Journal Policies:
1. Type of Journal:
The journal is an open-access and printed. Its content is available to academics and researchers to support exchange of knowledge on the national and global levels. It uses Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License that preserves the copyrights of published materials to the authors and protects it from unauthorized commercial use.
2. Frequency of publication:
The journal is published biannually. Each volume contains 2-issues at June and December.
Special issues are issued within regular issues and are going through similar process of reviewing.
3. Publishing Ethics:
Journal of SESD is maintaining and adhering to the standards of publication ethics that support ethical research practices
3.1 Author Responsibilities:
Authors are responsible to submit an original research work and ensure that his work was not published before and is not intended to be published elsewhere. Authors are requested to cite all references in appropriate way according to the journal requirements.
Authors are requested to declare any financial funds or other facilities provided to them for their research work and state any conflict of interest.
3.2. Editors Responsibilities:
Editors ensure fair double-blind peer-review of the submitted articles for publication. They ensure the confidentiality of all information concerning reviewing process of all manuscripts submitted to the journal. They attempt to avoided conflict of interest between authors and reviewers as well as with editorial board.
3.3. Reviewers Responsibilities:
Reviewers are responsible for reviewing manuscript and make their evaluation to the best of their knowledge and give constructive comments and provide editors with an impartial evaluation. They should keep all information associated to the manuscript confidential and return their reviewing report within time frame given to them by the editors. They should adhere to the time frame given by the editor.
4. Charges:
The journal is an open access with no charges for article submission and processing. It is free of charges for authors and readers. Its content is freely available to researchers and academics to support exchange of knowledge.
Paper Submission:
All papers and reports are peer reviewed through an evaluation process. Paper and report templates are available at the journal website.
- The papers and reports should be an original work and not considered for publication elsewhere. Papers published in conferences may be considered for publication in the journal after they go through the evaluation process and if they do not conflict with the copyright of the conference proceedings.
- All papers and reports are subject to evaluation and may not be published unless all the required corrections are met and the author’s guideline for publication is followed.
- The Arabic language is allowed in writing the text, including English abstract and all scientific terms as needed. In English language papers an Arabic abstract should be included.
- The author should submit an electronic copy of the article as a word document and one PDF copy to the journal address including a cover letter to the editors.
- If the paper was published in a conference, the author should give detailed information on the conference (including: name of the conference, date, etc) and any changes were added to the paper as well as permission from the conference scientific committee.
- After acceptance of the paper or report for publication in the journal, it should not be considered for publication in another journal and the author should sign a copyright agreement with the editorial board of the journal.
- The author should provide the editorial board with the consent of the other coauthors and the related institutions involved in the research work.
5. Peer Review Process:
Peer review is an essential process to maintain high standards of papers' publication at JSESD. All papers and reports are subject to evaluation according to the peer review procedure and may not be published unless all the required corrections are met and the author’s guideline for publication is followed. Publication process takes 4-5 months since paper submission. Peer review process takes 2-3 months followed by editing process and other publishing issues of about 2 months. It takes the following steps:
5.1. Editors Evaluation:
- The editorial board takes the first step of evaluation according to the following procedure:
- The manuscript must comply with the journal’s scope and aim,
- The manuscript must be of acceptable quality, and it is written correctly to the peer reviewing level.
- The manuscript must follow the instructions for authors.
5.2. Peer Review type, process and selection criteria:
The journal follows double blind review. So the cleared manuscripts are sent to at least two peer reviewers. They should follow the instructions requested by the editorial board. It includes points on how to prepare a reviewer report as well as evaluation of the technical quality of the manuscript. Also, they must provide the editors with their recommendation to accept or reject the manuscript (as last part of the evaluation form).
If one referees' report contradicted the other reviewer then a third reviewer is selected. Also, in case some reviewers did not respond in time the editorial board will assign another reviewer. This could prolong the evaluation process.
The reviewers are asked to perform their review and submit their reports within 3-4 weeks. The whole process should not exceed 2-3 months.
Peer reviewers are selected according to their experience in the field from different nationality in order to widen the data base of journal and maintain high quality standards of articles.
5.3. Editorial Decision:
After the peer review process is finalized, the editors (editor in chief and associate editors) will give their final decision in the light of the referee recommendation and their own evaluation and judgment to either:
- Accepted for Publication Without Revision
- Accepted for Publication With Revision
- Not Accepted for Publication
6. Copyright Statement
The Journal of Solar Energy and Sustainable Development (JSESD) is committed to real and immediate open access for academic work. All of the JSESD’s articles and reviews are free to access immediately from the date of publication. There are no author charges (commonly known as APCs) prior to publication, and no charge for any reader to download articles and reviews for their own scholarly use. The JSESD is free to all at any time and in perpetuity. To facilitate this, the JSESD depends upon the financial underwriting provided by the Centre for Solar Energy Research and Studies, the goodwill of its editorial team and advisory board, and the continuing support of its network of peer reviewers.
A Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) license applies to all contents published in JSESD. While articles published on JSESD can be copied by anyone for non-commercial purposes if proper credit and cite is given, all materials are published under an open-access license with authors retaining full and permanent ownership of their work. JSESD retains a perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish the work and to include it in other aggregations and indexes to achieve broader impact and visibility. Authors are responsible for and required to ascertain that they are in possession of image rights for any and all photographs, illustrations, and figures included in their work or to obtain publication or reproduction rights from the rights holders. In submitting their work for publication in JSESD, authors agree to the terms set above. Authors are free and encouraged to store their work elsewhere, for instance in institutional repositories or websites to increase circulation (see The Effects of Open Access). Authors are also able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. JSESD does not charge any reprint fees and it is not necessary to contact JSESD for permission.