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Policy and Procedures

Standard Operating Procedures

1. Purpose

To define the system of activities to publish Quarterly Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology.

2. Scope

This procedure is applicable to the Publication Division of the University to serve the above purpose.

3. Operating Procedure

3.1. Author(s) submit the manuscript(s) of their original article(s) through the online system of the journal or email to the Chief Editor / Editor / Publications Officer / Editorial Assistant. Before submission, author(s) are required to follow the approved instructions for authors and sign a declaration that the material presented is original, not submitted or under consideration elsewhere and is not plagiarized.

3.2. It is mandatory responsibility of each author, including the co-authors, to ensure that the manuscript(s) submitted for publication should attain the highest ethical standards with respect to plagiarism.

3.3. After the suitability of the submitted manuscript(s) is checked by the editor(s) for the journal, the author(s) are required to pay the processing and scanning fee through a bank challan, pay order, or other methods, in favour of the Publications Officer, MURJET.

3.4. The Publications Officer / Editorial Assistant processes the plagiarism scanning request to the University's Focal Person for anti-plagiarism services on a prescribed scanning request form along with a copy of the paid challan to find the authenticity of the manuscript through HEC-approved software for plagiarism.

3.5. Focal Person scans the manuscript(s) through HEC-approved software and provides the detailed scanning report to the Editorial Office, along with a duly signed and stamped hard copy of the first page of the containing similarity index.

3.6. As per the scanning report of the focal person, if the similarity index of the plagiarized text of the manuscript is found beyond the acceptable limits (that is less than or equal to 19%, and the similarity from a single source is not greater than 5%), the manuscript is sent back to the corresponding author(s). It should be noted that the database of the software as well as internet material is updated within span of time. Therefore, the similarity index may fluctuate with a number of times the document is scanned, if the authors resubmit the manuscript.

3.7. After re-submission, the scanning process as per clauses 3.5 and 3.6 will be repeated till the manuscript is found free of plagiarism.

3.8. After successful plagiarism scanning, the Chief Editor / Editor /Publications Officer/ Editorial Assistant sends the manuscript to the two experts for peer review and their technical comments. This Journal follows the Double Blind Peer Review Process. Additionally, the journal has a policy that at least one of the reviewers must be a foreign national.

3.9. When comments/evaluations of both experts are satisfactory, the manuscript is presented to the Editorial Board for possible acceptance. Otherwise, it is returned to the author(s) for modification as suggested by the expert(s) and the board. And if one of the reviewers rejects the manuscript for publication, the manuscript is regarded as not accepted.

3.10. The revised manuscript submitted by the author(s) is again sent to the same experts for final comments, if required.

3.11. The final comments of the experts/reviewers are submitted to the Editorial Board for final decision.

3.12. The Editor / Publication Officer / Editorial Assistant finally issues an acceptance or rejection letter.

3.13. The Editorial Board selects twenty manuscripts out of the accepted ones for publication in the upcoming issue.

Open Access Policy

Readers can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, and readers are allowed to use articles for any other lawful purpose (Budapest Open Access Initiative). In terms of Sherpa/Romeo colour scheme, this is a blue journal which means that the readers/authors can archive post-print (i.e. final draft post refereeing) or publisher's version/PDF. All articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)  International License.  

Correction and Retraction Policy

After publication of an article, normally no change is allowed. However, in exceptional cases, the editorial board may decide to correct, retract or remove an article.  This decision is made when there is clear evidence of fraudulent data, plagiarism, unethical research or duplicate publication.  Sometimes, correction may be allowed when serious errors are detected due to miscalculation, experimental, numerical, or other such human or system-generated errors. The decision of correction or retraction depends on the level of allegation and may be decided on a case-to-case basis. The following guidelines have been proposed by the publisher, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, for such decisions. These guidelines have been derived from the STM Guidelines and COPE Retraction Guidelines.

  • If errors are introduced during the production process, an erratum may be published in both online and the next available issue of the printed version of the journal.
  • If some serious errors are made by the author(s) which were not corrected or detected at proof reading stage, a corrigendum may be published in place of erratum on the request of the author(s).
  • If plagiarism, fraud or unethical research is evident, then the original article may be retained and a retraction note may be added to it indicating the date of retraction and a brief explanation. The same note may also be published in the print version of the next issue.
  • In case of duplicate publication, the following actions may be taken.
    1. If the article does not violate the copyright of another publisher, the original article is retained and the retraction note is attached to it explaining the reasons. The same is published in the next available print issue.
    2. If the article violates the copyright of another publisher, the editorial board may decide to remove the article from the online archives to avoid any legal consequences or court order etc. In such a case, the bibliographic information will be retained with a note explaining the reason of the removal of the paper. The same removal note shall also be published in the next available print issue of the journal.
  • The editorial board is authorized to make any other appropriate decision not listed above, if necessary.

Publication Ethics

The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan has prepared Publication Ethics guidelines for all its approved Journals. This journal follows these guidelines which are available here.

Appeals and Complains

Should you have to appeal or complain, do not hesitate to contact the editor at [email protected] 

Revenue Source

The Author's manuscript submission processing fee is the revenue source of this Journal.

Archiving and Repository Policy

All Published articles and issues are archived on the journal's website and the digital preservation is subscribed with Portico (Home - Portico). And, the data repository is maintained through official subscription of the Turnitin software.