Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

IJASRaR is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as well as the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE/ICMJE).

Distinguishing three types of content
BICA publishes News, Scholarly Contributions and Research articles.
News. In this section, we publish news of members, conference announcements and reports, reviews of significant books, and similar materials.
This section is curated by the ICA Executive. Due to its content, the policies stated below are in most cases not applicable.
Scholarly contributions. This section contains survey and expository articles,
presentations, classroom notes, and open research problems. Articles in this section are reviewed by editorial staff, and the below policies are applied as appropriate.
Peer-reviewed contributions. These are regular research papers handles strictly according to the policies set below.


Duties of the Editors-in-Chief
Inclusivity and Objective Evaluation Submitted manuscripts are evaluated
solely for their mathematical content, novelty and quality without regard
to personal characteristic of the authors, including but not limited to race,
color, creed, ethnic, geographical or national origin, citizenship, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity or lack thereof, marital or partnership
status, parenthood or pregnancy, age, disability, genetic predisposition,
military or veteran status, religion, religious belief or practices, political
association or philosophy, employment or career status, criminal or ethics violation history (unless such violations occurred repeatedly).
Confidentiality. All submitted manuscripts are treated with maximum confidentiality. No information about them shall be ever released except to
Editors-in-Chief, Handling Editors, Reviewers or persons asked for expert opinion, and Officers of The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA). In the case of suspected misconduct, the Editors may,
with ICA’s consent, share necessary information with external entities
like Editors of other journals or similar institutions. Reviewer’s and Handling Editor’s identities will be kept confidential from the authors unless
Reviewer’s or Handling Editor’s consent is obtained.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest. No materials disclosed in a submitted
manuscript (published or not) can be used in an Editor’s or Reviewer’s
own research without explicit written consent of the author(s).

Publication decisions. The handling Editor-in-Chief of BICA is responsible
for deciding which of the submitted articles should be published. The
Editors-in-Chief may be guided by the policies of the journal’s Editorial
Board and of The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications and
constrained by relevant legal requirements. The Editors-in-Chief may
confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision. The decision will not be influenced by concerns regarding journal rankings and
metrics.

Duties of peer reviewers

Role of the Reviewer in Selection and Quality. Reports by reviewers play
an important role in Editors-in-Chief final decisions. They may also
serve as a tool helping authors improve their manuscripts.
Promptness and correctness. Any invited Reviewer who feels unqualified
to review the submitted work in a manuscript or knows that its timely
review will be impossible should immediately notify the Editors-in-Chief
so that alternative reviewers can be contacted. Should a Reviewer raise
suspicion of ethical breach of any kind, the Reviewer must support their
suspicion by relevant citations or other verifiable evidence. Any missing
acknowledgement of known and previously published work shall be
brought up by the Reviewer.
Confidentiality. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as
confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with
others except if authorized by the Editors-in-Chief.
Standards of objectivity. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Referees should express
their views clearly with appropriate supporting arguments.
Disclosure and conflict of interest. Privileged information or ideas obtained
through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal
advantage. Reviewers should not accept invitations to review a manuscript if a
significant conflict of interest exists. Whenever possible, reviewers should not
have collaborated or co-authored publications with any of the authors in the preceding 3 years, unless they are explicitly authorized by the handling editor.

Expectations for research submissions

Reporting standards and data usage. The results presented in the manuscript must be entirely original work of the authors. Usage of results and
statements of others must be clearly distinguished, properly attributed
and cited. Any used data must be represented fully and accurately and be
available upon request to others for potential replication of the results.
Misinterpreting data knowingly or by neglect is unethical and unacceptable. Any supporting computational code or algorithms must be made
available upon request.

Originality and Plagiarism. The authors are fully responsible for the originality of their work. Every use of results or text by other authors and
publications must be properly acknowledged and cited. This includes
self-citations and repeated use of parts of authors’ previous published
work.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication. Multiple submission of
the same or similar manuscript with the same results to more than one
journal is unethical and unacceptable.
Acknowledgement of sources. Results of others or the authors themselves
previously used in other publications must be properly cited. Contribution of others that were not published need to be acknowledged and attributed properly in the Acknowledgement section. Work of others inspiring or motivating the published results or being influential in other
ways should also be cited.
Authorship of a manuscript. Only persons making direct and substantial
contribution to the content of submitted manuscript can be listed as authors. On the other hand, persons who contributed only indirectly, e.g.,
by providing space or material support cannot be listed as authors. Others, who contributed to some specific parts of the work but not significantly to the whole manuscript should be mentioned in the Acknowledgement section. The corresponding author is responsible for adhering
to the above-mentioned criteria and for other co-authors approval of and
an agreement to the submission.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest. All authors should disclose in
their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest
that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in
the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should
be disclosed.
Fundamental errors in published works. If a significant error or inaccuracy in the published work is discovered by the authors or readers, the
authors must take immediate steps to either retract the paper or to publish
an appropriate erratum.

Publisher’s confirmation

The Bulletin is published by academic society The Institute of Combinatorics and its Application, a non-profit organization registered in Minnesota, U.S.A. (ICA).
In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct,fraudulent publication
or plagiarism the ICA Executive Committee in close collaboration with
the Editors-in-Chief will appoint an ad-hoc committee consisting of the
Editors-in-Chief, one member of the Executive, and at least two ICA
members who are experts on the topic of the manuscripts. The Committee will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to
amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work. The Publisher and the Journal do not discriminate on personal characteristics mentioned in Inclusivity and Objective Evaluation
section.

Responsible use of artificial intelligence

BICA maintains that mathematical research must remain the work of human
intelligence. While acknowledging that artificial intelligence (AI) tools can provide helpful language support, BICA adheres to the following guidelines:
I. Authors can use AI to help with translation or to fix their English. They
can also use AI to help with figures and tables.
II. An AI cannot be listed as a co-author. The human authors are 100%
responsible for everything written in the paper.
III. An AI cannot be used to create the actual content of the paper—theorems, proofs, examples, etc. If authors use an AI for anything more
than simple translation or grammar, they must disclose how the AI was
used in a section titled “Use of artificial intelligence tools” that appears
at the end of the paper just before the list of references.
Should the Editors-in-Chief suspect a violation of this policy, the paper or report may be rejected to maintain BICA as a venue for human scientific discussion.
Reviewers can upload any part of manuscripts to AI only when they use “zerotraining” or “zero retention” mode (that is, when it is contractually guaranteed
by the AI provider that the data entered will not be used or stored after it is
processed for the reviewer) or if the manuscript has been publicly released (e.g.,
on arXiv or another similar platform). The expert opinion of human reviewers
is expected, not an AI-generated report.

The journal does not tolerate:

  • Plagiarism

  • Duplicate publication

  • Data fabrication

  • Data falsification

  • Citation manipulation

  • Image manipulation

  • Undisclosed conflicts of interest

  • Ethical misconduct in research

Editors, reviewers, and authors are expected to act with honesty, transparency, confidentiality, and professional integrity throughout the publication process.

Any allegation of publication misconduct will be investigated fairly and confidentially. Appropriate actions may include manuscript rejection, publication of corrections, article retraction, or notification of the authors’ institutions where necessary.

All complaint and appeal should be done editorial office by sending an email (ijasrar@gmail.com).