Privacy Statement

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Since its inception, the Journal of Business Administration (JBA) has been committed to publishing top-quality, peer-reviewed journals in the field of business and management. To maintain the leading standards of publication ethics, we take all possible measures against publication malpractices. As the publisher, the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka recognizes its ethical responsibilities and understands the gravity of guardianship of the various stages of the publication process.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

We state the following principles of Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement, which are entirely consistent with the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice Guidelines and the COPE Code of Conduct. COPE's guidelines are adhered to when addressing allegations or claims of research misconduct concerning a submitted or published article. 

Duties and Responsibilities of the Editor

In addition to many general duties, such as constantly improving the quality and integrity of the journal, striving to needs of authors and readers, encouraging academic debate, and others, the Editor accepts obligation to apply best will and practice to cope with the following responsibilities:

Editor

• Journal Supervision: The editor supervises all the editorial activities and ensures the timely publication of issues and manuscripts.
• Editorial Decision Making: The editor takes the final decision regarding the acceptance, rejection, or revision of submitted manuscripts. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers will be a crucial driver of such decisions.
• Journal Policy Implementation: The editor ensures that the journal's policies and guidelines are complied by authors, reviewers, and other stakeholders, with respect to the adherence of ethical standards, publication ethics, authorship criteria, and other pertinent policies.
• Editorial Board Management: The editor supervises the recruitment and administration of the journal's editorial board. This extends to providing guidance, fostering support, and coordinating the diverse roles and responsibilities inherent to the editorial board.
• Peer Review Administration: The editor efficiently administers the peer-review process, ensuring its fairness, impartiality, and timely execution. This includes closely monitoring the progress of peer reviews and making decisions based on the feedbacks, suggestions, and recommendations provided by reviewers.
• Remain Well-informed: The editor diligently tracks the latest advancements within the field, stays attuned to trends in scholarly publishing, and adheres to best practices in editorial management to maintain the journal's high quality and image.
• Special Issues: The editor is responsible for publishing special issues which focus on specific topics or contemporary themes.

Associate Editor

• Manuscript Assessment: The associate editor oversees the evaluation of submitted manuscripts, including the review of submissions, assignment of peer reviewers, and participating in the decision-making related to manuscript acceptance, revision, or rejection based on the received feedback.
• Manuscript Editing: The associate editor may offer guidance and constructive feedback to authors, aiming to enhance the clarity, coherence, and overall quality of their manuscripts, including but not limited to suggesting revisions, addressing grammar and language issues, and ensuring strict compliance to the journal's formatting and style guidelines.
• Operational Oversight: The associate editor holds responsibility for managing the day-to-day operations of the journal, with a particular focus on managing the peer-review process. This involves collaboration with other members of the editorial team.
• Team Coordination: The associate editor maintains regular communication with the Editor and the Editorial Board updating them on the progress of new and ongoing articles.
• Dispute Resolution: The associate editor addresses conflicts or disputes that may emerge during the manuscript evaluation or publication process, such as disagreements between authors and reviewers or issues related to authorship or plagiarism.
• Journal Promotion: The associate editor devises strategies to promote the journal and enhance article citations. This includes exploring new avenues such as leveraging emerging technologies and utilizing modern media formats like websites.
• Journal Publication: The associate editor regularly communicates and coordinates with the publishing team, overseeing the various stages of production and ensuring that the final version of the journal is delivered to readers in a timely and efficient manner.

The Editorial Board

The Editorial Board will be formed from IBA faculty members with expertise in different areas of business administration. Among the members of the board, one would serve as the Executive Editor and would carry the routine duties on behalf of the Editor. The Editor will provide full names and affiliations of the members and the updated contact information of the editorial office on the journal webpage. Any changes made in regard to the Editorial Board will be updated on this journal webpage.

Publication Decisions

The Editor will be responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers will be a crucial driver of such decisions. The Editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board. S/he may confer with other editorial board members or reviewers in making this decision.

Peer Review Process

All the contents of the journal are subjected to double-blind peer-review (double anonymized). Articles submitted for possible publication are subjected to a double-blind, peer-review process. After an initial review by the Editorial Board, the Editor may reject an article outright either because it is not dealing with the subject matter relevant to the journal or because of its poor quality. Articles that are found suitable for review are then sent to two subject matter experts, along with a review form. The reviewers and authors of a paper are unknown to each other, where communication can be done only through the Journal's editor. Reviewers are asked to fill up the form and classify the document as any one of the below options:

• Accept as it is
• Accept with minor revisions
• Resubmit after major revisions
• Reject and not encouraged to resubmit

Reviewers’ evaluations usually include an explicit recommendation of what to do with the manuscript. The article with reviewer comments is then sent to the authors. No part of the evaluation is published in the website but is only communicated with the authors.

The Editorial Board should be ready to justify any significant deviation from the described process. Editors should not reverse decisions on publication unless serious problems are identified.

The Editor will have to publish guidance to both authors and reviewers on everything that is expected of them.

Fair play

Editors should evaluate manuscripts in line with the intellectual content without considering race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. Editors´ decision to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper´s significance, originality and clarity, and the study´s relevance to the aim of the journal.

Digital Archiving

The Editor will ensure digital preservation of access to the journal content.

Confidentiality

The Editor and any editorial member must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. Editors will ensure confidentiality of that material submitted while under review.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Editors should recuse themselves (i.e., should ask a co-editor, associate editor or other member of the editorial board instead to review and consider) from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers. Editors should require all contributors to disclose relevant competing interests and publish corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication.

Procedures for Dealing with Unethical Behavior

Unethical behavior may be identified and brought to the attention of the editor and publisher at any time, by anyone. Whoever informs the editor or publisher of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence to initiate an investigation. All allegations should be taken seriously and treated in a similar method until a successful decision or conclusion is reached. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior must be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.

The Editor, along with the publisher, has to take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints are presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper. Such measures will generally include contacting the author of the document or paper and giving due consideration of the individual complaint or claim. Furthermore, communication with relevant institutions and research bodies may be required based on the gravity of the misconduct.

Minor misconduct might be dealt with without the need to consult multiple stakeholders. In any event, the author should be allowed to respond to any allegations.

Serious misconduct might require application of one or more of the following measures:

• Informing or educating the author or reviewer where there appears to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards
• Publication of a formal notice with relevant details of the misconduct
• An official letter to the author or the reviewer
• Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, along with informing the author or the reviewer
• The imposition of an official embargo on contributions from an individual for a defined period

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

Publication and Submission fee

No fees or charges are required from authors for manuscript processing. Full information about fees will be clearly stated on the journal´s website before authors begin preparing the manuscript for submission.

Reporting Standards

Authors of papers should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the article. A paper should contain sufficient details and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or falsification of statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial opinion works should be identified as such.

Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should, in any event, be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Originality and Plagiarism

The authors must ensure that the work is original, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, those must be appropriately cited or quoted.          

Plagiarism takes many forms, from passing off another´s paper as the author´s own, copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another´s paper (without proper citation), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism, in all its forms, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

At JBA, the permissible plagiarism threshold is set at 20%. Should the detected plagiarism exceed this limit, the article will be returned to the author for revision, with reconsideration possible only after a substantial reduction in plagiarism. The revised articles will also go through another round of plagiarism checking. Plagiarism detection is done using the latest version of Turnitin. 

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication

An author should not, in general, publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Concurrently, submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal, constitutes unethical publishing behavior. In general, an author should not present a previously published paper for consideration in another journal

The copyright remains with the authors; thus, they can decide about the eventual republication of their text. However, they have to cite the primary reference in the secondary publication.

Acknowledgement of Sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be provided. Authors should cite publications that have influenced in structuring the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as reviewing manuscripts or granting applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure the inclusion of only appropriate co-authors, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their paper. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which are to be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other sources of funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be reported at the earliest possible stages. Readers should be informed about the origin and reason of the funded research.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her published work, the author must promptly notify the journal's editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author must promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the authenticity of the original article.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions. Furthermore, the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication. 

Promptness

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will not be possible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscript received for review must be treated as a confidential document. Information regarding the work should not be discussed or consulted with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. The appropriate citation should accompany any statement that is an observation, derivation, or argument from previously reported work. 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.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer´s research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.