URDU, Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu

Ethical Policy

Quality Assurance: The Editor is responsible for maintaining the scholarly quality of the journal and ensuring that all published research meets international academic standards.
Editorial Independence: The Editor has full authority to accept or reject any article based on its merit and alignment with the journal’s policy, without any institutional, political, or commercial pressure.
Integrity and Transparency: The Editor ensures a rigorous double-blind peer-review process and plagiarism checks (via Turnitin) for every submission according to HEC regulations.
Accountability: The Editor shall provide corrigenda for any necessary corrections, clarifications, or apologies and respond promptly to author queries.
Non-Discrimination: Manuscripts are evaluated solely on their intellectual content, disregarding the author's gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, seniority, or institutional association.
Confidentiality: The Editor ensures that all submitted manuscripts remain confidential until the point of publication.

Authorship Criteria: Only individuals who have made a significant intellectual contribution to the study should be listed as authors. Others who provided minor assistance should be acknowledged but not credited as authors.
Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must provide a signed undertaking that the work is original and contains no plagiarized material. All sources must be properly cited according to the Chicago Manual of Style.
Exclusivity: A manuscript submitted to URDU must not be under consideration by any other journal simultaneously.
Data Accuracy: Authors are responsible for the data presented and must ensure it is sufficient to allow others to reproduce the results. Fraudulent or inaccurate statements are considered unethical behavior.
Conflict of Interest: Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest (financial, professional, or personal) at the earliest stage of submission.
Revisions: In the case of suggested revisions, authors must provide a detailed exposition of all corrections made in the manuscript.

Subject Expertise: Reviewers should immediately inform the Editor if they do not possess the required expertise for a specific manuscript or if they anticipate delays.
Confidentiality and Privacy: Manuscripts are confidential documents. Reviewers are prohibited from using the data for personal research or discussing the content on any platform prior to publication.
Objectivity: Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate; the focus should remain on high academic and scientific standards.
Ethical Vigilance: Reviewers must notify the Editor if they suspect plagiarism, duplicate publication, or any indication of violating ethical norms regarding human subjects.
Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers must declare any personal, financial, or professional conflicts. They must not review a paper that is too similar to their own ongoing research.

Impartiality in Internal Submissions: To ensure absolute transparency and prevent bias, any manuscript submitted by the Editor, a member of the Editorial Board, or the Advisory Board will be handled independently.
Recusal: The authoring board member will be strictly excluded from selecting reviewers and from any editorial discussions or final decisions regarding their own manuscript.
Blind Review: Such submissions undergo the same rigorous double-blind peer-review process as any external submission to maintain the integrity of the journal.

Appeals: Authors dissatisfied with a rejection decision may appeal to the Editor. The appeal will be reviewed by an independent committee.
Retractions: If plagiarism or serious scientific misconduct is proven after publication, the article will be formally retracted following COPE Flowcharts, and the author’s institution will be notified.