The editorial policy of our journal is based on the ethic statements of Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

 Publication decisions

The editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.

The editor is guided by the below-stated policies of the journal's Editorial Board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor therefore regularly confers with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play

Our editors, at any time, evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Responsibilities of Editors:

Editorial Independence and Fairness

All submitted manuscripts are exclusively evaluated by editors on their academic merit (importance, originality, reliability and validity of data, clarity and replicability) and its relevance to the journal’s scope. The authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation and other such considerations are not of any consequence. Final decisions to edit and publish are not directly dependent on the policies of governments or any other agencies/bodies apart from the journal. The Editor-in-Chief has full total charge over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content, in line with the journal’s policies.

Confidentiality
When a manuscript is received for review, it is treated as a confidential document and handled as such. The disclosure of information about submitted manuscripts by the editors and editorial staff shall, as deemed as appropriate, be exclusively to the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. Manuscripts are never shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Handling Manuscripts with Editors’ Conflicts of Interest

It is our policy that Editors and editorial board members do not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes, a strong exception shall be with the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. If there are certain manuscripts in which editors have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers; such editors shall excuse themselves from initiating action and instead, ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Decisions on Publication

Our editors regularly ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication are within the scope of the journal, and that they undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field of the article. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments. He also ensures that legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism are enforced. The Editor-in-Chief do however sometimes confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Involvement and Cooperation in Investigations

Whenever ethical concerns are raised regarding a submitted manuscript or published paper, the Editor-in-Chief and other editorial members (in conjunction with the publisher) shall take responsive measures. Every reported act of unethical publishing behaviour will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. CUJOSTECH editors follow the Committee of Publication Ethics(COPE) Flowcharts when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct. If, on investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be required will be published in the journal.

Responsibilities of Reviewers:

Contribution to editorial decisions

The process of peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of scientific endeavour. CUJOSTECH shares the view of many that all scholars who wish to contribute to the scientific process have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing. As a result, all our reviewers are Ph.D. holders and senior academics in various specializations of Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations and related fields of Management and Social Sciences.

Promptness of Review of Submitted Manuscripts

The editorial boards hold it, as a policy, that if at any given time, an invited reviewer feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript, maybe as a result of field divergence or conflicts of interest, or knows that its prompt review will be impossible he/she is required to immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Standards of Objectivity

Reviews are conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Criticisms are only limited to the research report and NOT authors. Our reviewers are encouraged to concentrate their decisions on the merits of individual articles.

Acknowledgement of Sources

It is the reviewers’ duty to identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation or argument that has been reported in previous publications is to be accompanied by the relevant citation. Reviewers often notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Any invited reviewer who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.
Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript is never used in our reviewer’s personal research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Responsibilities of Authors:

Reporting Standards

All authors of original research are encouraged to present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. Accepted manuscripts are required to contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Reviewed articles are ensured – to the best of our knowledge – to be accurate, objective and comprehensive, while editorial opinion or perspective is clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or inaccurate statements, knowingly or unknowingly, in our view, constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable to the journal. The report of the manuscript must conform directly and wholly to the format style standard and language of the CUJOSTECH.

Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be guaranteed to be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors are to ensure, and seen to have written and submitted only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from "passing off"someone elsepaper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another person’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable to CUJOSTECH.

Multiple, Duplicate, Redundant or Concurrent Submission/Publication
Two or more papers describing essentially the same research are not published in more than one issue of our journal or primary publication. Hence, authors are vetted for submissionof only manuscripts that havenot been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is deemed unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable to CUJOSTECH.

Authorship of the Manuscript

In all cases, only persons who meet these authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content by having carried out the following:

(i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; and

(ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and
(iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication.

All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgments" section after their written permission to be named as been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the authors’ list and verify that all co-authors have seen and approved of the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Authors should - at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript) - disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any).

Acknowledgement of Sources

Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from interviews, conversations, correspondences or focus group discussion) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors shall not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.

Hazards and Human Participants

Typical participants in social science are human participants and the process of data collection must protect the basic rights and protect against the dignity and emotional hurts; if otherwise animals are used, the treatment must be justified for ethical compliance through the use of international guiding principles stipulated for example by International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) or any such rules stipulated relevant ethics committee which authors must clearly identify in the manuscript. Where the work involves the human participants, the authors should ensure that ethical consents on all procedures used were obtained and performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them; the manuscript should contain a statement to this effect. Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants. The privacy rights of human participants must always be observed.

Peer Review

Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a "revision necessary" for first decision on the manuscript, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works

When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.

Responsibilities of the Publisher

Handling of Unethical Publishing Behaviour

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to give the necessary verdicts. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

Access to Journal Content

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining our own digital archive. All the CUJOSTECH published papers are assigned unique Digital Object Identification (DOI) number, making their accessibility possible with ease.