Policy

Publication of articles in International Journal of Halal Research (IJoHR) is dependent solely on scientific validity and coherence as judged by our editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field. IJoHR acknowledged the effort and suggestions made by its reviewers.

Initial evaluation of manuscripts

The Editor will first evaluate all manuscripts submitted. Although rare, yet it is entirely feasible for an exceptional manuscript to be accepted at this stage. Those rejected at this stage are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, or are outside the aims and scope of the IJoHR. Those that meet the minimum criteria are passed on to experts for review.

Type of peer review

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two to three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates the already published works, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The method used is a blind peer review.

Review reports

Reviewers are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:

• Is original by stating the objectives and gap clearly
• Is methodologically sound
• Follows appropriate ethical guidelines
• Has results/findings which are clearly presented and support the conclusions
• Correctly references previous relevant work
• Reviewers are not expected to correct or copyedit manuscripts. Language correction is not part of the peer-review process.

Decision

Reviewers advise the editor, who is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject the article. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board. Editor’s decision is final.

The originality and quality of the papers shall be evaluated based on the following categories:

1. Accept Submission; Only if the papers qualify all the journal requirements and no need for further revision.
2. Revisions Required; Only if the papers have minor and major revision where the authors agree to revise the papers according to the comments.
3. Resubmit for Review; If the papers do not follow the journal requirements, need further experiments, and/or consist of unclear results and discussion.
4. Resubmit Elsewhere; If the topic of the paper is out of the scope, the papers have low originality, and/or unclear research problems.
5. Decline Submission; If the papers have major issues such as flaws the experimental procedure, inaccurate data, illogical discussion, and/or unreasonable claims.
6. See Comments; If the reviewers give the total decision to the editor.

Section editor will read the reviewer’s comments or evaluation as well as the recommendation before it can be used to give the best final decision. After that, Section Editor will provide Reviewer Rating from “no rating, one to five stars”. Upon confirmation, the Section Editor will provide Reviewer Acknowledgement to Reviewers.

The authors shall receive the final decision:

1. Request Revisions; the revised version shall be completed within two
2. Accept Submission; the manuscript will be continued to the following step (copyediting and layout editing).
3. Decline Submission; the authors can re-submit the manuscript after provided a significantly revised version.

Becoming a Reviewer

If you are not currently a reviewer for WECR but would like to be added as the reviewers, please contact us. The benefits of reviewing for WECR include the opportunity to see and evaluate the latest work in the related research area at an early stage. You may also be able to cite your work for WECR as part of your professional development requirements. WECR ‘s reviewers are volunteers who contribute their expertise to the science, thus no financial payments are made.

Editor in Chief

• Ensure that the journal’s editors and editorial board are identified in the journal masthead.
• Provide guidelines to the authors for submission of manuscript.
• Establishing a system for effective and rapid peer review.
• Treating all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency.
• Protecting the confidentiality of every author’s work.
• Making editorial decisions with reasonable speed and communicating them in a clear and constructive manner.

Editors

• Conducting peer review of submitted manuscripts.
• Assigning papers for review appropriate to each reviewer’s area of interest and expertise.
• Allowing reviewers appropriate time to complete their reviews.
• Maintaining the journal’s internal integrity.
• Making recommendations about improved evaluation and dissemination of scientific material.

Authors

• Authors MUST follow the “Author Guidelines” that stated in the WECR
• The manuscript has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The manuscript MUSTin Microsoft Word and NOT IN PDF FORMAT.

Reviewers

• Avoiding personal comments or criticism
• Notifying the editor immediately if unable to review in a timely manner and providing the names of potential other reviewers.
• Providing a thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critique of the submitted work, which may include supplementary material provided to the journal by the author.
• Material under review should not be shared or discussed with anyone outside the review process unless necessary and approved by the editor.
• Complete the review process within the schedule.

WECR discourages and condemned plagiarism practices. Manuscript submitted to WECR will go to Turnitin’s similarity check. A maximum of 20% similarities is allowed for the manuscripts to go through the publication process. The database used as the similarity check setting is the periodicals, journals, and publications. Manuscripts with similarities between 21 – 30% will be returned to the authors for corrections and resubmission. Manuscripts with similarities of 31% and above will be rejected.

WECR’s editors shall consider retracting a publication if:

• they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)
• the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication)
• it constitutes plagiarism (high similarity with other published items)
• it reports unethical research

WECR’s editors shall consider issuing an expression of concern if:

• they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
• there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
• they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
• an investigation is underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time

WECR’s editors shall consider issuing a correction if:

• a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error)
• the author/contributor list is incorrect (i.e. a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included)

• Author Publication Charge

This journal is free of charge at all steps including submission, revision, processing and publication.