About the Journal

UHD Journal of Science and Technology (UHDJST) is a semi-annual journal published by the University of Human Development, Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. UHDJST member of ROAD, e-ISSN: 2521-4217, p-ISSN: 2521-4209 and a member of Crossref, DOI: 10.21928/issn.2521-4217. UHDJST publishes original research in all areas of Science, Engineering, and Technology. UHDJST is a Peer-Reviewed Open Access journal with Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). UHDJSTprovides immediate, worldwide, barrier-free access to the full text of research articles without requiring a subscription to the journal, and has article processing charge (APC). UHDJSTapplies the highest standards to everything it does and adopts APA citation/referencing style. UHDJSTSection Policy includes three types of publications: Articles, Review Articles, and Letters.

By publishing with us, your research will get the coverage and attention it deserves. Open access and continuous online publication mean your work will be published swiftly, ready to be accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Article Level Metrics allow you to follow the conversations your work has started.

UHDJST publishes works from extensive fields including;

• Pure Science
• Applied Science
• Medicine
• Engineering
• Technology
• Other related fields

EDITORIAL POLICIES

Scope and Focus

UHD Journal of Science and Technology (UHDJST) publishes original research in all areas of Science and Engineering. UHDJST is a semi-annual journal published by the University of Human Development, Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. We believe that if your research is scientifically valid and technically sound then it deserves to be published and made accessible to the research community. UHDJST aims to provide a service to the international scientific community enhancing swap space to share, promote and disseminate the academic scientific production from research applied to Science, Engineering, and Technology. By publishing with us, your research will get the coverage and attention it deserves. Open access and continuous online publication mean your work will be published swiftly, ready to be accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Article Level Metrics allow you to follow the conversations your work has started.

Section Policies

Articles: This is the main type of publication that UHDJST will produce. 

[Peer Reviewed        Indexed        Open Submission]

Review Articles: Critical, constructive analysis of the literature in a specific field through summary, classification, analysis, comparison.

[Peer Reviewed        Indexed        Open Submission]

Letters: Short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.

[Peer Reviewed        Indexed        Open Submission]

 

PEER REVIEW POLICIES

At UHDJST we are committed to prompt quality scientific work with local and global impacts. To maintain a high-quality publication, all submissions undergo a rigorous review process. Characteristics of the peer review process are as follows:

• The journal peer review process is a "double-blind peer review".
• Simultaneous submissions of the same manuscript to different journals will not be tolerated.
• Manuscripts with contents outside the scope will not be considered for review.
• Papers will be refereed by at least 2 experts as suggested by the editorial board.
• In addition, Editors will have the option of seeking additional reviews when needed. Authors will be informed when Editors decide further review is required.
• All publication decisions are made by the journal's Editors-in-Chief on the basis of the referees' reports. Authors of papers that are not accepted are notified promptly.
• All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. We expect our Board of Reviewing Editors, Associate Editors and reviewers to treat manuscripts as confidential material as well.
• Editors, Associate Editors, and reviewers involved in the review process should disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, and remove oneself from cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation. Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must not be used for competitive gain.
• Our peer review process is confidential and the identities of reviewers cannot be revealed.

Note: UHDJST is a member of CrossRef and CrossRef services, e.g., CrossCheck. All manuscripts submitted will be checked for plagiarism (copying text or results from other sources) and self-plagiarism (duplicating substantial parts of authors' own published work without giving the appropriate references) using the CrossCheck database. Plagiarism is not tolerated.

For more information about CrossCheck/iThenticate, please visit http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck.html.

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

UHDJST is published 2 times per year. Accepted papers are published online ahead of print. UHDJST is e-published online with e-ISSN: 2521-4217 as/when the process of peer-reviewing in finalized. UHDJST's hard-copy published with p-ISSN: 2521-4209 quarterly with the first issue publishes the accepted papers during (January - March), the second issue publishes the accepted papers during (April- June), the third issue publishes the accepted papers during (July- September, and the fourth issue publishes the accepted papers during (October-December). The hard-copy of UHDJST issues are published with all accepted online paper within each publication period.

OPEN ACCESS 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.
Open Access (OA) stands for unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse which means making research publications freely available online. It access ensures that your work reaches the widest possible audience and that your fellow researchers can use and share it easily. The mission of the UHDJST is to improve the culture of scientific publications by supporting bright minds in science and public engagement.
UHDJST's open access articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This license lets you retain copyright and others may not use the material for commercial purposes. Commercial use is one primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. If others remix, transform or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. The main output of research, in general, is new ideas and knowledge, which the UHDJST peer-review policy allows publishing as high-quality, peer-reviewed research articles. The UHDJST believes that maximizing the distribution of these publications - by providing free, online access - is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture and cultivate good research ethics as well. The UHDJST, therefore, supports unrestricted access to the published materials on its main website as a fundamental part of its mission and a global academic community benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.

Specifically;

• The University of Human Development supports the principles and objectives of Open Access and Open Science
• UHDJST expects authors of research papers, and manuscripts to maximize the opportunities to make their results available for free access on its final peer-reviewed paper
• All manuscript will be made open access online soon after final stage peer-review finalized. 
• This policy will be effective from 17th May 2017 and will be reviewed during the first year of operation.
• Open Access route is available at http://journals.uhd.edu.iq/index.php/uhdjst for publishing and archiving all accepted papers, 
• Specific details of how authors of research articles are required to comply with this policy can be found in the Guide to Authors.

ARCHIVING

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. 

PUBLICATION ETHICS

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The publication of an article in the peer-reviewed journal UHDJST is to support the standard and respected knowledge transfer network. Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011) that includes;

1. General duties and responsibilities of editors.
2. Relations with readers.
3. Relations with the authors.
4. Relations with editors.
5. Relations with editorial board members.
6. Relations with journal owners and publishers.
7. Editorial and peer review processes.
8. Protecting individual data.
9. Encouraging ethical research (e.g. research involving humans or animals).
10. Dealing with possible misconduct.
11. Ensuring the integrity of the academic record.
12. Intellectual property.
13. Encouraging debate.
14. Complaints.
15. Conflicts of interest.

Reference:
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

ANIMAL RESEARCHES

1. For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates), appropriate approval must have been obtained according to either international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Review Board, or Ethics Committee). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Methods section detailing full information as to their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research).
2. For research conducted on non-regulated animals, a statement should be made as to why ethical approval was not required.
3. Experimental animals should have been handled according to the highest standards dictated by the author’s institution.
4. We strongly encourage all authors to comply with the 'Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments' (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by NC3Rs.
5. Articles should be specific in descriptions of the organism(s) used in the study. The description should indicate strain names when known.

SEARCHING FOR PLAGIARISM

We use plagiarism detection:  detection; According to Oxford online dictionary, Plagiarism means: The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

ARTICLES SUBMISSION CHARGES

UHDJST is an Open Access Journal (OAJ) and has article submission charges (ASCs).

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES

UHDJST is an Open Access Journal (OAJ) and has article processing charges (APCs). The published articles can be downloaded freely without a barrier of admission.