South Asian Institute of Research & Education
SAMRJ is committed to protecting the privacy of all those who use our website. We will only collect the personal information necessary to fulfill your requested service. We will take all reasonable measures to protect the personal information collected by the SAMRJ website. We will not disclose personal information collected by the SAMRJ to any organization or agency without your consent. We will never sell, rent, or trade your personal information to another organization or agency.
Personal Information
When you visit our website, you may voluntarily provide us with personal contact information to be put on our mailing list or to receive educational materials. To register for a SAMRJ event, you may choose to provide us with contact and credit card information. The online registration system protects your personal information.
Non-Personal Information
When you visit our website, information on your IP address, the type of operating system and browser that you use, and your computer’s location will automatically be collected. We will also collect information on what pages you visit on our website and what links you click on. SAMRJ may use this information to improve our website, and we may disclose aggregate data based on this information to our affinity program suppliers for statistical purposes. This tracking system does not record personal information.
SAMRJ grants usage rights for using all articles on an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent). SAMRJ allows immediate free access to the work and permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.
Note: The copyrights will be automatically transferred to SAMRJ if the paper is accepted for publication. Submission of articles to the journal means that the author certifies that the submitted manuscript is not copyrighted. It has neither been accepted for publication nor is it under review in any other journal. Author(s) must inform the editors in case of any such information and must disclose any conflict of interest.
Methodological approaches vary across various management fields (and the overlapping within social sciences). Yet, they share basic ethical principles and responsibilities. Researchers are ethically obligated to be transparent about their research methods so that editors, peer reviewers, and readers may fairly and adequately evaluate their work.
Ethical/Institutional Approval
All research should be undertaken ethically and responsibly, following the latest guidelines from researchers’ disciplines, institutions, funders, and scholarly societies, in consultation with relevant authorities and site owners, and following national and international law.
Informed Consent
Researchers should always obtain informed consent from individual participants, and consent should be voluntary, specific, and offered without coercion, bribery, or misinformation.
Consent to Publish Identifiable Information
Researchers have an ethical obligation to ensure that participants have a clear and complete understanding of how the findings of a study will be used and distributed. Identifying information includes (but is not limited to) written descriptions, photographs, illustrations, recordings, videos, pedigrees, rare diseases, physical traits, or disorders. The process of obtaining consent to publish should include sharing the article with the participant (or guardian), so that they are fully aware of the article’s content before publication.
Transparency and Accessibility
All researchers should be prepared to answer questions about study design, ethics approval, the informed consent process, and any other questions that may arise, even after publication. They should be prepared to present anonymized data and ethical approval documentation to the journal’s editorial office upon request. To this end, researchers should ensure these materials are stored accessibly and securely.
Third-Party Permission
Authors must get written permission to use third-party material in their articles. The written permission must come from the person or organization that holds the copyright. Third-party materials are owned and held in copyright by a third party. They include – but are not limited to – proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, musical notation, and other supplemental material.
Survey Studies
Researchers must inform all participants why the research is being conducted, whether anonymity is assured, how the survey data will be stored, and any other associated risks involved in participation in the study. Researchers should also be aware of and adhere to any legal or institutional requirements regarding data protection.
Social Media Research
Scholars using data gathered from social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) should know national laws and ethical guidance on gathering and publishing such information. Researchers should ensure appropriate anonymity and obtain informed consent from anyone who could be identified. Authors must check the social media platform’s user policy or terms of service to determine whether permission is required from the platform.
Other Research Approaches
Researchers should adhere to ethical standards under various epistemological preferences. For example, authors conducting covert research must also consider the emerging legal frameworks surrounding privacy rights, which vary globally. Marketing communication should be aware of restrictions for using copyrighted content for their work. Authors are advised to consult guidance published by The International Communication Association. Ethnographies and interviews should obtain approval, and participants should be fully informed about the purposes of the research, how ethnographies/interviews will be used, stored, and published, and expectations around privacy and confidentiality.
Meaningful Collaborations
SAMRJ does not endorse ‘helicopter research’, i.e., where researchers from wealthier countries fly to South Asia, take samples, fly out, analyze the samples elsewhere, and publish the results with little involvement of local scientists. At best, local scientists are used to provide logistics. This leads to an inequity between the researchers and the local community. Collaboration allows scientists from developing and developed countries to share knowledge, expertise, and techniques. It also expedites the research process and increases visibility. Therefore, SAMRJ highly appreciates scientists treating local people as partners and thinking fairly instead of charitably regarding authorship.
Human Dignity
Researchers must ensure that their work minimizes risk and avoids harm to participants. Special consideration should be given to protecting the dignity and well-being of vulnerable participants, including but not limited to children, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, institutionalized persons, or anyone who may lack the capacity to provide informed consent. Thus, SAMRJ strongly believes that all human beings, living and deceased, should be treated with dignity and respect in academic research.
Articles published by SAMRJ undergo thorough peer review, and we endorse all HEC guidelines in this regard for reviewers. A minimum of two independent reviewers is typically required for every research article. The details of the comments, as well as the overall recommendations by peer reviewers, will be considered by the Editor when making a decision. Still, the ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor. Editors will assign any submissions they cannot handle (e.g., if they are the author of an article submitted to their journal) to a member of the Editorial Board or a guest editor. We maintain confidentiality and integrity of the peer review and editorial decision-making process at all stages. The invited reviewer should declare any competing interest before submitting their report to the journal.