About the Journal

Aim and Scope

Journal of Public Value and Administrative Insight (JPVAI) (Online ISSN: 2663-9181. Print ISSN: 2663-919X) aims to present the latest thinking and research on major management topics in form of articles that meet high academic quality standards, while still being accessible to non-specialists. Most articles are full-length research papers but Review Papers and Research Notes are also welcome. The major aim of the journal is to cover the range of information system development and usage in their use of managerial policies, strategies, and activities for business, public administration, and international organizations. JPVAI aims to bring its readers the very best analysis and discussion in the varied field of management includes: Public Value, Public Administration, Leadership, Governance, Organizational Behavior, Information Management; Business Ethics, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Information Systems, International Business & cross-cultural studies, Marketing, Tourism Management, Strategic Management, Organization Studies & General Management and related fields. For information on specific submission requirements, refer to the Authors Guidelines. JPVAI adheres to ethical guidelines and best practices as outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). For further details refer to Ethical Statement.

Currently, the journal is indexed with:

Publication and Peer Review Process

Journal of Public Value and Administrative Insight (JPVAI)  is a double-blind peer-review journal. All articles submitted to the Journal need to pass the review process before publishing. Peer review is important to maintain the quality and integrity of scientific and scholarly research and it is aimed to evaluate the quality, validity, and originality of the research articles. 

The corresponding author will submit the manuscript through our online submission system. At the first stage the articles will be scrutinized and evaluated by the editorial team, if it is according to the scope of the Journal, meet basic standards as outlined Authors Guidelines and Ethical Statement. In case the scope and topic of the manuscript are not related to JPVAI, the editor may recommend the author for publication in another journal of Readers Insight more related to the subject matter of the manuscript. However, this recommendation does not increase the chances of publication and the manuscript has to pass through the review process of that particular journal. In case the editor concludes that the article does not meet basic standards of research quality, language, and research ethics and the author should improve them before the manuscript is forwarded for peer review, an email with required modifications will be sent to the corresponding author. However, if the editor concludes that there is little room for improvement, he/she may desk reject the article, stating the specific reasons and suggesting the author submit another article for publication. This process would take 1 to 2 weeks approximately.

After the manuscript has gone through editorial review, the section editor will send requests for reviews to multiple reviewers. The section editor will also ensure that the reviewer is a specialist in the subject matter of the manuscript. In case a specific reviewer is not available, he/she will search for a reviewer based on the expertise in the specific field relevant to the wider subject domain of the topic in the manuscript such as psychology, business management, sociology, etc.  It is also the duty of the section editor to ensure that there is no conflict of interest of the reviewers with the research in focus. The section editor will also regularly follow up with reviewers to ensure the timely completion of the review process.

The review process is a Double-Blind Peer-Review. This indicates that the authors will be unknown to the reviewers. It is also the responsibility of the authors to ensure blind submission such that that title page is separate from the main body of the manuscript and there is no information in the main body that reveals the author's identity. The reviewers will return their recommendations and decision to the editor who will forward them to the author(s) as general and specific comments. The editor will assess the reviewer’s comments and recommendations and make a decision about the acceptance of the manuscript for publication. The section editor will forward the recommendations and peer-review analysis to the Editor in chief. The final decision on the first evaluation of the manuscript lies with the Editor-in-Chief, who would make the decision and communicate to the author via section editor. The decision can be one of the three possibilities 1) “Rejected” 2) “accepted as it is without changes”, 3) “conditionally accepted with modifications”.  The extent of changes varies from manuscript to manuscript and authors are allocated enough time to make the recommended amendments. However, if changes are extensive, the manuscript may go through a peer-review process after re-submission, preferably with original reviewers (depending upon availability). In case there are minor changes that author(s) successfully implemented; the editorial board may accept resubmission “accepted as it is without changes”. For modifications that are extensive, the manuscript is subjected to the peer-review process in an iterative manner. Even in the case of rejection, reviewers' and editors’ comments that are constructive and may be useful to authors to improve their work are passed on anonymously. 

Publication Frequency

Journal of Public Value and Administration Insight (JPVAI) published four issues per year. Each issue may contain 5-15 articles. Occasionally, JPVAI can publish special issues which can have specific editors. Announcements for special issues will be announced 6 to 12 months prior.

Open Access Policy

Journal of Public Value and Administrative Insight (JPVAI) provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All publications in JPVAI are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  For further details on the open access policy refer to section Licensing and Copyright Permissions. 

Archiving

Long-term preservation and archiving (LPTA) of data ensures that the journal’s data is backed up in a network of libraries created by a dedicated digital archiving and preservation service. Journal of Public Value and Administration Insights (JPVAI) employs PKP Private’s LOCKSS network to create a file distributed among the participated libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent files of the journal with goals to preserve and restore the digital data.

Publication Fee

Journal of Public Value and Administrative Insight (JPVAI) publishes open access publication and article processing charges are USD 200 per article. The JPVAI publishes on open-access content, which allows authors to reach a wider audience and foster the international and social impact of their contributions. To make this open access policy sustainable, the JPVAI is collaborating with research societies that are willing to facilitate the review process free of charge. For this reason, Readers Insight Publisher has collaborated with Connecting ASIA Network. Connecting Asia research network members will facilitate the review process of the journal through its network of researchers in 32 countries.  We are not receiving any funding from any organization to facilitate the publication process. The Journal is based on the voluntary services provided by the researcher from Connecting ASIA network. 

Licenses & Copyright Permissions

All articles published in Readers Insight journals are open access and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The complete copyrights are retained by the author(s). Given the open access status, the articles may be downloaded, read, and cited without any prior permission or fee. However, in special circumstances, a different license may be used. Such conditions may arise when funding or the confidential nature of research is involved. In this case please mention the special condition to the editorial office prior to the submission. The exception may be granted which will be decided by the publisher.

Permissions to use copyrighted materials

Any published material which is not open access and is copyrighted or requires original creates special permission are not to be included in the manuscript without adopting a formal procedure to obtain the permission. Permission is also required for the authors own work for which copyright is held by the publisher (a norm in subscription-based journals), a substantial extract quoted from someone else’s work, and slightly altered or unaltered published material including but not limited to figures, tables, images, extracts, schemes, maps, graphs, photographs, etc. However, if the author(s) is reconstructing a table of own data published somewhere else (must cite), using short quotes or re-drawing graphics, charts, schemes, and artwork such that they are changed beyond recognition, permission is not required. The responsibility of obtaining permission (and timely) is the author(s) responsibility. Readers Insight does not bear any responsibility to obtain permissions on the author(s) nor publish any material which is without formal permission. The copyright holder must also be acknowledged in the manuscript.

License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 You are free to:

  • Share— copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt— remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
  • The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution— you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • No additional restrictions— you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Ethical Statement

Ethical misconduct is a growing problem in the world of research publications. As a publisher Readers Insight vow to uphold the highest standards of scholarly ethics. For this reason, we have opted to be a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), the most detailed guidelines for ethical practices and standards for research publications. We expect our authors, editors, and reviewers to adhere to the ethical policies which are in accordance to COPE which provides comprehensive ethical guidelines to the authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers. They also provide specific details on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct. Readers Insight takes it very seriously to enforce these ethical policies in true spirit along with a rigorous blind peer-review. Our editors are trained to handle the cases of data integrity and falsification, authorship issues, plagiarism, and similar issues if they arise. There is a zero-tolerance policy in cases of ethical violations.

We also acknowledge that ethical malpractice is not always intentional but incidents like high plagiarism, redundant publications or infringement of copyrights may occur due to lack of knowledge. That is why we have made our best effort to explain below many aspects of publication ethics. We analyze any submitted paper and suspected case of ethical misconduct in line with COPE core practices which covers the following aspects:

  • Procedures to handle allegations of misconduct pre and post-publication
  • Policy about authorship and contributing authors
  • Complaint handling procedures
  • Conflict of interest
  • Data collection and reporting standards and reproducibility of data
  • Ethical oversight such as consent to publish, research involving humans and animals, handling confidential data, and marketing best practices.
  • Policies of intellectual property safeguard.
  • Internal procedures to manage the journal
  • A peer review process and its transparency
  • The mechanism for debate upon, correction, and retraction of papers after their publication.

 You can also download these publication ethics in PDF format. For more details, one can refer to the website COPE.  

Authors Guidelines

Data Fabrication/Falsification/Theft

It is highly unethical to fabricate, falsify and report selective data in order to manipulate the results with the intent to mislead and deceive the readers. We recommend the authors of original research to maintain a record of any data analysis conducted on data collected from experimentation, survey, interview, or other primary and secondary before submission. At any point during the publication process, reviewers or editors can ask authors for the research data and/or analysis results. After the publication the authors should keep research data saved for a reasonable amount of time and make it available on request. It is the duty of authors to report results such that they should reflect an accurate account of analysis performed on data and there should be an objective discussion of the significance.

Theft of someone else’s data or fabrication of data is unacceptable and the submitted manuscript will be rejected if any such case is proven and the author is not able to provide justification.  Journal management and readers' insight reserves all the rights not to accept any further submission from the author(s) and send a formal complaint to the parent institute if there is undeniable evidence of data fabrication/falsification/theft.

Plagiarism and Acknowledgement of Sources

Plagiarism is a subjective term that takes many forms such as presenting someone else’s research paper, research idea, or research results as one’s own or copying/paraphrasing a substantial portion of another manuscript without reference. Submitted manuscripts may be checked for similarity using Turnitin software. Turnitin checks submission against millions of published articles, institutional repositories, and internet sources for overlapping and similarity in text. A similarity index of greater than 15% from multiple sources and greater than 5% from a single source is unacceptable. The editor reserves the right to either reject a submitted manuscript or request a revision if plagiarism is detected.

An integral part of scholarly research is to acknowledge and credit the work of others. While drafting the manuscript, enough details and references should be included so that original sources of information are given true credited and others are able to track them. It is unacceptable and highly unethical to present someone else’s idea and information from a source making it appear as one’s own. Any information that has been obtained privately (conversation, discussion or correspondence) or obtained from confidential sources (e.g. financial grant sources, refereeing manuscripts) must never be reported without the written consent of third party. Similarly, it is unethical and prohibited to reproduce tables and graphics from another source without written permission of copyrights holder.

Authorship

Authorship is an important aspect of publication as it is directly related to the credit of research work as well as responsibility and accountability of the published paper. Authorship for a manuscript should be based upon substantial intellectual contribution to the research work. We only recognize individuals as authors, not any agency or institute as author. All those made significant contribution to the paper should be enlisted as co-authors. Readers Insight suggests authorship on the basis of one or more of the following contributions:

  • Conceived the research idea and planned the research
  • Conducted literature survey and developed framework
  • Data collection
  • Data entry
  • Data analysis
  • Interpretation of analysis results
  • Drafting manuscript
  • Critically analyzing and revising the draft
  • Overall supervision of the research project (must be involved in multiple stages mentioned above, need to justify if more than one co-author identify as supervisors)
  • Any other significant contribution

Every article should have corresponding author who is responsible for the submission and all the correspondence during the review and publication process. All names of corresponding author and contributing authors and their order of appearance should ideally be decided before submission of manuscript. Any addition, deletion or change in order of authorship after submission will be entertained case to case basis with corresponding author providing sufficient proof to why this is important (for instance need to include an author for the sake of revisions after peer review or a contributing author decides to withdraw from the research project).

All the contributing authors(s) should

  • Agree to be responsible and accountable for accuracy and integrity of all aspects of published research
  • Be able to identify which co-author is responsible for which part of the research work.
  • Should have faith on integrity of co-authors
  • Have reviewed the final version of paper before submission and before publications.
  • Make sure that there is no ghost author, which means that a potential contributor is left out in the list of authorship
  • Make sure that there is no guest author, which means that a non-contributing individual is added as a co-author.

Disclosure of Conflict of Interest

When authors submit a manuscript (any type) they are required to honestly disclose any conflict of interest which could have influence their research. These conflicts of interests (COIs) can be financial supports/grants, commercial interests, legal or professional relationships with other organizations or individuals, that might influence the results or interpretation of the study. Any financial grant or other funding source must be acknowledged within the manuscript. Potential entities that can cause COI may include but not limited to: consultancies, employers, interest groups, financial grants, patents, royalties and stock ownership. In case authors do not have any COI they must also mention that in manuscript using this statement “The author(s) declare no conflict of interest for this research”. If the authors fail to disclose COI at the time of submission and there is actual or potential effect on interpretation of the results, the manuscript may be returned or rejected.

Redundant and Con-current Publications/Self-Plagiarism

Publishing manuscripts in multiple journals which have almost similar research framework and research results without proper citation is strongly discouraged and lies under the category of self-plagiarism. This practice leads to a repetition in the scholarly literature and can leads to skewed results of meta-analysis. However, authors may use the data collected from a larger body of data set for research frameworks which are essentially different and multiple manuscript has their own specific contributions to the existing literature. Similarly sending same manuscript to multiple journals is also an ethical malpractice and may result in rejection or backlisting of the author.

The editor of the journal will thoroughly investigate any suspected cases of self-plagiarism in a submitted manuscript and may request author(s) for a logical explanation of the potential overlap. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the manuscript may be rejected. In repeated incidents, journal management/readers insight may opt not to accept any further submissions from the author(s).

Human and Animal Subjects

All studies involving human subjects require documented review and approval from an institutional review board or ethics committee. In case researchers do not have access to these ethical bodies, they should strictly adhere to principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The researchers must obtain informed consent from all participants who are above 16 years of age and from their guardians/next of kin if below 16 years. In case an informed consent is not possible (such as an observation study), the review board must decide if this procedure is ethically acceptable. All these steps must be documented in the manuscript. Similarly, study involving animal must also be ethically and legally approved by the pertinent committee and the name of the approving authority must be mentioned in the manuscript. Any use of chemicals, experimental procedures or equipment that may prove to be hazardous, must be clearly documented in the manuscript.

Ready to submit your paper? Your ethics checklist

Before you submit, make sure you’ve:

  • Read the journal’s instructions for authors, and checked and followed any instructions regarding data sets, ethics approval, or statements.
  • Named all authors on the paper, and the online submission form.
  • Referenced all material in the text clearly and thoroughly.
  • Carefully checked data and included any supplemental data required by the journal.
  • Declared any relevant interests to the journal.
  • Obtained (written) permission to reuse any figures, tables, and data sets.
  • Only submitted the paper to one journal at a time.

Finally, notify all the co-authors once you have submitted the paper.

Code of Conduct for Journal Editors

Editors have responsibility of everything published in their journals. The ethical responsibilities for journal editors are based upon COPE code of conduct for Journal Editors which are summarized as under:

General Duties and Responsibilities

Editors are responsible and answerable for anything that is published in their journal. They should strive to maintain and upheaval the academic quality of their journal and ensure that high quality research material is published which cater to needs of both readers and authors. To ensure this they should remain in contact with multiple stakeholders such as authors, reviewers, readers, editorial board and publishers to seek their views in this regard. The integrity of academic record, intellectual quality of published work and ethical standards of the journal should remain priority over and above the business needs. Best practices in this regard means editors persuade the publishers for ample resources and guidance from lawyers while also support appropriate systems to reduce publishing misconduct.  The paper submission and acceptance process should assure quality of the material published while the journal should have processes to publish corrections, retractions, clarifications and apologies when needed. The editor should remain abridged with latest research into peer-review and publishing processes and ethical case studies integrating all into one seamless peer review publication process with flow from submission to publication/ revision/ rejection. Freedom of expression should be a ubiquitous policy in scholarly research.

Relationship with Stakeholders

Relationship with Readers

It is ethical responsibility of editor to present a high quality, transparent and use-full piece of academic information in their journals to the readers. The readers should be aware of the integrity of the research they find in form of articles. Separate sections should be established for non-peer review and non-research articles so that they do not get mixed up with peer reviewed research papers. To ensure readers are aware of process by which manuscripts are selected for publications, Readers Insight have highlighted the peer review process in the form of a flowchart. Our journals have taken necessary steps to ensure that submitted manuscript are handled and evaluated objectively and impartially. 

Relationship with Authors

Authors are the main contributors of the scholarly information published in the journals. They have the right to an impartial and objective review of their submitted research work. Therefore, we believe that it is obligation of editors to ensure that decision to accept or reject a paper should be on merit with defined criterion such as quality, originality, significance, clarity, validity and relevance to the journal. We have advices our editors to recommend another journal of Readers Insight if they receive a submission not relevant to their journal. It is ethical obligation of the editors to provide a detailed and updated authors guidelines (including ethical guidelines), establish a transparent, timely and impartial mechanism of peer-review, selecting the most suitable reviewers, not to reverse decision of accepted submission until severe ethical and/or technical issues are identified, establish a mechanism to appeal against editorial decisions, well-defined mechanism of handling cases of author’s grievances and cases of suspected misconduct (guided by COPE flowcharts and existing case studies).

Relations with Reviewers

Peer review is the process by which experts thoroughly and critically analyze the research paper submitted by an author. It is the most credible and widely accepted process to select an author’s research for publication in a journal. It also gives authors an opportunity to improve their quality of publication as reviewers often give recommendations for improvement before a submitted manuscript is accepted for publication. According to COPE best practices guidelines, editors should provide a complete guidance to the reviewers regarding the journals scope, ethical policies, confidentiality of manuscript and everything that is expected of them in the review process. Since readers insight journals uses double blind peer-review (identity of reviewers and authors are hidden from each other), it is duty of editors to ensure that identities of reviewers remain anonymous. We also advise editors to encourage reviewers to evaluate manuscripts for originality (e.g. plagiarism, theft of data, redundant publications) and ethical misconduct. Editors should show vigilance to develop and consistently update a database of suitable reviewers based upon their performance.

Relations with Editorial Board

Editors should provide clear guidance to the editorial board members regarding the scope and policies of the journal and what is their expected functions and duties. Some of the functions of editorial board members include academic support, scholarly contributions, promotion, representation, reviewer, writing editorials and commentaries, participating in board meetings and provide their opinions and ideas for the improvement of the journal. An editor may request an editorial board member or constitute a committee comprising of editorial board members to decide upon matters of ethical misconduct. The editor is responsible for the composition of the editorial board and must act in accordance to the best interest of all stakeholders in this regard.

Relations with Readers Insight

We, at Readers Insight believe in providing editorial independence (which means editors have total responsibility, authority and accountability for the published content of the journal) to our editors and expect them to make independent and on-merit decisions regarding publication which are based on the merits and suitability for the journal. Our editors are in written contract with us which are in line with COPE code of conduct for journal editors. We expect our editors to freely communicate us any issues they are facing regarding journal management, software, hosting, and such as. We also expect our editors to understand our business and marketing needs so that we can operate a sustainable and growing business entity. (Mechanism to handle disagreement between The Editors of the journal and Readers Insight)

Responsibility of Editorial Processes

Editorial and peer-review process is the backbone of a journal management. Editors are expected to devise an editorial and peer-review mechanism which ensures confidential, fair, impartial and timely reviews. The best practice in this regard would be to keep abreast of the latest technological and methodological advances and expert guidance into peer-review process, adopting the best suited method for their journal, is flexible to implement improvements, eradicate weaknesses and provide adequate trainings to the people involved in editorial and peer-review process. We suggest our editors to refer to COPE (flowcharts/case studies / direct contact) if publication misconducts are suspected. It is their responsibility to maintain the standard and integrity of their journal publications. A system should be defined to identify plagiarism, falsified data and redundant submissions. They should define a house style which enhance the standard of reporting and best suited to aims and scope of the journal.

Protection of Individual Data

Editors have obligations to obey laws on confidentiality of data and individual. It is necessary to obtain consent for publication from people who are identifiable in a manuscript. However, in specific cases, if research is based on topic which is in public interest, it is impossible to obtain consent, or the author(s) believe that individual is unlikely to object to publication; the clause of consent may be relaxed.

Research Involving Humans/Animals

We encourage editors to ensure that research which involves human and animal subjects are approved from either an institutional review board or research ethics committee. They should also ensure that research is carried out according to internationally accepted guidelines (e.g. the Declaration of Helsinki for clinical research or the code of ethics of theAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA) ethics for educational research.

Dealing with Potential Cases of Misconduct

It is ethical duty of the editors to take action if they are suspicious towards ethical issues in a manuscript (published or under-review) or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to their notice. Their responsibility towards ethical misconduct is not limited to reject manuscript under question, they are obliged to make reasonable efforts to investigate the alleged misconducts in order to find out the truth and determine the type and severity of misconduct, if any. First they should seek a response form the author(s) of the manuscript. If they are not satisfied with the authors perspective, they should pursue the institute author (s) have indicated affiliation with. In investigating the alleged misconducts, they should follow COPE guidelines available in the forms of flowcharts and case studies.

Managing Conflict of Interests

We encourage editors to publish a list of financial, academic or other kinds of vested interests of themselves, their editorial staff and member of editorial boards. This list should be updated regularly (at least annually). Editors should also declare on their websites the process to handle reviews of manuscript without any bias.

Integrity of Academic Record

Anything that is published in a journal is assumed to be a scientific literature and is often cited as a reference for future development of knowledge. Readers Insight considers it obligatory for editors to take prompt actions to correct errors, inaccurate information, and misleading statement in published manuscripts. Editors should also give their best to identify and reduce possibility of redundant publication.

Commercial vs. Academic Interest

Readers Insight aims to develop a knowledge society and a platform to provide solutions to the critical challenges faced by humanity in the digital age. We encourage our editors to set up policies and system so that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decision. Our marketing and promotion department is independent from editorial department and do not exert any influence on editors. However, we also encourage our editors to keep in mind that journals need to be financially sustainable so that they can bear their own managerial and operational cost. Therefore, we encourage a minimal fee as article processing charges which will be split between the journal management and Readers Insight according to the pre-determined ratio.

Handling complaints

Complaints are part and parcel of running a journal. It is a way for stakeholders (especially authors and readers) to provide feedback to the editor for the improvement of journals. Editors should set a proper mechanism for receiving and responding promptly to the complaints. We encourage our editors to clearly highlight an email address on the landing page of the journal and check it regularly so that they can respond to the complaints within a short time. Moreover, we also expect our editors to make their best effort to solve these complaints as soon as possible. Readers Insight has also provided an email address info@readersinsight.net if the complainant is dissatisfied and wants to take the complaint further.