We publish URDU under HEC ethical guidelines for the journals. Some points are as follows:

Policy for the Editor

·    Editor is responsible to maintain the quality of the journal.

·    Editor has full authority to accept or reject any article keeping in view the publishing policy of URDU without any institutional pressure.

·   Editor ensures the process of blind peer review and Plagiarism Check of every article accor-ding to HEC restrictions.

·    Editor would provide corrigendum for any correction, clarification and apologies when required and would try to promptly respond to the authors for any query.

·   Editor ensures smooth functioning of the journal and conducting the editorial board meeting regularly.

·    Editor would disregard the discriminating factors, e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, cultural sentiments, political affiliation, seniority and/or institutional association of the authors while selecting articles for publication.

·   Editor will not edit any article which would have any conflict of interest. He / She is respon-sible to ask the reviewer also for disclosing any conflict of interest regarding the article to ensure the impartiality.

·    Editor ensures the confidentiality of the content of article before publishing.

Policy for the Author

·    An author (principal) is a person who has significantly authored the research paper. One who has contributed at some extent or helped out the author in write up should not be the author.

·    Someone who has contributed particularly in any design, analysis etc. he/she can be credited as co-author.

·    Author would be fully responsible for the presented study.

·    It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that the research paper and data contain adequate detail and references to the sources of information in order to allow others to reproduce the results. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

·   Author is required to provide an undertaking stating that the submitted manuscript contains solely his original work and no material has been copied without reference from anywhere. If someone coauthors the paper then his contribution should be explicitly stated in that undertaking.

·   Article once submitted by the author to URDU will not be submitted to any other journal till the time he would have been conveyed about rejection from our side.

·   The author should disclose any conflict of interest at the earliest possible stage keeping in view the editorial and advisory board, employment, consultancies, honoraria, patent applications / registrations, grants or other funding.

·    Authors are supposed to allow the journal while submitting the article to reserve the right to circulate the article.

·   The review process can last between 1-2 months or longer and during this period the author reserve the right to contact the Editor to ask about status of the review. In the case of rejection, the author reserves the right to publish the article elsewhere. In case of revisions, the author must provide an exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript. In case of dissatisfaction over the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.

Policy for the Reviewer

·  Review process allows author improve their manuscript through editorial communications. Reviewers accepting to review an article have an ethical responsibility to complete this assignment professionally. The quality, credibility and reputation of a journal also depend on the peer review process. The peer review process depends on the trust, and demands that a reviewer is supposed to fulfill ethically. The reviewers should:

·    Immediately inform the editor if they do not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review or any possible delays.

·    The data included in the article is confidential and the reviewer is not allowed to use it for his/ her personal study / academic or professional purpose.

·    Reviewers must not discuss its content on any platform prior to its publication except in cases where professional advice is being sought with the approval of the editor.

·  A reviewer must declare any conflicting interests (e.g. personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious). He / she should declare if the research paper under review is the same as to his / her presently conducted study.

·   The reviewer may justifiably criticize a manuscript but it would be inappropriate to resort to personal criticism on the author. He / she is supposed to objectively carry out the review with a consideration of high academic, scholarly and scientific standards.

·   Reviewer should brought into the editor's notice, before writing the evaluation report, if the research paper is based on any previous research study or is replica of an earlier work, or the work is plagiarized. Moreover if the reviewer suspects the given results to be untrue / unrealistic / fake, or there has been an indication of violating ethical norms in the treatment of human beings (e.g. children, female, poor people, disabled, elderly, etc.), all these points should also be identified to the editor.

·   For writing an evaluation report, reviewers are sent prescribed form from the editor and they are supposed to share their comments on it.

·   The editor will surely consider reviewer's comments and may send the article to someone else for another opinion or send it back to the author for revision before making the any decision. But it is very clear that the final decision about publishing an article (either accept or reject) will solely rest with the editor. A reviewer cannot challenge the decision of the editor at any forum.