The SLJMS employs a two-staged evaluation of manuscript submissions, namely, initial Screening and Double-Blind Peer Review. All manuscripts that are submitted to SLJMS are initially screened by the Editorial Team to assess whether;

• – the manuscripts are within the scope of the SLJMS and,
• – the manuscripts are of acceptable quality and in compliance with the SLJMS’s Author Guidelines.

At this point, the manuscript may be rejected if the Editorial Board deems it inappropriate for publication in the Journal due to its unsuitability and quality problems. Each manuscript passing initial screening will be subjected to double-blind peer review process (i.e., neither authors nor peer-reviewers know each other) which involves two independent peer reviewers to whom the manuscripts are sent anonymously. The Editorial Board of SLJMS evaluates all manuscripts submitted together with corresponding review reports by reviewers. SLJMS makes the final decision and recommendation, obtaining advice and observations from the Editorial Board whenever necessary, regarding their publication. Usually, reviewers will complete their reviews within three to four weeks.

Editorial Board members in SLJMS are not entitled to publish their research papers/Book reviews in any of the particular issues they edit. However, the members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for publication in the SLJMS. In such cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting editorial Board member will have no involvement and contribution in the decision-making process.

Articles including supplementary material published in SLJMS undergo through peer review process. The reviews are not posted with materials published or posted on Journal’s webpage or any online repository.

The Journal ensures that contents published are preserved and available for future users. All contents are included in the Issue Archives of Sri Lanka Journals Online (https://sljms.sljol.info/) and OUSL Research Repository (http://repository.ou.ac.lk/).

Publishing Ethics

SLJMS makes every effort to ensure that the content published is ethically sound. To help achieve this goal, it closely follows the advices outlined in the guidelines issued by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The link to access these resources is https://publicationethics.org/

The following are some of the ethical principles followed by SLJMS

• – All manuscripts submitted to this journal should be original and should not have been published before in its current or similar form.
• – The manuscript or any part thereof should not have been submitted elsewhere and should not be under consideration by any other publication.
• – If author(s) has a conflict of interest, it must be declared upon submission. For more details regarding the conflict of interest, please read the research and publishing ethics guidelines issued by COPE.
• – By submitting any work to SLJMS, authors are guaranteeing that the work is not in infringement of any existing copyright.

Affiliations

Authors and co-authors must mention all relevant affiliations to attribute where the research or scholarly work was conducted. If author(s) does not have a current institutional affiliation, independent status should be mentioned.

Authorship

An author is an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of a manuscript. SLJMS recommends that authors listed on an article are expected to fulfill the following criteria

• – Made a substantial contribution to the conception, design of the work, the acquisition, analysis, interpretation of data, or in all these areas.
• – Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
• – Have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted.
• – Reviewed and agreed on all versions of the article before submission, during revision, the final version accepted for publication, and any significant changes introduced at the proofing stage.
• – Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Intellectual Property Rights

Author(s) certify that the submitted manuscript (and any supporting items) is their own intellectual property and the copyright has not been transferred to others.

All manuscripts, revisions, drafts, and galleys remain the intellectual property of the author(s) and author(s) retain the copyright to their work.

Citations

Research articles and non-research articles must cite appropriate and relevant, timely, and verified literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.

Authors should consider the following guidelines when preparing their manuscript:

• – Any statement in the manuscript that relies on external sources of information (i.e. not the authors’ own new ideas or findings or general knowledge) should be supported with a citation
• – Authors should avoid citing derivations of original work. For example, they should cite the original work rather than a review article that cites an original work
• – Authors should ensure that their citations are accurate (i.e. they should ensure the citation supports the statement made in their manuscript and should not misrepresent another work by citing it if it does not support the point the authors wish to make)
• – Authors should not cite sources that they have not read
• – Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications
• – Authors should avoid citing work solely from one country
• – Authors should not use an excessive number of citations to support one point
• – Ideally, authors should cite sources that have undergone peer review where possible
• – Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material

Plagiarism

Trust and integrity are among what readers value the most in scholarly peer-reviewed journal content. SLJMS takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously. This applies to data, images, words or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. The use of any such material either directly or indirectly should be properly acknowledged in all instances. Author(s) should always cite source(s).

Peer Review

Articles published in SLJMS undergo through peer review process. Submissions felt to be suitable for consideration will be sent for peer review by appropriate independent experts identified by the Handling Editor. Editors will make a decision based on the reviewers’ reports and authors are sent these reports along with the editorial decision on their manuscript. Authors should note that even in light of one positive report, concerns raised by another reviewer may fundamentally undermine the study and result in the manuscript being rejected.

Standards of Reporting

Research should be communicated in a way that supports verification and reproducibility, and as such SLJMS encourages authors to provide comprehensive descriptions of their research rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis. The Handling Editor may ask for the full disclosure of the methods and data subject to COPE guidelines (for editorial purposes). The disclosure of data will be considered in the decision of whether to publish the paper.

Corrections and  Retractions

The Journal will issue corrections, retraction statements and other post-publication updates including Editor’s Notes on published content. These corrections include author correction, author name change, publisher correction and addendum.

The Open Access Policy

Your article will be published open access without having to pay an APC (article processing charge) or a submission fee. That is, the publication is free.

This journal fulfils the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) definition of open access.

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Use of Third-party Material

SLJMS operates under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) (CC BY-SA) licence which enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. The full terms of this licence can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 

Authors who have published under this licence may share and distribute their article on websites and repositories immediately upon publication.

All authors publishing with SLJMS accept these as the terms of publication.

Author(s) must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in the article. These materials may include but are not limited to text, illustration, photographs, tables, data, audio, video, or screenshots.

The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material without plagiarism and subject to proper citation (acknowledgment) is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If author(s) wish to include any material in their papers for which they do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, they will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission. SLJMS does not publish any article with permissions for the use of third-party material pending.

Misconduct

SLJMS takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct to protect the integrity of the scholarly record. In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for the Editor to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

Examples of misconduct include but are not limited to:

• – Affiliation misrepresentation
• – Breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions
• – Citation manipulation
• – Duplicate submission/publication
• – Image or data manipulation/fabrication
• – Peer review manipulation
• – Plagiarism
• – Text-recycling/self-plagiarism
• – Undisclosed competing interests
• – Unethical research

Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) usage

• – Copywriting any part of an article using a generative AI tool/Large Language Models (LLM) is not permitted.
• – The generation or reporting of results using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permitted.
• – The in-text reporting of statistics using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permitted.
• – Copy-editing an article using a generative AI tool/LLM in order to improve its language including spelling and grammar, and readability may be permissible. However, the author(s) remains responsible for the original work.
• – The submission and publication of images created by AI tools or large-scale generative models is not permitted.

Policy on Handling Complaints

Once a complaint is received, an acknowledgement is sent to the complainant stating that an appropriate action will be taken on the complaint within five (5) working days from the receipt of the complaint.

The investigation process begins by the Managing Editor(s) as per the direction of the Editor-In-Chief. After the investigation is complete, a meeting is held and the decision taken is communicated by email.

The Journal considers complaints as an opportunity to improve the editorial process and practices. All complaints received are dealt in a timely manner maintaining the confidentiality of the complaints, unless otherwise required by the law or COPE guidelines on publication ethics.

The journal does not entertain anonymous complaints.

Allegations of Research Misconduct

All academic misconducts including ethical issues are dealt with due care in the following manner:

The editorial office receives a complaint relating to any material (e.g. article, case studies, book reviews etc.) submitted to or published in the SLJMS which is subject to academic misconduct.

It is the responsibility of the complainant to ensure that the complaint clearly and specifically details the nature of the misconduct and the manner in which it occurred (e.g., plagiarism, copyright violation, etc.). The complainant should clearly identify the material that is subject to misconduct and highlight the original work.

The editorial office will conduct an investigation into the matter, and the authors will be asked to provide an explanation, along with evidence, for the alleged misconduct.

If the author(s) accepts the misconduct and if the misconduct is rectifiable, the editorial office will take the following actions depending on the circumstances.

• – If the material has been published, an erratum or retraction will be issued rectifying the issue.
• – In the case of non-response by the author(s) within the stipulated time or failure to provide a satisfactory explanation, the article may be retracted or rejected if it is under review process

If the author(s) disagree with the complained misconduct, it will be dealt in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines

If the author(s) disagree with the alleged misconduct, it will be addressed in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines https://publicationethics.org/.

The complainant will be informed of the outcome, and the case will be closed

If author(s) have a conflict of interest, it must be declared upon submission. This allows the editor to evaluate the situation in which the conflict of interest occurred and decide on how the editors would like to proceed with the editorial work.

The editorial team closely follows the advice outlined in the guidelines and flowcharts on the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) website.