Ethics and Responsibility

Beyond Words: a journal on language education, applied linguistics and curriculum & instructions is a peer-reviewed and open-access focuses on language education and applied linguistics. It is published twice a year in May and November. Publications include perspectives, research articles, and book reviews related to language education and applied linguistics.

This following statement clarifies ethical behavior of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in this journal. This statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Authors’ Rights
The copyright of an article published in Beyond Words is with the author(s). As an open access Journal, Beyond Words does not charge authors for the publication of their articles, and the full texts are directly available for readers without any payments.


Authors’ Responsibilities
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items. Submissions may be returned to authors who do not adhere to the guidelines.
All articles submitted for Beyond Words must be free from any form of plagiarism, fraud research, fake data, and fraudulent analyses. It is the authors’ responsibility to comply with these academic best practices. Articles submitted must not have been previously published, entirely or partly, nor is in the waiting list of another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor). When using other authors’ ideas or statements, all the quotes and paraphrases of ideas taken from other articles must be given appropriate citations. (Beyond Words uses APA Publication Manual).
Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interests that may influence the objectivity and the judgments of the authors related to the research.


Editors’ Responsibilities
Editors do their tasks by considering journal quality only, and will not make any unfair decisions on the basis of race, gender, religious beliefs, political beliefs and affiliations, and sexual orientation.
The Editor-in-Chief secured authors that contents of waiting-to-be published and unpublished articles will not be used by editors or editorial staffs for their own writings

Reviewer Resposibilities

  1. Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
  2. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewers should notify the journal immediately if they come across any irregularities, have concerns about ethical aspects of the work, are aware of substantial similarity between the manuscript and a concurrent submission to another journal or a published article, or suspect that misconduct may have occurred during either the research or the writing and submission of the manuscript; reviewers should, however, keep their concerns confidential and not personally investigate further unless the journal asks for further information or advice.
  3. Standards of Objectivity: Review of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. The reviewers should follow journals’ instructions on the specific feedback that is required of them and, unless there are good reasons not to. The reviewers should be constructive in their reviews and provide feedback that will help the authors to improve their manuscript. The reviewer should make clear which suggested additional investigations are essential to support claims made in the manuscript under consideration and which will just strengthen or extend the work.
  4. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.  Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. In the case of double-blind review, if they suspect the identity of the author(s) notify the journal if this knowledge raises any potential conflict of interest.
  5. Promptness: The reviewers should respond in a reasonable time-frame. The reviewers only agree to review a manuscript if they are fairly confident, they can return a review within the proposed or mutually agreed time-frame, informing the journal promptly if they require an extension. In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.