PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

The Journal of African Language Teachers’ Association (JALTA) commits to following best practices on ethics in relation to academic and professional publications. The editorial board of the journal is responsible for preventing plagiarism and other forms of publication malpractice. Authors must submit original contents to the journal and confirm this when they are required to.

The duties outlined below for authors, editors, and reviewers are based on the policies of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct for Journal Editors. Authors, editors, and reviewers should also follow the guidelines of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) and the COPE International Standards for Authors.

Duties of Editor

Publication Decisions: In line with external reviews, the editor decides whether to accept or reject a manuscript or request that it be modified.

Review of Manuscripts: Editors must focus on originality when evaluating a manuscript. After desk review, every manuscript will be sent out for blind peer review. The editors will use the outcome of this decision to accept, reject, or request the modification of the manuscripts.

Fair Review: Editors must consider intellectual values and not sex/gender, religion, race, or nationality among others when accepting manuscripts for JALTA.

Confidentiality: Information about manuscripts and identities of authors are confidential and the editors must treat them as such.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Editors must not use information in an unpublished manuscript for personal benefit.

The editors of JALTA will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research without the written consent of the author.

Duties of Authors

Authorship Status: This is either author or co-author. An author is a person who originally and significantly conceived, designed, executed, and interpreted a study. A co-author significantly contributes to the study. Authors and co-authors must agree on the version of the manuscript submitted and authorship status.

Originality: Authors must present an entirely original work that is based on their original research.

Citation and Acknowledgment: Authors must cite all publications that influence their work and acknowledge their data sources.

Concurrent Publication: Authors should not submit a manuscript that is already accepted or published in another journal or book.

Data Access: For manuscripts based on primary/raw data, authors should make the data accessible for editorial review.

Discrepancies: If authors notice any significant discrepancies between their published works and the final version of their manuscripts that was processed for publishing, they should report such discrepancies to the editor.

Duties of Reviewers

Confidentiality: Reviewers should make information about the manuscripts given to them confidential.

Objectivity: Reviewers should be objective about the manuscripts given to them. They should support their views about the manuscripts with clear and constructive arguments.

Promptness: Whenever a reviewer thinks a manuscript cannot be completely reviewed within the given period, they should reach out to the editor to send the manuscript to another reviewer.