Ethical Guidelines for Editors

The editor of the Journal of Statistics is responsible for setting and maintaining professional standards. The Editor is supposed to be responsible for the journal in all areas, from accepting articles through publishing them. The following guidelines can be downloaded from Downloads.

General Responsibilities

To establish and maintain the journal's quality, the editor(s) should publish quality papers, ensure integrity and legitimacy of research activities, and provide corrigendum for any correction, explanation, and apologies when appropriate.
The editor(s) should encourage new ideas and suggestions from authors, peer reviewers, editorial board members, and readers to improve the quality of the journal.
The editor(s) should promote creative results in relevant area and publicize them on priority.
The editor(s) should implement the journal's policy without institutional pressure and change it from time to time.
The editor(s) should educate new board members on ethical standards and their anticipated role, as well as keep the Editorial Board informed of journal progress, problems, and any policy changes.
The criterion for selecting research papers must be objective, and the Editor should choose publications that are academically and scientifically sound.
The editor(s) should have a list of qualified reviewers. He/she may utilize sources other than personal relationships to find fresh reviewers, e.g., author referrals, citations, and references sections of books/journals.

Fair and Quick Play in Review Process

The editor(s) must guarantee that peer review is fast, fair, and professional.
The editor(s) should guarantee that all published articles have been double-blinded reviewed by at least one outside the country.
The editor(s) should guarantee that peer review is anonymous in both directions and that the author's name is removed from the manuscript prior to review to preserve the author's privacy.
The editor(s) must quickly convey reviewers' comments to authors and ensure that the authors implement the reviewers' revisions in word and spirit.
The editor(s) should ensure that the review process is impartial by informing reviewers (s) that they must disclose any conflicts of interest regarding the submitted research paper, e.g., gender, race, ethnic origin, religious belief, cultural sentiments, political affiliation, seniority, and/or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
The editor(s) should promptly reply to the authors of papers submitted for publication and give all research papers submitted for publishing equal treatment.

Confidentiality

The Editor must ensure confidentiality of the author(s) and reviewers during the process of double-blind peer review.
The Editor should only share information about a research article to the author(s), reviewer(s), and editorial board members.
Only the Editor may reveal the title and author(s) of a research article that has been approved for publication.
Personal information (e.g., identifying personal data, photographs, and/or individual findings) should be protected to preserve participant confidentiality. The editor(s) should inform the authors regarding the confidentiality of the participants.
Before publication, the Editor and reviewer(s) will not share or use any part of the work.

Dealing with misconduct

The Editor should report difficult circumstances (e.g., one acceptance and one rejection or any post-review controversy) to the Advisory Committee for resolution.
The Editor should check for plagiarism (using Turnitin) and/or similar titles to the submitted research paper.
The Editor should be ready to publish a correction, delete or retract a plagiarised work if it is discovered after publication.
Reviewers should be encouraged by the editor to remark on the authenticity of the submitted research work and to detect "subtle (just copy-paste)" and/or "blatant (paraphrasing)" types of plagiarism if practiced by the authors(s).
The editor(s) must ensure that the multiple articles of a principal author cannot be published in the same issue.

Transparency

Only ONE co-authorship is permitted for authors who also submit a research article to the same issue as a principal investigator.
There will only be one manuscript each issue for Editorial Board members (including the Editor) to submit either as a primary investigator or co-author.
The editor(s) should not edit papers for authors or institutions with whom they have a conflict of interest (e.g., competitive, collaborative, or professional standing).
For articles submitted by the Editor, one of the Associate Editors must evaluate the paper, and reviewer identity must be kept secret.

Publication decision

The editor(s) should only shortlist research articles that are relevant to the journal's scope as specified in the Journal.
After the review process, the Editor may approve or reject a research article based on its quality and validity.
The editor(s) should only publish papers that meet the journal's academic and professional requirements.
The editor(s) must explain why a paper was rejected to the author (s). e.g., insufficient depth of material, major flaws connected to design, analysis, write-up, and presentation, any misbehaviour, or contradictory aspects (e.g., plagiarism, copyright infringement, legal issues, fake data, authorship issues)
The editor(s) should not change editorial judgments in favour or against authors on their own.