Publication Ethics
Human Rights Education Review is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices. The journal adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.
HRER journal editors follow the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors and we encourage reviewers to refer to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Any allegations of misconduct will be investigated in accordance with the COPE Best Practice Guidelines as far as is practicable.
Authorship and contributorship
Human Rights Education Review refers to the ICMJE definitions of authorship and expects all published articles to contain correct and clear information about authorship. It is not the role of the Editor to determine who qualifies or not for the authorship. It is the sole responsibility of the author(s) to ensure that everyone who made a significant scientific contribution is fairly acknowledged and that the published author list correctly reflects individual contributions. According to the widely recognised Vancouver protocol on authorship, four criteria must be fulfilled for someone to qualify as a co-author of a paper: the person in question must have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
Requests for changes to authorship shall be directed to the Managing Editor. Changes in authorship will only be permitted where valid reasons are provided, and all authors have approved the change.
Any allegation of ghost, guest, or gift authorship will be investigated in accordance with the COPE guidelines. Where such practices are identified the authors in question will be removed from an article through a post-publication correction or erratum.
Conflicts of interests
Conflicts of interests occurs when issues outside research might be seen as influencing the objectivity of the work or its assessment.
Human Rights Education Review is committed to transparency of potential conflicts of interests as they relate to authors, editors and peer reviewers.
It is the responsibility of a manuscript’s corresponding author to confirm if co-authors hold any conflict of interest. At the point of submission, the corresponding author is required to include a statement that the author(s) have disclosed any conflict of interest. Submissions with undeclared conflicts of interests may be rejected or, if already published, reassessed or retracted.
Editors are required to declare any conflicts of interests at the point of agreeing their position and update them annually. They are also required to declare themselves unfit to handle individual manuscripts if they themselves have a potential conflict of interest.
Human Rights Education Review uses a double-blind peer review type. However, if a reviewer discovers any competing interests, s/he is expected to inform the editor who should select alternative reviewers. Failure to declare conflict of interest may result in removal of the reviewer from the journal database.
Ethical oversight
Authors are normally required, on submission, to confirm that they have obtained ethical clearance for their research from an appropriate body in the jurisdiction in which they are based. This may be, for example, clearance from their university, or in some cases, from a national body managing ethical clearance. Ethical oversight may include, but is not limited to, the informed consent of research subjects; research approval relating to vulnerable populations; ethical conduct of research involving human subjects; and handling confidential data.
Peer review process
Human Rights Education Review will only publish manuscripts that have been through a double-blind peer review process. This will be conducted by two or more independent referees whose field of expertise is pertinent to the subject area. The journal ensures full editorial quality of all submissions. The Handling Editor considers the manuscript and the reviewers’ comments before making a final decision either to accept, to request revisions or to reject a manuscript. Until the manuscript is published, it will be treated with confidentiality by the editorial team and reviewers in terms of all personal information.
Intellectual property
When a paper is accepted for publication in Human Rights Education Review, the author retains copyright. Copyright allows the authors to protect and promote their work and stop others from using it without the authors’ permission.
Authors who publish with Human Rights Education Review agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Errors and misconduct
Human Rights Education Review is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s responsibility to promptly notify the Editor and cooperate to retract or correct the paper through the publication of an erratum. The same applies when the Editors find a significant error in a published article for which a correction needs to be made.
In cases where a correction or a retraction is necessary, and in all instances where there is reason for concern about issues such as plagiarism, fabrication of research, duplicate publication, or failure to disclose conflicts of interest, the Editor will examine and resolve the issue in consultation with other members of the Editorial Team. In the event of research misconduct, the Editors may subject future submissions to stricter scrutiny or withhold the possibility of further publication in HRER for a period of two years.