Aims
- To develop professional scholarly journal publishing in line with international standards of transparency and publication ethics.
- To help the journals it publishes meet the requirements of international indexing and archiving services.
- To support editors, reviewers and authors through guidance and training workshops.
- To make research freely available to all readers through open access.
Commitment to COPE
Afarand is not itself a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It follows the COPE Core Practices and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME). Journals published by Afarand may hold COPE membership in their own right; each journal's website states its own COPE status.
Afarand:
- Follows these principles and encourages the editors it works with to follow COPE guidance for journal editors.
- Ensures that the editors of journals that are COPE members are aware of what their membership provides and entails.
- Provides reasonable practical support to editors so that they can follow COPE guidance.
Afarand defines the relationship between the publisher, the journal owner, the editor and other parties in a contract, and in doing so:
- Respects privacy (for example, of research participants, authors and peer reviewers).
- Protects intellectual property and copyright.
- Fosters editorial independence.
Afarand works with journal editors to:
- Set journal policies appropriately and aim to meet them, particularly with respect to editorial independence; research ethics, including confidentiality, consent and the special requirements for human and animal research; authorship; transparency and integrity (for example, conflicts of interest, research funding and reporting standards); peer review and the role of the editorial team beyond that of the journal editor; and appeals and complaints.
- Communicate journal policies to authors, readers and peer reviewers.
- Review journal policies periodically, particularly in the light of new COPE guidance.
- Maintain the integrity of the academic record.
- Assist the parties (for example, institutions, funders and governing bodies) responsible for investigating suspected research and publication misconduct and, where possible, help to resolve these cases.
- Publish corrections, clarifications and retractions.
- Publish content on a timely basis.