reviewers before publication of the article, it is be returned to the author with referees’ comments for improvements and an editor’s letter. Maximally, 3 rounds of review are permissible for any submitted manuscript.

Once an article has been approved for publication, and the author has resubmitted it with all corrections, it goes through a production process. An electronic versions of the typeset, edited version of the article, known as proofs or galleys is sent to the author for final inspection and approval. Authors have one week to review the final proof and may suggest any alterations. Once the article is returned, the managing editorial staff enters all the changes, and it is published online in the current volume of the journal within minimal possible time.

Handling editors/ Editorial Board Members/ EIC, as appropriate, are contacted if any post publication issue arises.

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 [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
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 Statement:

Zeal Press strives to fully adhere to Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Zeal Press implements a publication process strictly adhering to its ethical policies and standards. This is done to ensure that only high-quality scientific studies are being added to the existing research pool. In case any ethical issue comes up, we are committed to investigate it and take actions as deemed required for maintaining the integrity of the literature while simultaneously ensuring the safety of research participants.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS:

Authors wishing to publish their papers in Zeal Press journals must follow the below Ethics guidelines:

• Any possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be clearly disclosed in the paper prior to submission.

• Any change to the author list including the order of names during the editorial process or after acceptance for publication should be approved by all authors, including any who have been removed. Zeal Press reserves the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made under its vigilance.

• Data and methods used in the research article should be presented in sufficient detail unless there is compelling justifications otherwise.
• Simultaneous/concurrent submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not permitted.

• There is absolutely no room for any form of plagiarized work. Submitting an article to Zeal Press journals for publication means the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take necessary action in case any plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered.
• If the submitting author wishes to publish translations of the previously published articles by some other publisher he/she should ensure that they have appropriate permission(s), clearly indicating that the material has been translated and re-published, and provide the primary source of the material. If the Editor-in-Chief senses some overlap he/she may request the related publications to be provided to the publisher.

• Authors should not recommend collaborators or colleagues who work in the same institution as themselves as peer reviewers. Recommended reviewers should have no conflicts of interest that may include (but not limited to) the below:

1. The reviewer should not be aware of your submission
2. There must be no recent collaboration between suggested reviewer and any of the authors.

The suggested reviewer’s institutional email address and ORCID or Scopus ID will be required to help the Editor verify the identity and expertise of the reviewer.

• For any previously published content (including quotations, figures or tables), necessary permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder and provided to the publisher.
• If any of the authors finds any error/ inaccuracy in the manuscript after publication, it must be promptly communicated to the Editorial Office through corresponding author.

The above list is expandable; and all authors are advised to keep them abreast with local regulations and accepted criteria practiced in academic publishing.

 ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWERS:

• Peer reviewers should give their reports in English language.
• Reviewers are instructed that a constructive critical evaluation of the authors’ work must be provided, particularly regarding the appropriateness of methods used, accuracy of the results, and whether the conclusions are supported by the results presented in the article.
• Short, superficial peer reviewer reports which do not provide a good rationale are highly discouraged.
• Reviewers should identify any published work that has not been cited by the authors and mention it in their report.
• Reviewers are requested to inform the journal editor in case of any possible conflict of interests that may positively or negatively prejudice the review report. Usually the Editorial Office keeps an utmost check over this before inviting the reviewers; however, in case of any overlook we appreciate the cooperation of reviewers in this matter. Conversely, if reviewers had previously reviewed manuscript for another journal and they are invited to do so for Zeal Press it is not considered as a conflict of interest per se.
• Reviewers must keep all contents of the manuscript confidential. If they like a student or colleague to complete the review on their behalf, they are obliged to inform the editorial office.
• All Zeal Press journals function with double-blind peer reviews. Reviewers should practice caution not to reveal their identity to the authors in any way in their comments.
• All reviews should be objectively and professionally conducted without any sort of personal criticism to the author. Reviewers are requested to express their academically proficient views clearly with supporting arguments.

For further assistance in reviewing the articles please see, https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR EDITORS:

The Editorial Office, along with the Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, and Guest Editors is responsible for maintaining the integrity of Zeal Press journals. Below is a brief description of particular ethical aspects of their roles.

• The editor assigned with the responsibility of evaluating a manuscript should make all possible efforts to make sure that the manuscripts shall be evaluated solely on their intellectual merit without any discrimination based on the authors’ race, gender, religious belief, ethnicity, nationality, or political philosophy.
• If the editor feels ethical reservations regarding the review or acceptance decision of a manuscript, or finds concrete evidence about any ethical violation after its publication, he is supposed to inform the editorial office immediately.
• The editors are responsible to check that the ethical approval and permissions for research has been appropriately obtained if it involves human subjects, animals or cell lines.
• Any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than those involved in the potential review, editorial advisers, and the publishing team members.
• The editor must be vigilant that no piece of unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must be used by anyone who has sighted the manuscript (while handling it) in his or her own research without the explicitly written consent of the author.
• When making a final acceptance decision on a manuscript, editors should consider that facts likely to be supposed as a conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the manuscript prior to its submission.
• Editorial decisions should be based on peer reviewer comments that meet these criteria rather than on recommendations made by short, superficial peer reviewer reports which do not provide a rationale for the recommendations.
• Editors are suggested to go through https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/recognising-peer-review-manipulation-cope-infographic.pdf COPE’s directives for ensuring an unbiased and transparent peer review process.