Publication Ethics

Introduction:

The Text, an International Peer Reviewed Online Journal of Language, Literature and Critical Theory, endorses the principles of publication ethics and malpractice statement laid down by various scholarly committees. It ensures the highest standards of publication ethics and quality publication by adhering to the Code of Conducts and best practices set by the Committee on Publication Ethics Hence, The Text expects all the parties (authors, peer-reviewers, editors and the publisher) involved in the publication process to comply with the international publication ethics in the preparation/review of manuscripts to ensure integrity and quality in publishing scholarly contents.

Research Integrity:

All parties involved in research are required to conduct the research in line with scientific integrity and professional integrity. Researchers are required to uphold the following principles:
- Use of honest, accurate and verifiable methods in all aspects of research.
- Transparency and openness in all communication.
- Care and respect for those involved in research.
- Abide by the code of conduct set by The Committee on Publication Ethics.
- Accountability for a positive research environment.

Journal Information, Ownership and Management:

The Text (ISSN: 2581-9526) is an International peer reviewed open access bi-annual (January and July) online journal. It is founded, owned and managed under the current name by T. Pandiyan since 2019. It accepts critical and creative writings in English. For more details, please click here

Aims and Scope:

The journal offers a platform for scholarly writings on language, literature, theory/criticism, cultural/queer/disability/translation/media/performance/eco/animal studies. For more information, please click here

Editorial Board

The editorial structure of The Text includes Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, International Advisory Board, Editorial Board and a network of reviewers to carry out effective editorial/publication process.
The following are the responsibilities of the lead editor of The Text Dr. P. Karkuzhali (Editor-in-Chief) and Dr. P. Prayer Elmo Raj (Associate Editor):
• Responding to queries.
• Initial screening of the submitted manuscripts and coordinating the review process.
• Providing guidelines and collaborating with authors, reviewers and editorial board members to ensure ethical standards.
• Addressing/Investigating issues pertaining to unethical authorship and research misconduct.
• Taking all important decisions.
The international advisory board of The Text provides counsel on:
• Editorial/publication policies of the journal.
• Overall strategic development and academic standards of the journal.
• Issues raised on research misconduct.
The names and institutional affiliations of the editorial board members are available at Editorial Board.

Editorial Independence and Integrity:

The Text is committed to intellectual freedom and editorial independence. We ensure that the editors are free to take decisions without any interference or influence from the publisher or any other third-party. Editorial content is not compromised by any financial or commercial interests. Manuscripts under review will be evaluated exclusively on the basis of quality or academic merit of research and its relevance to the scope of the journal, without regard to class/race/ethnicity, gender/sexual orientation, disability, citizenship, religious/political beliefs or institutional affiliations of the authors. The journal's editorial and publication decisions are not influenced by the policies of governments or any other external entities. The journal’s editorial content and publishing schedule are entirely within the control of the journal's editor-in-chief. Any concerns or complaints about the editorial decisions will be strictly handled within the editorial structure of the journal.

Peer Review Process:

The Text follows double-blind peer review process and authors are expected to adhere to standard publishing practices. All authors are obligated to correct any errors or omissions that may have been made in their work. Authors are given a deadline for submitting amendments when they are requested for. Based on the type and volume of the recommended revisions, authors and reviewers will agree on an expected timeframe. Policies related to submission and peer review procedures are clearly stated on the journal’s editorial policies page.

Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Editors

The Text follows international standards for editors recommended by COPE:
• Editors/reviewers should make fair and unbiased decision.
• Editors/reviewers decision should solely depend on academic merit and not driven by any commercial interests.
• Editors/reviewers should withdraw from review if they have any conflict of interest or ties with the manuscript under review.
• Editors/reviewers’ activities are bound by ethical and legal restrictions such as PEMS and IP.

Identifying and Preventing Misconduct:

All members of the journal’s advisory board and editorial board are prohibited from encouraging or intentionally allowing any misconduct to occur. The advisory board and editorial board are responsible for educating authors and reviewers about the ethical standards they must adhere to. To detect manuscripts where research misconduct has or seems to have happened, members of the editorial board, and reviewers are expected to be aware of all sorts of misconduct and deal with the accusations properly.

Data Access and Retention:

Editors urge writers to contribute supporting data where it makes sense to do so. Experimentation and observational evidence are examples of research data. An editor’s recommendation is for writers to provide a data statement with their publication, stating that their data is available. The data statement allows writers to be open and honest about the information they utilize in their papers.

Confidentiality:

The names and organisational/institutional affiliations of the authors and reviewers recorded by the journal in the course of its functioning will remain confidential and will not be used beyond the publication requirements.
All submitted manuscripts and communication with peer reviewers and authors will be treated as confidential. All parties involved in publication are automatically bound by the policies of The Text to maintain strict confidentiality of their assigned work. The authors must treat all correspondence with The Text, referees’ report and other material as confidential and must not be posted or publicized anywhere without prior permission from The Text. Editors should not misuse/appropriate author's ideas or the content of the unpublished manuscripts for their personal use without getting explicit written consent from the authors.

Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests:

Editors/reviewers will withdraw from evaluating the manuscript if they have any conflict of interest or competing, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with authors, corporations, or institutions associated with the publications. In such cases, the manuscript will be handled by other members. All conflict of interest between authors, reviewers, and members of the editorial board will be precluded by the journal.

Complaints and Appeals:

The editorial board members together with the publisher will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent research misconduct and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct to take place. When ethical concerns are reported or raised with regard to a published article or an unpublished manuscript, the editorial board together with the publisher will take necessary action. Even if the unethical publishing practice is detected after years of publication, it will still be investigated by the editorial board in line with COPE Flowcharts. In cases of proven research misconduct (data falsification/fabrication, plagiarism, citation manipulation), a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other relevant remark will be published in the journal.

Unethical Publishing Behaviour - Publisher’s Responsibilities:

In the event of claimed or proved scientific misconduct, fraudulent publishing, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close conjunction with the editors, will take all relevant actions to explain the situation and to rectify the article in issue. An errata or explanation may be issued as soon as possible, or even a full retraction. Under no circumstances should a publisher or editor promote or enable research misconduct to occur. The publisher and editors must make reasonable efforts to avoid publishing articles when such misconduct has occurred.

Addressing Post-Publication Issues:

We are committed to maintaining best publication practices and thoroughly investigate issues raised on research misconduct or unethical practices. The journal editor is responsible for handling any issues that may arise in the event of misconduct. They may collaborate with the members of the advisory board, editorial board, peer reviewers, and specialists in the area to take necessary steps. The issue will be documented in the best manner. All facts (who, what, when, where, and why) and all necessary documents related to the manuscript in question will be recorded in detail for all official use. The author or the publication concern shall be contacted by the journal editor to provide him/her an opportunity to respond to the complaint/dispute/allegation.
Depending on the nature and severity of the issue, the following responsive measures will be taken:
• If the manuscript is under review, it will be rejected and the author will be notified immediately.
• If the article in question has already been published online, the following actions will be taken:
 Editorial Expression of Concern may be issued when they have reason to believe that the authors have done something wrong, but do not have enough evidence, or if there is evidence that the findings aren't accurate and the author’s institution has not look into the case.
 a correction or Addendum may be issued if errors are identified (i.e., a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).
 The article may be retracted when there is clear evidence that (i) the results are erroneous, either because of misconduct (e.g., data manipulation, plagiarism) or obvious mistake (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error); (ii) infringes copyright or intellectual property right; (iii) Government or court order has been issued demanding the removal/retraction of such content.

Authorship and Contributorship:

Authorship is restricted to those who made significant contributions to the concept, design, execution, or interpretation of the research. To be listed as an author, a person must meet the following criteria: (i) made significant contributions in the conception and design of the study; (ii) drafted or critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission. An acknowledgement section should be included in the publication for anybody who made a significant contribution to the research but does not fit the requirements for authorship. Authors should double-check that their co-authors have viewed and accepted the article's final version and consented to its submission for publication before submitting the paper to the Journal to which they belong.

Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors

The Text follows international standards for authors recommended by COPE:
• Research must be done per all applicable laws, including intellectual property, and presented ethically and responsibly.
• Authors must be aware of and desist from these practices to avoid scientific misconduct and ethical publication violations.
• There should be no fabrication, falsification or improper modification of data by authors in their findings. According to intellectual property law, the writers ensure that their work is unique. So that other researchers can verify their results, authors should be open and precise about how they conducted their research.
• Acknowledgement and authorship must be clearly stated. If an author misrepresents a scientist's involvement in published work, they risk being sued. Each author must have made a substantial contribution to the study. Those who have completed less significant contributions to the study or the publication may be recognized, but they should not be labelled as authors.
• Authors are expected to disclose any conflicts of interest they may have had with editors or members of the Editorial Board.
• There must be no major portion of the paper that has already been published elsewhere, either as an article or as a chapter.
• Researchers should avoid ‘salami publishing,’ or ‘minimal publishable unit’ which is the division of research into several articles that are not related to each other.
• Authors must submit their work for peer review and adhere to standard/best publishing practices.
• Authors should offer an accurate summary of their work and findings, followed by an impartial evaluation of the study’s relevance. The manuscript should have enough information and references for the work to be reproduced. A review article should be factual, impartial, and complete. It is unethical and unprofessional to make false or intentionally misleading remarks.
• Authors may be required to give research data of their work for editorial review and should be willing to make the data public if feasible. Authors and researchers must anonymize confidential data and personal information before viewing it. Observations or experiments that validate research findings are called research data. Suppose participants’ privacy and legal rights to proprietary information are protected. In that case, authors should ensure that the data they publish can be accessed by other qualified professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institution- or subject-based data repository or another data centre).
• Authors should submit only original works; if the work or words of others have been copied, they should be appropriately cited. Citations should be made for publications that significantly impacted the development of the work described in the paper. One of the most common kinds of plagiarism is ‘passing off’ someone else's work as the writer’s own, which may be done in numerous ways, including copying or paraphrasing significant chunks of another's paper without crediting the source. Unacceptable and unethical publishing practices include plagiarism in many forms.
• Authors must avoid multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission. authors should avoid submitting the same research paper to more than one Journal or principal publication at a time. Publishing in the form of an abstract, publication of an academic thesis, and electronic preprints are not considered earlier publications by journal editors. The practice of simultaneously submitting a manuscript to more than one publication is considered unethical and inappropriate in the publishing industry.
• Authors should (1) as soon as possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript). (2) clarify any conflicts of interest that might skew the findings or interpretations in the paper. Financial conflicts of interest should be disclosed, as should non-financial ones, such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent licencing arrangements. All funding sources for the project should be mentioned (including the grant number or different reference number, if any).
• Authors must recognize the work of others appropriately and to mention publications that have had a significant impact on the reported study. Unless the source gives their specific, written consent, no information collected via informal means (such as conversation, email, or discussion with other parties) may be applied or reported. Unless the author(s) of the workers engaged in these services have given their explicit written consent, authors should not utilize information discovered when providing confidential services, such as reviewing manuscripts or grant applications.
• As part of the peer-review process, authors are expected to actively contribute by instantly providing raw data, clarifications, and documentation of ethical approval, as well as patient consent and copyright authorization. Accordingly, authors should react methodically, point by point and on time in the event of an initial revisions required.
• In the event of serious mistakes or inaccuracies in published material, authors must quickly inform editors or publisher and work with them to either rectify the manuscript through an erratum or retract it. The authors’ responsibility is to correct or withdraw a published work if the editors or publisher learns of the mistake or inaccuracy via a third party.

Article Processing Fee:

The Text does not charge any processing/publication fee. Fee detail is available at editorial policies. Editorial decisions are not compromised or influenced by publication fees or waiver status.

Advertisement Policy:

• All advertisements and sponsors are independent from editorial decisions.
• The Editorial content or the editorial decisions will not be compromised or influenced by the current/potential advertising clients or by sponsors.
• The Journal does not accept advertisements that are misleading, indecent or harmful to health.
• The journal does not endorse advertisements that are offensive in its text or image (ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientations).
• The Text reserves the right to decline any type of advertisement causing damage to the reputation of the journal.
• Advertising request should be made to editor-in-chief.

Archiving Policy:

The authors are allowed to self-archive only the published versions of the manuscripts in their personal websites, institution and non-commercial repositories recognized in their fields of expertise. The Text does not allow archiving of accepted draft or unpublished versions of the manuscript prior to its publication on the journal's website.
Theprevious issuessection of The Text serves as an electronic back up of all published content of the journal.
In the event if the journal is no longer published, free access to the archiving of journal’s all scientific content is available at Citefactor.org.

Open Access Policy:

The Text is a non-profit, non- commercial open access initiative in India founded by T. Pandiyan in 2019. Making its publications freely available online, The Text allows readers to read, copy, cite, download, print, distribute its publications and to utilize them for any other lawful purpose. The open access policy is available at the journal’shome page and ateditorial policies.

Copyright and Licensing:

The author retains and holds the copyright of the manuscript. The Text (ISSN: 2581-9526) as the publisher holds the right to first publication of the manuscript and the right to produce and disseminate the contributions, whether in conjunction with other articles or on their own, in all media formats known or yet to be developed. For more details, pleaseclick editorial policies.