fore1. Open Access Journal

Al-‘Ulūm Journal of Islamic Studies is a peer reviewed, open access journal. All research articles published in the Al-‘Ulūm are fully open access and immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship as well as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

Notes:

Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

2. Publication Fee & Monetry Ploicy 

All articles published in al-‘Ulūm are open access and freely available online, immediately upon publication. Al-Karam International Institute, Bhera Sargodha, Pakistan bear all of expenses regarding peer review administration, professional production of articles in PDF, other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions, from its own budget. The Institute has spared and specified a budget to run the biannual research journal al-‘Ulūm. Therefore, al-‘Ulūm does not charge any article submission fee, Article Processing Charge (APC), or Article Publication Fee (APF) from authors. Al-‘Ulūm also does not charge any fee for the length of an article, figures, or supplementary data. All the items (Manuscripts, Editorials, Teaching Modules, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.

3. Plagiarism Policy / Originality

Al-‘Ulūm believes in quality research and consequently, there is no space for plagiarism. Plagiarism is considered a breach of Journalistic ethics and is an intellectual crime. Al-‘Ulūm will never tolerate plagiarism as It has a very clear policy regarding this.

Distortion of facts, copying or stealing of others’ creative work, duplicating and reproducing an author’s own already published work, are all considered undesirable and adverse practices. Therefore, the plagiarism of all received manuscripts is checked through the software before sending them for blind peer review.

Authors caught plagiarizing face disciplinary measures. Al-‘Ulūm will take strict actions regarding this as following:

• A ‘Plagiarism Standing Committee’ is to be handled for investigation. Clear terms of reference will be provided to the ‘Plagiarism Standing Committee’ for their investigation.
• Under investigation, an opportunity to the author will be provided to justify the originality of their concepts and research work.
• Plagiarism Standing Committee shall conduct the investigation and submit its report with clear-cut findings and recommendations to the editor journal within a specific period not exceeding 60 days.
• The Editor al-‘Ulūm will have the discretion to implement the recommendations after approval through the statutory process and take punitive actions against the offender as per penalties prescribed under the HEC policy or to forward the report to HEC for further actions.

It is the responsibility of the authors to prove the originality of their research by ensuring that ideas are not stolen, the citation is original and proper, no rephrasing is made from someone other’s thought, and the results and conclusion drawn are obtained from the original research of the author. The work presented for publication must be related to the author’s original research.

4. Review Policy

To ensure the excellence of the publication of the article in al-‘Ulūm, a complete, thorough, comprehensive, and confidential review is adopted. The review is made by independent and competent scholars who give their recommendations on the article being presented for publication.

 Selection of Reviewers

A careful selection of national and international reviewers is made keeping in view their area of research. To get an unbiased review, the names of reviewers are kept confidential, all works submitted for publication are reviewed objectively without regard to authors’ race, gender, religious view, ethnicity, citizenship, political tendency, age end reputation.

Tasks of Editor

• Decision for publication
• To ensure Objectivity
• To keep the process Confidential

 Declaration of opinion by Editor / Reviewers 

Reviewers of al-‘Ulūm provide an explanatory short paragraph(s) reflecting their opinions proof of objectivity in the review process, al-‘Ulūm expects free declaration of opinion from authors, editor, and reviewers. Hence reviewers are expected to avoid any arrangements that might potentially influence their recommendations or decisions of agreement or disagreement.

 Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewing process is expected to be academic, honest, courteous, precise and constructive. The basic characteristics of & high quality review ere the followings:

• The reviewers should outline weak and strong expects of the work with respect to its organization end methodology and also comment on each of these.
• The reviewers should express their opinions on the work concerning whether it has unethical content or below the standard for acceptance,
• The reviewers should give helpful suggestions for the improvement of the research work.
• The reviewers should have constructive and professional critiques addressed to the authors.
• The reviewers should provide a fair perspective to have a decision of acceptance (or revision).
• The reviewers are expected to identify the works that do not include citations or have not cited usage of other works end specify which parts are reproduced by the author without citation.
• The reviewers should also state the outstanding similarities between the works submitted to al-‘Ulūm and any other study published in another journal.
• The reviewers should not contact the author directly or indirectly. If a referee is not able to review the work or complete the review with some delay, he/she should inform the editor in time,
• If the reviewers suspect a violation, they can inform the editor about this easily and they should not share the issue with others unless they receive a directive concerning this.

Review Process

All manuscripts submitted are sent for a ‘double blind’ peer-review process in order to produce quality research. Referees do not know the name of the authors whose papers they review. Peer reviewers are asked to give their opinion about significant issues relating to the originality and quality of the article and to judge papers.

Al-‘Ulūm follows a three-tier review process.

• In the first tier, each paper is run on the anti-plagiarism software and reviewed for relevance by the coordinators of the editorial committee.
• In the second stage, if the article is found to be relevant and plagiarism-free, the paper is sent to the reviewers:  international and national. Suggestions by the reviewers are strictly implemented by sending the papers back to the authors.
• In the third and the final stage, the editorial team analyzes whether the recommended changes (where applicable) have been incorporated or not, and a decision about acceptance of the paper is made. Only papers of the highest research quality are accepted for publication.

5. Ethical Policy

Approval of an article to be published in al-‘Ulūm will be subjected to the following conditions:

• The article must not contribute to hate literature, extremism, sectarianism, and anti-state views.
• The author must be agreed on the content of the article on its submission to the journal.
• The article, partially or completely, should not be published before in any language.
• An article submitted to al-‘Ulūm for publication must not be submitted to another journal during the review process.
• If a draft submitted to al-‘Ulūm includes figures, tables, or long text blocks that have been published before, the author is responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright owners. All copyrighted elements should be specified appropriately in the draft submitted to al-‘Ulūm.

 6. Privacy Policy

The information and opinions given by the reviewers during the review process are all kept confidential and are never used for the advantage of anyone. The submission of an article, as a special presentation, is kept confidential completely. Before the publication of an article, the reviewers and editor cannot utilize the data, ideas, or subjects without the permission of the author.

7. Publishing and Copyright Policy

In principle, articles are published after necessary reviews, revisions, and approval in respect to their submission order, however in some exceptional cases where the research is extraordinary and worthwhile; the order can be changed with the decision of the editorial board for which the authors are informed accordingly.

Al-‘Ulūm is an official journal of Al-Karam International Institute, Bhera Sargodha. The article once published in al-‘Ulūm, cannot be published elsewhere without the written permission of al-‘Ulūm.

8. Accessibility Policy

“Al-‘Ulūm” has a policy of open access. All published articles and reviews can be accessed from the address https://alulum.net/archive/

An electronic copy of the article will be sent to the corresponding author of the article. Moreover, a hard copy of the al-‘Ulūm will also be sent to each of the authors free of cost.

Authors can be asked to show the sources which are used in the article during the review process hence he/she is bound to provide access to the sources. Moreover, it is also recommended for the authors to withhold the sources and data for a short period after the publication.

9. Letter of Acceptance

A letter of acceptance can be issued by the editor on request to the author after positive reviews from all the reviewers.