Al-‘Ulūm is a biannual research journal of Al-Karam International Institute (AKII), Bhera, Pakistan which is a federally charted institute by the government of Pakistan. Al-Karam International Institute frequently publishes two issues of Al-‘Ulūm annually: in June and December. However, Editorial board may decide to publish a special issue other than its frequency. Furthermore, Editorial board may change its frequency with the consent of authority of the Institute.

Al-‘Ulūm pays impartial consideration to all research papers submitted for publication disregard the discriminating factors, e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, cultural sentiments, political affiliation, seniority and/or institutional association of the author(s) and submitted manuscripts are accepted or rejected purely on the basis of merit, academic standards and professional demands.

Al-‘Ulūm publishes or reject any article upon the given below criteria:

1. The content of an article should match with the scope and objectives of Al-‘Ulūm.
2. Only academically and scientifically sound articles are selected. Al-‘Ulūm publishes the articles that meet research methodology standards and obtain more than 60% scores by evaluation. So, if an article is non-scholarly composed, lacking research methodology it would be rejected.
3. Editorial Board members (including the Editor) are not allowed to publish their paper as a principal investigator or co- author.
4. Only one co-authorship is allowed for those authors who also contribute a research paper as a principal investigator in the same issue.

Al-‘Ulūm Journal of Islamic Studies is a peer reviewed and an open access journal. All research articles published in the Al-‘Ulūm are fully open access and immediately freely available to read, download, and share. 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.

The authors have to pay Processing/Publishing Charges: (PKR=20,000 only, Non Refundable) after successful peer-review of the article.

Al-Karam International Institute (AKII), Bhera, Pakistan bears all of administrative expenses regarding 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. Al-‘Ulūm also does not charge any extra 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.

Al-‘Ulūm believes in quality research. Consequently, plagiaried work is considered a breach of Journalistic ethics and is an intellectual crime.  Al-‘Ulūm does not tolerate the plagiarism beyond the tolerenace level set by HEC, Pakistan in this regard.

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.

The authors who are involved in plagiarizing act beyond the tolerenace level set by HEC, Pakistan, will face disciplinary measures. Al-‘Ulūm will take strict actions in this regard as follows:

• ‘Plagiarism Standing Committee’ which will be provided the clear terms of reference will conduct the investigation accordingly.
• The author(s) will be given an opportunity to justify the originality of their concepts and research work during the investigation.
• Plagiarism Standing Committee will submit its report with certain findings and recommendations to the editor journal within a specific period of 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.

The al-‘Ulūm has adopted a comprehensive and confidential review procedure to enusre the best quality of resaerch before it got published in it. The al-‘Ulūm gets reviews form independent and competent scholars with their recommendations for the authors.

 Selection of Reviewers

The al-‘Ulūm, carefully, selects the National and international reviewers subject to their areas of interest. To get an unbiased review, the names of authors are kept confidential. All research work submitted for publication are reviewed objectively irrespective of authors’ race, gender, religious view, ethnicity, citizenship, political tendency, age and reputation.

Tasks of Editor

• Decision for publication
• ensuring the objectivity
• keeping the review process Confidential

 Declaration of opinion by Editor / Reviewers 

Reviewers of al-‘Ulūm provide an explanatory short paragraph(s) reflecting their opinions and proof of objectivity in the review process. The 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

The reviewers are expected to complete the review process with academic, honest, courteous, precise, and constructive manners. To fulfil the basic characteristics of high quality review, the reviewers are;

• expected to conduct constructive and professional criticism.
• expected to highlight the weak and strong aspects of the work w.r.t. its structure, format, methodology, theme of the work, and reference. They are also expected to add their comments on each of these aspectes.
• expected to provide fruitful suggestions for the improvement of the presented research work.
• expected to express their true, unbiased, and fair opinions regarding the work whether it publishable or not.
• expected to provide a fair judgement whether the reviewed work is publishable after major or minor changes.
• expected to identify the missmatch between citation(s) and referenec(s), missed reference(s), or error(s) if any.
• expected to identify that the reviewed work has already been poblished or pirated/translated version of any other published work.
• expected not to contact the author(s) directly or indirectly.
• expected to inform the editor in time, If a reviewer is not able to review the work or complete the review without some delay.
• expected to inform the editor about any intlectual violation in the work without sharing the issue with others.

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 tested on the anti-plagiarism software and reviewed for relevance by the coordinators of the editorial committee.
• In the second stage, the paper is sent to the National and international reviewers, if the article is found to be relevant and plagiarism-free. The kind suggestion of the reviewers are strictly implemented by sending the papers back to the authors for changes (minor/major) accordingly.
• In the third and the final stage, the editorial team analyzes whether the recommended changes (where applicable) have been incorporated, and then it is decided to accept or reject the paper. Only papers of the highest research quality are accepted for publication.

To accept the paper in addition to the  completion of aforementioned procedure, Al-‘Ulūm also considers the following conditions;

• The article must not contribute to hate literature, extremism, sectarianism, and anti-state views.
• The author must be agreed to al-‘Ulūm that the content of the article is free from hate literature, extremism, sectarianism, and anti-state views.
• 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.

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.

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.

“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.

A letter of acceptance can be issued by the editor on request to the author after positive reviews from all the reviewers and the compliance with all other prerequisite conditions aforementioned.