Publication Ethics

Conflicts of Interest 

JARER seeks to avoid conflicts of interest for associate editors, in which relationships with authors could influence the judgment of the manuscript. Therefore, associate editors are generally not assigned manuscripts by an individual who has served as the main graduate student advisor of the associate editor, or where the associate editor had a key advising role for the individual as a graduate student, or where the individual is an active and recent coauthor of the associate editor, or where the associate editor or the editor judges there to be a concern due to some other close relationship.

Authors are required to declare and acknowledge any material conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any people, organisations, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript.

Peer reviewers are asked to disclose potential material conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to a manuscript they have been invited to review. Every reviewer is required to treat each manuscript received for review as confidential, whether or not they agree to review it.

Submissions from Editorial Team Members

Where a member of the JARER editorial team submits a manuscript to the journal, the manuscript will be handled by an independent editor who is not in a conflict of interest with the author. The submitting editorial team member will be excluded from all editorial and peer review processes related to their manuscript, including reviewer selection and editorial decision-making. The journal will ensure that the review process is conducted in accordance with its double-blind peer-review policy and that neither the reviewers nor the handling editor is influenced by the author’s editorial role.

Research Misconduct

Before publication, the Editorial Team, working with peer reviewers take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts that show evidence of research misconduct. (Research misconduct includes but is not limited to plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification and/or fabrication.) After publication, if the Editorial Team are made aware of an allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in the journal, the allegations will be addressed by the JARER Ethics committee. Where applicable, they may follow the guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Appeals

Complaints and appeals should be addressed to the JARER Editor-in-Chief, Abel Olaleye, for further review with the Ethics committee at aolaleye@oauife.edu.ng.