ADVERTISING POLICY

The Journal does not endorse any product or service marked as an advertisement or promoted by a sponsor in publications. Editorial content is not compromised by commercial or financial interests, or by any specific arrangements with advertising clients or sponsors. The Editorial Board of the Journal does not accept for consideration and does not print advertising articles (both on a reimbursable and free basis). Authors of the articles cannot link to ads using keywords. The Publisher/Journal reserves the right to decline or cancel any advertisement at any time.

AFFILIATIONS

Each author must list all relevant affiliations to attribute where the research or scholarly work was approved and/or supported and/or conducted. An author may hold more than one affiliation, but it must be properly stated. A complete institutional affiliation must be written in the Title Page during submission, together with corresponding author’s e-mail address.

Current institutional affiliation may apply to non-research article. If you have moved to a different institution before the article has been published, you should list the affiliation where the work was conducted and include a note to state your current affiliation. If you do not have a current relevant institutional affiliation, you should state your independent status (independent researcher).

AI POLICY

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) software, such as ChatGPT, must be noted in the Materials and Methods section (or Acknowledgments, if no Materials and Methods section is available) of the manuscript and may not be listed as an author. Authors are solely accountable for and must thoroughly fact-check, outputs created with the help of generative AI software.

The Use of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Scientific Writing

Where authors use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process, these technologies should only be used to improve readability and language of the work. Applying the technology should be done with human oversight and control and authors should carefully review and edit the result, because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. The authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.

Authors should disclose in their manuscript the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies and a statement will appear in the published work. Declaring the use of these technologies supports transparency and trust between authors, readers, reviewers, editors and contributors and facilitates compliance with the terms of use of the relevant tool or technology.

Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.

The Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Tools in Figures, Images and Artwork

We do not permit the use of Generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. This may include enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing a specific feature within an image or figure. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or colour balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Image forensics tools or specialised software might be applied to submitted manuscripts to identify suspected image irregularities.

The only exception is if the use of AI or AI-assisted tools is part of the research design or research methods (such as in AI-assisted imaging approaches to generate or interpret the underlying research data, for example in the field of biomedical imaging). If this is done, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section. This should include an explanation of how the AI or AI-assisted tools were used in the image creation or alteration process and the name of the model or tool, version and extension numbers and manufacturer. Authors should adhere to the AI software’s specific usage policies and ensure correct content attribution. Where applicable, authors could be asked to provide pre-AI-adjusted versions of images and/or the composite raw images used to create the final submitted versions, for editorial assessment.

APPEALS

To ask the Editor to reconsider a rejection of a manuscript, please contact the Editorial Office at jcdc@usm.my. These are considered appeals, which, by policy, must take second place to the normal workload. In practice, this means that decisions on appeals often take several weeks. Only one appeal is permitted for each manuscript. Final decisions on appeals will be made by the Editor.

In general, an appeal against a rejection decision on a manuscript will only be considered if:

• the authors can demonstrate that an error that determined the final decision has been made - by a referee or the Editors - during review

• if important additional data can be provided

• if a convincing case of bias in the process can be demonstrated.

Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should submit a formal letter of appeal to the Journal by contacting the Journal Editorial Office. Include the manuscript tracking number in the email subject line and the appeal letter. If appeals are successful, then authors will be given instructions on how to proceed. If an appeal merits further consideration, the Editor may send the authors’ response and the revised paper out for further peer review.

ARTICLE PUBLISHING CHARGE (APC)

With effect from 1st January 2023 onwards, an Article Publishing Charge (APC) of MYR500/USD150 will be imposed on authors upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication (for submission starting 1st January 2023).

All manuscripts published in our journals are open access and freely available online. APC is crucial to sustain and develop an open-access journal. The APC payable for a manuscript is agreed as part of the manuscript submission process. Authors pay a one-time APC to cover the costs of publishing services we provide. This includes provision of online tools for editors and authors, manuscript production and hosting, liaison with abstracting and indexing services and customer services. The corresponding author of the manuscript is responsible for making or arranging the payment upon editorial acceptance of the manuscript. We advise prompt payment as we are unable to publish accepted manuscripts until payment has been received. Payment should be made through the University’s payment gateway as instructed in the acceptance email from the Editor-in-Chief.

Upon acceptance of a manuscript, an APC of RM500/USD150 will be imposed on the authors. The APC is based on the followings:

MYR500 for corresponding author affiliated mainly to an institution in Malaysia.

USD150 for corresponding author affiliated mainly to foreign institution outside Malaysia.

(Bank charges have to be defrayed by authors.)

Refund Policy

The corresponding author assumes the responsibility for the APC payment. Penerbit USM will refund an APC if an error on our part has resulted in a failure to publish the accepted manuscript. APCs will not be refunded when articles are withdrawn by the author(s) or retracted as a result of author error or misconduct.

Waiver Policy

There is no discount or waiver on the APC for accepted papers.

Payment Instruction

The APC payment must be made online through USM e-payment portal. Author(s) of accepted paper will be instructed on the payment via the acceptance email from the Editor. Please note that your publication will only be considered upon acceptance of payment, not acceptance date.

Only payment through the USM e-payment portal will be accepted and processed. Once you click the provided link, you should be directed to the USM e-payment form for “Journal Publication” services, in which it will land to the designated journal e-payment portal. Please make sure that the name of the journal is correctly displayed. If the link does not direct to the correct journal, please refer the matter to the Journal Admin immediately.

Author then must fill in the Manuscript ID (provided by the journal during submission). Before you click “Next”, please ensure that you have filled in all required information. Through this portal, payment can be made either by credit card or interbank online transfer method. Author MUST ensure to select the correct currency and amount as instructed in the acceptance email. After you have successfully made the payment, please print the proof of payment as PDF and email this document to the Journal Admin. You will receive an acknowledgement email once we have received the notification of successful transaction from the bank. Should you have enquiries or issues regarding the payment process, please contact the Journal Admin.

USM ePayment Operating Hours

AUTHORSHIP

Authorship provides credit for researcher’s contribution to the work. Each author is expected to have made substantial and significance contribution to the conception and design of the work. All authors are accountable to their own contribution to the work and mutually agree to submit the work to the selected journal. The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the Journal and between co-authors. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors that contributed to the work are fairly acknowledged and that the published author list accurately reflects individual contributions.

Any changes to the author list after submission must be accompanied by a letter signed by every author approving those changes. The Journal and Editor should be informed on such changes in authorship. Request should be dealt with fairly and in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines. Changes in authorship will only be permitted where valid reasons are provided and all authors are in agreement with the change.

In the event of dispute among authors, the Journal will follow the recommendations set by COPE guidelines.

COMPLAINTS

Complaints should be directly emailed to jcdc@usm.my and will be dealt with confidentially. All complaints will be formally acknowledged within 7–14 working days. If possible, a full response will be made within 2–3 weeks. If this is not possible, an interim response will be given within 3-4 weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

When submitting a manuscript, authors must declare any potential conflicts of interest. You must do this by including a “Conflicts of Interest” statement in your submitted manuscript or in the cover letter during submission. It is the responsibility of a manuscript’s corresponding author to confirm if co-authors hold any conflict of interest.

Any relevant information – such as sources of research findings; the role or research funder(s), sponsor(s) (if any); and financial or non-financial interests and relationship that might affect the interpretation of findings – must be declared through the Acknowledgments section of the manuscripts or at the point of submission.

CONTENT ORIGINALITY AND PLAGIARISM

Authors are responsible to submit contents which are original and for other works which have been referred to in the research, proper citations must be made to the referred works. All articles submitted to the Journal are subject to plagiarism check using plagiarism detection software. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.

CONTRIBUTORSHIP

Contributors who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship should be described clearly in the acknowledgement section; for example, “served as technical or statistical advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” or “collected data.” All individuals named must give permission to be included, as readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions of the paper. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that permission is obtained and to be able to provide evidence of this if required.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

This Journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All articles in the Journal are published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0). Authors transfer the copyright to Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia. This copyright transfer enables the Journal to protect the copyrighted material for the authors but does not relinquish the authors’ proprietary rights. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, photographic reproductions, microfilm or any other reproductions of similar nature and translations. Authors are responsible for obtaining from the copyright holder permission to reproduce any materials for which copyright exists.

The works are released under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0), which provides unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles in this Journal and to use them for any other lawful purpose.

CORRECTION AND RETRACTION

Should there be any corrections to the published article, author must immediately notify the Journal and clearly specify the corrections. Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorisation of the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. In cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged while the corrected version will be published as well. An erratum or corrigendum will also be published, indicating the reason for changes to the article. When necessary, retraction of article will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the Journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the Journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, disclosures of relationships and activities and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements are properly completed and reported. A corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all contributing authors have fulfilled their responsibilities. The corresponding author accepts responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work and for the Journal’s policies and ethical standards being adhered to. This person will also sign the publishing agreement on behalf of all the authors. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all the authors’ contact details are correct and agree on the order that their names will appear in the article. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the Journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

DATA SHARING AND REPRODUCIBILITY

Research data can take many forms but is essentially the underlying evidence upon which the claims made in a publication rely. Sharing these data publicly helps to maximise the discoverability and impact of any research. It also improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility and replicability of results.

The Journal follows the share upon reasonable request policy. Thus, authors agree to make data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper available upon reasonable request. It is, however, up to the authors to determine whether a request is reasonable. Please note that data should only be shared if it is ethically correct to do so, where this does not violate the protection of human subjects, or other valid ethical, privacy, or security concerns.

Authors should check whether their funder has a data sharing policy. If the policy of the funder and the Journal differs, authors are encouraged to follow the more progressive policy, i.e., the policy that encourages a greater level of data sharing.

The Journal recommends authors to deposit data in a recognised data repository before submission. This can facilitate the ease of sharing on receipt of requests (which could be months or years after publication). The Journal recommends choosing a repository that can mint a persistent digital identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI). It should also recognise a long-term preservation plan.

The Journal highly encourages researchers to consider the FAIR Data Principles when depositing data. The Journal further advises researchers to use FAIRsharing and re3data.org to search for a suitable repository. These both provide a list of certified data repositories.

EDITOR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The role of the Editor is to produce the best journal possible for readers in the field of Asian management. At the time of appointment, the Editor is supplied by the Publisher with a written agreement that clearly states the rights and duties, authority, the general terms of appointment and mechanisms for resolving conflict. The Editor is supported by an independent editorial board who assist the Editor on editorial policy and content as well as help the editor establish and maintain editorial policy.

• The Editor has editorial freedom, i.e., full authority over all editorial content and the timing of publication of the Journal. The Publisher does not interfere in the evaluation, selection, scheduling, or editing of individual articles either directly or by creating an environment that strongly influences decisions.
• The Editor will not share information about manuscripts, including whether they have been received and are under review, their content and status in the review process, criticism by reviewers and their ultimate fate, to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. The Editor will also not discuss the content publicly prior to acceptance and publication.
• The Editor will ensure that reviewer comments are properly assessed and interpreted in the context of their declared conflicts of interest. Besides, the Editor will work to ensure timely processing of manuscripts. If the Journal has no intention of proceeding with a manuscript, the Editor will endeavour to reject the manuscript as soon as possible to allow authors to submit to a different journal.
• The Editor will ensure that all editorial decisions are based on the relevance of a manuscript to the Journal and on the manuscript’s originality, quality and contribution to evidence and not be influenced by commercial interests or conflicts of interest.

FUNDING

Please fully cite any relevant funding information in your manuscript, including specific grant numbers. Funding acknowledgements should be written in the following form, for example: “This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme [grant number xxx].”

If the research was not funded by any specific project grant, please include the statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.” An Acknowledgement section may be used to specify this.

LANGUAGE POLICY

For reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in the manuscript, please be assured that the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English, you should consider getting professional proofreading at your own expenses. If our reviewers or editors recommended professional editing, we will only accept work from the following: Scribendi, Scribbr, Enago, PaperTrue, Manuscriptedit, Editage and American Journal Experts and/or other trusted professional bodies. The editing and/or proofreading certificate must be submitted to the journal along with the manuscript during submission. Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in the journal and does not imply that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted. However, manuscripts which fail to meet a satisfactory standard of English will be rejected.

LICENSE

All articles published in Journal of Construction in Developing Countries are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

OPEN ACCESS

Journal of Construction in Developing Countries published by Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia is an open access journal. All articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). All articles are freely available to read, share and download. In accordance with publication ethics and best practices of scholarly publishing, authors and journals must be properly credited. All articles are accessible via the Journal’s website and selected indexing and abstracting databases.

PEER REVIEW

This Journal practices double-blind peer review. At all stages of the review process, until the decision to accept has been taken, authors’ and reviewers’ identities are concealed from each other.

The Editorial Board may exercise their prerogative to reject a manuscript without peer review if that manuscript is judged to be outside the scope of the Journal, poorly written or formatted, or lacking significance.

Reviewers are matched to the manuscript according to their expertise. They are selected from the Journal’s reviewers’ data bank. If a manuscript is found to be of suitable quality and meets the aims and scope of the Journal, it will then be sent to at least two reviewers. The reviewers selected by the Editor may, of course, not necessarily be from the data bank. The Journal also welcomes suggestions for reviewers from authors, though these recommendations may or may not be used.

After receiving a request for peer review, reviewers must respond in a timely fashion, particularly if they cannot do the review, to avoid unnecessarily delaying the process. Reviewers are tasked to evaluate a manuscript for its originality and significance of contribution, subject relevancy, appropriate coverage of existing literature, the presentation of methodology, results and interpretation and manuscript organisation. Reviewers are also required to provide anonymous comments to the author and confidential comments to the Editor.

Typically, the review process will take three to four months. Should there be any delay, the Journal will promptly alert the reviewers. For any contradicting reports, the Journal will seek further expert opinion. A revised manuscript may be returned to the initial reviewers. Where manuscript revision is required, authors are urged to ensure that the necessary corrections are made before the manuscript can be accepted for production. Authors will be notified of the decision made by the Editor.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Journal of Construction in Developing Countries adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) standards on publications ethics. Submission of an article implies that:

• The work described has not been published previously except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis.
• That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• That its submission and publication in the journal is known and approved by all Authors.
• The work is the Author’s own and there are no falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation and misappropriation of.

Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with using the guidelines issued by the COPE. For further details please visit:

Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
Core Practices

RESEARCH MISCONDUCT

The Journal considers the following as research misconduct:

• Falsification of data: Ranges from fabrication to deceptive reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or wilful suppression and/or distortion of data.
• Plagiarism, redundant and duplicate publication: The appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work.
• Simultaneous submission: This occurs when a person submits a paper to different publications at the same time, which can result in more than one journal publishing that particular paper. Articles submitted for publication must be original and must not have been submitted to any other journal. Authors are required to disclose any details of related papers in press, including translations.
• Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
• Misappropriation of the ideas of others: An important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
• Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results. A lack of declaration of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship and other failures of transparency.
• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, wilful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, human subjects, recombinant products, new devices, or any materials relevant to the research.
• Inappropriate behaviour in relation to misconduct: This includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding of information relevant to a claim or misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.
• Salami slicing (or salami publication): Is defined as the unnecessary splitting of findings from a single study across several publications. Salami slicing is considered a form of redundant publication. The Journal does not accept publications suspected of salami slicing, as these publications have the potential to skew the scientific record and create biases in the results of meta-analyses. All submitted articles will be assessed for potential salami slicing by the editorial team as part of standard checks. Studies that share significant similarities in the hypotheses, population and methods should usually be presented to the readers in a single paper. If authors believe that they have legitimate grounds to submit multiple publications based on the same study, inform the Editorial Office about any and all potentially overlapping papers (published or unpublished). For further information about best practice please refer to the ICMJE guidance on overlapping publications.

Submission to the Journal implies that the work described has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and does not duplicate material already published. This must be emphasised in the cover letter during submission.

Dealing with Allegations of Misconduct

The Journal takes seriously all possible misconduct which will be dealt with using the guidelines issued by COPE. If a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour, the Editor will discuss the case with the Editorial Board Members and the Publisher.

If the case cannot be resolved by discussion with the author(s) and the Editor still has concerns, the case may be reported to the appropriate authorities. If, during the course of reviewing an article, an editor is alerted to possible problems (for example, fraudulent data) in another publication, the Editor may contact the journal in which the previous publication appeared to raise concern.

Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the Editor and/or the Publisher.

For further details, please visit:

• COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
• COPE Core Practices

STUDIES INVOLVING HUMAN SUBJECTS

For research involving human participants, authors must identify the committee that approved the research, confirm that all research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines/regulations and include a statement at the end of the manuscript confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their legal guardians.

Informed Consent

Human participants’ names and other HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) identifiers (e.g., address and birth date) must be removed from all sections of the manuscript, including supplementary information. Written informed consent must be obtained for the publication of any other information that could lead to identification of a participant (e.g., images and videos). A statement confirming that informed consent to publish identifying information/images was obtained must be included in the methods section. Identifying images/video/details that authors do not have specific permission to use must be removed from the manuscript. Please note that the use of coloured bars/shapes to obscure the eyes/facial region of study participants is not an acceptable means of anonymisation.