Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Editorial Policy & Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
General:
The Journal of Management and Administration is published by the Management College of Southern Africa (MANCOSA) and is an international, multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed and Open Access journal offering high quality research across the management discipline. The journal aims to provide African perspectives on management and administration to benefit scholars, educators, students, practitioners, policy-makers and consultants worldwide.
To be considered for the Journal of Management and Administration, manuscripts should be academically sound and must make strong empirical and/or theoretical contributions highly relevant to the management practices in the VUCA world. The Journal of Management and Administration is published primarily electronically and accepts original research articles, as well as review papers and smaller contributions. All contributions are published in English (British or American standard). It is understood that manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Management and Administration have not been offered to any other printed or electronic journal for prior or simultaneous publication. Publication in the Journal of Management and Administration is currently free of charge.
Organisational structure:
Chief Editor
Editorial Board
Academic Publishing Unit
Associate/Guest Editor(s)
Managing Editor
Production team: Copy-editor(s), graphics editor(s), DTP specialist(s), proof-reader(s)
Responsibilities:
Chief Editor should be an internationally recognized expert in one of the fields covered by the journal, is nominated by the MANCOSA Research Office and approved by the existing Editorial Board. Chief Editor leads the Editorial Board, overseas the aims and scope of the journal and ensures a high academic standard of the journal.
The Academic Publishing Unit and Managing Editor supervises all stages of the journal production, from manuscript submission through peer-review and editing to online publication and printing hard copies.
Associate/Guest Editor(s) consider submitted manuscripts and decide if they are suitable for publication in the journal. Only papers considered suitable will be sent out for review.
The Editorial Board members are nominated by Chief Editor and approved by the MANCOSA Research Office to represent the diversity of fields covered by the journal. The Editorial Board members can be approached to nominate appropriate reviewers or to act as reviewers themselves. The Editorial Board meets or communicates electronically on a regular basis, to discuss the progress of the journal. The Editorial Board members are expected to comment on the quality of the journal content and production shortly after issues are printed, to ensure that there is no drop in standard.
Chief Editor and the Editorial Board ensure that a high standard is maintained in terms of the content of the journal, the procedures for acceptance of material for publication, and print quality of the final product.
Peer-review process:
An objective, unbiased and timely double-blind peer-review is seen as a way to ensure a high academic standard of published papers.
All manuscripts are scrutinized by at least two external experts, i.e. reviewers who are neither members of the Editorial Board nor employees of authors’ host institutions; this does not preclude members of the Editorial Board from reviewing manuscripts. The choice of reviewers is the responsibility of Chief Editor and Associate/Guest Editor(s), who may seek assistance from the Editorial Board. Reviewers’ identity remains anonymous unless they expressly give their consent to state otherwise.
The decision to consider, accept or reject a manuscript once the review process has been followed is the responsibility of Chief Editor and Associate/Guest Editor(s). No papers may be accepted without going under the above procedure. In case of negative reviews, authors are given an opportunity to respond before a final decision is drawn.
Publication ethics:
Cases of professional misconduct (e.g., redundant submissions, copyright violation, data fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image manipulation, plagiarism, breach of confidentiality, inappropriate language etc.) may result in immediate rejection of the manuscript. However, authors have a right to respond to such allegations and for investigations to be carried out with appropriate speed and due diligence. Chief Editor has a responsibility to alert appropriate bodies (e.g., employers, funders, or regulatory authorities) and encourage them to investigate such allegations.
The list of authors should meet the ICMJE/Vancouver authorship criteria (ICMJE, 2023) that state ‘authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) 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. Authors should meet all four conditions. Contributors who meet fewer than all four of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group or general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing and proofreading do not qualify a contributor for authorship.
Authors who use artificial intelligence (AI) tools should (1) transparently disclose their use in the Material and Methods section and clearly describe details of their use, (2) add relevant citations and references, and (3) record and submit their relevant interactions with AI tools as appendices. AI tools do not qualify as authors, and reviewers should not use AI tools in the review process.
Sources of funding for research or publication should always be disclosed, if applicable.
The Journal of Management and Administration accepts manuscripts on the condition that the reported research follows relevant national and international ethical guidelines and legislation, including (but not restricted to) personal data protection laws. The authors are responsible for obtaining a formal ethical clearance from relevant authorities where applicable, and should provide a proof thereof when they submit their manuscripts to the Journal of Management and Administration.
The authors are responsible to ensure and, when possible, document (e.g., in the Acknowledgements) that legal requirements pertaining to their work are fulfilled. The publisher of the Journal of Management and Administration and its editors, while comply to the best of their ability/knowledge with regulations regarding specimen/biological samples/data propriety, indemnify themselves against any legal action undertaken by either a natural person or a private/public organization with regard to specimen/biological samples/data proprietary rights.
Editors, authors and peer reviewers have a responsibility to disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review data objectively.
Copyright & Licensing:
Authors of the Journal of Management and Administration retain the copyright of their articles without restrictions. Authors grant the publisher of the Journal of Management and Administration non-exclusive publishing rights to publish the articles both electronically and in print.
The materials in the Journal of Management and Administration are published in Open Access and are licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License allowing for immediate free access to the articles and permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in the Journal of Management and Administration.
Article processing charges:
Neither page charges nor submission fees nor colour fees are currently levied on authors, publishing in the Journal of Management and Administration.
Archiving:
Electronic versions of all articles published in the Journal of Management and Administration are permanently archived at Zenodo.
The Journal of Management and Administration follows the Open Access policy of RoMEO. Authors can archive publisherʼs version/PDF reprints of their articles on their personal and/or institutional Web sites and/or ResearchGate.
Sources and further information:
Committee on Publication Ethics. 2023. Core practices. https://publicationethics.org/core-practices (accessed 2 October 2023)
European Commission. 2018. Ethics in Social Science and Humanities. https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/other/hi/h2020_ethics-soc-science-humanities_en.pdf (accessed 2 October 2023)
Hosseini, M., Resnik, D.B. & Holmes, K. 2023. The ethics of disclosing the use of artificial intelligence tools in writing scholarly manuscripts. Research Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470161231180449
ICMJE [International Committee of Medical Journal Editors]. 2023. Defining the role of authors and contributors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html (accessed 2 October 2023)
Pruschak, G. 2021. What constitutes authorship in the social sciences? Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics 6, Art. 655350. doi: 10.3389/frma.2021.655350
SHERPA/RoMEO. [no date]. Definitions and Terms. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/about.html (accessed 2 October 2023)
World Medical Association. 2013. World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. Journal of the American Medical Association 310(20), 2191–2194. doi: 10.1001/jama.2013.281053