Journal Policies

Peer Review Policy

We are transparent in our reviewing process. A double-blind peer-review process is applicable for our journal (authors and reviewers are unaware of one another’s identity) and the author(s) is informed about the status of their contribution whether accepted or sent back to them for improvements.

Open Access Policy

IJCMS is aimed at providing high-quality research articles to the academic community without any cost (GOLDEN OA). This journal provides immediate open access to its content for making it one of the largest open-source available to the research community in the arts, humanities, and social science sector. However, the author whose article is accepted, need to pay the specified amount in order to cover the publication fees.

Copyright Policy

IJCMS holds copyrights for the articles including abstracts published in the journal as accepted by the author in full consent in order to ensure full copyright protection and to disseminate the journal internationally.

IJCMS is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The articles published in IJCMS can be copied and redistributed in any medium or format. Articles can be remixed, transformed, and built upon for any purpose, even commercially.

IJCMS allows authors to self-archive and reuse their work subject to the journal’s Copyright Policies on this Website, considering all the matters concerning a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The authors are responsible for the content of the manuscripts and articles.

Reuse Policy

The material published in this journal can be remixed, and built upon even for commercial purposes, as long as the new creations are credited and licensed under identical terms (as indicated by “SA” in the license title). 

Plagiarism  Policy

We check for plagiarism by iThenticate or Turnitin and never tolerate plagiarism, forged data, and falsified data presentation from authors who will be blacklisted from publishing articles in IJCMS and its group of journals. We also strictly follow norms of UGC PROMOTION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND PREVENTION OF PLAGIARISM IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS) REGULATIONS, 2018.

IJCMS respects intellectual property and aims at protecting and promoting the original work of its authors. Manuscripts containing plagiarized material are against the standards of quality, research, and innovation. Hence, all authors submitting articles to IJCMS are expected to abide by ethical standards and abstain from plagiarism, in any form. In case, an author is found to be suspected of plagiarism in a submitted or published manuscript then, IJCMS shall contact the author (s) to submit his / her (their) explanation within two weeks, which may be forwarded to the Fact-Finding Committee (FFC) constituted for the purpose, for further course of action. If IJCMS does not receive any response from the author within the stipulated time period, then the Director / Dean / Head of the concerned College, Institution or Organization, or the Vice-Chancellor of the University to which the author is affiliated shall be contacted to take strict action against the concerned author.

IJCMS shall take serious action against published manuscripts found to contain plagiarism and shall completely remove them from our websites and other third-party websites where the paper is listed and indexed. The moment, any article published in the IJCMS database is reported to be plagiarized, IJCMS will constitute a Fact-Finding Committee (FFC) to investigate the same. Upon having established that the manuscript is plagiarized from some previously published work, IJCMS shall support the original author and manuscript irrespective of the publisher and may take any or all of the following immediate actions or follow the additional course of actions as recommended by the committee: 

1. IJCMS editorial office shall immediately contact the Director / Dean / Head of the concerned College, Institution, or Organization or the Vice-Chancellor of the University to which the author(s) is (are) affiliated to take strict action against the concerned author.
2. IJCMS shall remove the PDF copy of the published manuscript from the website and disable all links to the full-text articles. The term Plagiarized Manuscript shall be appended to the published manuscript title.
3. IJCMS shall disable the author's account with the journal and reject all future submissions from the author for a period of 03 / 05 / 10 years or even ban the authors permanently.
4. Any other course of action, as recommended by the Committee or as deemed fit for the instant case or as decided by the Editorial Board, from time to time

Correction &  Retraction Policy

Article withdrawal

Authors are free to withdraw articles or their publications from being published from our journal group through a written statement duly signed by the author(s) before it is published online or being allotted with Volume, Issue numbers, DOI, and article ID. If an article is withdrawn by us in the events such as, but not limited to, multiple submissions, fraudulent use of data, the bogus claim of authorship, unreliable findings, and unethical research practices, the ERM publication group is not bound to inform the author(s) on the reason for withdrawal. Any such withdrawn articles are removed from the online databases in all formats irrespective of the citation or impact factor. Instead, a short note will be displayed stating that the article has been withdrawn.

Corrections

As a responsible journal publishing group, we take the utmost care to ensure the published works are error-free. However, if there are any unintentional errors found by the readers, the journal group is ready to publish the refutations from the readers only after being checked and peer-reviewed for the prominent evidence that claims that there is a major error in the original paper. Though criticisms will not be discussed with the authors, the editor-in-chief is the final decision authority to approve or reject a refutation from publishing. ERM group of journals is open to receive such corrections to all the types of articles published except research highlights.

Errata

Significant typographical errors, units, data, errors in figures-table numbers, legends, proofing errors, and errors that are not inclusive of editing sections are published with the information on the article. However negligible errors are not published but not in the case of apparent simple errors that are significant. The decision of the editor-in-chief is final.

Corrigenda

Corrigenda submitted by the original authors are published if the scientific accuracy or reproducibility of the original paper is compromised. Post-publication of the papers if the authors found errors that are unavoidable, they can contact the editor-in-chief with the required information. Readers who find such errors are requested to write ‘Letter to the editor’ stating the complete information such as article title, name of the authors, volume, issue, page number, section head, and the error with the correction. The decision of the editor-in-chief is final though most corrigenda are approved by the editors and peer-reviewers provided there is a justification.

Addenda

After peer-reviewing, addenda are added if the editors feel that the additional information is required mandatorily so that the readers can easily understand. This is usually in response to readers' requests for clarification. Addenda are rarely published with the omitted information significant for the understanding of the manuscript.

Article retractions

The editor-in-chief when receives a request from a third party or from the author(s) to retract their article because of the scientific misconduct or outdated information such as the main conclusion of the paper being outdated, the same will be thoroughly analysed with neutral editors, peer-reviewers, all the authors and institutions. Once found with eligible and reliable information about the misconduct/outdated information, the editor-in-chief decides the article to be retracted either in partial or in-full prior to which the author(s) are requested an explanation/justification though this doesn’t affect the decision. This is followed by informing the readers about the article retraction with the note stating that the article has been retracted. If one or more author(s) does not want their article to be retracted, they may send ‘Letter to the editor’ stating the corrections/justifications carried out with Statement of Proof. The final decision on the retracted articles is with Editor-in-Chief.

Article removal

Though removing an article occurs during rare instances, this is mandated if the journal article clearly has defamatory content, copyright or any such legal issues, etc., In such circumstances, though the article is removed with a note that ‘article has been removed for legal reasons, the bibliographic information (title and authors) are retained and unchanged. The final decision on the removed articles is with Editor-in-Chief.

Article replacement

As mentioned in the article retraction, if the author(s) respond to Editor-in-Chief with the false/inaccurate/misguided information / plagiarized content along with the corrections carried out by them, the editor-in-chief may consider replacing the article from its online version.

Supplementary information

A rare case of authors' corrections to Supplementary Information (SI) is published only if it makes much difference to the article results such as (major errors that compromise the conclusion of the study). Authors have no option to update or change the SI during or after a publication since it is a part of publication unless a change made for technical reasons.

Privacy Statement  

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Non-Discrimination

The editors and reviewers evaluate manuscripts for intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Deposit Policy

The Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies (IJCMS) believes in open access research and it offers the research community free, immediate, and unlimited access to the information they need.
With digital archiving, we have the opportunity to share our data freely with the Scientific and Academic society and the whole world. This removes the barriers for those interested in research. To contribute to the promotion of knowledge and science in the world, IJCMS offers free access to all its data.
To preserve our data and respect the open access policy we have registered in the Registry of Open Access Repository (ROAR).

Advertising Policy
The Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies is an independent journal and does not accept advertising in any kind at any time. 

Appeal and Compliant Policy
We welcome appeals and complaints from authors, readers, and other stakeholders of our journal. IJCMS handles each appeal/complaint seriously and strictly adheres to the policy of COPE.

The complainant may submit their complaint(s) about the following issues: 

• Plagiarism Compliant
• Copyright Violation
• Authorship Complaint
• Misappropriation in Research Results
• Review Process Complaint
• Violations regarding Research Standards
• Research Errors and Frauds
• Guiding principles

Please address your complaint to editor@ijcms.in

Authorship and Contributorship

Authors are prominent contributors to the submitted research article and authorship has important academic, social, and financial implications. When a researcher is the author of a manuscript, he/she not only holds the authorship but also accountable for the accuracy and originality of their contribution. IJCMS (Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies) defines a contributor as ‘author’ based on few notions such as,

• Those who have substantially contributed in the development of the concept, research design, methodology, tools development, data collection, data analysis and interpretation of the output.
• Those who agree to be accountable for any clarifications, questions, feedback, comments and suggestions from the readers, reviewers and anyone who handles their research paper in a scientific manner

Authorship is limited to those persons who have contributed significantly to the main framework of the manuscript, while co-authors are defined as those who have substantially contributed to the paper development through their critique and improved the article in terms of accuracy, standards, authenticity, originality and readability

Contributor Roles Taxonomy 

The roles played by the individual author should be defined as framed by CReDit (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). CReDit is a 14-role taxonomy which defines the role of a specific author in a scholarly work. This taxonomy gets rid of potential author disputes, recognizes individual author works, helps in finding suitable peer-reviewers and subject matter expertise, and keeps a track record of individual author’s growth and development in research perspectives. Some authors may have contributed in multiple areas while few authors would’ve made a high degree of contribution in a specific area. So, author’s role should be mentioned based on their contribution and level of contribution. Here is the list of roles and their potential contributions in research work.

Points to Note

• Prior to submission to the journal, the authors’ names should be listed and respective contributions must be checked and approved by all the authors so that no dispute arises in this regard.
• The corresponding author, if selected once, will not be changed during the processing of the article. If there are any changes in the order of authors, correspondence, addition/deletion, or rearrangement in the author’s names, a standard application should be sent to the editor-in-chief about the need to bring such change, confirmation from all the authors inclusive and the change to be incorporated. If approved, the corresponding author will be informed about the change.
• Collaborative and co-authorships with colleagues, researchers, scholars and students are encouraged and the authors hold collective responsibility to designate people whether they can be an author or a co-author/contributor.
• The journal editors/editorial team do not involve in arbitrary when there is an authorship conflict (such as, but not limited to, missing other author name(s), misusing author name(s), not providing funding agency information, reducing the contribution made by author(s), impersonation to pass through peer review/acceptance etc., ) neither designate specific authors in a submitted work.
• The journal editors/editorial team has no accountability if authorship conflicts arise and if any so, it should be resolved and proved through written submission from all the authors involved in the manuscript.
• The journal editors/editorial team do not have a say, in deciding the role played by contributors of a journal article. So the entire responsibility of contributory roles must be defined by the authors themselves in a clear manner.
• It is the sole responsibility of corresponding author to keep all the main and supporting information in hand such as, but not limited to, authorship details, ethics committee approval, originality report of the manuscript, grants approval documentation if applicable and disclosures of relationships and activities.
• In case if the study is submitted by a large group or a firm or institution or a consortium or university without naming any individual, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and defines the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors.
• Unfeasible long or shortlist of author(s) would be verified by the journal editors/editorial team based on the type of manuscript submitted. For instance, a simple case report with multiple authors or a longitudinal study/systematic review with a single author
• Manipulated work submitted by authors who have no idea about the work neither the context would be verified. In case of any disputes, justifications would be requested from the concerned author(s) about their contribution in the specific manuscript. For example, an e-commerce paper submitted by an author proficient in neuro-medicine.