The practice of peer review is to ensure that only original concepts and data are published. It is an objective process at the heart of good scholarly publishing and is carried out by our journal. Our referees play a vital role in maintaining the high standards. All manuscripts are peer-reviewed following the procedure outlined below.
The Editors first evaluate all manuscripts. Only exceptionally good manuscripts are accepted at this stage. Manuscripts rejected at this stage are insufficiently original, have poor grammar or English language, or are outside the aims and scope of the journal. Those that pass through this stage are sent to at least 2 experts for review.
Our review policy employs double-blind reviewing, where both the referee and author remain anonymous throughout the process.
Whenever possible, referees are matched to the paper according to their expertise and our database is constantly being updated.
Referees are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:
Language correction is not part of the peer review process, but referees may, if so wish, suggest corrections to the manuscript.
The time required for the review process is dependent on the response of the referees. Should the referee’s reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed, a further expert opinion will be sought. In rare cases for which it is extremely difficult to find a second referee to review the manuscript, or when the one referee’s report has thoroughly convinced the Editor, decisions at this stage to accept, reject or ask the author for a revision are made on the basis of only one referee’s report.
The Editor’s decision will be sent to the author with recommendations made by the referees, which usually includes verbatim comments by the referees. Revised manuscripts might be returned to the initial referees who may then request another revision of a manuscript.
A final decision to accept or reject the manuscript will be sent to the author along with any recommendations made by the referees, and may include verbatim comments by the referees.
Referees advise the editor, who is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject the article.
If you are not currently a referee but would like to be considered as a referee, please contact the editor. The benefits of refereeing include the opportunity to read, see, and evaluate the latest work in your research area at an early stage, and to contribute to the overall integrity of research and its published documentation. You may also be able to cite your work as a referee, as a part of your professional development requirements for various purposes.
We are transparent in our reviewing process. A double-blind peer review process is applicable for our journal and the author is informed about the status of their contribution whether accepted or sent back to them for improvements.
INDIAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY is aimed at providing high-quality research articles to the academic community without any cost. This journal provides immediate open access to its content for making it one of the largest open-source available to the research community in archaeology.
IJA hold copyrights for the articles including abstracts published in the journal as accepted by the author in full consent in order to ensure full copyright protection and to disseminate the journal internationally.
We never tolerate plagiarism, forged data, and falsified data presentation from authors who will be blacklisted from publishing articles in IJA. We strictly follow norms of UGC PROMOTION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND PREVENTION OF PLAGIARISM IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS REGULATIONS, 2018.
Authors are free to withdraw articles or their publications from being published from our journal group through written statement duly signed by author(s) before it is published online or being allotted with Volume, Issue numbers.
If an article is withdrawn by us in the events such as, but not limited to, multiple submission, fraudulent use of data, bogus claim of authorship, unreliable findings and unethical research practices, the journal is not bound to inform the author(s) on the reason for withdrawal. Any such withdrawn articles are removed from the online databases in all formats irrespective of the citation or impact factor. Instead, a short note will be displayed stating that the article has been withdrawn.
As a responsible journal, we take utmost care to ensure the published works are error-free. However, if there are any unintentional errors found by the readers, the journal group is ready to publish the refutations from the readers only after being checked and peer-reviewed for the prominent evidence that claims that there is a major error in the original paper. Though criticisms will not be discussed with the authors, the editor-in-chief is the final decision authority to approve or reject a refutation from publishing.
The editor-in-chief, when receiving a request from a third party or from the author(s) to retract their article because of scientific misconduct or outdated information such as the main conclusion of the paper being outdated, the same will be thoroughly analyzed with neutral editors, peer-reviewers, all the authors, and institutions.
Once found with eligible and reliable information about the misconduct/outdated information, the editor-in-chief decides the article to be retracted either in partial or in full prior to which the author(s) are requested an explanation/justification though this doesn’t affect the decision.
This is followed by informing the readers about the article retraction with the note stating that the article has been retracted.
Though removing an article occurs during rare instances, this is mandated if the journal article clearly has defamatory content, copyright or any such legal issues etc. In such circumstances, though the article is removed with a note that ‘article has been removed for legal reasons, the bibliographic information (title and authors) are retained and unchanged.
Final decision on the removed articles is with Editor-in-Chief.
If author(s) respond to Editor-in-Chief with false/inaccurate/misguided information/plagiarized content along with the corrections carried out by them, the editor-in-chief may consider replacing the article from its online version.
Rare cases of authors’ corrections to Supplementary Information (SI) are published only if it makes much difference to the article results such as (major errors that compromise the conclusion of the study). Authors have no option to update or change the SI during or after a publication since it is a part of publication unless a change is made for technical reasons.
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