Nepal Public Policy Review

Connecting research to policy

Journal Policies

Nepal Public Policy Review upholds the seven core values of the Policy Research Institute, namely, quality, diversity, integrity, objectivity, transparency, engagement, and accountability, and follows the universal publication ethics and quality standard. 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 Nepal Public Policy Review, the author of the paper is he/she who has made a substantial 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 his/her as well as co-author’s contributions.

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 holds the right to inquire for the verification of the author’s contributions.

The NPPR team is frank in acknowledging that there might be a culture of unfairly granting or denying authorship (commonly known as ‘ghost authorship’, ‘gift/honorific authorship’, ‘forged authorship’, ‘orphan authorship’, 'unwarranted hyperauthorship', and 'bureaucratic authorship') in scholarly publications in Nepal and elsewhere. We, therefore, have a policy to take 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 policy for disclosing conflict of interest by editors and peer-reviewers when they handle manuscript.

Ethics

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

 Research misconduct

The NPPR has a strong policy against plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data and information in papers. The NPPR follows 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 interpreting research misconduct. Where possible, we will employ plagiarism detection applications to check for plagiarism. The NPPR holds the right, if it deems necessary, to make inquiry with the authors, affiliated organization or any other relevant individuals and organization regarding the research conduct. Authors must declare in the cover letter that the submitted manuscript is free of plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data and information. The NPPR has a policy of retraction of the paper published in the NPPR if any breach of integrity of research including research misconduct is found.

Peer-review process

The NPPR employs a double-blind peer review process. Reviewers are selected from PRI’s scholarly database matched by their expertise. The NPPR may also get the help of the research fellows at the Policy Research Institute for initial assessment and peer-review of the manuscript. The NPPR has guidelines for peer reviewers and follows the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Review Processes.

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

  1. Initial editorial assessment of the manuscript for suitability for the NPPR based on the Aims and Scope of the journal.
  2. Peer review by two reviewers selected by the NPPR Secretariat.
  • Editor’s assessment of the reviews for their compliance with the NPPR Guidelines for Reviewers.
  1. Communicating the review reports to the author for comments and revision of the manuscript if so was suggested.
  2. Editor’s recommendation on the revised manuscript (accept, reject, further revision).
  3. Editorial Team’s final decision.
  • 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, reposits all accepted articles following their repository compliances. You can find NPPR's published content in NepJol (https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/nppr).  

The NPPR also deposits/displays its articles on the official website of the journal.

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge and local use by policymakers. NPPR grants permission to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles which are available online freely.

Privacy

The NPPR does not share personal information it receives from the authors and manuscripts with any other party. Author’s personal information is used only for the publication and promotion of the published work. We follow the privacy protection and information use policy commonly adopted by academic publishing world. For illustration purpose: https://plos.org/privacy-policy