Editorial and publication policies
SGST aligns its policies with recognised principles of publication ethics and transparency, including relevant COPE principles and established scholarly publishing standards.
These policies are published in full so that authors, reviewers and readers can hold the journal to them.
On this page
- Peer review
- Publication ethics
- Authorship and contributorship
- Conflicts of interest
- Funding and sponsorship
- Plagiarism and misconduct
- Research ethics and participants
- Preprints and prior publication
- AI-assisted technologies
- Data, materials and code
- Corrections and retractions
- Appeals and complaints
- Copyright, licensing and open access
- Charges and waivers
- Advertising and sponsorship
- Privacy
- Terms of use
- Website security
Peer-review policy and workflow
Double-anonymised; normally two independent reviewers
The model is double-anonymised peer review, in which reviewers do not normally know the identity of authors and authors do not know the identity of reviewers. The journal may adopt another transparent model only if it is formally approved and clearly stated on this website.
Workflow
- Submission received.
- Technical and scope screening.
- Similarity and integrity checks.
- Editor assignment.
- Reviewer invitation and conflict-of-interest check.
- Peer review by normally two independent reviewers; additional reviewers may be invited when necessary.
- Editorial assessment of reports.
- Decision: accept, minor revision, major revision, reject, or other documented category.
- Revision and further review when required.
- Final acceptance.
- Production, copyediting, proofing, metadata verification and publication.
- Post-publication monitoring and correction where necessary.
Reviewers are selected for subject expertise, independence, availability and absence of conflicts. The journal avoids repeatedly using the same reviewers and seeks appropriate geographical and institutional diversity.
What reviewers assess
- Scientific originality and significance.
- Alignment with the journal’s scope.
- Clarity of research objectives and hypotheses.
- Appropriateness and reproducibility of methods.
- Validity of data, analysis, statistics, models and interpretation.
- Quality and completeness of figures, tables and supplementary information.
- Appropriateness of references and awareness of relevant literature.
- Strength of the sustainability or green-technology contribution.
- Clarity of conclusions and whether they are supported by evidence.
- Ethical and integrity considerations.
Reviewer conduct
- Keep the manuscript and review confidential.
- Do not use unpublished information for personal advantage.
- Declare conflicts of interest.
- Provide specific, respectful, evidence-based comments.
- Distinguish major concerns from minor corrections.
- Do not request citations solely to increase personal citations or journal metrics.
- Do not recommend rejection simply because the study challenges the reviewer’s preferred interpretation.
- Do not upload confidential manuscripts to external AI systems unless the journal expressly permits it and confidentiality is assured.
Editorial confidentiality
Manuscripts and peer-review materials are confidential.
- Who is bound
- Editors, reviewers and editorial staff
- What is protected
- Unpublished manuscript content and all review materials
- Permitted disclosure
- Only as required for legitimate editorial and ethical processes
- Duration
- Not limited to the period of review
- External AI systems
- Not permitted for confidential material; see AI policy
Research integrity and publication ethics
SGST is committed to maintaining high standards of research integrity. The journal expects, and applies to itself:
- Honesty and transparency in research and reporting.
- Respect for research participants, communities, animals and the environment.
- Accurate presentation of data and methods.
- No fabrication, falsification, manipulation or deceptive reporting.
- No plagiarism or inappropriate appropriation of others’ ideas or text.
- No duplicate or redundant publication.
- Transparent disclosure of conflicts and funding.
- Fair and confidential peer review.
- Appropriate correction of the published record.
The journal may investigate suspected misconduct before, during or after publication. Where appropriate, it may contact authors’ institutions, funders, ethics committees or other responsible bodies.
Conflicts of interest
Authors, editors and reviewers must disclose relationships or activities that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.
Conflicts may be financial or non-financial and may involve employment, consultancy, funding, patents, personal relationships, institutional interests, academic competition or other relevant circumstances.
A conflict does not necessarily prevent publication or review, but it must be transparently disclosed and appropriately managed.
Funding and sponsorship
Authors must disclose all financial support, grants, equipment, materials, institutional support or other assistance that contributed to the research or publication.
The role of each funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing or publication decisions should be disclosed where applicable. Commercial sponsorship must not compromise editorial independence or scientific reporting.
Plagiarism, similarity and misconduct
The journal uses similarity screening as one element of research-integrity assessment. Similarity percentages are not treated as automatic proof of plagiarism; editors evaluate the nature, location, source and context of the overlap.
Potential misconduct includes plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, image manipulation, data manipulation, peer-review manipulation, authorship fraud, citation manipulation, duplicate publication, redundant publication and undeclared conflicts.
When concerns arise, the journal documents the case, seeks explanations and evidence, and follows a proportionate process. Serious cases may lead to rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction or referral to the relevant institution.
Research ethics and protection of participants
Research involving human participants, identifiable human data, animals or other regulated subjects must comply with applicable ethical standards and institutional or national requirements.
Where applicable, manuscripts must state the name of the approving ethics committee or institutional review board, the approval or reference number, and the relevant consent procedures. For human participants, informed consent should be obtained where required; authors must protect privacy and remove unnecessary identifying information. Animal research should report relevant ethical approval and appropriate welfare procedures.
Clinical trials and other prospectively registered studies should be registered in an appropriate recognised registry when required. Authors should provide the registration identifier and details, and the journal may request protocols, registration records or ethical approvals.
Preprints, prior publication and duplicate submission
Authors must not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal. Any prior dissemination, preprint, conference version, thesis or related publication must be disclosed where relevant.
Preprints may be considered provided the submission is transparently identified and the journal’s policy is followed. Authors must disclose substantial overlap and explain how the submitted manuscript differs from earlier versions. Duplicate or redundant publication is unacceptable unless a legitimate secondary publication has been approved and clearly identified.
AI-assisted technologies policy
Human accountability, disclosure, confidentiality, and no AI authorship
The journal recognises that AI-assisted technologies can support language editing, coding, data analysis, visualisation, literature organisation and other research activities. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, confidentiality and appropriate attribution of all submitted content.
AI systems and chatbots cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot assume responsibility for the work.
Disclosure by authors
Authors who use generative AI or other AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation must disclose the tool and its purpose in the manuscript or cover letter as required. Examples include language editing, text generation, code assistance, image generation or modification, data analysis, and other substantive uses. Routine spelling, grammar or language assistance may be treated differently from substantive generation, but authors should follow the journal’s current disclosure requirements.
AI and peer review
Reviewers must maintain manuscript confidentiality. They must not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished material to AI systems unless the journal expressly permits it and confidentiality can be assured.
AI-generated images and data
Authors must disclose substantive AI-generated or AI-modified images where relevant, and must not use AI to fabricate experimental results, data, references, participant information or evidence. Authors remain responsible for copyright, attribution and scientific validity.
In short
- AI as author
- Never permitted
- Substantive use
- Must be disclosed, naming the tool and its purpose
- Fabrication
- Prohibited, including fabricated references
- Confidential material
- Must not be uploaded to external AI systems
- Responsibility
- Rests entirely with the human authors
Data, materials, code and reproducibility
SGST encourages authors to make supporting data, code, models, protocols and materials available whenever ethically, legally and practically possible.
Authors must provide a Data Availability Statement. Where data cannot be shared, authors should explain the reason, such as privacy, legal restrictions, confidentiality or third-party ownership.
Repositories with persistent identifiers are encouraged. Authors should provide sufficient information for independent assessment and reproducibility without compromising confidentiality or intellectual property.
Computational studies should identify software versions, key parameters, computational environments, and relevant code or data availability where appropriate.
What a computational paper should name
- Software
- Name and version
- Parameters
- Key values and how they were chosen
- Environment
- Computational environment relevant to reproducing the result
- Code
- Availability, with a persistent identifier where possible
- Data
- Availability statement in every case, including where sharing is restricted
Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern
The original scholarly record is never silently altered
| Notice | When it is used |
|---|---|
| Correction | For a limited error that can be corrected without invalidating the main findings. |
| Retraction | When serious errors or misconduct invalidate the reliability of the publication, or require its removal from the valid scholarly record. |
| Expression of concern | When there is a substantial unresolved concern but the investigation is incomplete, or the available evidence is insufficient for immediate correction or retraction. |
| Withdrawal | For manuscripts that have not yet entered the final published record, subject to documented policy. |
Corrections and retractions are linked to the original article, clearly identified, dated and explained.
Appeals, complaints and post-publication discussion
Appeals
Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they can identify a substantive factual, procedural or reviewer-related issue that may have materially affected the decision.
Appeals should be submitted within a reasonable period and should provide specific evidence rather than simply disagreeing with the decision. The Editor-in-Chief or an independent editor may review the appeal.
Complaints
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, conflicts, ethics or publication practices should be submitted to the editorial office or designated publisher contact. Complaints are handled confidentially and without retaliation.
Post-publication discussion
The journal may publish letters, comments, responses, corrections or other post-publication content where these contribute constructively to scientific discussion. Authors may be invited to respond to substantive concerns.
Post-publication discussion should be evidence-based, professional and free from personal attacks.
Copyright, licensing and open access
The licence is being finalised by the publisher
The journal states copyright ownership and licensing terms before publication. If the journal operates as open access, the specific Creative Commons licence will be stated on this website and on published articles.
The journal provides clear information on author rights, reuse, repository deposition and third-party material. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for copyrighted material when required.
The selected licence will be applied consistently and displayed in article metadata and full text.
No licence has yet been adopted, so this page names none. Publishing a licence the publisher has not approved would be worse than showing the gap. The decision will appear here, and on every article, before the first issue.
Charges and waivers
- Current position
- No decision has been taken on article processing charges.
- If charges are adopted
- The amount, currency, timing, conditions, and waiver or discount policy will be clearly displayed before submission.
- If the journal operates without charges
- This website will state explicitly that no submission or publication fee is charged.
- Any future change
- Announced transparently and applied according to a clearly stated policy.
- Effect on decisions
- None. Editors do not make decisions based on an author’s ability to pay, and charge information is kept separate from editorial decision-making.
Advertising, commercial influence and sponsorship
Any advertising or commercial sponsorship must be clearly distinguished from editorial content. Advertisers and sponsors must not influence editorial decisions, peer review, article selection or scientific conclusions.
The journal may reject advertising that conflicts with its mission, ethical standards or applicable laws.
This website currently carries no advertising and no sponsored content.
Terms of use
This website is provided by Al Qasim Green University for information about the journal and for communication with the editorial office. Policy pages describe the journal’s intended practice; where an item is marked as pending, no commitment beyond that description should be inferred.
Content on this site may be read, printed and quoted with attribution. The licence covering published articles is stated in copyright and licensing and on each article once published; site text is the property of Al Qasim Green University.
Do not use this site to attempt unauthorised access, to disrupt its operation, or to submit unlawful content. Misuse may be reported to the relevant authorities.
Privacy
What this website collects, why, and for how long
Names, email addresses, affiliations and messages submitted through this website or sent to the editorial office are used solely for the stated purposes of the journal: running peer review, publishing articles, and corresponding about them. They are not sold, rented, shared with third parties for marketing, or used for any other purpose.
- The site sets no advertising or tracking cookies, and uses no third-party analytics or social media widgets.
- Web server logs record IP address, request path, timestamp and user agent for security and troubleshooting.
- Manuscript records, including reviewer reports and correspondence, are retained because the integrity of the published record depends on them.
- Names of authors, and of reviewers who consent to be listed, form part of the scholarly record and cannot be withdrawn once published.
- Personal data supplied in confidence during peer review is not disclosed outside legitimate editorial and ethical processes.
To ask what is held about you, or to have contact details corrected or deleted, write to the editorial office. Data is stored on systems administered by Al Qasim Green University and is subject to Iraqi law.
Retention
- Server logs
- Short retention for security and troubleshooting, then deleted
- Enquiry messages
- Retained only as long as needed to answer and record the enquiry
- Manuscript files and reviews
- Retained with the manuscript record
- Published articles
- Permanent, by design
- Cookies
- None beyond what a session requires
- Third-party trackers
- None
Exact retention periods will be fixed in the publisher’s data-protection schedule and stated here once approved.
Website security
How the site is hardened, and how to report a weakness
Transparency guidance requires that the journal website use HTTPS and be maintained and secured. The integrity of a scholarly record depends on the integrity of the system that holds it.
- All traffic is served over HTTPS, and requests over plain HTTP are redirected. HTTP Strict Transport Security is enforced.
- A Content Security Policy restricts scripts, styles, fonts, images and form targets to known origins. Framing by other sites is blocked.
- The site carries no user accounts, no comment facility and no public file upload, so the surface an attacker can reach is deliberately small.
- Form input is validated and encoded on the server; nothing submitted by a browser is trusted.
- Only the GET, HEAD and POST methods are accepted; configuration, source and backup file types cannot be retrieved.
- Server version banners are suppressed and error pages reveal no internal detail.
- Server software and dependencies are patched on a regular cycle, and sooner for anything rated critical.
- Backups are encrypted, held off-site, and restored as a test periodically.
Reporting a vulnerability
If you find a security weakness in this site, report it to the editorial office with enough detail to reproduce it.
The journal will not pursue action against anyone who investigates in good faith, reports privately, and does not access, alter or remove data beyond what is needed to demonstrate the problem. Please do not test denial of service, do not run automated scanners against the live site, and allow a reasonable period for a fix before disclosing publicly.
Suspected compromise of a manuscript file or of editorial correspondence should be reported in the same way and marked urgent, since it may affect the confidentiality of peer review.
The journal avoids misleading similarity to established journals, and will never operate under a name, design or identifier intended to be mistaken for another publication.