Global visibility, ethical publishing standards, and open access commitment
All JOPS articles are indexed in Google Scholar and discoverable through Google search.
JOPS is listed on AJOL, the primary aggregator of African academic journals.
DOI registration with Crossref is in progress. This enables citation tracking and Altmetric integration.
JOPS application to DOAJ is pending. DOAJ is the gold standard for legitimate open access journals.
Scopus indexing application will be submitted following two years of consistent publication.
Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) application planned after Scopus acceptance.
JOPS is registered and indexed in ResearchBib (Academic Resource Index), a free academic database and journal indexing service.
JOPS content is harvestable via RSS and OAI-compliant metadata, accessible through BASE.
JOPS is pursuing COPE membership to demonstrate commitment to ethical publishing standards.
JOPS is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics. Our policies are aligned with COPE guidelines.
All articles published in JOPS are immediately and permanently free to read, download, and reuse. JOPS is a Gold Open Access journal. No subscription or pay-per-view fees are charged to readers.
JOPS operates a rigorous double-blind peer review process. All submitted manuscripts are evaluated by at least two independent expert reviewers. The identities of authors and reviewers are mutually concealed throughout the process.
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), allowing free use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.
Authorship credit requires substantial contributions to conception, design, data acquisition, or analysis; drafting or critically revising the manuscript; final approval; and accountability for the work. All authors must meet all four criteria.
All submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism. Manuscripts with a similarity index above 20% (excluding references) are returned to authors for revision before review. Fabrication, falsification, and duplicate submission are grounds for immediate rejection and reporting.
Authors are encouraged to make underlying research data available in a public repository and include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript. JOPS supports open data principles consistent with FAIR data standards.
All authors must disclose any financial, personal, or professional relationships that could influence the work. Reviewers must declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when they exist. The Editor-in-Chief manages conflicts involving editorial board members.
AI-assisted writing tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot) may be used to improve language and readability but not to generate scientific content. AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors must disclose use of AI tools in the Methods or Acknowledgements section.
JOPS publishes corrections for significant errors that do not affect conclusions. Articles are retracted when findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error that materially affects conclusions. All retraction notices state the reason and remain permanently linked to the original article.
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