Policy Documents
INTRODUCTION THE JOURNAL
Al-Mīthāq (Research Journal of Islamic Theology) ISSN: 2791-0989 (P), 2791-0997 (E) is a tri-lingual (Urdu, English and Arabic), Double-Blind peer-reviewed, open access Quarterly Research Journal ( Change Journal’s Frequency from Biannual to Quarterly w.e.f 2024, August 01) is published by Hira Institute of Social Sciences Research & Development. In this journal different aspects of Islamic theology and their impact on Muslim world are discussed.
Al-Mīthāq is a peer-reviewed academic journal that serves as a forum for distributing research discoveries on issues relating to Islam and Islamic Sciences. It pursues to publish articles that identify, discover and outspread Islamic Knowledge relating to Qurān and its Sciences, Ḥadīth and its Sciences, Islamic History, Economics, Politics, Culture and Civilization, Sufism, Shari'ah & Law, Comparative Religions and other related disciplines in order to encourage an atmosphere boosting to universal peace and interfaith harmony. The Journal has a special focus on Islamic Thoughts and their modern applications. Scholars, Intellectuals and officials of the universities and other circles are always invited & welcomed for their unique research findings & writings.
AIMS
Al-Mīthāq (المیثاق) aims to explore and bring forth innovative research-based concepts and practices in its discipline. Its main aim is to provide a platform to raise awareness of new trends in education among the younger generation and also provides a platform for researchers and academic professionals to share their novel theoretical and practical research initiatives with others in the form of good quality research papers from all over the world. Al-Mīthāq focuses the literary research and modern trends of criticism in the discipline of Islamic Studies, Arabic Linguistics & Literature and Social Sciences. Al-Mīthāq is committed to publish the wide range of new topics of research on single important criterion that is literary and critical excellence. It is also committed to step forward with great zeal and zest to maintain standards of quality and integrity.
SCOPE
Al-Mīthāq (المیثاق) considers all manuscripts and review articles related to Islamic Studies & Arabic Linguistics & Literature and Social Sciences that seek to publish arbitrated articles dealing with various aspects of life. It covers various branches of knowledge such as Qurān and its Sciences, Ḥadīth and its Sciences, Principles of Jurisprudence, Comparative Religions, Theology, Mysticism, Philosophy, History, Culture and Civilization, Law, Politics, Economics, Anthropology, Education, Human rights, contemporary issues in Islamic perspective as well as Arabic Language and Literature and Social Sciences.
So, we welcome and provide a platform to post graduate students, scholars, faculty members to publish their valuable research on current issues. International perspective is also reflected by the Journal’s trilingual approach as it welcomes research papers in Urdu, Arabic and English.
POLICY STATEMENT
Al-Mīthāq follows the guidelines and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and HEC guidelines and policies.
Contents:
1. Review Process:
1.1. Desk Review
1.2. Peer Review Policy
1.3. Disclaimer
2. Publication Charge Policy:
3. Publication Malpractice Statement:
4. Authorship Policy:
4.1. Authorship Credit
4.2. Changes in Authorship
4.4. Guest Authorship
4.5. Anonymous Authorship
4.6. Acknowledgement
4.7. Contributors
4.8. Duplicate Submission
4.9. Citation Manipulation
5. Accessibility Policy:
6. Corrections and Retraction Policy:
7. Digital Archiving Policy:
8. Confidentiality Policy:
9. Conflict of Interests Policy:
9.1. Conflict of interests
9.2. Editor obligations regarding conflicting interests
10. Anti-plagiarism and Anti-predatory Procedures:
10.1. Verbatim copying
10.2. Paraphrasing
10.3. Re-using parts of a work without attribution
10.4. Self-plagiarism
10.5. Republication of original work
10.6. Attribution
10.7. Handling Allegations of Plagiarism
10.8. Prior Publication
11. Copy Right Policy:
- Review Process:
All submitted manuscripts are reviewed through 'double-blind' peer review process that means the identities of the authors are kept confidential from the reviewers, and vice versa. To make this possible, anonymized version of the manuscript are sent to referees.
Submitted papers are first considered by the editor after submission. Papers that do not fall within the scope of the journal are 'desk-rejected'. In addition, papers that fail to meet a minimum threshold for quality and originality are also rejected without being sent out to the reviewers.
The standard procedure of an initial editorial review by the internal editorial committee consists of the content, scope, formatting, citations according to recommended Style, i.e., Chicago Manual of Style, (Bibliographies and Notes format) and is usually completed in three to four weeks
Papers passing through this initial editorial scrutiny are then typically sent out to minimum three referees. If one or more of these turn down the invitation to provide a review, other referees will subsequently be appointed. The authors will be informed when Editors decide further review is required. All publication decisions are made by the journal’s Editor on the basis of the referees’ reports (reviewers report).
Please bear in mind that the peer review process takes another two- three months. Therefore, the contributors are expected to bear with us as we complete the process to ensure, that the journal adheres to the highest quality standards.
In case if a manuscript is found to be plagiarized (see plagiarism policy) after publication, the Editor will conduct a preliminary investigation, maybe with the help of a suitable committee constituted for the purpose. If the manuscript is found to be plagiarized beyond the acceptable limits, the journal will contact the author’s Institute / College / University and Funding Agency, if any.
We are advising all the author(s), do not submit the same paper to multiple journals. Author(s) should wait for the review status of the paper.
The Editor reserves the right to copy-edit and make necessary amendments to the submitted text. The editor also reserves the right to modify or omit material if deemed unsuitable for publication. However, all responsibility for opinions expressed in articles as well as the precision of stated facts rests with the author and not with the editors of the Al-Mīthāq.
- Publication Charge Policy:
All articles published in "Al-Mīthāq" is open access and freely available online, immediately upon publication.
Al-Mīthāq operates without any external funding. Therefore, we implement an article processing fee to sustain essential operations such as publishing research articles, maintaining website, ensuring long-term archiving, conducting peer review and facilitating copyediting. This fee structure allows us to maintain the quality and integrity of publication process. So, the management decided to charge PKR 10,000/- as APC since January, 2024. However, foreign authors working in any foreign universities are exempted of said charges.
There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures, or supplementary data.
The journal follows the ethical guidelines for publication outlined by the COPE (Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers) as well as Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. In view of that, the authors, the reviewers, and the editors are expected to follow the best-practice guidelines:
COPE ethical guideline for peer-reviewers
Declaration of Conflicting Interests Policy
- Authorship Policy:
4.1. Authorship Credit
Authorship credits may only be given to those who have made a substantial contribution in constructing the article. The corresponding author of the article holds the responsibility to give credits to the co-authors that are significantly involved in the work. Also, the corresponding author should make sure that all the co-authors have approved the final submission and ready-to-publish version of the article. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research should be acknowledged for their contribution in an "Acknowledgement" section.
4.2. Changes in Authorship
The authors are fully responsible to provide the names of the authors upon submitting the article to the journal. Once the article is accepted for publication, any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of the authors’ names will not be entertained unless approved by the journal’s editor. To request such a change, the corresponding author must provide the journal’s editor with: (a) the reason for the change in the author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement, along with the confirmation from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances and with considerable reason/s will the editor may consider the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the editor considers the request, the processing of the manuscript for publication will be put on hold. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests may not be entertained by the editor.
4.3. Order of Authors
It the responsibility of the authors to have a mutual agreement on the order of the authors before submitting the article to the journal. Any such disagreements must be ruled out before the submission.
4.4. Guest Authorship
The “guest” author makes no significant contributions to the study, hence, do not qualify for authorship. The journal does not allow the appearance of guest authorship on the articles.
4.5. Anonymous Authorship
Because authorship should be transparent and requires public accountability, it is not appropriate to use pseudonyms or to publish scientific reports anonymously. In extremely rare cases, when the author can make a credible claim that attaching his or her name to the document could cause serious hardship (e.g., a threat to personal safety or loss of employment), a journal editor may decide to publish anonymous content.
4.6. Acknowledgment
In the Acknowledgments section, authors may wish to include the names and contributions of those whose involvement in a study did not qualify them for authorship (because of the journal policy) but have contributed to the article in some way.
4.7. Contributors
"Ghost" and/or "Guest" author phenomenon has been common in the traditional listing of research papers. This has been raising inappropriate authorship practice in which some individuals did not have an actual input in the experiment. For this, the journal highly recommends that only authors who have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript shall be listed individually in the submitted manuscript (including students and lab technicians).
4.8. Duplicate Submission
Articles that are found to have been published elsewhere, or are under consideration for publishing elsewhere, will be considered as "duplicated" material. In case the author(s) have used their own previously published work (or work that is currently under review), they are asked to cite the previous work and indicate how their submitted manuscript offers novel contributions and adds value differently (from the previous work).
4.9. Citation Manipulation
Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations in order to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will be considered as a "citation manipulation"-containing material.
- Accessibility Policy:
We are committed to continuously enhance the accessibility of our published database to maximize readability without any interruption. We process all our articles through the Open Journal System (OJS) that automatically generates the files in ‘HTML’ and converts those that are not in the desired format, making our files easily accessible on the web to all kinds of users.
Open Access Statement
This is an open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
All articles are available on the internet to all users immediately upon publication. Non-commercial and commercial use and distribution in any medium are permitted, provided the author and the journal are properly credited.
- Correction and Retraction Policy:
Authors who discover errors in articles they have published should have the corresponding author contact the journal’s editorial office with a detailed description of the correction that is needed. Corrigenda (corrections of author’s errors) and errata (corrections of publisher’s errors) will be published at no charge to the authors. Requests for corrections that affect the interpretation or conclusions of a published article will be reviewed by the editors. An article may be retracted when the integrity of the published work is substantially undermined owing to errors in the conduct, analysis, and/or reporting of the study. Violation of publication or research ethics may also result in a study’s retraction. The original article is marked as retracted but a PDF version remains available to readers, and the retraction statement is bi-directionally linked to the original published paper. Retraction statements will typically include a statement of assent or dissent from the authors. In exceptional circumstances, the editorial office reserves the right to remove an article from the journal’s online platforms. Such action may be taken when (i) the editorial office has been advised that content is defamatory, infringes a third party’s intellectual property right, right to privacy, or other legal rights, or is otherwise unlawful; (ii) a court or government order has been issued, or is likely to be issued, requiring removal of such content; (iii) content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risk to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. Bibliographic metadata (e.g. title and authors) will be retained and will be accompanied by a statement explaining why the content has been removed.
- Digital Archiving Policy:
The journal is fully committed to storing the published material on digital archives to ensure that the articles will always be available to readers, even in the event of a publication being lost or discontinued. The best way to ensure that journal articles will always be accessible to readers is to deposit all published articles into a long-term digital preservation service or archive. The journal is hence regularly uploaded on archive.org.
Moreover, the journal management system automatically self-archives the data on “Hira Institute of Social Sciences Research & Development” servers regularly.
- Confidentiality Policy:
The editors and the publication handling/managing staff keep all information about a submitted manuscript confidential and share it only with those involved in the evaluation, review, and publication processes as per the journal’s publication policy. The journal is operating through an automated journal management system to ensure a transparent double-blind peer review process as well as the confidentiality of the information. The Editors should consider adding a confidentiality notice to all correspondence, including reviewer forms, to serve as a reminder to authors, editors, and reviewers.
- Conflict of Interests Policy:
A Declaration of Conflicting Interests policy refers to a formal policy a journal may have to require a conflict of interest statement or conflict of interest disclosure from a submitting or publishing author.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) that: “Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.”
Many scholars, researchers, and professionals may have potential conflicts of interest that could affect their research. As a result, the journal requires a formal declaration of conflicting interests enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated published article. A potential conflict of interest may arise from relationships, allegiances, or hostilities to particular groups, organizations or interests, which may influence one’s judgments or actions excessively. The issue is particularly sensitive when such interests are private and/or may result in personal gain. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are evaluated fairly and are not necessarily rejected when any competing interests are declared. Examples of conflicts of interest might include the following, although it is not an exhaustive list:
- Having received fees for consulting.
- Having received research funding.
- Having been employed by a related company.
- Holding stocks or shares in a company that might be affected by the publication of your paper.
- Having received funds reimbursing you for attending related symposia, or talk.
If there are other interests that the reasonable reader might feel has affected your research you may also wish to declare them. (Please note that it is not expected that details of financial arrangements be disclosed when a competing interest is declared.)
Upon identification of any conflict of interest, the editors may require more information from the author that may include the following:
- Acknowledgement of financial support/sponsorship in their contribution.
- Any commercial or financial involvements that might present an appearance of a conflict of interest related to the contribution are disclosed in a covering letter accompanying the contribution and all such potential conflicts of interest will be discussed with the editor as to whether disclosure of this information with the published contribution is to be made in the journal.
- If they have signed an agreement with any sponsor of the research reported in the contribution that prevents you from publishing both positive and negative results or that forbids you from publishing this research without prior approval of the sponsor.
- If they have checked the manuscript submission guidelines to ensure whether the journal requires a Declaration of Conflicting Interests and have complied with the requirements specified where such a policy exists. The Authors are required to fill and sign the Copyright and Author Consent Form upon submitting the manuscript.
9.2. Editor obligations regarding conflicting interests
The same obligations equally apply to the editors or guest editors writing an editorial for the journal. When you are submitting or publishing your article in a journal which requires you to make a Declaration of Conflicting Interests, please include such a declaration at the end of your manuscript after any Acknowledgements and prior to the Funding Acknowledgement, Notes (if relevant) and References, under the heading 'Declaration of Conflicting Interest'. If no conflict exists, please state that 'The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest'.
*Please note, a Conflict of Interest Statement will not appear in journals that do not require a declaration of conflicting interests. Where a declaration is required the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article have with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.
- Anti-plagiarism and Anti-predatory Procedures:
It is the journal’s editorial policy to welcome the original work that is not under consideration for any other publication at the same time. All authors are obliged to be aware of the importance of presenting content that is based on their own research and expressed in their own words. Plagiarism is considered to be bad practice and unethical. As per the part of journal’s Copyrights Policy, originality guidelines are designed to assist authors in understanding acceptable and unacceptable practice. Our approach is specifically aimed at promoting and protecting authors' work. The following types of plagiarism should be avoided:
Verbatim copying of more than 15% (or a significant passage or section of text) of another person's work without acknowledgement, references or the use of quotation marks.
10.2. Paraphrasing
Improper paraphrasing of other person's work is where more than one sentence within a paragraph or section of text has been changed or sentences have been rearranged without appropriate attribution. Significant improper paraphrasing (more than 10% of work) without appropriate attribution is treated as seriously as verbatim copying.
10.3. Re-using parts of a work without attribution
Re-use of elements of other person's work, for example, a figure, a table or a paragraph without acknowledgement, references or the use of quotation marks. It is incumbent on the author to obtain the necessary permission to reuse elements of another person's work from the copyright holder.
It is required that all authors sign a copyright form that clearly states that their submitted work has not been published previously. If elements of a work have been previously published in another publication, including any “Hira Institute of Social Sciences Research & Development” publication, the author is required to acknowledge the earlier work and indicate how the subsequent work differs and builds upon the research and conclusions contained in the previous work. Verbatim copying of author's own work and paraphrasing is not acceptable and we recommend that research should only be reused to support new conclusions. We recommend that authors cite all previous stages of publication and presentation of their ideas that have culminated in the final work, including conference papers, workshop presentations and listserv communications. This will ensure that a complete record of all communication relating to the work is documented.
10.5. Republication of original work
Only original and innovative work is published in the journal with a small number of exceptions only. These exceptions include conference papers, archival papers that are republished in special issues and at the discretion of the editor. The original work is fully and correctly attributed and permission from the appropriate copyright holder obtained. Besides, it is the author’s obligation to mention any facts in this regard in the compliance with ethical standard statement at the end of the manuscript.
References to other publications must be in CMS 17th Edition. All references should be carefully checked for completeness, accuracy, and consistency. You should include all author names and initials and give any journal title in full.
10.7. Handling Allegations of Plagiarism
The journal seeks to uphold academic integrity and to protect authors' rights and to ensure this, the editors take all cases of plagiarism very seriously. The editors are also aware of the potential impact of an allegation of plagiarism can ruin a researcher's career. Therefore, they have procedures in place to deal with alleged cases of plagiarism. In order to take an unbiased approach, they investigate each case thoroughly, seeking clarification from all affected parties. This journal is an academic publication and uses software such as Turnitin.com to get help when an alleged case of plagiarism is brought to the attention. If the editors are approached by a third party with an allegation of plagiarism, they would always seek a response from the author(s)/contributors or copyright holder(s) before deciding on a course of action. Their decisions will be unbiased and objective as well not influenced by other parties. The journal is not obliged to discuss individual cases of alleged plagiarism with third parties. We reserve the right not to proceed further with a case if the complainant presents a false name or affiliation or acts in an inappropriate or threatening manner towards the journal editors and staff.
If the submitted manuscript or its significant part has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in the journal. However, for abstracts and posters presented at conferences, the authors are responsible to inform the editor and acknowledge the first source of publication. Articles that have been presented at a conference but not published by the conference organizers may also be considered. The author should confirm that they have not granted the conference organizers a license to the work; if the author retains all the rights in the work, the journal editor may consider the article for publication based on the fact that articles presented at a conference are unlikely to be the same or substantially the same version as that being accepted by the journal. In all cases, the author should disclose any prior publication or distribution to the editor and ensure appropriate attribution to the prior distribution and/or publication of the material.
Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is not acceptable. Material quoted verbatim must be placed in quotation marks. If more than 19% similarity index has been found in the TURNITIN Similarity index, it will either be rejected (As per HEC’s policy) or left at the discretion of the Editorial Board for the purposes of a conditional acceptance.
The "Al-Mīthāq" fully compliance with the open-access publishing policy and all the published articles are freely available on the website. The journal follows the licensing terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license and and Copyrights Ordinance of Pakistan 1962. Therefore, it ensures that the submitted work is author’s original, unpublished work (not under consideration nor published in some other journal). Submission of the manuscript considered as a mutual decision on behalf of co-authors, and he will be considered responsible for the correspondence.
Author must provide a conflict of interest statement at the end of the article. In case the statement is missing, then publisher has a right to add a default conflict of interest statement: "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Authors are requested to provide the proof of sponsorship or funding received for the research project. Editor has a right to determine what information should be made publicly available.
Authors are prohibited to share their submitted work on any electronic platforms, or any other place by any means until the decision on the paper has been announced. In case the manuscript is approved for publication, author is not allowed to share the work in its entirety on any platforms till the paper is formerly published by Al-Mīthāq.
Author may post the Abstract of the paper along with author’s name and affiliations by giving a statement “The manuscript has been accepted for publication in the “Al-Mīthāq”. Author may post the full article after its publication with full journal citations.
Summary of the Licensing Agreement
Under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under CC-by 4.0 you are free to:
Share — In any medium or format copy or redistribute the material
Adapt — transform, remix, and build upon the material for any purpose even commercially.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — Give proper credit, a link to the licensing body, and specify the changes that were made. In a logical way, you can do so, but it does not depict that the licenser endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — avoid using technological measures or legal terms that legally restrain other from doing anything that license allow.
Author E-prints
The journal assists a bundle of policies to provide benefits to the authors, by providing them with e-prints. E-Prints are shared with the authors prior to the print or in- print issues. Al-Mīthāq website link is also provided to the authors to download and disseminate the manuscript among their academic peers.
Declaration:
These research policies have been adopted from the guidelines and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Higher Education Commission (HEC).
