The decisions of acceptance or rejection of a paper for publication of Editor will be made on the basis of the innovativeness, genuineness, importance, originality and clarity, validity and its relevance to the field of study. Pragyana expects all the editors, authors, peer reviewers that they follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour contained therein.

EXPECTATIONS FROM AUTHORS

Before submission, authors/ corresponding author are supposed to go through the submission guidelines thoroughly and ensure that all the terms given there are complied fully. As a part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The manuscript has not been previously published fully or partly, neither is it under consideration by another journal.
• The manuscript contains sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work
• The text of submitted manuscript follows the stylistic and bibliographic requirements as given in the submission guidelines.

Any efforts of seeking favour from editors or fraudulent or misleading statements will be taken as unethical behaviour and will be taken seriouly.

Plagiarism and originality of work

Editorial Board bears no responsibility for the originality of work or views expressed by the authors of their articles/ papers published in Pragyana. It should be ensured at the Authors’ end that the research paper presented for publication is an original work and free from plagiarism, and if a piece of work from other researchers has been used, the work and/or words of others, should appropriately be cited.  It falls under the sole responsibility of author(s) that any kind of published or unpublished data has essentially been credited well and also a proper permission has been sought from the authorised person or organisation. Plagiarism in its any form is against the ethics of publishing in Pragyana and hence not acceptable.

Pragyana has a policy to offer another chance to authors to make corrections or amendment, if their work has a similarity indexed exceeding the permissible limits of 10%. Pragyana uses state-of-the-art plagiarism tools available to check every section of the manuscript.

EXPECTATIONS FROM EDITORS

The Editor-in-Chief, along with Editorial Board, is fully authorised for entire editorial content and timing of publishing content of the journal. Editors are largely responsible for maintaining quality and credibility of journal, therefore, they, as per their expertise, should assess all the manuscripts on the basis of its suitability and relevance to the scope of journal. Editors will treat authors equally irrespective to their organisational affiliation, caste, creed, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, political inclination or otherwise.

Roles and responsibility of Editor(s)

It is the responsibility of Editors that they should avoid and always be keen on publishing corrections, clarifications, apologies etc., if required. The quality of the published work must be ensured and integrity of academic record must be maintained by the Editors by actively valuing the views given by all the stakeholders of research, i.e., scholars, readers, authors, reviewers, experts and editorial board members for improving policies, processes, publication of journals. It should also be ensured that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions, publishing and acceptance dates for articles.

Maintaining Confidentiality

Ensuring confidentiality is Editors’ first and foremost duty.  Editors are supposed to ensure that no information about a submitted manuscript will not be disclosed in any case to anyone except reviewers, concerned editorial advisers, publisher and the corresponding author(s).

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

Following the ethics of publishing the editors and editorial board members will refrain from using for their own research purposes or revealing any unpublished information in a submitted manuscript, in any manner. Any editor who falls in conflict of interest raised due to relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript, competitive, collaborative, or other reasons should immediately bring it to the notice of the Editors-in-Chief and request him to declare conflicts of interest and also stay away of handling the manuscript so that an alternative editor can be contacted.

Decisions for Publication

The Editor-in-Chief, with or without seeking advice from other editors and/or reviewers, is an authority to take decision about all the publication.  The Editor-in-Chief will decide whether a manuscript submitted will be published or not, which of of the manuscripts and when it should be published on the basis of the validity, importance to academics, reviewers’ comments taking into consideration the such legality as copyright infringement and plagiarism etc.

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS

Ensuring fair and high quality of articles to be published, Pragyana follows a single-blind peer-review process. After evaluating the content, importance and objective of the study and whether it falls under the scope of Pragyana, the manuscript is sent to meticulously selected Reviewers. It is the duty of Reviewers that they express unbiased and impartial views with clear and valid arguments. The reviewers, using a high level of expertise, are supposed to make constructive, positive and supportive comments on manuscripts, sent for their reviews in order to maintain high quality.

See Before Reviewing

• The Reviewer are supposed to see that manuscript sent for him/her consideration matches his/her area of expertise.
• The Reviewer should also see if manuscript does not match the expertise he/ she should inform the Editor without delay and also recommend another reviewer.
• The Reviewer should see whether he/ she can spare his/ her time to review and comments should be submitted maximum in 4 to 6 weeks.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

If a reviewer has conflicts of interest arose from relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript, competitive, collaborative, or other reasons should immediately bring it to the notice of the editors to declare conflicts of interest and refuse the review invitation so as to enable the editors to contact alternative reviewers.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to please take into consideration the following points while in the process of reviewing:

• Check whether or not the structure of the article submitted is proper and it is in accordance with submission guidelines.
• Read and evaluate the manuscript critically and thereafter give an impartial, fair and constructive feedback on the work.
• Clearly mentioned the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript.
• Check the originality, novelty and inventiveness of the content and of the work.
• Do not communicate directly with authors.
• Maintain confidentiality about the manuscript sent for review purpose and do not discuss with anyone except editor about the manuscript.

After the Review

After reviewing reviewers are requested to please send the complete detailed observations on the manuscript in MS Word document. While writing comments reviewers should clearly indicate the page number, line number and the section of comments that can be communicated to the author(s). The reviewers should freely contact the editorial board members if they have any query or concerns regarding the manuscript sent for their consideration. The recommendation of the reviewers on the manuscript are strongly deliberated upon when the editors make the final decision, and reviewers’ thorough, honest feedback is highly appreciated.

DUTIES OF THE PUBLISHER

Handling of unethical publishing behaviour

Himalayan Management and Development and Development Resource Institute in close collaboration with the editors, is committed to take all suitable actions if an alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism is observed. This action includes an immediate publication of erratum, clarification, in severe cases, the retraction of the affected work. Himalayan Management and Development and Development Resource Institute in collaboration with the editors, will take appropriate measures to find out and stay away from the publication of manuscript which carry a research misconduct. Under no circumstances, Himalayan Management and Development and Development Resource Institute can encourage any scientific misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to happn.

Access to journal content

The Publisher, Himalayan Management and Development and Development Resource Institute, is fully committed to the all time availability and preservation of all research articles published in Pragyana at own digital archives. For detail, please feel free to click: https://www.pragyana.org or mail to pragyana@ himadritrust.in.