About the Journal
The Journal of Asian Civilizations offers a platform to advance the research in the studies of cultures and civilizations of Asia. These guidelines will help our authors, reviewers, and the editors in the process of manuscripts' submissions leading to publications. This document is approved by our Editorial Team and reserves the rights of amendments.
1. Scope, aims and objectives
This Journal normally accepts the topics of both specific and wide research scope relevant to Asian civilizations, and appreciates the works informing major debates through original data and analyses, adding existing body of knowledge.
Therefore, we aim to present the research contributions of original value covering the scope of archaeology, prehistory, protohistory, history, ancient art and architecture, comparative religions, museum studies, numismatics, palaeography and epigraphy, linguistics, and tourism studies.
Further, we also offer additional notes and items of discussions beside obituaries in the memory of late contributors, placed their lifelong services to the studies of Asian civilizations.
2. Ownership and management
This Journal is owned and managed by Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, under the umbrella of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. The Director of this Institute is the Editor-in-Chief and managed by the Editorial Team. Therefore, this Institute is the sole publisher both in print and online form. Thus, the whole team of editors is working as the Board of Governors, further advised by the members of Advisory or Scientific Board.
3. Previous Chief Editors
Prof. Dr. Ahmad Hassan Dani (1978-2008)
Prof. Dr. M. Ashraf Khan (2009-2015)
4. Free of cost publication
This Journal is not charging any service cost against submission, evaluation, and publication process. Because, all the editors and members of the Scientific Board or other referees are working with us without any financial benefit. Online publications here are also available in print form for our readership and libraries, mostly supported by this University and various other Institutions working in collaboration with us.
Complaints or appeal to the Editors can be made on contacts below.
5. Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
This Journal only seeks the academic contribution of novel value, without considering any social discrimination, respecting the personal inclination of an author. We consider every manuscript submitted to this Journal as a confidential document, therefore striving to maintain the publication ethics. Publication ethics of this Journal involves authors, reviewers, and editors; expects to maintain standards of ethical values, approved by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE Council) on 7th March 2011.
5.1. Responsibilities of authors
Before submitting a manuscript to this Journal authors should ensure, a fresh submission, that the manuscript has not been submitted, accepted, and published in any form before. The authors share the academic benefits of the paper as well as the responsibilities for any academic misconduct. Therefore, authors must be careful about plagiarized work, which is not acceptable to this journal (see point 8 below).
As an author, he/she shall have a role in data collection, analyses, and writing of a manuscript. Becoming a co-author merely due to project team member, license provider, sponsor, head of the department, as the addition of irrelevant author reduces the efforts of original contributors.
We expect the corresponding author may remain in communication with editor, unless authorized by the author in communication. Further, we do not appreciate the changing of authors' order and addition of new author to the existing list. Before publication, releasing of any information from the study results to the media, seems to be a breach in the responsibilities of confidentiality. Further authors should also avoid asking the reviewer’s details. If authors want to process the manuscript in another Journal, due to any reason before publication, he/she shall request for the withdrawal, accepted by the Editor.
5.2. Responsibilities of reviewers
Referees may include members of the Scientific Board or anyone having PhD in relevant field. In an event that the review is delivered to persons without a PhD but with a relevant field experience related to the topic/area, or experience in globally reputed institutions, it will be the Editors’ responsibility to appoint them with a specific letter explaining their exceptional choice.
This Journal maintains the ethics of double-blind reviewing, where the referees remain anonymous to authors and authors remain anonymous to referees throughout the process. Therefore, reviewers are expected to avoid asking the details of author from the Editors and expected to maintain the confidentiality of manuscript.
Reviewers have an impartial role while the evaluation of manuscript. In support of referees, a standard report template is shared. Here, they are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is original, methodologically sound, follows research ethics, novel results in the conclusions supported by the analyses, coherence between title and contents, and accuracy in referenced material with higher quality of utilized English language.
Manuscripts are expected to be reviewed within 15-20 days of submission; therefore, reviewers are requested to have correspondence in time. If a reviewer rejects a paper, he may elaborate the reasons of rejection helping the editor to decide similar. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript, shall not be used by any referee for his own research.
5.3. Responsibilities of editors
The editors are involved in every stage of the process, from the phase of submission, evaluation, further editing, formatting, and publication. Therefore, the Editors are expected more to maintain the ethics of confidentiality of paper throughout the process. Confidentiality means confidential in any form including oral. Journal further expects that the Editor will not forward any academic contribution to any other irrelevant person in any form, other than the members of editorial board, and if shared with reviewers, values of double-blind review shall be considered. Further, editors are expected to maintain the ethics of disclosure of any information about a submitted and processed manuscript to anyone other than that relevant in the process.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript shall not be used by an Editor's own research. Further, an Editor shall not change anything major in the paper as per his own personal experience. Yes, editor’s comments on the paper can be placed as an ‘Editorial Note’ at the end by mentioning the name of commenting Editor. Further, an editor reserves the right to bring any change in the manuscript merely to maintain the coherence in the contents of the issue.
6. Peer Review Process
Editorial Team ensures the scholarship about the publications of original contributions on various aspects Asian civilizations. Therefore, the concern Editors evaluate the paper at the stage of its submission, if accepted forwarded for international evaluations from the experts of relevant fields, and with the majority acceptance the Editor offers the acceptance, and ultimately leading to publication.
6.1. Initial exmination at submission desk
At the stage of submission, the Editorial Team first evaluates the relevancy of the submitted manuscript to the Journal’s scope, and confirms similarity. The papers rejected at this stage are irrelevant to the Journal’s scope, based on insufficient original data, similarity more than twenty percent (20%), and have serious academic flaws. Moreover, we discourage the publication of previously published papers in any form and plagiarized material.
6.2. Double blind review (See 5.2.)
The papers accepted at the initial stage are filtered further considering the scope of study. These papers are distributed among the relevant members of the Editorial team to propose at least three relevant experts for the evaluation of each paper, including one referee from Pakistan and remaining two from abroad. With the proposed referees, available anywhere around the world, the Editor and Co-Editor are responsible for processing the evaluations. A proforma is given to the examiners, helping them to assess the quality of paper. Based on their examination, referees have three options to propose their recommendation (1) Rejected or (2) Accepted with Minor Changes or (3) Accepted. Those papers meeting the minimum criteria with the recommendation of at least two experts of review are processed further, otherwise declined.
The papers with suggested revisions are forwarded to the authors and received within the time of 15 days. Revised manuscripts are usually returned to the initial referees upon receipt, if necessary. Usually, this process of review takes 15-20 days, and sometime also depending on the availability of reviewer. If necessary, at the final stage, the papers are forwarded to the authors for a final revisions before publication.
6.3. Editorial Notification
A final decision of Acceptance or Rejection is reserved by the Editorial Team and the Editor-in-Chief at the final stage of the process.
7. Publication
This Journal is bianual, publishes on 30th of June and 31st of December, every year. Further, the June issue is No. 1, and December issue is No. 2.
Once the paper is accepted by the Chief Editor through notification, the article publishes in the mentioned volume and issue.
8. Academic Misconduct
Any academic misconduct including plagiarism if found at any time even after the publication of paper, the concern authors shall be blacklisted forever, as per the decision of the Editorial Team and the Chief Editor.
9. Archival Record
As an archival record, we maintain the record of all the published papers and related documents at the Ahmad Hassan Dani Library of this Institute, since the first issue of this Journal.
The issues published after 2013 are also available at online archives of this website. For further details see http://jac.qau.edu.pk/index.php/jac/issue/archive
10. Advertising
This journal invites scholars to submit research publications through this website. Other channels of social media and newspapers can be used if necessary.
Further, the publications and research findings are shared on various platforms where this Journal is Indexed. For further details see http://jac.qau.edu.pk/index.php/jac/Indexation
11. Marketing
This Journal is directly marketed by TIAC for libraries and readership in contact, in print form only. Otherwise, the recent publications are available online in open access. See http://jac.qau.edu.pk/index.php/jac/issue/archive
