Editors, authors, referees, and the publisher of the Philippine Journal of Public Administration (PJPA) shall comply with standards of ethical behavior in journal publishing. The publication ethics and malpractice statement of the PJPA is adapted from the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). A copy of these guidelines can be accessed from the COPE Website.

Duties of the Editorial Board

(See "About" for list of members of the PJPA Editorial Board and Editorial Staff)

The Editorial Board shall uphold the standards of quality and scholarship of the PJPA, as well as the quality of articles published in it. The Board shall adopt and maintain plans and policies for the Journal. The Board is also responsible for nominating and inviting members to the PJPA’s International Advisory Board, which serves as a pool of referees.

The Editorial Board may intervene in case of conflict in the editing process.

Publication decisions

The Director of the Publications Office (PO), serving as the regular Editor of the PJPA, and the designated special Issue Editors constitute the top operational management of the PJPA.

The Editors shall make the final decisions on the acceptance of articles for publication in the PJPA, unless an issue concerning editorial policy is raised, in which case the Editorial Board may intervene.

Reviews of and decisions made on the articles shall be based on relevance to public administration and governance, originality, credibility of approach, methodological appropriateness, clarity, adequacy of literature review, analysis, organization, writing style, soundness of conclusions, and overall quality.

Editors must ensure that the peer review and editorial processes are being faithfully followed.

Fair play

The Editors shall evaluate manuscripts for their scholarly content and relevance to the remit of the PJPA, without undue regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

The Editorial Board, Editors, and other members of the editorial staff, shall not, if possible, reveal any purely personal information about a submitted manuscript to anyone else, particularly about its authorship in the case of reviewers. The identity of both the contributor and referee shall be concealed from each other throughout the peer review and editing process. Any communication between them shall be done through the Editor or Issue Editor concerned.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

The Editorial Board shall require contributors and referees to promptly disclose any potential conflicts of interest that they may have in the editorial and business transactions involving the PJPA.

Duties of Referees

Contribution to editorial decisions

The Journal is expected to maintain a high level of scholarship, by publishing articles that are relevant, adequately documented, and of excellent quality. All articles submitted for possible publication in the Journal shall be subjected to a double-blind refereeing process. The qualitative assessments of scholars chosen to review submissions form the basis for Editors to decide whether an article should be published in the PJPA.

Referees may reverse their recommendations to publish a manuscript if they find that the revisions made by the author are insufficient or do not address the referees’ recommendations.

Promptness

Referees shall exert their best efforts to abide by the given time frame to review and evaluate manuscripts. If they are unable to submit a timely review, referees shall promptly contact the Editor or Issue Editor in charge and indicate the time they will need to finish the review if still asked to do so. A referee who feels unqualified to review assigned paper/s or knows that prompt review will be impossible shall immediately notify the Editor in charge. He/she shall also promptly inform the Editor if s/he is unable to continue the review process.

Standards of objectivity

Referees shall ensure that their reviews are based on the merits of a work, and not influenced, either positively or negatively, by any personal, financial, or other conflicting considerations or by their own intellectual or ideological biases.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

At no point during the process of evaluation and revision of the paper shall the identity of the authors be disclosed to the reviewers and vice versa. Referees shall notify the PJPA management of any potential conflicts of interest.

Duties of Authors

Originality and plagiarism

Authors shall ensure that they have submitted original rather than borrowed or plagiarized work, that they have acknowledged co-authors, and have properly cited source materials, including those that do not require prior permission to publish. This includes quotations, figures, photos, graphs and tables. Likewise, authors are required to cite and acknowledge their own previous works used in the submitted manuscript. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical and illegal publishing behavior and is unacceptable to the PJPA.

Use of copyrighted material

Authors shall secure permission to publish any copyrighted material used in their work. Authors are generally allowed to use or quote copyrighted materials without prior permission provided that they subscribe to the fair use doctrine. This doctrine refers to the proper use and acknowledgment of copyrighted works for purposes of research, education and criticism without first securing the permission of the copyright holder. Purpose of use, length of the material used, nature of the copyright of the source material, and the effect of the use of the material to the work’s potential market are among the factors that determine fair use.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

Authors shall not submit to the Journal any work that has been previously published or considered in any other publication. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. However, an article published elsewhere, which is considered by the PJPA Editor to be highly relevant to Philippine public administration and governance and of potential interest but inaccessible to the PJPA’s readers, may be reprinted in this Journal if the article meets its standards.

Authors who intend to reprint works already published by the NCPAG Publications Office shall inform the same office of any plans to republish their works elsewhere.

Authorship of the paper

The authorship of a manuscript, as indicated by the by-line, shall be limited to those who have taken part in the conception and writing of the work, any research or data gathering and analysis involved, and in other phases of its preparation. In the case of multiple authorship, the group shall designate a corresponding author for purposes of communicating with the Publications Office and the publication’s readers.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Authors shall fully disclose the authorship of their submissions, contributions made by people other than the recognized principal authors, funding support, and potential conflicts of interest at the earliest stage possible.

Duties of the Publisher

The Publications Office (PO) of the National College of Public Administration and Governance at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP-NCPAG), is responsible for the printing, publication, and distribution by sale or otherwise of the Philippine Journal of Public Administration (PJPA). This is intended to be issued at least twice a year. The PO shall provide reasonable support to the Editors and the Editorial Board in ensuring the proper and timely review, editing, proofreading, and other preparations for the timely publication of the PJPA. The PO’s responsibilities include attracting more contributions worthy of publication, expediting the editing processes to meet publication deadlines, and prompt distribution and active marketing of the PJPA and other publications to prevent the pile-up of inventories.

The PO shall also ensure that works submitted for publication adhere to the prescribed fromat and style of the PJPA as well as to other Journal policies. The PO reserves the right to return to authors manuscripts that fail to follow the prescribed standards, format and style of the Journal. It shall automatically exclude papers that violate PJPA policies regarding originality or relevance. 

The PO shall work with the editors, authors and contributors to meet Journal policies and shall facilitate the publication process.