This publication is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is committed to complying with its principles
The ethical policy of Journal of Figh and Usul is based on COPE's best practice guidelines for journal editors. The Editorial Board, Reviewers, and Authors are encouraged to study these guidelines, If they encounter any issues, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, or data falsification/fabrication in submitted or published articles, they should contact the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Mohammad Taghi Fakhlaei at fakhlaei@um.ac.ir or the publisher's principal contact at fumpress@um.ac.ir, who will follow COPE flowcharts.
Duties of Editor in Chief (Editor) and Guest Editor(s)
http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
Publication Decisions: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) have the right to make the final decision on whether to accept or reject a manuscript with reference to the significance, originality, and clarity of the manuscript and its relevance to the journal.
Fair Review: Editors should give fair consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to country, race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
Confidentiality: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) and the editorial staff will ensure that systems are in place to ensure the confidentiality and protection from misuse of material submitted to the journal while under review and the protection of authors’ and reviewers’ identities and will themselves take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of authors’ and reviewers’ identities.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should ensure that submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, as appropriate.The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should excuse themselves from considering a manuscript in which they have a real or potential conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, financial or other relationships or connections with any of the Authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript.
Duties of Reviewers
https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
Fair reviews: Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly and professionally. Reviewers should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers must provide substantiated and fair reviews to assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
Right of refusal: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or unable to provide a prompt review should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process. Furthermore, Reviewers should refuse to review manuscripts where they have provided written comments on the manuscript or an earlier version to the Author, and, in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, financial, institutional, personal, or other relationships or connections with any of the companies, institutions, or people connected to the papers.
Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Editor/Guest Editor(s), nor should they discuss any information from the manuscript without permission.
Impartiality: The reviewers should analyze the manuscripts objectively, impartially, and in complete fairness. Personal bias should be avoided in passing on any advice or judgement on the works.
Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the Editor in Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Conflict of Interest: Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections
Duties of Authors
https://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf
Reporting standard: Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism: All work in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrications, or omission of significant material. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism constitute unethical publishing behavior and are unacceptable.
Originality: Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works. Authors must ensure that no part of their work is copied from any other work, either authored by themselves or others and has not previously been published in whole or substantial part. The author should not submit concurrent manuscripts (or manuscripts essentially describing the same subject matter) to multiple journals.
Acknowledgement: The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research.
Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.
Fundamental errors in works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the Editor to retract or correct the paper.
(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_publishersFINAL_1_0.pdf)
FUM Policy on Using Al and LLMs
In compliance with the position taken by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (link), in all FUM Press publications, including academic papers, authors may use AI and LLMs tools to prepare initial drafts “in the Materials and Methods (or similar section)” of their manuscript. They may do so transparently, and only if they maintain full accountability and responsibility for the content of their work. Since these tools cannot take responsibility for submitted manuscripts, “AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship” at this stage. FUM Press remains strictly committed to the long-established academic standards regarding authorship, plagiarism, transparency, and accountability; authors are thus required to properly document and state their use of AI or LLMs.
Journal’s Policy Against Plagiarism
Plagiarism and exploiting other researchers’ work by claiming false credit or quoting major sections of another article (directly or indirectly without citation) is considered highly unethical and unprofessional and must be avoided at all costs. Such cases, if confirmed, will be accordingly punished.
Authors must ensure that their submitted manuscript is original and free of any plagiarism charges. In doing so, they are recommended to run their work through a similarity checker tool before submission to avoid any major overlap with other studies.
In the event that a breach of best practice is detected during the screening or reviewing process by the Editor-in-Chief, the editorial board, or the reviewing team, the manuscript will be rejected immediately (this is in case the corresponding author’s explanation is unacceptable). In this case, the author(s) will receive a written reprimand according to the severity of their malpractice, and might even be blacklisted for further submissions.
If plagiarism is detected and confirmed after publication, the issue will be discussed among the editors. Where it is proven to be significant, the article will go out of print and will be archived. Readers will be informed of the matter in the following issue, and the corresponding author will have to write a formal apology letter. In addition, the Committee of Publication Ethics (located in the author(s) own institution) will be informed so as to take necessary measures.