Publication Ethics Policy

The Ugandan Journal of Management and Public Policy Studies (UJMPPS) is committed to upholding the highest standards of scholarly publishing, editorial independence, research integrity, transparency, accountability, and ethical conduct. UJMPPS is a multidisciplinary, open-access, peer-reviewed research journal published by the Uganda Management Institute (UMI). The journal publishes scholarly work in public administration, governance, business, management, leadership, public policy, and related fields as they apply to public institutions, business firms, private-sector organizations, civil society, and nonprofit organizations.UJMPPS publishes biannual issues in June and December. The journal is published in both online and print formats under ISSN 2078-7049 (Print) and ISSN 2959-4316 (Online). The journal does not charge Article Processing Charges (APCs).
Authors are not required to pay any fees for submission, peer review, acceptance, or publication. This policy outlines the ethical responsibilities of authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and the publisher. By submitting a manuscript to UJMPPS, authors confirm that they have read, understood, and agreed to comply with this policy.

1. Editorial Integrity and Independence
Editorial decisions at UJMPPS are based solely on scholarly merit, originality, relevance, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and contributions to knowledge, policy, and practice. These decisions are not influenced by the author’s nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, political opinion, seniority, personal relationships, or ability to pay.The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for editorial decisions. However, decisions are informed by editorial screening, peer review reports, ethical checks, and the journal’s aims and scope. The publisher, sponsors, institutional partners, advertisers, or external bodies shall not interfere with editorial independence.

2. Responsibilities of Authors
Authors submitting manuscripts to UJMPPS must ensure that their work is original, accurate, ethically prepared, and not under consideration elsewhere. Authors are responsible for the integrity of their manuscripts and must ensure that:
The manuscript has not been published previously and is not under submission to another journal. All sources, data, ideas, tables, figures, and quotations from other works are properly cited and acknowledged. The research is reported honestly and without fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, selective reporting, data manipulation, or misrepresentation of findings. The manuscript provides sufficient methodological detail to allow readers to assess the study's credibility, validity, reliability, and contribution. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and consented to its submission. Any significant errors discovered after submission or publication are promptly reported to the journal.

3. Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, drafting, or critical revision of the manuscript. All listed authors must approve the final manuscript and be accountable for their contributions.UJMPPS does not permit ghost, guest, honorary, or gift authorship, nor the sale or purchase of authorship. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission.The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all eligible authors are included, that no inappropriate authors are listed, that author order has been agreed upon, and that all author details are accurate. Any request to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be justified in writing and approved by all affected authors.

4. Originality, Plagiarism and Redundant Publication
UJMPPS accepts only original manuscripts. Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, text recycling without proper acknowledgment, unattributed paraphrasing, citation manipulation, and submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal are unethical and unacceptable. All manuscripts may be screened with recognized similarity-detection tools. Similarity reports are interpreted with editorial judgment because not all similarity constitutes plagiarism. Manuscripts with unacceptable overlap, unattributed borrowing, manipulated citations, copied content, or substantial duplication may be rejected, returned for correction, or investigated under the journal’s misconduct procedure. Authors must obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted materials, including figures, tables, images, instruments, scales, and long extracts, when legally required.

5. Research Ethics, Human Participants and Informed Consent
Research submitted to UJMPPS must comply with ethical standards applicable to studies involving human participants, organizations, employees, public officials, managers, communities, students, and other respondents. Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants must include an ethics statement. The statement should indicate whether ethical approval was obtained, the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board that granted it, and the approval number, where applicable. If ethical approval was not required, authors must provide a clear justification. Authors must confirm that informed consent was obtained from participants before data collection, where applicable. Participation must be voluntary, and participants must be informed of the study's purpose, their right to withdraw, confidentiality arrangements, and any potential risks or benefits. Studies involving vulnerable groups must demonstrate appropriate safeguards to protect participants from harm, coercion, stigma, privacy violations, or misuse of information.

6. Data Integrity, Availability and Reproducibility
Authors must present data honestly and transparently. Fabrication, falsification, suppression of relevant findings, manipulation of results, and selective reporting constitute serious misconduct. Where appropriate, authors should include a data availability statement that explains whether the data are available, restricted, confidential, or not publicly accessible. Data sharing is encouraged when it does not violate confidentiality, privacy, institutional restrictions, intellectual property rights, contractual obligations, or applicable law.Authors may be asked to provide anonymized raw data, instruments, coding frameworks, interview guides, statistical outputs, or other supporting materials for editorial assessment. Data should be retained for a reasonable period after publication, in accordance with institutional, funder, and legal requirements.

7. Conflicts of Interest and Funding Disclosure
Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial board members must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, academic, political, or professional relationships that could, or be perceived to, influence the research, review process, or editorial decision. Authors must disclose all sources of funding, sponsorship, grants, institutional support, consulting relationships, and the role of funders in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and publication decisions. If no funding or conflict of interest exists, authors should state this clearly. Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest, including recent collaboration, institutional affiliation, supervisory relationships, financial interests, personal relationships, or direct academic competition with the authors.

8. Peer Review Policy
UJMPPS maintains a rigorous peer review process. Manuscripts are first screened by the editorial office for scope, formatting, originality, ethical compliance, and basic scholarly quality. Manuscripts that fall outside the journal’s scope, are ethically deficient, are insufficiently scholarly, or are not prepared according to the journal’s guidelines may be rejected before peer review. Manuscripts that pass editorial screening are typically subjected to peer review by qualified experts in the relevant field. Reviewers assess originality, relevance, theoretical contribution, methodological quality, engagement with the literature, ethical soundness, clarity, and contribution to knowledge, policy, and practice. Reviewers are expected to provide fair, constructive, timely, evidence-based, and confidential assessments. Personal criticism of authors is unacceptable. Final decisions may include acceptance, minor revision, major revision, resubmission, rejection, or referral to another article category. The Editor-in-Chief retains final authority over publication decisions.

9. Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers support the quality and integrity of UJMPPS by evaluating manuscripts objectively and professionally. Reviewers should accept assignments only if they have relevant expertise and sufficient time to complete the review.Reviewers must assess the manuscript's originality, relevance, theoretical foundation, methodological quality, ethical soundness, clarity, engagement with the literature, interpretation of results, and contribution. They should alert the editor to potential plagiarism, duplicate publication, data issues, unethical research practices, inappropriate citations, or conflicts of interest.All manuscripts under review are confidential. Reviewers must not disclose, discuss, copy, cite, distribute, or use manuscript content before publication.

10. Responsibilities of Editors and Editorial Board Members
Editors must handle manuscripts fairly, confidentially, transparently, and efficiently. They are responsible for selecting appropriate reviewers, safeguarding the integrity of peer review, managing conflicts of interest, ensuring ethical compliance, and making decisions based on scholarly merit. Editors must not use unpublished information from submitted manuscripts for their own research without the authors' written permission. Where an editor has a conflict of interest, the manuscript must be assigned to another qualified editor. The editorial board shall consist of scholars and professionals whose expertise aligns with UJMPPS’s aims and scope. Editorial board membership, affiliations, countries, and contact or profile information should be publicly displayed and regularly updated.

11. Use of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Tools
UJMPPS recognizes that artificial intelligence and digital tools may support language editing, formatting, literature organization, data analysis, translation, coding, and research communication. However, AI tools must be used responsibly, transparently, and under human accountability.AI tools must not be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for published work. Authors remain fully accountable for the accuracy, originality, citations, analysis, interpretation, and integrity of any content assisted by AI tools. Authors must disclose significant use of generative AI in writing, data analysis, image creation, coding, translation, or other research processes. The disclosure should specify the tool used and its purpose. AI-generated content must be checked for accuracy, bias, fabricated references, plagiarism, and confidentiality risks. Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviewer reports, unpublished data, or author information to external AI tools unless the journal has approved such use and confidentiality is guaranteed.

12. Research and Publication Misconduct
UJMPPS takes research and publication misconduct seriously. Misconduct includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate submission, redundant publication, unethical research involving human participants, breach of confidentiality, authorship manipulation, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, undeclared conflicts of interest, misuse of AI, and deliberate misrepresentation of data or findings.
Allegations of misconduct may be raised by readers, reviewers, editors, authors, institutions, or other parties. UJMPPS will assess allegations fairly, confidentially, and without prejudice. Authors will normally be given an opportunity to respond. Where necessary, the journal may contact institutions, funders, ethics committees, or other journals. Possible actions include rejection, a request for correction, publication of a correction, an expression of concern, retraction, notification of institutions, or restriction from future submissions for a defined period.

13. Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern
UJMPPS is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. Errors identified after publication will be evaluated based on their seriousness. Minor errors that do not affect interpretation may be corrected administratively. Significant errors that affect understanding, data, authorship, interpretation, or conclusions may require a formal correction notice. A retraction may be issued when findings are unreliable due to misconduct or major error, when the work has been published elsewhere without proper justification, when plagiarism is confirmed, when peer review was manipulated, or when ethical approval or participant consent was seriously compromised. An expression of concern may be issued when there is credible evidence of a problem but the investigation is incomplete or inconclusive. Retraction and correction notices shall be clearly linked to the original article and should explain the reason for the action.

14. Appeals and Complaints
Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions when they believe there has been a procedural error, misunderstanding, conflict of interest, or misinterpretation of the manuscript. Appeals must be submitted in writing and include a clear explanation and supporting evidence. Complaints regarding editorial conduct, reviewer conduct, publication ethics, conflicts of interest, delays, or journal processes should be submitted to the editorial office. All complaints will be acknowledged, assessed fairly, and handled confidentially. Where appropriate, complaints may be referred to an independent editor, editorial board member, publisher representative, or ethics committee. Appeals and complaints do not guarantee reversal of editorial decisions, but they will be handled transparently, fairly, and respectfully.

15. Copyright, Licensing and Open Access
UJMPPS is an open-access journal. Published articles should be freely accessible to readers without subscription barriers. The journal shall clearly state its copyright and licensing terms on the journal website and in each published article. Authors should retain copyright in their work unless otherwise stated in a signed publishing agreement. The applicable license should specify how readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, reuse, or adapt the work. UJMPPS does not charge Article Processing Charges. Editorial decisions shall not be influenced by payment, waiver requests, institutional status, sponsorship, or advertising.

16. Archiving and Digital Preservation
UJMPPS shall maintain a clear digital preservation policy to ensure long-term access to published content. The journal should preserve content through reliable archiving arrangements, including institutional repositories, national repositories, LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, the PKP Preservation Network, Portico, or another recognized preservation system. The journal shall maintain accurate metadata, including issue records, article identifiers, publication dates, author affiliations, abstracts, keywords, references, and full-text files, to support discoverability, indexing, and long-term accessibility.

17. Special Issues and Supplements
Special issues, themed sections, conference papers, and supplements must adhere to the same standards for peer review, ethics, editorial independence, transparency, and quality control as regular issues. Guest editors must be identified by affiliation and must disclose conflicts of interest. Sponsors, partners, advertisers, or funders of special issues shall not influence editorial decisions. The Editor-in-Chief retains final responsibility for all content published in UJMPPS, including that of special issues.

18. Advertising, Sponsorship and Direct Marketing
Any advertising, sponsorship, institutional support, print sales, grants, subscriptions, or other revenue sources must be clearly disclosed. Revenue sources must not influence editorial decisions, peer review outcomes, article selection, or publication timing. Direct marketing and calls for papers must be accurate, respectful, targeted, and not misleading. UJMPPS shall not make false claims regarding indexing, impact factor, acceptance rates, review speed, or guaranteed publication.

19. Commitment to Continuous Improvement
UJMPPS is committed to the continuous improvement of its editorial systems, ethical policies, peer review quality, website transparency, publication regularity, international visibility, metadata quality, and indexing readiness. This policy shall be reviewed periodically to ensure alignment with recognized standards in scholarly publishing and with the evolving needs of the management, governance, public administration, leadership, business, and public policy research communities.