Publication Ethics & Editorial Policies

'PRoPAKnowledge' adheres to the ethical guidelines formulated by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE); Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA); World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) to eradicate any kind of misconduct, malicious and unethical practices. Our author should abide by these guidelines and support us in the application of ethical and best publication practice.


Authorship policies and guidelines

The author who submitted the work for publication will be considered as the corresponding author and prime representative of the co-author(s) who have contributed for the work. All further communication related to the publication will be sent to the corresponding author. Each author should have made a significant contribution while conducting the research and/or analysis, conceptualizing, data interpretation and documenting the manuscript. All authors should sign the statement of authorship describing individual contributions to the work submitted for publication.

An approval letter signed by all the authors should be provided to publish the manuscript in ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ journals. Our journals would not be responsible for any authorship dispute of a submitted work. Any changes related to authorship (such as addition or deletion of authors or change in the sequence of authors list) should be intimated to our journal’s editorial office through a letter signed by all the authors prior to publication of the paper.

Any unethical practices while conducting the research and claiming authorship will not be entertained. Authors should not submit the same research work to multiple journals for publication. Authors should be able submit the quintessential raw materials/data of the submitted research work and other additional materials (proof of approvals, copy right permissions, signed consent forms), to support the standard pre-publishing process. Any disputes and failures in submitting such materials will be considered for retraction of the paper as per the ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ publishing policies.


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Competing Interests

Any direct relationships (can be financial or non-financial, professional or non-professional, or personal) which can most possibly interferes with integrity of the scientific records, main objective, Editorial and peer-review process will be considered as competing interests. We strongly believe that, the accuracy and transparency in terms of handling competing interests will help in building the trust and credibility of the articles published on our journals. Any non-disclosure of competing interests will significantly impact the scientific integrity and credibility of the authors and journal. So that, We sincerely request our authors, reviewers and editors to be more supportive during the whole publishing process by being not so hesitant to disclose competing interests (if any- financial or non-financial, professional or non-professional, or personal).

Editors and reviewers should not have any relationship with the authors within the past 10yrs, be it financial or non-financial; professional or personal relationship. Editors and/or reviewers should disclose about any such past relationships and should voluntarily exclude themselves from involving in the pre & as well as the post publishing process. So that, the journal office could manage to process the manuscript in a timely manner and could be able retain the scientific integrity of the journal. If any infringement of the above mentioned guidelines and unethical practices would result in permanent retraction of the manuscript. ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ management reserve the power to take strong action against the persons who involved in such practices.


Peer-Review

‘PRoPAKnowledge’ journal’s conducts a meticulous double blinded peer-review for each and every article published to maintain the scientific integrity and to provide an authentic scientific content to our readers. In a double blinded peer-review process, the details of the authors and reviewers should be kept confidential to avoid disputes, unbiased and unethical practices.

We request our reviewers to disclose the competing interests (if any) at the earliest after receiving a review invitation; so that, our editors could be able to exclude them from review process.

To maintain high standards in the peer-review process, our editors would selects the reviewers based on critical factors like: Affiliation, Proof of expertise in the specific field, history of previous publications and reputation, etc.

Reviewer’s comments will be sent to the corresponding author within 3weeks after submission along with the final decision of the editors (Accepted without changes/ Accepted with major or minor revision/ Rejected).

Authors should submit the revised version of the manuscript within 7-14days after receiving the editor’s decision. The revised version may be sent for an additional review, based on the opinion of the reviewers. In case of any major revision which involves additional experiments and analysis, etc. authors may request for timeline extension which should not go beyond 7-8weeks. Authors should submit the revised version of the manuscript along with the review comment form addressing individual review comment and questions asked by the reviewers. We request our Authors and reviewers to understand and support the journals mission of maintaining fast and accurate publishing timelines. Journal editors reserve the right to take the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. To support our deep intuition of promoting high quality scientific knowledge, the management of PRoPAKnowlege will reserve all rights to opt for a re-review at any stage before the final publication of a manuscript.


Copyright and Access to Content

All articles published with ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ will be immediately and permanently accessible to everyone for free to read, download, distribute, copy and re-use. All articles published and distributed online under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 or 4.0 Licence (CC BY). According to the CC BY Attribution Licence, the readers are permitted to unrestricted access, distribution, and reproduction in any format until the original work is properly cited and given credits to the main contributor of the work.

For more information related to Creative Commons Attribution Licences, please visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Authors should provide copyright permissions for images and any data of other scientists (if any such data used) and should properly cite the original contributor of that particular work. In case of any copyright issues exposed during the process of publication may lead to retraction, and the journal editors reserve the right to take final decision.


Plagiarism and Overlapping

As, ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ journals operates on deep intuition of publishing and disseminating high quality and original research and authentic scientific knowledge; we would not consider any plagiarised content and duplicate publications. We ‘PRoPAKnowledge’ journals adhere by the following guidelines formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE); Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on

Plagiarism and overlapping publishing: Each and every manuscript submitted to our journals would go through a rigorous plagiarism checking process. For this, we use advanced plagiarism detection tools and other databases.

If the authors using someone else’s work and claiming as that works as his/her own without giving due credits to the original creator; such cases would be considered as plagiarism.

In cases of any minor plagiarism detected in the submitted manuscript, the authors would be contacted by the journal office asking for proper explanation regarding the plagiarism. Our editors will decide to accept the manuscript, based on scientific acuity of the explanations given by the authors. If any findings of major plagiarism or using substantially large amount of other’s work /data, our editors would choose to reject the manuscript for publication.

In some cases, where the author re-uses significant parts of his/her own or other’s work previously published elsewhere. Using of any such data without proper references and prior notice to the editors, Paper contains substantial amount of similar data used in previously published work or overlap with author’s own previous publications, etc. would be considered as duplicate publication.

Editors reserve full powers to take final decisions (Rejection in most cases) regarding these kinds of scenarios.

‘PRoPAKnowledge’ journals would not consider any duplicate submissions for publication in our journals. Duplicate submissions are the papers submitted to multiple journals whatever may be the reasons. Editors may decide to accept such manuscripts for publication, based on the topical importance and interest of public health.

Crorrection and Retraction Policies

Our journals abide by the following policies for corrections to the peer-reviewed content published online: All corrections are subjected to be peer-reviewed (Mostly by the same team of reviewers who reviewed the original work) where applicable and a proper notification will be posted to the main authors of the content. Our journal’s editors have the right to make a final decision regarding the type of corrections with the help of suggestions made by reviewers.

Erratum: It will be used if any errors occurred in the time of pre-publishing/editing process, which will significantly undermines and influence the credibility of the original contributor of that particular work and/or of the journal (which includes typographical errors and significant errors in figures and/or tables). Any such errors usually corrected by publishing new corrected version of images and/or tables as an erratum. A figure or table will be republished as an erratum, if necessary.

Corrigendum: It is a formal notification on significant corrections suggested by the main author who’s submitted the work for publication. A Corrigenda will be published in case of any substantial errors appeared in the published content, which will significantly affects the integrity of the scientific records, credibility of the contributors and the journal. A Corrigendum must be agreed and signed by all the authors. If in case of any author(s) disagree to sign, the editors will consider advises given by individual reviewers and suggest appropriate amendments accordingly (Author’s dissention notice will be added in the published version). Editors reserve the right to publish the corrigenda with the dissenting author(s) identified. Overlooked acknowledgements will not be considered to publish as one. Readers who are willing to notify about any significant errors in the published version should communicate with our editors by sending an E-mail to: editors@....

Addendum: An addendum is a formal notification of peer-reviewed addition of information to the original work. Addenda should not contradict with the original work, but if the authors inadvertently omitted to include any significant information at the time of initial submission of the work for publication. Any Such additional material provided by the authors can be published as an addendum after went through standard peer-review. Editors rarely decide to publish addenda, only if the information is crucial to provide the readers a better understanding of the significant part of the contributed work.

Retraction: A Retraction will be deployed in case of any invalid results or conclusions. A reader, who would like to draw attention of editors regarding a retraction should first contact the author of original work and then contact the journal office regarding the same. A Retraction will be published in case of any unethical practices took place and proven such as, multiple submissions, plagiarism, falsely claiming authorship, fraudulent/ illegal usage of data and the results projected would likely to cause any further works being retracted. Authors will be asked to provide a signed document describing the error and explaining how it impacts the conclusions of the original work. Our editors reserve all the rights to publish a retraction with dissenting author(s) identified.