Review Policy
Editorial Review and Peer Review
All submissions to Shodh Sari Journal are first reviewed for completeness and only then sent to be assessed by an Editor who will decide whether they are suitable for peer review. Where an Editor is on the author list or has any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to oversee peer review. Editors will consider the peer-reviewed reports when making a decision, but are not bound by the opinions or recommendations therein. Authors receive peer review reports with the editorial decision on their manuscript.

Editor(s) to obtain a minimum of two peer reviewers for manuscripts especially to discipline specific. Peer review reports should be in English and provide constructive critical evaluations of the authors’ work, particularly in relation to the appropriateness of methods used, whether the results are accurate, and whether the conclusions are supported by the results. Editorial decisions should be based on peer reviewer comments that meet these criteria rather than on recommendations made by short, superficial peer reviewer reports which do not provide a rationale for the recommendations.

Peer reviewers are expected to provide an assessment on the following aspects of manuscripts, key results, validity, originality, significance, data and methodology, statistics, conclusion, clarity, contexts, references, and suggested improvements.

Communications between Editors and peer reviewers contain confidential information that should not be shared with third parties.

Responsibilities of Reviewers
This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). All articles are double reviewed by the editorial board and peer group as per specialization. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and, through the editorial communications with the author, may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of the scientific method. In addition to the specific ethics-related duties described below, reviewers are asked generally to treat authors and their work as they would like to be treated themselves and to observe good reviewing etiquette.

• Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and decline to participate in the review process.
• Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone.
• Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research.
• Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
• Reviewers should not upload a submitted manuscript or any part of it into a generative AI tool as this may violate the authors’ confidentiality and proprietary rights and, where the paper contains personally identifiable information, may breach data privacy rights.
• Reviewers should not upload their peer review report into an AI tool, even if it is just for the purpose of improving language and readability.
• The reviewer is responsible and accountable for the content of the review report.
• A reviewer should be alert to potential ethical issues in the paper and should bring these to the attention of the editor, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
• Reviewers should be aware of any personal bias they may have and take this into account when reviewing a paper. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should consult the Editor before agreeing to review a paper where they have potential conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
• The reviewer will submit the review report to the concerned editor only, who is assisting the reviewer in the review process.

Responsibility of Editor/s
It is the overall responsibility of the editors to publish high-quality articles as per the journal’s policies and guidelines. Some responsibilities, but not limited to mentioned below, are:

1. Editors have total control over whether or not an article is accepted or rejected.
2. Editors are in charge of the publication’s content and general quality.
3. When trying to promote a publication, editors should constantly consider the demands of the writers and readers, thereby ensuring that the articles are of top quality and that the academic record is accurate.
4. When needed, editors should issue erroneous pages or make revisions, and besides this, should make judgments entirely based on the articles’ significance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the scope of the journal.
5. Editors should have a thorough understanding of the funding sources for a study.
6. Editors should protect reviewers’ identities.
7. Editors should make sure that any study they publish follows globally acknowledged ethical criteria.
8. Editors should act if they suspect misbehavior in a manuscript, whether it is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable efforts to resolve the issue.

Plagiarism Policy
Shodh Sari only accepts high-quality, original, and unpublished research articles. We are strictly against any unethical act of copying or plagiarism in any form. All manuscripts submitted for publication are cross-checked for plagiarism using Turnitin software. Manuscripts found to be plagiarized during the initial stages of review will be rejected and not considered for publication in the journal. In case a manuscript is found to be plagiarized after publication, the Editor-in-Chief will conduct a preliminary investigation, which may be with the help of a suitable committee constituted for the purpose.
We respect intellectual property and aim to protect and promote the original work of its authors. Manuscripts containing plagiarized material are against the standards of quality, research, and innovation. Hence, all authors submitting articles are expected to abide by ethical standards and abstain from plagiarism in any form.
Editor-in-Chief shall take serious action against published manuscripts found to contain plagiarism, as recommended by or as deemed fit for the instant case or as decided by the Editorial Board, from time to time.

Corrections and Retractions Policy
If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud, the editorial board will investigate as per journal guidelines. If there are valid concerns after an investigation, the authors will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the journal and/or publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

1. Rejecting the manuscript if it is still under consideration.
2. Resubmission of the article with corrections.
3. If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

• An erratum/correction may be placed with the article.
• The article may be placed with an editor’s note or editorial expression of concern.
• Or, in severe cases, retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, editor’s note, editorial expression of concern, or retraction notice. Retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted,” and the explanation is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

Conflict of Interest Statement and Research Misconduct
As per Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines:
‘Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.’

Authors are required to read the journal’s author instruction and ethical policies carefully and to adhere to the terms before submission.

Many scholars, researchers and professionals may have potential conflicts of interest, that could – or could be seen to – have an effect on their research.

The editors, authors, and peer reviewers should disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review work objectively. These might include relevant financial interests (for example, patent ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, or speaker’s fees), or personal, political, or religious interests.

Articles will be evaluated fairly and will not necessarily be rejected when any competing interests are declared. Report of research misconduct, if any, may be related to a published article or a manuscript under peer-review process, should proceed with sensitivity, tact, in confidence, to shodhsari@icert.org.in

All research misconduct complaints will be treated as per complaints and appeal policy, and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.

Complaints and Appeals
Complaints regarding any published materials will only be accepted within 12 months from the first publication date. In case of any complaint, the authors are required to submit their complaints along with their reasons to the editorial office via shodhsari@icert.org.in e-mail address.

Every attempt will be made to provide a full response as earliest. Complaints will be dealt with by the editorial team wherever possible, with reference to the journal policies. It will be escalated to the Editor-in-Chief where necessary. Where a complaint is made about an Editor, it will be independently investigated by one or the other two Editors or a committee constituted by the Editor-in-Chief in consultation with Core Committee ICERT, if required so seeing the severity of the complaint. Complaints against authors and reviewers will also be dealt in the same manner. The Editor-in-Chief has the right to consult the other Editors or with any third party over the issue, and make a final decision. That final decision shall be binding, and the matter shall be deemed closed.

If you do not feel your complaint has been addressed, you may wish to refer it further. We will consider appeals against the editorial decision only under highly specific circumstances and usually only where a clear breach of policy can be demonstrated or author can indicate a clear misunderstanding of the article by the reviewer.

Archiving Policy: Manuscript Deposition and Digital Preservation

Archiving is a Digital preservation that can be seen as the set of processes and activities that ensure the information that now exists in digital formats is backed up and distributed to guarantee continued access for the long term. The digital content of the journal is precious, and measures are in place to ensure its current accessibility and long-term preservation. The preservation policy includes the following steps:

• Website archiving

• Abstracting/Indexing services

• Self-archiving

Long-term availability and accessibility of research work to relevant audiences and readers

It helps minimize or eliminate the risk of digital decay of valuable information by preserving content for a long time. In a disaster, data retrieval from archive storage is easy. You can recover archived copies of your journals and make them accessible to the public if the original output is lost or removed from a publication. The more archives you join and submit your scholarly articles to, the higher the chances of your journal discovery and visibility. When articles are published, authors can self-archive the accepted manuscript on their website and in their funder’s or institutional repositories for public release.

Copyright and License: Intellectual Property
Privacy Statement
The journal respects the intellectual property rights of authors and the confidential information shared by the authors with the journal is used exclusively for the stated purposes of the journal and will not be made available to any other party.

Copyright
In order to publish and disseminate research articles, we need certain publishing rights from authors, which are determined by a publishing agreement/ author declaration between the author and the Journal.
Authors grant declaration and consent, a copyright, to publish the article in Shodh Sari and identify itself as the original publisher. Copyright to any open access article in the journal is retained by the author(s) and the publisher only. Authors retain following rights:
Retain patent and trademark rights, rights to use their research data freely without any restriction, receive proper attribution and credit for their published work, re-use their own material in new works without permission, use and share their works for scholarly purposes (with full acknowledgement of the original article), publicly share the preprint on any website or repository at any time, publicly share the accepted manuscript on non-commercial sites, and publicly share the final published article.

License
The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing articles. The journal chooses the licence Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form and for noncommercial purposes only. All readers are free to read and use the article, as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

All authors need to submit following consent with the manuscript to the editor.

Author declaration/ Author consent/ License agreement
In submitting an article to the journal, I certify that:

1.  I am authorized by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements.

2.  I warrant, on behalf of myself and my co-authors, that:

• the article is original, has not been formally published in any other journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third-party rights;
• I am/we are the sole author(s) of the article and have full authority to enter into this agreement and in granting rights to Shodh Sari are not in breach of any other obligation;
• the article contains nothing that is unlawful, libelous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy;
• I/we have taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To my/our – and currently accepted scientific – knowledge all statements contained in it purporting to be facts are true and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.
• If I am using any personal details or images of patients, research subjects or other individuals, I have obtained all consents required by applicable law and complied with the publisher’s policies relating to the use of such images or personal information.

3.  I, and all co-authors, agree that the article, if editorially accepted for publication, shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.

4. copyright and all rights under it.I have the consent of each author (co-authors) to transfer and assign any and all right, title, and interest, including copyright of the article referenced above. I hereby assign and transfer to the Editor Shodh Sari

Explanatory notes: The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 provides the following summary (where ‘you’ equals ‘the user’):

You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, but not commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms

Under the following terms:
Attribution— you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions—you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

AI Generated Content Policy

In line with evolving academic practices, Shodh Sari International Multidisciplinary Journal maintains a clear policy regarding AI-generated content. While we acknowledge the transformative potential of artificial intelligence and its tools in research and writing, authors are required to disclose the use of any AI tools in the generation of any part of their manuscript (including text, code, figures, or data analysis) during the submission process. It is imperative that AI tools are not listed as authors. The ultimate responsibility for the integrity, originality, accuracy, and ethical implications of the content presented in the manuscript lies solely with the human authors. Our policy aims to promote transparency, maintain academic integrity, and ensure the quality of published research.

1. AI as an Author is Prohibited: AI tools, Large Language Models (LLMs), chatbots, or any other AI-assisted technologies do not qualify for authorship of a manuscript. Authorship implies responsibility, accountability, and the ability to consent to publication, approve the final version, and investigate questions related to accuracy or integrity – responsibilities that can only be attributed to and performed by humans. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors in the manuscript, nor can they be cited as authors.
2. Disclosure of AI Tool Use: Authors must be transparent about the use of AI tools in the preparation of their manuscript. Disclosure is required for any AI tool used to generate, modify, or analyze content, including but not limited to:

• Generating text (e.g., introductions, literature reviews, discussions, abstracts)
• Generating or altering figures, images, or graphical elements (exceptions might apply if the manuscript is specifically about AI image generation, in which case it must be clearly labeled and discussed)
• Translating text
• Analyzing data
• Generating code
• Summarizing existing literature

How to Disclose:

• In the Methods Section: For AI tools used in research design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation (e.g., specific algorithms, software). Please provide details on the tool name, version, and how it was used.
• In the Acknowledgements Section: For AI tools used in the writing process to improve language, grammar, clarity, or style (e.g., grammar checkers, rephrasing tools). State the name of the tool(s) and their specific application.
• A Statement upon Submission: Authors will be asked to confirm their adherence to this policy and disclose any AI tool usage during the submission process.

3. Human Oversight and Responsibility: Authors are solely responsible and accountable for the entire content of their submitted manuscript, including any portion produced or assisted by AI tools. This includes:

• Accuracy: Ensuring the factual accuracy of all AI-generated or AI-assisted content. AI tools can “hallucinate” or produce incorrect, biased, or misleading information.
• Originality and Plagiarism: Verifying that AI-generated text is free from plagiarism and appropriately cited where necessary. Authors must ensure that the work is original and does not infringe on third-party rights.
• Ethical Considerations: Being aware of potential biases in AI outputs and taking steps to mitigate stereotypes or misinformation.
• Intellectual Property and Confidentiality: Authors should exercise caution when inputting sensitive, confidential, or unpublished information into AI tools, as the privacy policies of these tools vary and may result in the loss of confidentiality or intellectual property rights.

4. Prohibited Use of AI:

• Falsification or Fabrication: AI tools must NOT be used to fabricate or misrepresent research data, results, or findings.
• Generating Core Arguments/Conclusions: AI should not be used to autonomously generate the core arguments, hypotheses, interpretations, or conclusions of the study. These must be the intellectual contribution of the human authors.

5. For Reviewers and Editors:

• Confidentiality: Reviewers and editors must not upload submitted manuscripts or any parts thereof into generative AI tools, as this could breach the confidentiality of the authors’ work and potentially expose sensitive information.
• Independent Judgment: AI tools should not be used by reviewers or editors to generate substantive parts of their reviews or editorial decisions. All evaluations and decisions must be based on human expert judgment.

This policy will be regularly reviewed and updated to adapt to the rapid advancements in AI technology and evolving best practices in scholarly communication. By submitting to Shodh Sari International Multidisciplinary Journal, authors affirm their adherence to this comprehensive AI Generated Content Policy.