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Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement PEMS

The following statement on Publication Ethics and malpractice reflects the Journal of Translation and Languages’ (TRANSLANG) policy that has been in place since its establishment and became more visible after its integration into The Algerian Scientific Journals Platform ASJP. TRANSLANG follows a publishing model that privileges research publication integrity based mainly on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).     

TRANSLANG publishes original and blind peer-reviewed research papers, reports, and case studies relevant to Translation, Interpreting, and Language studies. The journal’s content is open access and is archived at ASJP as indicated in this link (https:// www.asjp.cerist. dz/en/Articles/155). The journal’s content is available online through ASJP, which ensures the long-term survival of Web-based scholarly publications. Furthermore, publications will remain digitally available for free under the Creative Commons License.         

TRANSLANG content is under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license that permits copying and redistributing any material in any medium or format other than for commercial purposes. It also allows remixing, transforming, and building upon the material by providing appropriate credit to the original work. More importantly, the intellectual property rights of the submitted papers remain with the contributors. Moreover, the journal edited by the University of Oran2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed does not collaborate with any private publishing company to promote its publications to prevent deceptive publishing. TRANSLANG prohibits the use or the marketing of published material for commercial reasons.

TRANSLANG adheres to international plagiarism policies. The editors are in their best preparation to prevent plagiarism and other forms of fraud and misconduct in academic publishing. A plagiarism detection software is running to ensure the originality of the submitted manuscripts for plagiarism detection. Each manuscript is sent to screening for plagiarism before the peer review process. One of the secretaries is responsible for checking the manuscripts in terms of plagiarism. Again, the final version of the accepted papers is checked for plagiarism.           

TRANSLANG also provides guidelines for errata, retracting or correcting articles. The journal pledges to correct, as soon as possible, any genuine errors in published work pointed out by readers, authors, or editors, which do not render the work invalid. A time stamp will appear on every paper that was subject to corrections. The editor will retract the paper with an explanation of the reason for the retraction if the work has defaulting errors.

All members and effective parts of the editorial board of TRANSLANG journal are to be fully committed to good publication practice and accept the responsibility for fulfilling the following duties and responsibilities defined by COPE Committee on Publication Ethics and their updates as stated in this link (https://publicationethics.org/).    

These principles are reflected in the following ethical guidelines, which are organized into authors’, editors', and reviewers’ responsibilities.      

1. Duties of Authors

Manuscripts submitted for publication must be based on original, unpublished research. They must include the data obtained and used and an objective discussion of the results. They must supply enough information to allow any specialist to reproduce the research and confirm or refute the interpretations defended in the manuscript.

Authors must follow the following ethical principles: 

• Reporting standards: Authors should accurately present their original research and objectively discuss its significance. Manuscripts are to be edited following the submission guidelines of the journal. Authors are also responsible for language editing before submitting the article. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.  
• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted. All authors must ensure that the data and results reported in the manuscript are original and have not been copied, fabricated, falsified, or manipulated.

Plagiarism in all forms, multiple or redundant publications, and invention or manipulation of data, constitute serious ethical failings and are considered scientific fraud. TRANSLANG reserves the right to use plagiarism-detecting software to screen submitted papers at all times.  

• Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication: Authors should not publish manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal or conference. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. No significant part of the article must have been previously published either as an article or as a chapter or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. 
• Data Access and Retention: Authors should retain raw data related to their submitted papers and provide them for editorial review upon request of the Editor-in-Chief. 
• Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Conflicts of interest easily identified are financial interests such as direct employment, payment for consultancies, participation in a company, salary fees, patent exploitation, or payment for lectures. However, conflicts may also arise from friendships, intellectual rivalry, academic competition, or personal beliefs. When sending an article for publication, all authors must declare any financial or personal involvement with any public or private institution that might influence (even if unintentionally) the results of their work. Likewise, authors must declare any non-financial relation that may cause a conflict of interest in their work (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political, or religious). Conflicts of interest, both financial and non-financial, must be notified when the article is submitted. The rationale behind this requisite is not to impede the publication of authors with competing interests but to ensure that these can be clearly identified so that readers can judge if authors may be predisposed or influenced in their work.

At the end of the work, a note referred to as “Conflict of interest” will be published. The status included will appear as 'None' if no conflict exists.  

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or any other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. They should disclose all sources of financial support for the project. Authors must indicate the journal when they have a direct or indirect conflict of interest with editors or members of the Editorial Board or international Scientific committee.  

• Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited only to those who have contributed significantly to conceiving, designing, executing, and interpreting the submitted study. 

Authors should provide appropriate authorship attribution and acknowledgment. Authors must refrain from deliberately misrepresenting a scientist’s relationship with published work. All authors must have significantly contributed to the research.

Those who do not meet these three criteria can only be mentioned in the acknowledgments. To avoid the risk of ghostwriting or fictive/purloined authorship, it is advisable that before the document is submitted, all authors agree on their contributions and the order in which they will appear on the list of co-authors.  

To avoid any possible confusion with the authors’ names and to guarantee the adequate attribution of publications and quotes, the journal requires the ORCID ID from all involved authors. Although by itself, this cannot ultimately ensure correct identification, the adoption of ORCID constitutes an additional form of control against authorial fraud. 

Changes in authorship, incorporation, exclusion or reorganization of the authors’ names must be done before the work has been accepted for publication and needs to be approved by the journal’s editor.

The motive justifies the modification of the list of authors and the written confirmation of all involved authors stating their agreement with the incorporation, exclusion, or reorganization of the list of contributors. In the cases of incorporation or exclusion, the confirmation of the author affected needs to be included as well. To request this change, the author must send the following to the editor:

Once a manuscript has been accepted, the editor will only consider the incorporation, exclusion or reorganization of the contributors’ list in exceptional circumstances. The article's publication will stop while the request for the changes is evaluated. If the manuscript is published online, the editor will introduce the changes appertaining to a granted request in a correction note.

• Acknowledgment of Sources: Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Any assignment or words of other authors, contributors, or sources should be appropriately credited and referenced. Reviewers should attempt to identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that a result or argument has been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge. Accordingly, authors should provide appropriate authorship attribution and acknowledgment. 
• Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. 
• Copyright: The Journal of Translation and Languages is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Under this license of open access, the copy, use, dissemination, transference, and public exposition are permitted as long as: 

The author and source of the publication are quoted (journal, publishing house, and URL of the work). They are not used for commercial purposes.

The existence and specifications of this license of use are mentioned. If the material is remixed, transformed, or built upon, its distribution must be done under the same license as the original.

This type of license facilitates the freedom of reutilization and ensures that the contents of the journal can be used for the needs of academic research.

Authors are permitted to reuse published works, i.e. the post-print (final PDF file of the publisher) can be archived. Authors are encouraged to upload and store their work in social media, institutional and public repositories, scientific, social networks, personal websites, blogs, etc.

• Information about funding

All authors must state if their research has received private or public funding. For the submission, authors are required to indicate any financial support from private or public sources that may have been obtained for the recollection of data analysis and interpretation of results or even for writing the article’s text. Each author must provide all the information concerning the funding received for the research and work submitted to the journal. Said information includes the name of the funding entity, the ID number of the fund, and the description of the role played by the funding entity in the research process (selection of the hypothesis, design of the investigation/experimentation, participation in any phase, analysis, writing, or review). If the funding entity has not participated in the execution of the research process, it must be expressly declared as well. It must be stated:

(Optional) In the letter of introduction: this information should be included in the introduction letter sent during the article’s submission.

In the article: funding information must be included in the final section, in a note titled 'Support' under acknowledgments. 

2. Duties of the Editor  

TRANSLANG is committed to ethical standards in its editorial policy, where editors consistently try to ensure fair, unbiased, and transparent peer review processes and editorial decisions. The editors assume responsibility for everything they publish. They have procedures and policies in place to ensure the quality of the material TARNSLANG publishes and maintain the integrity of the published record.  

• Publication decisions: The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the editorial policies of the journal and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor may confer with associate editors or reviewers in making this decision.  

The journal’s Editorial Board will initially assess all contributions. The Editorial Board is solely and independently responsible for selecting, processing, and deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal meet the editorial goals and could thus be published. Each paper considered suitable is sent to two independent peer reviewers who are experts in their field and can assess the work's specific qualities. The editor is responsible for the final decision regarding whether or not the paper is accepted or rejected.

The decision to publish a paper will always be measured by its importance to researchers, practitioners, and potential readers. Editors should make unbiased decisions independent of commercial considerations.

• Fair Peer Review: The Editor-in-Chief ensures that each manuscript received is evaluated on its intellectual content without regard to the author's race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

Each article submitted is the responsibility of one member of the Editorial Board or of the international scientific committee, who undertakes to have it evaluated by two peers who are experts in the field and evaluate it anonymously.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by editorial board members, members of the international scientific committee, and reviewers. 

The Editorial Board will assess and acknowledge the input of all those involved in reviewing the manuscript submitted to the journal. It will also encourage academic authorities to acknowledge peer review activities as part of the scientific process and should decline reviewers who submit reports of poor quality, improper, disrespectful, or delivered after the agreed deadline.

• Confidentiality: The Editor-in-Chief, the members of the Editorial Board, and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the authors of the manuscript, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.  
• Identifying and preventing misconduct: In no case shall TRANSLANG journal and the members of the Editorial Board and the international scientific committee encourage misconduct of any kind or knowingly allow such misconduct to occur.

Members of the Editorial Board and the international scientific committee shall try to prevent misconduct by informing authors and reviewers about their ethical conduct.

Members of the Editorial Board, scientific committee, and reviewers are asked to be aware of all types of misconduct in order to identify papers where research misconduct of any kind has or seems to have occurred and deal with the allegations accordingly.

In case of misconduct, the journal editor is responsible for resolving the issue. He or she can work with the other co-editor, Editorial Board and scientific committee members, peer reviewers, and experts in the field.

The issue will be documented accordingly. All factual questions should be documented: who, what, when, where, and why. All relevant documents should be kept, particularly the article(s) concerned.

The journal editor shall contact the author or publication involved, either the author submitting or another co-author. The author is thus allowed to respond to or comment on the complaint, allegation, or dispute.

If misconduct has or seems to have occurred or in the case of needed corrections, the Editorial Board deals with the different cases by following the appropriate COPE recommendations.

Great care will be taken to distinguish cases of honest human error from deliberate intent to cheat.

The editorial board will consider retracting a publication in case of misconduct, issuing an expression of concern in case of inconclusive proof of misconduct, or issuing a request to correct a misleading segment.

• Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript will not be used in the research of the Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Board members without the author's express written consent.   

Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should withdraw from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential problems concerning articles under consideration. The responsibility of the final decision regarding publication will be attributed to an editor with no conflicts of interest.

3. Duties of Reviewers  

All research articles published in the journal are subjected to a rigorous double-blind peer review process based on the initial selection of the editor, the anonymous arbitration of external reviewers of expertise in their particular field, and the subsequent revisions of the article’s author(s) when needed.

The Editorial Team will assign the article to a minimum of two specialists who will review the article and provide recommendations to improve it, as well as give their verdict on the acceptance or rejection of the article. A definitive publication will require a positive evaluation of both. If such is not the case, the article will be subjected to a third evaluation. The result will lead to either the acceptance of the work, the need to introduce corrections to re-evaluate the potential acceptance of the work, or its final rejection.

The double-blind peer review process ensures that the assigned reviewers do not know the author's identity, just as authors ignore the identity of who is reviewing their work. Notwithstanding, journals are encouraged to publish the list of external reviewers who collaborated with it in the two preceding years.

All reviewers must follow the following ethical principles: 

• Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review assists the Editor-in-Chief, and the Editorial Board in making editorial decisions, and the editorial communications with the author via ASJP may also assist the author in improving the paper.  
• Promptness: A selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and decline to review the paper.
• Confidentiality: The manuscripts for review will be treated as confidential documents.  They will not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor. 
• Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Acknowledgment of Sources: Reviewers should attempt to identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. The relevant citation should accompany any statement that a result or argument has been previously reported. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper they have personal knowledge of.
• Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts with conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

All reviewers must know and keep the Editorial Policy and Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement in mind. 

The journal requires potential reviewers to have scientific expertise or significant work experience in a relevant field. They must have recently conducted research and/or work and recognised their peers' expertise. Potential reviewers should provide personal and professional information that is accurate and that gives a fair representation of their expertise. 

All reviewers must likewise withdraw if they know they are unqualified to evaluate a manuscript if they feel their evaluation of the material will not be objective, or if they understand themselves to be in a conflict of interest. 

4. Guidelines for Errata, corrections, and retractions  

Articles and other kinds of documents published in the journal will be kept valid, exact, and unaltered as much as possible. However, exceptional circumstances may occur in which a published article needs to be corrected, retracted, or even withdrawn. Such actions will be taken after being carefully considered by the Editorial Team of the journal, with the support of the staff of TRANSLANG to ensure that they are done with the utmost guarantees and based on the rules set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

In such cases, the norms and mechanisms of control of scientific communication have several main procedures of rectification per type, seriousness, and consequences of the detected inaccuracy. These can assume the form of a notice of an erratum, a correction, a retraction, or, on rare occasions, the removal of an article. The purpose of this mechanism is to ensure that changes are transparent and that the integrity of the academic record is always warranted.

• Errata

Errata will be published when an error or omission made by the journal might affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal but when the academic integrity of the article remains intact. All errors will be accompanied by a separate notification. The notice must provide clear details of the erratum and the changes made to the document. In such circumstances:

• The article will be corrected.
• A final note with reference to the notice of errata will be included in the article.
• Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.
• Corrections

Notice of corrections will be published when an error or omission by the author needs to be corrected. Otherwise, this would affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal. However, this will not affect the academic integrity of the article.

A separate notification will accompany all errors. The notice must provide precise details of the erratum and the changes made to the document. In such circumstances: 

• The article will be corrected.
• A final note with reference to the notification of errata will be included in the article.
• Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.
• Retractions

A notice of retractions will be published when a significant error invalidates the article's conclusions or in cases of misconduct in the research and/or publication process. Authors can request a retraction of their articles if any of the following criteria are met:

• If there is clear evidence that the results are unreliable, whether resulting from misconduct (for instance, fabricated data and manipulated images) or a mistake (e.g. an experimental error or miscalculation). 
• If the findings have been published elsewhere without adequate cross-referencing, license, or justification (e.g. in cases of redundant or duplicate publication).
• If the research constitutes plagiarism.
• If there is evidence of fraudulent authorship.
• If the peer review process is proven to have been compromised.
• If there is evidence of unethical research and infringement of professional ethical codes.

Once the decision to retract an article has been made:

• The watermark 'Retracted article' will be added to the published version of the article’s record.
• The article’s title will be headed 'Retracted article: [Title of the article]'.
• A separate declaration of retraction will be published, titled 'Retraction: [Title of the article]', which will be linked to the retracted article. The editors of the journal will sign this note. 
• Removal of articles

The removal of an article will only happen in exceptional circumstances when the issues are exceedingly severe to be addressed through a notice of correction or retraction. This will only occur when:

• The article is defamatory or violates other legal rights.
• When the article is subject to a court order.

In the event of an article removal, the metadata (authorship and title) will remain, and the text will be substituted by a document that indicates that the article has been removed for legal purposes.   

5. Complaints

The journal intends to answer and solve all complaints promptly and constructively. The Editorial Team and the staff TRANSLANG will study the particular case of the complaint following its nature and complexity. Any decision reached will consider the recommendations the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provided.

Suggestions or complaints are to be sent to the journal’s e-mail address. All messages will be addressed and solved for up to thirty working days. However, depending on the degree of complexity of the complaint, the editor will inform the complainant if additional time is required to conclude the case inquiry.

The complaint must be concise and specific and have enough data to demonstrate any possible fault in the journal’s publication ethics. The complaining party should also provide complimentary documents as evidence of the particular request.

Complaints beyond the journal’s capabilities, like personal complaints against authors, editors, reviewers, or the journal’s Editorial Team, shall receive an answer indicating why the complaint has been regarded as beyond the journal’s responsibility. In addition, the journal will refrain from undertaking pertinent inquiries when complaints are addressed in an offensive, threatening, or defamatory manner.  

References

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from: 

http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

TRANSLANG PEMS updated 01/11/2022 according to COPE Committee on Publication Ethics and their updates

https://publicationethics.org/