Nepal Public Policy Review

Connecting research to policy

 

Journal Policies (January 2025)

Nepal Public Policy Review upholds the seven core values of the Policy Research Institute, namely, quality, diversity, integrity, objectivity, transparency, engagement, and accountability. It follows the universal publication ethics and quality standards. NPPR has adopted the following major policies to adhere to these values and standards.

Membership

The NPPR is planning to be a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics and is the journal is guided by the Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing, along with other COPE resources and guidance.

Authorship

For the Nepal Public Policy Review, the author of the paper is the person who has made a significant contribution in (1) designing the research AND collecting and analyzing the data AND/OR drafting and revising the report, AND (2) has approved the submitted and subsequent modified versions of the paper, AND (3) is accountable for their own contributions as well as those of co-authors.

In the case of policy research, as they use well-known concepts, the conception of research alone does not qualify a person to be an author, unless the concept is novel and intellectually arduous.

The NPPR requires an Author Contribution Statement in the manuscript. The statement should be honest and transparent. The NPPR Secretariat has the right to request verification of the authors' contributions.

The NPPR team is frank in acknowledging that there may be a culture of unfairly granting or denying authorship (commonly known as ‘ghost authorship,’ ‘gift/honorific authorship,’ ‘forged authorship,’ ‘orphan authorship,’ 'unwarranted hyperauthorship,’ or 'bureaucratic authorship’—in scholarly publications in Nepal and other places. Therefore, we have a policy to exercise extra caution regarding the authorship of the papers going to be published in the NPPR.

For more information and an ethical position on the transparency in the author’s contribution, McNutt et al (2018) can be consulted. Visit: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715374115.

Conflict of interest

Author(s) must disclose by a declaration while submitting their manuscripts any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations (such as benefit, reward, position, relation, legal action, membership, etc.) that could influence the research work. Conflict of interest not related to the research and manuscript before, during, or after the publication should not be declared.

Financial support received for the research should be disclosed in the Acknowledgement section.

The NPPR also has a policy for disclosing conflicts of interest by editors and peer reviewers when they handle manuscripts.

Ethics

Research related to human health must adhere to the National Ethical Guidelines for Health Research in Nepal 2022 and must declare ethical approval. Other research should follow the general ethical standards and institutional guidelines of the organization with which the authors are affiliated.

 Research misconduct

The NPPR has a strong policy against plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification of data and information in papers. It adheres to the core principles outlined in the University Grants Commission Nepal Policy on Research Misconduct 2018 and the University Grants Commission Nepal Procedure for Addressing Allegations of Research Misconduct 2018 for defining research misconduct. Whenever possible, we will use plagiarism detection tools to check for originality. The NPPR reserves the right, if deemed necessary, to inquire with authors, affiliated organizations, or other relevant individuals and entities regarding research conduct. Authors must declare in the cover letter that their submitted manuscript is free from plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. If any research misconduct, including breach of integrity, is found, the NPPR maintains a policy of retracting the published paper.

Manuscript improvement assistance

The NPPR offers pre-review and post-review manuscript improvement/revision support based on the needs identified by the editorial team. The pre-review assistance aims to enhance the diversity and quality of data and ensure alignment with relevant policies. The goal of the post-review revision support is to help authors efficiently implement the reviewer’s suggestions. NPPR also plans to explore the potential for broader mentoring opportunities for both academics and policy professionals to help develop policy research articles.

Peer-review process

The NPPR employs a double-blind peer review process. Reviewers are selected from PRI’s scholarly database based on their expertise. The NPPR may also seek assistance from research fellows at the Policy Research Institute for initial assessment and peer review of manuscripts. The NPPR has guidelines for peer reviewers and adheres to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Review Processes.

The NPPR peer-review process consists of the following steps:

  1. Initial editorial review of the manuscript for suitability for the NPPR, considering the journal's Aims and Scope of the journal and the room for improvement of the manuscript
  2. Pre-review manuscript improvement assistance. This typically involves a series of communications between the author and the editorial team.
  3. Peer review by two reviewers selected by the NPPR Secretariat.
  4. Editor’s assessment of the reviews for their compliance with the NPPR Guidelines for Reviewers.
  5. Communicating the review reports to the author for comments and revisions of the manuscript if suggested.
  6. Need-based manuscript revision support from the journal’s team
  7. Editor’s decision on the revised manuscript (accept, reject, or request further revisions).
  8. Final decision by editorial team.
  9. Process for online publication.

Fee and Honorarium

The NPPR does not charge any Article Processing Fee to the author. The publication cost of the NPPR journal is covered by the Policy Research Institute. Honorarium to the peer-reviewers is as per the rules of the Policy Research Institute.

Dispute Resolution Mechanism

NPPR follows the widely accepted dispute resolution process outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is in practice among publishers and editors across the world. NPPR has the following policy on the most frequent issues that every academic journal and editor encounters.

  • Correction and Retraction Policy: Ensuring compliance with all requirements in submitted articles is the responsibility of the editorial team. As such, the editorial team makes the final decision on the magnitude of correction to be made to the original article.

 Repository and Access

The journal is indexed in Nepal Journal Online and, therefore, deposits all accepted articles following their repository requirements. You can find NPPR's published content on NepJOL (https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/nppr).

The NPPR also deposits/displays its articles on the official website of the journal (https://nppr.org.np).

This journal offers immediate open access to its content based on the principle that freely sharing research supports a wider exchange of knowledge globally and benefits local policymakers. NPPR permits users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles which are available online at no cost.

Privacy

The NPPR does not share personal information received from authors and manuscripts with any other party. Author’s personal information is used solely for publication and promotion of the work. We also require the personal information of study subjects or respondents to be anonymized in the manuscript. We follow the privacy protection and information use policies commonly adopted by the academic publishing industry. For illustration purposes: https://plos.org/privacy-policy