Ethical Guidelines for Research and Publication

INTRODUCTION

• Enforcement Guidelines for Research Ethics Regulations / Full Knowledge of Research Ethics Regulations and Social Accountability
  All authors who submit their manuscripts to APJRECE must promise that they will observe the research ethics regulations. If the occurrence of a fraudulent act is reported, our ethics committee will conduct a proper investigation and then process the issue confidentially. The parties suspected of violating research regulations shall have the right to set forth their counterargument against the results of the investigation by the committee. Once recognized to have violated the research ethics regulations, an author may be subjected to warning, manuscript submission limitation, membership interruption or deprivation, etc.

GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

* Ethics for Researchers

Submission declaration and Verification

• Multiple or Concurrent Publication / Prohibition of Multiple or Concurrent Publication
  Authors must not submit their work to more than one journal simultaneously. Submitting the same research to more than one journal concurrently is ethically unacceptable. In addition, authors should not submit a previously published paper from another journal.
  Authors must not publish their previously published work (including works that are in the process of being published or reviewed), both within and outside of the country.
  If the authors wish to publish using their previously published work, information on the previous publication must be submitted to the editor in order to check whether it is a duplicate publication or a double publication.
  Summaries of theses and dissertations of scholarly conferences do not apply to this regulation, but they must be noted in the footnotes.

Ethics in Publishing

• Protection from Harm / Prohibition of Research to Cause Its Participants Physical or Psychological Harm
  The researcher should not use research procedures that may physically or psychologically harm the participant. Whenever the researcher is in doubt about the harmful effects of the research procedures, consultations should be sought from an Institutional Review Board.
• Human Subjects / Protection of Participant Information
  The privacy rights of human subjects must always be protected. Information on the identities of individuals who participated in research should not be disclosed in any form. Research concerning children needs particular care when obtaining consent and conducting research. The researcher should inform children accurately of all features of the research that may affect their willingness to participate and answer all the children’s questions to their level of comprehension. Also, the researcher should respect the children’s freedom to choose to participate in the research and their decision to discontinue their participation at any time during the research. Parents need to be fully informed of all features of the research. The parents should be informed that there is no obligation for their children to participate and their right to refuse consent will be respected. Informed consent should be obtained by individuals who participated in the research, ensuring the protection of privacy rights, individual identities, and the voluntary participation of the research participants.

Procedures for Fraudulent Research Act

• Procedures for Fraudulent Research Act
  1. Reporting and submission: In case of fraudulent research acts or violations of ethics regulations, the concerned researcher should be reminded of the ethics regulations as part of an effort to correct his or her problem him or herself. If the problem is not corrected or a clear violation case is identified, it should be reported to the research ethics committee.
  2. Investigation and vindication: The research ethics committee will inform the concerned researcher that there has been a report on his or her fraudulent research act and provide him or her with a chance for vindication through appearance or documents.
  3. Notification of a Decision and Appeal: The head of the research ethics committee will send a written notification of investigation results to the concerned researcher as well as the informant. Both the researcher and the informant can request another round of investigation in writing within two weeks in case of insubordination to the results.
  4. Follow-up measures: cancellation of the concerned research work: If it has been already published, the next issue and the society’s homepage will offer the reason for its cancellation along with the name of the author, title of the paper, issue number, and date of cancellation.

Declaration of Interest

• Authorship / Recognition of Contributions and Listing of Authors
  All authors who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the work should be included in the list of authors. Those who have participated in certain aspects of the work should be acknowledged as contributors. It is unacceptable to include in the author list authors who have no contribution to the work. It is not acceptable to add, delete, or rearrange an author’s names in accepted manuscripts.

Copyright

• Accurate citation and prevention of plagiarism
  1. When quoting other person’s works or borrowing or referencing ideas, authors must state it in the main text and identify the sources so that the readers know which parts are referenced and which parts are the author’s original ideas.
  2. When quoting published scholarly materials, they must be accurately included in accordance with the prescribed format. Materials obtained through evaluation of a thesis or a research plan, or through personal contact must be quoted after gaining the author’s approval. Lastly, materials of all information must be clearly cited unless they are common sense.
  3. Unintentional plagiarism is considered plagiarism, so the authors must ensure no accidental plagiarism by conducting similarity detector or plagiarism checker before submitting their works.

* Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The assistant editor converts your files to a single PDF file, which is used in the review process.

Submission of Manuscripts

ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION publishes three issues per year, on January, May, September. Manuscripts submitted to ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION should not be under consideration by any other journal, or have been published elsewhere.

Manuscripts should be double-spaced, in 12-point (Heading) and in 10-point(Subheading) and 10-point (Main text) Times New Roman. Articles should be concise and written in English. All pages of manuscripts must be numbered.The author’s name(s) and author’s correspondence information, including e-mail address and telephone number should appear on Cover page. The title of the paper and an abstract should appear on page 1.The abstract of 150∼200 words summarizing the significant coverage and findings should be accompanied by up to 4 keywords.

∎ Article structure

Manuscripts should be divided into clearly defined sections:  Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, and Reference. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.

∎ Length

Manuscripts should be 3000-7000 words in length INCLUDING tables and figures, and reference.

∎ Tables and Figures

Tables must be typed on separate sheets, and not included as part of the text. Tables should be numbered using Arabic numerals. Please supply clear copies of artwork (preferably the originals) for figures in a finished format suitable for reproduction. The publisher will not normally redraw artwork for figures. The captions to artwork should be gathered and typed on a separate sheet. The author(s) must arrange permission for the reproduction of illustrations and table within the articles. Figures may be sent electronically, preferably in either TIFF (tagged image format) or EPS (encapsulated postscript) formats. However, PICT or JPEG formats are also acceptable. The publisher will normally reproduce color figures in black and white. All figures and tables should be mentioned in the text and the approximate position of the tables and figures should be indicated in the paper.

∎ Reference

Citations and references should follow the guidelines in the APA Publication Manual(American Psychological Association, 2019, 7th ed.). The references must be listed in alphabetical order. Each reference must be cited in the text and all references cited within the text should appear in the list.

Examples of the basic reference formats:

• Reference to a journal publication:
  Saywit, K. J., Mannarino, A. P., Berliner, L., & Cohen, J. A.  (2000). Treatment for sexually abused children and adolescents. American psychologist, 55,  1040-1049.
• Reference to a book:
  Beaty, J. J. (1992). Skills for preschool teachers. Macmillan Publishing Company.
• Reference to a chapter in a edited book:
  Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in  human memory. In H. L. Roediger Ⅲ & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp.309-330). Erlbaum.
• Reference to a dissertation:
  Gold, N. C. (1981). Meta-evaluation of selected bilingual education  projects. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Massachusetts.
• Web reference:
  National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2009). Where we STAND onresponding to linguistic and cultural diversity. http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file  /positions/diversity.pdf
• Authors should send the final, revised version of their article in  electronic forms. The preferred way to receive manuscripts is through disks in Microsoft Word (PC format), however Mac and most other common word-processing programs are acceptable as well. Please specify which program you have used. Do not save your files as “text only” or “read only”.

Revised Submissions

Researchers should try to revise their papers by reflecting the opinions from ALL of the reviewers and editors provided in the review process as much as possible. If they do not agree with the opinions, they may submit their grounds and reasons in detail and wait for a decision from the editing committee.

GUIDE FOR REVIEWERS

• Ethics in the Review Process
  Reviewers should review a submitted paper in an objective and fair manner based on the review criteria by the deadline and provide academic grounds for their evaluations and opinions.
  Reviewers should respect the personality and independence of researchers as professional intellectuals, using polite and soft expressions and abstaining from disparaging and insulting expressions.
  Reviewers should keep the secrets of the research work under review and are not allowed to cite its content without the researcher’s consent before its publication.
• Criteria for Reviewers
  Originality and academic contribution of the paper topic
  Appropriateness of the research questions and content
  Integrity of literature analysis and quotations
  Fitness of research methods
  Validity of states in findings and conclusion
  Appropriate references

GUIDE FOR EDITORS

• Ethics in the Editing Process
  The editing committee and its editors should choose reviewers that have expertise in the concerned field and fair judgment and present no financial, economic and intellectual interests with the researcher to review a submitted paper.
  The head and assistant administrator of the editing committee must not reveal information about the researcher until the publication of his or her paper is confirmed and show its content to individuals other than the editors and reviewers involved in its review.
• Criteria for Editors
  Fitness and agreement of the abstract
  Accuracy of quotations and references
  Fitness of the systems and forms
  Appropriate observation of research ethics

PROCESS AND REGULATION OF PAPER REVIEW

Review Processes

1. The head of the editing committee and editors appoint three reviewers among experts in the concerned field through recommendation and paper search.
2. An official document, which asks for a paper review, is sent to the appointed reviewers via an online system.
3. Reviewers make a decision among “Accept as it is,” “Accept with Minor Revisions/Accept with Major Revisions,” and “Reject” based on the review criteria and submit review results containing details about the reasons for the decision.
   
   The criteria of judgment include the followings:
   • Accept as it is: The paper is considered to be published with no revision.
   • Accept with Minor Revisions: The paper is revisable enough based on the opinions of reviewers and can be published after partial revision.
   • Accept with Major Revisions: The paper has problems with its core content, thus requiring overall revision. It is, however, still revisable.
   • Reject: The paper has problems with its core content, whose solution is impossible or whose revision will require a considerable amount of time. The quality level of the paper may also be too low to be published in this journal.
   
   
4. The assignment of paper review will, in principle, be completed within two or three weeks before ‘accept’ or ‘refuse.’
5. The editing committee will make an overall decision among “Accept as it is,” “Accept with Minor Revisions/Accept with Major Revisions,” and “Reject” based on the judgments of three reviewers and inform the author of the decision. The judgment of “Accept with Minor Revisions/Accept with Major Revisions” will be accompanied by the review results of the editing committee regarding the abstract and form.
6. If the researcher does not reflect the requirements for revision fully without valid reasons, the editing committee will ask him or her to make another round of revisions after the review. If he or she fails to submit the revised paper by the deadline, the committee will assume that he or she has no intention to publish his or her paper in the journal.
7. After the revision is submitted, the manuscript goes through another deliberation by the editorial board and a 2nd revision may be requested. Further process afterwards regarding the final decision of the publication will be decided according to the regulations of the editorial board.