The Editorial Board of Aitihya-The Heritage has agreed upon the necessity to conform to certain standard norms of ethical conduct to which all the parties engaged in this project of publishing of the Journal viz. – the author, the Journal editor, the blind peer reviewer/ reviewers and the publisher will be bound. The publishers and stakeholders of the publication are committed to the best publication practices including originality of the entries, issues on plagiarism and confidentiality. The ethical policy of the journal is modeled on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Aitihya–The Heritage is a bi-annual, multi-lingual research journal on Indology with ISSN number 2229 5399, publishing original research articles related to Indian history, society, culture, philosophy, literature and on any topic within the discipline of Humanities in relation to the Indian heritage. The journal particularly encourages submissions that reflect critical thinking and employ interdisciplinary and comparative research methods. The guideline for manuscript preparation has been outlined in the website.
Since its inception in the year 2010, the journal has specialized in the publication of longer monographic research papers which show a deep engagement with certain conceptual and critical thinking with the use of rich empirical data. Each issue carries about ten to twelve entries in three major languages, viz. English, Bengali and Assamese.
All submissions to the Journal must be online with a separate title page reflecting the name, email, mobile/telephone no., and the address of the author. The author must be careful not to indicate directly or in any other manner, his/her identity in the body of the manuscript. All article entries would go through the process of blind peer review. It is imperative to note that the editor will subject every entry through a rigorous pre-review. The authors should take care to ensure that the content in the manuscript does not offend/hurt the sentiment of any community and does not use any defamatory or derogatory language. The authors must note that the article submitted to the Journal anticipating consideration for publication must not be submitted to any other journal concurrently or till the outcome of the submission (acceptance/rejection) is communicated to them by the editor. Entries must also be accompanied by a certificate/declaration from the authors certifying that the manuscript has undergone a check on plagiarism. Authors will be liable for any violation of the norms of copyright and penal action will be initiated against the offending authors. Entries must be accompanied by a declaration from all the contributors (if more than one author) on the approval of the final version of the entry and its submission to the journal along with a declaration that the entry is not barred by the terms of ‘Research Misconduct’, which would mean making up of data or results, manipulating research data, or processing and appropriating, and claiming of ideas, process, result or words and phrases authored or used or belonging to another person, without proper/ appropriate credit or acknowledgement.
The Editorial Board is collectively responsible for deciding which manuscript shall find place in the Journal as an article for publication. The journal is published in hard copy. The soft copy of the content page of the journal is uploaded by the editor as per the schedule of publication of the journal.
The editor shall communicate to the scholar the initial intimation about the receipt of the manuscript for consideration for publication in the journal. No other correspondence of any kind will be entertained during the pendency of the review. The Editor will transmit the intimation about the acceptance or rejection of the submitted manuscript to the author. Manuscript received for review will be treated as a confidential document except as authorized by the editor. Privileged information or ideas obtained from unpublished manuscript shall be kept confidential and shall not used for any personal advantage or research.
If any author is found to be guilty of ‘research misconduct’, the journal reserves the right to reject/ retract or withdraw the paper; decline further submissions from the offending authors for a period as determined by the Journal editorial committee. On receipt of any challenge/ complaint about the authenticity and integrity of the article, the Editor will consult the publisher / author and contribute to the investigation and responsive measures that may/ follow from such investigations will be undertaken.
The authors must ensure that the paper has not been previously published, in the current format either in print or in electronic form and is not under consideration for publication by any other journal/publication or has not been previously transferred, assigned or is otherwise encumbered in any other form. Necessary permission and authorization has been obtained for the use of the same by the author in such situation. The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential source of conflict of interest. Authors will certify that all affiliations and conflict with the subject or materials discussed in the manuscript along with other financial or personal relationships that might bias the author/s work must be disclosed to the journal editorial board as part of the initial declaration while submitting the entry for consideration.
In conformity with international standards of peer review, the reviewers must disclose any competing/ conflict of interests, evaluate a manuscript for its intellectual content independent of any bias within a reasonable timeframe. Any manuscript that is transmitted to the reviewer should be treated as a confidential document.