NJNS Policies

All articles and contributions are published in full open access in the NUST Journal of Natural Sciences ISSN 2072-4659. This journal serves as instantaneous open access to its particulars on the fact that provides free research content to the public that contributes to a greater extent of knowledge exchange worldwide.

LICENSING

All items published by the NUST Journal of Natural Sciences are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The license permits others to use, reproduce, disseminate, or display the article in any way, including for commercial purposes, so long as they credit the author for the original creation.

COPYRIGHT

In order to promote and guarantee maximum dissemination of the scholarly work being produced through the platform of NJNS and to maximize its impact, the copyrights are held by the authors. However, NJNS retains the right of first publication and other non-exclusive publishing rights. Condition of publication refers that manuscripts submitted to the journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Authors retain the right to use and share their published articles with others.

PEER REVIEW POLICY

NJNS follows a double-blind peer-review process after an editorial review. A plagiarism check is conducted on all submissions before the review. The manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Editor and subsequently assigned to two reviewers who are experts/specialists in their respective fields. The reviewers evaluate the manuscript's originality, quality, size, type, and suitability. Based on the reviewers' comments, if necessary, the manuscript is sent to a third reviewer for evaluation. The Editor is responsible for the final decision on publication.

AUTHORSHIP

Criteria for Authorship:

All authors listed on a manuscript must have made significant contributions to the research or preparation of the manuscript. To be considered an author, an individual must meet all of the following criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Acknowledgments: Individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the manuscript. This may include individuals who provided research assistance, financial support, or other contributions.

Changes in Authorship: The corresponding author bears the responsibility of ensuring that all co-authors are duly listed in the manuscript and have reviewed and endorsed the final version before submission. The editor may only contemplate requests to amend the authorship in exceptional circumstances, but only with the approval of all authors included in the manuscript, including any individuals added or removed. It is important to note that any changes to the authorship will not be considered post-publication of the manuscript.

Authorship Order: The order in which authors are listed should reflect the relative contribution of each author, with the lead author being the individual who contributed the most to the study. In cases where multiple authors contributed equally to the study, they may be listed in alphabetical order. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors meet the authorship criteria and that the order of authorship is agreed upon by all authors prior to submission. Any changes to the authorship order after submission will only be considered in exceptional circumstances and must be approved by all authors.

PERMISSIONS AND CONSENT

All authors are requested to get informed consent from all the research participants before disclosure of their personal information. Permission from the authors of any copyrighted work that authors use in their manuscripts is also required. All the relevant documents must be submitted by authors to NJNS during or after publication. The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts at any stage in the publication process if the authors fail to produce the required documentation.

DATA ACCESS AND RETENTION

Raw data in connection with a paper must be provided by authors as supplementary information for editorial review. They should also be prepared to provide public access to such data if practicable. In any event, the authors are also advised and expected to retain such data for a reasonable time even after the publication of their contributions.

PRIVACY

Collection and Processing of Personal Information
Our contributors may provide us with personal information when they are:

accessing the website of NJNS, including information provided when registering on the NJNS website, requesting content or any other information from the editorial team or reporting any problem with the site; and
corresponding with any member from the NJNS team by post, telephone, or email.

NJNS values its relationship with its contributors (all individuals, including authors, interacting with NJNS) and keeps their information confidential. NJNS deems the protection of their privacy as one of its primary concerns. However, some information is meant for dissemination through publication. This includes, in addition to the short authors’ biographies provided at the time of manuscript submission, the names, email address (of the corresponding author), institutional affiliations, and subject specializations of the authors. NJNS has the right to collect the information about the authors, that is necessary but is not provided by them to the journal, from any public domain. In any such case, the respective author will immediately be notified by the editorial team. The authors reserve the right to object and withdraw from any further correspondence or processing.

Authors’ rights to access their personal information
NJNS acknowledges the rights of the authors pertaining to their personal information that the journal holds. These include:

to obtain access to, and copies of, their personal information that NJNS holds;
to get any corrections or updating made to their personal information;
to get their personal data erased from NJNS database;
to transmit their personal information to another data controller upon their request; and
to object, on grounds relating to their particular situation, to any of NJNS particular processing activities where they feel this has a disproportionate impact on their rights.

MANUSCRIPT PROCESSING

Manuscript Preparation

Authors should prepare the manuscript using a word processor like Microsoft Word using an appropriate font style (Times New Roman) and size (12). Appropriate line spacing and margins should be used, and text should be justified. All tables and figures should have appropriate legends and numbering. In-text citations and references should be added using an appropriate reference/citation managing software/program.

Review Process
NJNS provides precise methods for reviewing the submissions it receives so that it can disseminate quality literature and discourse within Pakistan and abroad. For this reason, a double-blind peer-review process is adopted by NJNS for each research article received. The authors are informed about the reviews received, and they are expected to make the amendments accordingly. The Editorial Team then decides how well the author has incorporated the reviews in the revised manuscripts.

Publication
All authors are notified about the publication of the pre-print versions of their accepted manuscripts on the journal’s website. Each (upcoming) issue of NJNS is initially published online and is freely accessible. After online publication, each journal issue will be available in print in two weeks. The print copies of the journal are also posted to the authors at the address provided at the time of manuscript submission.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES (APC)

NJNS is a peer-reviewed, sponsored open access journal where the National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan, pays for the expenses of open access. Authors do not have to pay any article processing charges (APC).

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

This journal is published biannually.

Further information
For any queries regarding the publication process, the Editorial Team can be reached at all times on the principal email ID given in contact NJNS.

MISCONDUCT AND MALPRACTICE

Plagiarism Policy: NJNS highly discourages any form of plagiarism and duplicate submissions. Hence, we strongly recommend that our authors thoroughly check the article content before submitting it to us for publication. It is to be noted here that the manuscripts received by NJNS are subjected to a similarity check using Turnitin, the report of which is also shared with the respective authors.
NJNS will reject any manuscript in which plagiarism is observed by the editorial team or highlighted by the reviewers at any stage before the publication of the article. Plagiarism reported after the article has been published will result in the retraction of that article with immediate notification to the respective author(s).

Policy on data inaccuracies: The NJNS shows no tolerance for misconduct such as citation manipulation, data fabrication, or data falsification. Authors are advised to carefully draft the manuscript to avoid any such inaccuracies. The manuscript will be returned to the author(s) for correction if any issue of this sort comes into the knowledge of the editorial team during the publication process. The decision on the acceptance of the manuscript may be subject to change depending upon the extent and gravity of the issue under consideration. Any complaints or allegations received by NJNS after the publication of the article can result in a corrigendum or retraction once they have been verified; the author(s) will be notified in any case.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publications: The authors are expected not to publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. The concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and can impact editorial decisions. The author should inform the editorial board — at the time of submission — if the manuscript has already been presented at any platform or has been extracted from any other academic work such as a thesis. Redundant or concurrent submissions can lead to rejection (prior to publication) or retraction (after publication) of the manuscript.

DECLARATION OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Any conflicts of interest among the authors and/or role of funding agencies should be made clear during submission of manuscript. In case this is not done, the editors may reject or retract the submitted material.

The editors and reviewers are also to reveal any potential conflict of interest pertaining to the received submission. The editors having any conflict of interest with the received submission shall not be involved in the editorial decision-making process concerning that submission. Referees who do not comply with this policy might not be considered for peer review in the future.

Policy on Appeals
The author’s right to appeal any decision or action made by the editorial team is acknowledged by NJNS. Every appeal will be handled thoroughly with great care and the appellant will be notified of the decision within a maximum of two months.

Policy on Complaints

Complaints pertaining to misconduct by authors, reviewers, or editors can be made to the NJNS editorial team at any time at the given email address. The identities of the complainant(s) will be treated as strictly confidential. The complainee(s) will be ensured the right to respond to the complaint(s) or allegation(s) received by the journal.

RESUBMISSION

If a previous version is rejected by the journal or withdrawn by the authors themselves, authors are allowed to resubmit the revised manuscript to NJNS, provided that the new version is declared as ‘resubmission’. The authors are also required to respond to comments made by the reviewers and the editorial team on the previous version.

REPOSITORY AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING POLICY

According to Open Access policies, the NUST Journal of Natural Sciences (NJNS) allows authors to use the final published version of an article for self-archiving ‎and/or institutional repository without embargo. When posting, distributing, or reusing articles, ‎the NJNS should be ‎clearly attributed as the original place of publication, and correct citation ‎details should ‎be provided. Additionally, DOI and link to NJNS homepage must be added.

When making their article publicly available according to the terms of the Open Access Licence (CC BY-‎NC), NJNS strongly encourages authors to deposit the Version of Record. This will guarantee ‎that the definitive version is readily available to those accessing the article from such repositories ‎and that the article is more likely to be cited correctly.‎

In order to digitally preserve all published scholarly content, NJNS submits all the metadata of the manuscripts to Open Journal Systems (OJS). This archiving service is available for all OJS users and we are further discussing the process with other repositories such as PKP Preservation Network and LOCKSS. NJNS is committed to ensuring that the metadata of the journal is compatible with all the well-known repository services and their digital crawlers may regularly collect it for record and preservation. Also, NJNS assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to all its issues and contents to facilitate permanent links on the internet.

WITHDRAWAL

No withdrawal penalty will be charged if authors decide to withdraw a manuscript submitted to NJNS. However, the request will only be entertained if made within seven working days of submission of the manuscript.

It should be noted that once an article has entered the peer-review phase, it cannot be withdrawn unless inevitable. In such a situation, the editorial board will decide upon the withdrawal request and the author may be charged with a penalty.

All withdrawal requests will be accommodated only if received from the corresponding author who is expected to have taken on board the co-authors before submitting. The submission should be considered and treated as ‘withdrawn’ only after receiving official notification of withdrawal from NJNS. All correspondence in this regard will be made from the principal email ID ([email protected]).

ETHICS STATEMENT

High-quality standards of publication are ensured by NJNS by following a rigorous peer-review process along with strict ethical policies and standards. The editors of NJNS take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy. To provide our readers with a journal of the highest quality, NJNS is uncompromising on following publication ethics. All articles not in accordance with the standards will be removed from publication if malpractice is discovered at any time, even after the publication.

ROLES

Editors

Guarantee an impartial double-blind peer-review of the submitted articles for publication.
They will endeavor to avoid any potential contradiction among the author, editorial, and review personnel.
Editors will make sure that all the information associated with submitted manuscripts has stayed confidential before publishing.
Editor-in-Chief will synchronize the efforts of the editors and review personnel.

Reviewers

Appraise manuscripts founded without concern to ethnic origin, femininity or gender, sexual preference, citizenship, religious belief, or partisan philosophy of the authors.
They must confirm that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is stayed confidential and must inform the Editor-in-Chief if they are not mindful of charter infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.
They ought to evaluate the submitted works accurately as well as represent their opinions on the works clearly in the assessment form.
A reviewer who considers himself incompetent to evaluate the research reported in a manuscript should inform the Editor-in-Chief and excuse from the re-evaluation process.

Authors

Present an impartial discussion of the importance and consequences of research work along with appropriate detail and references to allow others to repeat the testings.
Misleading or intentionally erroneous statements constitute unethical behavior and are objectionable.
Review articles should also be unbiased, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art.
The authors make sure that their work is entirely original performs, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been suitably admitted.
Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is objectionable.
Submitting the identical manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is objectionable.
Authors should not submit articles depicting fundamentally the same research to more than one journal.
The corresponding author must confirm that there is a full unanimity of all co-authors in accepting the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.

National University of Sciences & Technology

OTHER INFORMATION

Connection to open journal systems: https://njns.nust.edu.pk/
Option for requesting copy editing services: https://njns.nust.edu.pk/copy-editing-services
Social media handles:

a. Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/NUST-Journal-of-Natural-Sciences-2710-222X

b. Twitter: https:twitter.com/NJNS_NUST

c. Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=JQ-2S1kAAAAJ