MISCONDUCT POLICY

Scientific Misconduct Policy:

Guidelines laid down by the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan (HEC), ICMJE, WAME and COPE are followed by FUJRS. The forms and examples of misconduct covered by the scientific misconduct policy include fabrication of scientific data, plagiarism, taking credit of authorship when there has been none, not giving other actual authors their due recognition, re-publishing the same research work as different research work in another journal, inclusion of individuals who have not participated in the research, fraudulently using other researcher’s ideas as own without informed consent. Similarly, not declaring competing interests regarding the source of funding for the research and not assuring transparency are also construed as misconduct by the journal.

Data falsification and fabrication:

Data falsification is manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images, removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding, or omitting data points, etc. Data fabrication means the making up of research findings.

Any questions regarding data integrity raised during or after the peer review process will be referred to the Editor-in-chief. The Editor-in-chief may request (anonymized) underlying study data from the author(s) for inspection or verification. If the original data cannot be produced, the manuscript may be rejected or, in the case of a published article, retracted. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s).

Defamation:

Whilst striving to promote freedom of expression wherever possible, FUJRS aims to avoid publishing anything that harms the reputation of an individual, business, or organization unless it can be proven to be true. We take all possible measures to ensure that published work is free of any text that is, or may be libelous, slanderous, or defamatory.