Publication Ethics

The Wasit Journal of Computer and Mathematics Science (WJCM) and its editorial board strictly abide by the Core Practices and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors are presumed to have a working knowledge of publication ethics, including those related to authorship, duplicate submission, plagiarism, data fabrication, and conflicts of interest. Concerning incidents of possible misconduct, we adhere to COPE’s norms and processes and consult the COPE Forum for guidance.

Ethical Considerations and Permission

Submissions describing research investigations must include the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board, the approved reference number/ID, and a statement that participants gave their informed consent before participating. Research approved by an institutional review board or research ethics committee may nevertheless be subject to additional editorial inquiries from reviewers concerned with the study’s ethical implications. Studies involving human participants, human tissue, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by an authorized ethics committee. If the editors find that a study was not conducted according to proper ethical guidelines, they reserve the right to reject the submission and may consult the relevant institution’s ethics committee as necessary.

We reserve the right to contact authors’ institutions, funders, or regulatory organizations if we find it necessary to investigate allegations of publishing misconduct, both before and after publication. If there is sufficient proof of misconduct, corrective procedures will be taken, which may include the publication of a correction or retraction.

Retrospective ethical clearance: If a study did not obtain ethical clearance before beginning, it is usually not possible to obtain it retrospectively, and the submission may not be considered for peer review. It is at the discretion of the journal’s editors whether to send such submissions out for review.

Informed Consent and Participant Privacy

To protect the privacy of individuals involved in research, authors must ensure that all personal data is fully anonymised. Names, initials, precise locations, or other identifying characteristics should be removed or masked in all narrative descriptions, data tables, and supplementary materials. Research involving human participants must follow the principle of “privacy by design”, ensuring that data cannot be traced back to an individual.

Informed consent for publication: For any research involving human subjects, authors must obtain written informed consent for publication from the participants (or their legal guardians) before submission. Consent is mandatory if there is any possibility that a participant could recognize themselves in the data or images (e.g., facial features, unique medical conditions, or specific case-study details). Authors do not need to submit the consent forms to the journal, to protect participant privacy, but they must state in their manuscript that informed consent was obtained. The journal reserves the right to request proof of consent if necessary.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors of research and non-research articles must disclose any conflicts of interest that could affect the peer review, presentation, editorial decision-making, or publication of their papers. A conflict of interest occurs when a professional’s objectivity is compromised by employment, personal profit, consultancy, stock holdings or options, patents, honoraria, or paid expert testimony unrelated to the primary interest. Having competing interests is not inherently unethical, but they must be disclosed. Authors must declare any conflicts of interest both in the cover letter and in the “competing interests” section of the submission form; where none exist, the authors should state that they have no competing interests in creating and disseminating the work. The Editor may request further information if a potential conflict of interest is suspected. Failure to declare competing interests may lead to rejection; if new information about a disclosed conflict emerges after publication, WJCM will follow COPE standards and inform readers.

If an editor or reviewer has a conflict of interest, they must disclose it and will be removed from the peer-review process. No WJCM editor may have financial ties to any organization whose interests relate to the content they handle.

Financial conflicts of interest include compensation from an organization that stands to gain or lose financially from the publication of the work (reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary); ownership of, or intent to acquire, stocks or shares in such an organization; and holding, or actively seeking, patents related to the subject matter of the work.

Non-financial conflicts of interest include competing interests that are personal, political, ideological, academic, or intellectual in nature.

Authorship

An author is a person who has made significant intellectual contributions to a published work. Consistent with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), authorship requires all four of the following:

Substantial contribution in the formative stages, such as conception, design, or the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.
Drafting the work or critically revising it for important intellectual content.
Final approval of the version to be published.
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including investigating and resolving any questions about its accuracy or integrity.

Only those who fulfil all four criteria should be listed as authors. Contributions such as funding acquisition, data collection, technical support, writing assistance, or general supervision of the research group do not by themselves qualify a person for authorship; such contributors should be credited in the Acknowledgments section.

Deceased authors: If a manuscript is submitted with an author who has passed away, or an author passes away during peer review, the corresponding author or co-authors should inform the editorial office. If the deceased author was the corresponding author, the co-authors should appoint a replacement. The corresponding author must verify the deceased author’s contributions and any potential conflicts of interest. A note will be added under the list of authors upon publication.

Changes to authorship: Authors are expected to settle authorship carefully before submission. Any modification to the author list — addition, removal, or reordering — requires the approval of all authors, including those to be removed, via a completed authorship change form signed by all authors and stating the reason for the change. Requests made after acceptance will delay publication; if the manuscript has already been published, approved changes will be announced through a published Correction. Acceptance of post-acceptance changes is at the discretion of the WJCM editorial board.

Authorship disputes: WJCM adheres to COPE guidelines in resolving authorship disputes arising during processing or after publication. In line with COPE, the journal does not adjudicate authorship contributions, and disputes over authorship do not normally lead to retraction where there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings. Where the parties cannot resolve a dispute, WJCM will seek a final decision from the appropriate institution or governing body and reserves the right to modify authorship lists based on its recommendation.

Acknowledgments: An Acknowledgments section must list the names and contributions of anyone who assisted with the work but does not meet all four authorship criteria, with their consent to be named. Grants, institutional funding, and commercial sponsorship must be stated, as must payments to consultants and investigators, and any professional writing assistance.

Author Responsibilities

All authors must follow the WJCM publication policy and writing style, and must sign a declaration confirming compliance with these standards.
Authors must not submit their work to more than one journal at the same time.
Authors must submit original work that has not been published elsewhere in any form or language, unless the new work is an extension of the former one.
The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining approval from all co-authors participating in the manuscript.
The corresponding author acts as the editorial office’s correspondent and may edit and revise text and proofs.

Editor Responsibilities

The editorial team is responsible for the approval of manuscripts submitted to WJCM for publication, and for the integrity and validity of the research it publishes.
The Editor-in-Chief and editorial board members must keep all information related to a submitted manuscript secure and confidential until it is published.
The Editor-in-Chief and editorial board members must prevent conflicts of interest and disclose them where they arise.
The editorial team is responsible for transparency regarding self-publication.
The editorial team instructs reviewers to identify potential misconduct and ethical issues in submissions, such as improper data manipulation or unethical research design, and expects reviewers to alert it to duplicate publication and plagiarism.
The editorial team forwards all reviewers’ comments to the authors, except those containing insulting or libelous material.
The editorial team takes all precautions to guarantee the standard of the content it publishes, considering that different sections have varying standards and objectives.
The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team decide whether or not to publish submitted papers.
Editors are selected from all subject areas and international institutions based on their scientific achievements and publication track record, with disclosure of potential conflicts of interest per COPE requirements, and compliance is audited regularly.

Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers assist the editorial team in making decisions on submitted manuscripts.
Reviewers should undertake the review process constructively; comments and opinions must be supported by arguments, and personal criticism is improper.
Reviewers who are unable to review a manuscript for any reason are encouraged to recommend alternative reviewers.
Reviewers are required to maintain the confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts.
Reviewers should be impartial and free of bias, and must declare any conflict of interest that could influence their assessment.
Reviewers must notify the editorial team if a submission does not meet the journal’s publication standards, of any suspected misconduct in the submitted work, and of any significant overlap between the manuscript under review and any other published work known to them.
Reviewers must not use concepts or information from the articles they have evaluated for their own gain.

Peer Review Policy

All research articles and most other article types undergo rigorous peer review by two impartial subject-matter experts. Editors decide which submissions proceed to review; an editor who is an author of a submission, or who has a competing interest in the work, will not handle its review. WJCM applies a single-blind peer-review process involving two external reviewers, in which the reviewers’ anonymity is protected. Editorial decisions are based on the reviewers’ reports, and both the decision and the reports are provided to the authors. A paper may be rejected despite a positive report if other reviewers raise serious concerns that cast doubt on the study’s reliability.

Suggested reviewers: Authors may suggest potential peer reviewers in the cover letter, providing verifiable contact details where possible (e.g., an institutional email address, ORCID, or Scopus ID); recent collaborators or colleagues at the author’s own institution should not be suggested. Authors may also request the exclusion of specific reviewers with justification, though excluding too many people may slow the review process. The decision to use or decline suggested reviewers rests entirely with the editor. Deliberately falsifying reviewer information, such as suggesting reviewers with a false name or email address, is a violation of our misconduct policy and may result in rejection and further investigation.

Confidentiality: All submissions are treated in confidence by the editors, and reviewers have the same duty. WJCM will not disclose submitted papers to outside parties except in cases of suspected misconduct.

Author Information and ORCID

Author names and affiliations are published exactly as provided by the corresponding author at the time of submission, and authors must submit data consistent with their previous publications so that bibliographic indexes and databases record them correctly. Authors will be asked to review and approve the presentation of their author data before publication, to limit changes during proofreading or after publication.

WJCM encourages the use of ORCID iDs. The first and corresponding authors of every submission, and anyone selected as a peer reviewer, must disclose their ORCID iDs, and all editorial board members must list their ORCID iDs on their profiles.

Citations

All articles, including non-research articles such as reviews and commentaries, are expected to cite appropriate and relevant literature to support their claims. Excessive or inappropriate self-citation, and coordinated efforts by groups of authors to cite each other’s work, are strongly discouraged. Authors should observe the following:

Any assertion that relies on external sources of information should be accompanied by a reference, citing the original work rather than a derivative work that cites it.
Authors should verify that each citation genuinely supports the statement it accompanies, and should not cite sources they have not read.
Authors should not preferentially cite their own work or that of friends, peers, or their institution, should avoid citing works from only a single country, and should not support a point with an excessive number of citations.
Wherever possible, authors should cite peer-reviewed sources, and should avoid citing advertisements or advertorials.

Duplicate Publication and Text Recycling

Submissions to WJCM must be completely original and must not be under consideration for publication anywhere else while in review. Authors must disclose all related publications at the time of submission, including copies where possible, and note any overlapping content. Any “in press” or unpublished manuscripts cited in the article that the Editor or reviewers consider essential must be made available. Prior publication of the submitted manuscript in a journal or other citable medium is not permitted; exceptions, such as material previously presented as a conference poster or talk, must be explained clearly at the time of submission. It is at WJCM’s discretion to determine whether two publications constitute redundant publication.

Text recycling: Reusing text from an author’s own previously published works must be clearly acknowledged, appropriately cited, and compliant with copyright. Authors should notify the editors in the cover letter if their submission reuses content from elsewhere.

Plagiarism Screening

Every article is screened with the Turnitin plagiarism-detection service before publication. Plagiarism includes, without limitation: copying text directly from other sources; taking concepts, images, or data from another source without attribution; reusing text from previously published works; and using an idea from another source with only minor linguistic modification. Submissions found to contain plagiarism during peer review may be rejected. If plagiarism is identified after publication, we reserve the right to issue a correction or retract the work, following COPE guidelines, and our policy is to report instances of plagiarism to the authors’ institutions.

Image Integrity

Digital images in submitted papers are analyzed for evidence of manipulation. Nothing may be altered, concealed, moved, removed, or added within an image. Adjustments to brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable only if they are applied to the whole image and do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent any information present in the original; non-linear adjustments (such as gamma changes) must be disclosed in the figure caption. Where images from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields, or exposures are grouped, the figure structure (e.g., dividing lines) and legend must make this clear. Editors may request the original raw data during or after peer review; failure to provide primary source materials may result in rejection or, for published articles, retraction. Suspected inappropriate manipulation will be reported to the authors’ institutions.

Misconduct

Allegations of research or publication misconduct are taken very seriously and handled according to COPE standards. Where there is reason to believe misconduct has occurred, the editor may contact the authors’ institution, funders, or ethics committee, and WJCM may consult COPE and discuss anonymized cases in the COPE Forum. A publication may be retracted if the authors are shown to have engaged in research misconduct or if the scientific integrity of the work is substantially compromised.

Use of AI Tools in Writing

WJCM strongly advises authors against employing AI tools or large language models to generate scientific papers. While such tools can produce human-like text, their use in generating scholarly work raises concerns about authorship, accountability, and scientific integrity. Authors must take personal responsibility for the content they submit and be able to account for the research process, methods, and data presented. In line with COPE’s guidance on authorship, accountability, and transparency, authors submitting to WJCM are expected to actively conduct the research and writing themselves, so that their papers reflect their own expertise, insight, and intellectual effort.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

Corrections and retractions are rare but necessary for the integrity of the scholarly record. Changes to an article after publication are made only after a careful review process compliant with COPE guidelines, and every correction is accompanied by a post-publication notification. Errata and retraction notices are published as separate, indexed items with a prominent link from the original article, and both versions remain publicly available. Content is removed from the website and archive sites only in the exceptional case that it is found to violate rights or to be defamatory. Where a co-author withdraws from a paper after publication, an erratum is issued. Authors may also add a comment to a published article to note changes, provided the changes do not affect the article’s findings and conclusions.

Post-Publication Discussion

The journal encourages academic debate and transparency through post-publication discussion. Readers may submit Letters to the Editor regarding published articles to offer scientific critiques or further insights. Upon receiving a substantive letter, the journal will invite the original authors to provide a formal Author Response. Both the Letter and the Response are subject to editorial review and, at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, may undergo external peer review. If a discussion reveals a significant error, the journal will issue a formal correction or erratum in accordance with our ethical guidelines.

Appeals and Complaints

Appeals: Authors may appeal a rejection if they can demonstrate a specific error in the review process or a misunderstanding of the scientific content. A formal letter with a point-by-point rebuttal must be sent to the Editor-in-Chief within 14 days of the decision. The Editor-in-Chief or an independent Editorial Board member will evaluate the case.

Complaints: The journal takes all complaints regarding publication ethics (e.g., plagiarism, authorship disputes, or reviewer conduct) and editorial or publishing processes seriously. Complaints should be submitted in writing to the Editorial Office at wjcm@uowasit.edu.iq. The Editor-in-Chief investigates each complaint impartially, in accordance with COPE guidelines, and may consult the Editorial Board. Receipt is acknowledged within 5 working days, and we aim to provide a resolution within 30 days. If a complaint is substantiated, the journal will take corrective action, which may include a formal apology, correction, expression of concern, or retraction.

Contact for all appeals and complaints: wjcm@uowasit.edu.iq