The Journal of History and Social Sciences (JHSS) follows the guidelines and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in letter and spirit and operates according to HEC guidelines and policies.

Editors and Referees

Our editors and referees are required to declare any conflicts of interest related to the manuscript they are requested to evaluate. To ensure transparent double-blind peer-review, the identities of authors are not disclosed to referees, and vice versa. Manuscripts submission by the editor/associate editor or by any member of the editorial board is not allowed as per HEC policy guidelines for the research journals. 

Authors

Authors are expected to adopt the general ethical standards in their research and writing, ensuring that:

• The submitted work or any of its essential content has not been previously published in a refereed journal and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. To ensure this, the editors screen out the submissions using the anti-plagiarism software, i.e. Turnitin.com.

• Published relevant material/work referred by the authors in their research must be properly cited as per APA formatting guidelines.
• Mentioning and acknowledging the sources of funding and significant help is the ethical obligation of the authors. It must be explicitly mentioned under the heading of ‘Compliance with the Ethical Standards’ at the end of the manuscript.
• Obtaining the consents from the parties with vested interests is the ethical responsibility of the authors.

If a published paper or its essential content is found to have been published before or if any other unethical conduct by the authors is verified, the journal will take one or more of the following actions:

• Publishing a notice
• Retracting the paper
• Preventing the corresponding author from publishing in JHSS
• Reporting the impropriety to the corresponding author’s, co-authors, employer, head of department (HOD), funding body, and HEC.

Complaints

JHSS publishes corrections only when significant errors arise from author error (Corrigenda) or editorial mistakes (Errata). If there is a serious complaint about a journal’s own procedures, the Chief Editor will confer with the corresponding author and any relevant members of the editorial board in order to resolve the problem. The advisory board of JHSS will be consulted if further guidance is required, and if the above procedures prove unacceptable, the matter will be referred for outside adjudication as per COPE guidelines.