Editorial Policy

Overview
The Journal of Business and Enterprise Development (JOBED) publishes only original papers that have never been published before; that is, that they are not under consideration for publication elsewhere; and that all co-authors, if any, have given their permission for publication, as well as the responsible authority—tacitly or explicitly— at the institute where the work was done.

Editorial responsibilities 

  1. The decision to publish any article which is submitted to JOBED is the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief. The decisions are made based exclusively on the manuscript's originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance are devoid of racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias. When making decisions the Editor-in-Chief is also guided by the editorial policy and legal provisions relating to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
  2. The Editorial Board shall support initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct and maintain the integrity of the academic record.
  3. Members of the Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest regarding the articles they consider for publication. Members who feel they might be perceived as being involved in such a conflict do not participate in the decision process for a particular manuscript.
  4. The Editorial Board shall protect the confidentiality of individual information obtained during research or professional interactions. Information and ideas contained in unpublished materials must not be used for personal gain without the written consent of the authors.
  5. The Editorial Board shall take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material they publish.
  6. The Editorial Board shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the authors/reviewers remain anonymous during and after the evaluation process in accordance with the type of reviewing in use.
  7. The Editorial Board shall assess the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behaviour and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behaviour and discourage misconduct.

Author's responsibilities

  1. Authors must ensure that manuscripts submitted are their original works, that they have not been published before, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere in any language or concurrently submitted to another journal. Manuscripts already published elsewhere cannot be published in JOBED.
  2. Authors are exclusively responsible for the content of the manuscript submitted.
  3. Authors affirm that the research is honestly conducted and without fabrication, falsification, inappropriate data manipulation or unfounded results and does not contain unlawful statements which violate the rights of third parties.
  4. Authors shall represent the work of others accurately in citations as well as quotations and clearly indicate the data, text, figures, or ideas originated by other researchers.
  5. Authors are to check their publications carefully at all stages concerning calculations, data presentation, typescripts/submissions and proofs to ensure that methods and findings are reported accurately.
  6. When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief (or publisher) and co-operate with him/her to retract or correct the paper.
  7. It is the responsibility of authors to disclose all sources of research funding, including direct and indirect financial support, supply of equipment or materials, and other support (such as specialist statistical or writing assistance).

Plagiarism
JOBED has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism of any kind and does not publish plagiarized articles. Plagiarism, described as taking someone else's thoughts, words, or other creative speech and passing them off as one's own, is a direct breach of scientific ethics, according to the Editorial Board. The ORI module "Avoiding Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide to Ethical Writing" can help authors identify questionable writing practices. For more information, please see the following guidelines regarding plagiarism:

COPE guidelines on Suspected plagiarism in a submitted manuscript

COPE guidelines on Suspected plagiarism in a published paper

ORI Policy on Plagiarism

ORI module on Ethical Writing

ICMJE Recommendations

Plagiarism Detection
JOBED screen manuscripts for potential plagiarism.

Reviewer responsibilities

  1. Reviewers are responsible for ensuring that JOBED maintains high quality by offering a detailed evaluation of the manuscripts submitted for consideration.
  2. The reviewers must be impartial in their evaluations of submitted manuscripts, and they must express their opinions to the editors in a straightforward and persuasive manner.
  3. The reviewers assess the manuscript for compliance with the journal's profile, the relevance of the topics examined, and the methods used, the scientific relevance of the information presented in the manuscript, the style of presentation and the scholarly apparatus. The review shall have a standard format.
  4. There must be no conflicts of interest between reviewers and the research, the authors, or the research funders. Reviewers must not consider for review any manuscript for which there is a possible conflict of interest, and they must disclose any problem that could result in a conflict of interest to the Editor-in-Chief.
  5. Reviewers should notify the Editor-in-Chief if they have any reasonable suspicions or awareness of potential ethical breaches by the writers.
  6. Reviewers should call attention to any related published work that has not yet been cited. Reviewers must ensure that all applicable sources of knowledge used in the study have been extensively referenced and cited by the authors.
  7. Reviewers should be aware of related published works that were not taken into account in the manuscript. They may suggest relevant references for citation, but they will not be required to cite JOBED papers or their own unless it is justified.
  8. Writers' manuscript submission information must be kept confidential and regarded as protected information. Reviewers may keep manuscripts for the purpose of reviewing them for publication consideration in JOBED, but they may not keep or use them for any other purpose.
  9. The reviewers are expected to make recommendations that will enhance the manuscript's consistency. If they demand that the manuscript be corrected prior to publication, they must explain how this would be accomplished.

Peer review
For all articles, JOBED uses a double-blind review scheme. At least two reviewers look over each manuscript. The reviewers work in solitude and are unaware of each other's identities. The reviewers are chosen solely on the basis of whether or not they have the necessary skills to evaluate a manuscript. They cannot be associates of the manuscript's author(s), nor have they been co-authors in the recent past. Peer review serves to aid the Editorial Board in deciding whether or not to approve or reject an article. The aim is also to aid the author in improving his or her articles.

Peer review process
Only manuscripts that pass an initial assessment of their type and thematic scope are submitted for review. The initial assessment is carefully timed to ensure that it does not last longer than is required. The review process can take up to three months in normal circumstances, and up to nine months in exceptional circumstances. It takes an average of one year from the time a manuscript is submitted to the time it is published. If additional information (including raw data) is required for the evaluation of the manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief will request it during the review process. These materials must remain private and not be used for any other reason.

Resolving inconsistencies
The Editorial Board determines whether a review is objective and follows academic criteria whether the reviewers have strong and rational objections to it. If the Editor-in-Chief has any concerns regarding the objectivity or accuracy of the review, an additional reviewer will be appointed. When reviewers' decisions (accept or reject) are inconsistent or otherwise significantly incompatible, additional reviewers may be appointed. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision about whether or not to accept a manuscript for publication.

Procedures for dealing with unethical behaviour
Anyone can report an alleged unethical behaviour or any sort of wrongdoing to the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board at any time by providing the requisite reliable information/evidence to begin an investigation.

  • The Editor-in-Chief decides whether or not to open an investigation.
  • During an investigation, all evidence should be considered as private and only shared with people who are directly involved in the investigation.
  • Wherever possible, the accused will be given the opportunity to react to the allegations levelled against them.
  • If wrongdoing is found to have occurred at the conclusion of the inquiry, it may be graded as minor or extreme.
  • Minor wrongdoing (which has no effect on the paper's or journal's reputation, such as misunderstandings or inaccurate implementation of publishing standards) will be dealt with directly by the authors and reviewers without the intervention of any other parties. Outcomes include:
    •  Sending writers and/or reviewers a warning letter.
    • Publishing correction of a paper.
    • Publishing an erratum, if the mistake was made by the editorial staff, for example.
  • In the event of serious wrongdoing, the Editor-in-Chief should take the following actions:
    • A formal statement or editorial detailing the wrongdoing is released.
    • The journal's formal announcement of retraction of publications in compliance with the Retraction Policy.
    • A restriction on an individual's submissions for a set period of time.
  • The acts mentioned above may be taken individually or in tandem. Related expert organisations, bodies, or individuals can be consulted, if appropriate, during the case-resolution process.
  • When dealing with unethical conduct, the Editorial Board would follow the Committee on Publication Ethics' guidelines and recommendations (COPE).

Retraction policy
Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct, require retraction of an article.

Occasionally, a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually. The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labelled as "Retraction." Retractions are published according to the requirements of COPE operationalized by CEON/CEES (link) as the journal indexer and aggregator.

Open access policy
JOBED is published under an Open Access licence. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher. The right to use content without consent does not release the users from the obligation to give credit to the journal and its content in a manner described under Licensing.
JOBED does not charge authors or any third party for publication. Both manuscript submission and processing services and article publishing services are free of charge. There are no hidden costs whatsoever.

Self-archiving Policy
At any time after publication, authors can deposit the publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, a subject-based repository, the author's personal website (including social networking sites, like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and others), and/or a departmental website. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.

Licensing
The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made.

Users are required to provide a full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in JOBED and the license used.

Authors can enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Disclaimer
The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and the Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.