Ethics & Policies

Articles published on the AIJR Preprint server are not peer-reviewed and hence caution and responsibility are required when reusing them. Published articles on this preprint server shall not be reported as an established research work. Readers and media shall share/report responsibly by clearly mentioning & highlighting that the reported work is from a preprint article that is not peer-reviewed and may contain flaws. Authors & readers are expected to follow standard ethical policy as described on this page.

Competing Interests Declaration

It is mandatory for authors to include competing interests (conflict of interest) statement at the end of the manuscript. CoI can be identified as any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications or opinions stated including- pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department or organization, personal relationships, or direct academic competition. Click here to know more about competing interests.

For studies related to human and animal subjects, the author will require to include the following set of declarations before the references section as described in the author guideline  

Ethical Approval

If the research work involves the use of human/animal subjects, an ethical approval/exemption letter should be obtained from IRB/ethical committee/institution head. A statement with the detail of obtained ethical approval/exemption letter with approving authority and reference number shall be included under the declarations section.

Informed Consent

If a human participant/respondent involved, a signed & informed consent letter should be taken from the participant by informing them purpose, privacy, benefit, risk, and other associated factors with the study. A statement of obtaining informed consent from the participant or respondent shall be included under the declarations section.

The editor may ask to upload the scan copy if required. Click here to read more.

Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarized articles are not allowed in to publish in AIJR Preprints. Even though plagiarism is a serious issue but it’s very easy to avoid by giving proper acknowledgment to the work of others. Before submitting the article to AIJR Preprints, the authors should ensure that they have written original works. In the case where authors have used someone else’s or own previously published work/words, that should be properly attributed through appropriate citation. The author shall remember to not use information obtained privately without explicit, written permission from the source; for instance, the knowledge gained through peer-reviewing of other’s work or through third party discussion. The overall similarity of the article shall be less than 20% with limitation of similarity from a single source shall be less than 5%. Visit publisher's Plagiarism Policy for more detail.

Data Fabrication/Falsification Policy

Open Access Policy

The submission that passes the screening process is published online in open access format under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. This gives maximum visibility to authors while ensuring that they are properly recognized for their work. Once online, articles can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited.

Copyright Policy

Author(s) retains full copyright of their article and grants non-exclusive publishing right to AIJR Preprints and its publisher “AIJR (India)”. Author(s) can update the article anytime with a new & improved version. The author may submit the article for peer-reviewing to any scholarly publication and when it gets accepted/published, the author should update with DOI of the peer-reviewed version.

Licensing policy

All articles published in the AIJR Preprints are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) unless otherwise stated. Under this license, author(s) retain ownership of the copyright for their content but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, distribute, and/or copy the content for non-commercial purposes as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers for non-commercial use.
Click here for more information on the licensing policy.
Note: Publications on this Preprint server are not peer-reviewed and hence caution and responsibility are required when reusing them. 

Discussion Policy

Readers can comment, provide feedback, and discuss on any published article on AIJR Preprints. These discussions are highly valued by authors and can help to improve papers for the revised version. For such comments and discussion purposes, we use the Hypothesis Annotation tool in the PDF file of the article on AIJR Preprint Server. Your goal of using this annotation tool may include to-

• Make suggestions for extension or improvement of the article.
• Bring attention to a key idea or research steps in the author’s methodology.
• Propose an alternative idea that the author might have considered.
• Respond constructively to an annotation posted by another reader.
• Pose questions or seek clarifications about the author’s key ideas.
• Highlight any flaws in the research presented.
• Challenge an author’s claims, evidence, assumptions, or perspective.

Discussion must follow the standards of professional discourse and should focus on the content of the article. Insulting or offensive language, personal attacks, and off-topic remarks are not allowed. Readers who post comments are obliged to declare any competing interests, financial or otherwise. AIJR Preprints reserves all right to remove comments without any notice.

Withdrawal Policy

It is important for all authors to understand that preprints cannot be completely removed once published. Information about the published preprint is permanently available. In addition, a number of databases collect information about published preprints. Article withdrawal policy before and after publication treated differently as described below-

Article not yet Published

If your submission has not yet published you may delete it. To delete go to your author dashboard and click on the Delete button. Deleting a submission will remove it from our system if you have difficulty in deleting contact AIJR Preprints immediately. In your message be sure to include the submission id, paper title, an explanation of the problem, and the reason for deletion.

Article already Published

Articles that have been published cannot be completely removed. Withdrawal creates a new version of the paper marked as withdrawn. That new version displays the reason for the withdrawal and does not link directly to the full text. Previous versions will still be accessible, including the full text. Withdrawal reasons must be appropriate for the withdrawal to be accepted.

• Withdrawal reasons will be displayed publicly so when writing the withdrawal reason please keep in mind that you are explaining the withdrawal to the readers of AIJR Preprint.
• It is inappropriate to withdraw due to the author wishes to submit to a journal whose policy does not allow preprint posting. Authors should check in advance whether the journal they intend to submit to accepts preprints.
• It is not appropriate to withdraw a paper because it is published or submitted to a journal. Instead, you should update the relationship with the DOI of the published version in a peer-reviewed journal.
• It is not appropriate to withdraw a paper because it is being updated. Instead, you should submit a new improved version. Any scientific error or other correction shall be done by updating the manuscript to a new version.

Submitting a withdrawal request by Author

• From your author dashboard click on the production discussion tab and click add new.
• Select all available participants and write a withdrawal request by providing the specific reason for the withdrawal within the Comments field.

Withdrawal by AIJR Preprints

From that time on, articles may get withdrawn at the discretion of Preprints editors/moderators and the advisory board for the following reasons:

• Misconduct by authors, including plagiarism and data fabrication.
• Serious scientific errors, that cannot be corrected by updating the paper.
• Where leaving a paper online would constitute an illegal act, including copyright violation.

In all the above situations, the author may get contacted with the issue so that author can update the manuscript with a new version to resolve the concern. If so, the author shall act promptly, failing which may result in the article withdrawn without any further communication.

AIJR Preprints reserve the right to withdraw without notice where there is sufficient reason for doing so.

Withdrawal Representation

• The withdrawal will create a new version (version 2).
• The new withdrawn version will become the default view of the paper.
• The reason for the withdrawal is displayed in the abstract field.
• Under the Download options on the right, there is no option to download the PDF.
• The previous version will still be available on the server which can be accessed through the version history option.