For Authors

Authors who publish with the International Center for Promoting Knowledge (ICPK) work with a publisher established in 2019 that operates from the USA and Bangladesh. ICPK provides publishing infrastructure, policies, and administrative support. Editorial decisions belong to each journal's Editor-in-Chief and editorial board, not to ICPK.

To publish with ICPK is to publish through a fully open access model. Every article is freely available from the date of publication, without an embargo or a charge to readers. Authors retain copyright, grant the relevant journal a licence to publish, and may deposit the published version in any repository at any time. Each published article receives a Crossref-registered DOI, and its metadata is deposited at publication. ICPK is a direct Crossref member.

Authors should also understand ICPK's current standing before deciding where to submit. ICPK is not a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), although it follows widely used principles of transparency and best practice as a matter of publishing practice. Its journals are not listed in DOAJ and are not indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, Index Copernicus, Ulrich's, or a comparable database. They do not claim an impact factor, citation metric, or publisher-wide acceptance rate.

What ICPK offers instead is a clear publishing foundation: registered ISSNs, Crossref-registered article DOIs, named editorial and international advisory boards with public affiliations, journal-level peer review processes, freely accessible archives, and public editorial, ethical, and legal policies. Submitted work may be checked with Turnitin, additional third-party similarity tools, and ICPK's archive of published and submitted manuscripts. These safeguards support but do not replace editorial judgement.

Before starting an open access journal submission, authors should review the relevant journal as a whole—its subject remit, editorial board, peer review process, author instructions, charges, licence, and indexing statement. The guidance below is designed to help identify the most appropriate ICPK title.

Choose the Right Journal

Journal selection should begin with the manuscript's central research question and intended scholarly audience—not isolated keywords. A paper may touch several disciplines, but its best home is normally the journal whose readers can best evaluate and use its main contribution. Review the journal's aims and scope before deciding through the ICPK journal directory.

International Journal of Social Policy and Education (IJSPE). IJSPE is the appropriate starting point for interdisciplinary research connecting social policy, education, or both. Suitable territory may include the relationship between educational systems and public policy; access, equity, inclusion, and participation; policy implementation and institutional practice; the social conditions shaping learning; education's role in community or social development; and research examining how public decisions affect learners, educators, institutions, or populations. A manuscript that uses education primarily to answer a broader social-policy question may fit, as may research that studies a social issue through educational institutions or outcomes. Authors should use IJSPE's own aims and scope, author guidelines, peer review, charges, licence, and indexing pages for its controlling requirements.

IJSPE is currently the only ICPK journal accepting submissions through an online workflow. Authors whose manuscripts fit its remit may proceed through the submission call-to-action below. Its print ISSN is 2689-4998, its online ISSN is 2689-5013, and its DOI prefix is 10.61494/ijspe.

International Journal of Business and Economics Development (IJBED). IJBED's subject territory brings together business, economics, and development. It is the closest thematic match for manuscripts whose central contribution concerns enterprises, markets, economic systems, management, trade, finance, entrepreneurship, organizational activity, or the relationship between economic change and development. Work may cross disciplinary lines, but business or economic development should remain the main analytical focus rather than a secondary context.

International Journal of Social Science and Humanities (IJSSH). IJSSH is the broadest home among the four titles for research centred on social life, institutions, cultures, ideas, communities, or human experience. It may be the more natural thematic fit when the manuscript's primary contribution is to social science or humanities scholarship and is not specifically anchored in education and social policy, business and economics development, or language and literature. Authors should still define the paper's disciplinary conversation clearly rather than treating the journal's breadth as an unrestricted scope.

International Journal of Language, Linguistics and Literature (IJLLL). IJLLL is intended for scholarship in language, linguistics, and literature. Its territory includes research in which language structure, language use, linguistic analysis, literary texts, literary traditions, criticism, interpretation, or related language-and-literature questions form the principal scholarly contribution. A manuscript using literary or linguistic material only as evidence for a mainly social-policy, educational, business, or economic argument may belong elsewhere; the decisive question is where the paper makes its main contribution.

IJBED, IJSSH, and IJLLL are currently directory listings and do not have an online submission workflow on the ICPK platform. Their presence in the directory must not be read as an invitation to submit through IJSPE or through a general ICPK form. Authors should consult their directory entries for current information and should not send a manuscript unless a journal-specific submission route is expressly made available.

If a manuscript spans two titles, compare its principal research question, the literature receiving its conclusion, and its intended audience. For general publisher enquiries—not submission—contact ICPK at info@theicpk.org. Questions about a prospective IJSPE submission may be directed to editor@ijspe.com.

Before You Submit

The journal-specific instructions remain the controlling source for file preparation, article types, word limits, referencing, supporting materials, and submission requirements. Read the selected journal's author guidelines and submission checklist before uploading anything. At publisher level, every author should also confirm the following:

• Originality: The manuscript presents original work, and all sources, quotations, data, ideas, and reused material are appropriately acknowledged. Authors should be prepared for similarity screening and should not attempt to disguise overlap or duplicate publication.
• No concurrent submission: The manuscript is not under consideration by another journal. Submitting the same work to more than one journal at the same time compromises editorial resources and the integrity of the academic publishing process.
• Correct authorship: The author list is complete, ordered as agreed by the contributors, and limited to people who satisfy the applicable authorship requirements. Every listed author should know about and approve the submission. Contributors who do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately. See Authorship and Contributorship.
• Competing interests: Financial, personal, professional, institutional, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work are disclosed. A competing interest does not automatically prevent publication; transparency allows editors and readers to evaluate the work appropriately.
• Ethical approval and participant protection: Where research involves human participants, animals, identifiable personal information, sensitive records, or another activity requiring oversight, the necessary approval, consent, or lawful basis has been obtained and can be documented. Consult Research Data and Ethics Approval.

Authors should also read ICPK's Publication Ethics and Research Integrity and Misconduct policies. These publisher policies explain the standards that apply across the portfolio; the selected journal's pages provide the concrete requirements for that title.

What Happens After You Submit

Across ICPK journals, the process follows a common shape: submission, editorial screening, peer review where the manuscript proceeds, an editorial decision, issue assignment for accepted work, and publication. Not every submission passes through every stage or reaches publication.

At submission, the manuscript and required information are received through the route made available by the relevant journal. Currently, only IJSPE offers an online submission workflow. Administrative checks may identify missing information or files, while initial editorial screening considers matters such as scope, basic suitability, and whether the submission should proceed for fuller assessment.

When a manuscript advances, peer review is arranged under the journal's documented process. The review model, number of reviewers, assessment criteria, revision expectations, and expected timeline are determined and published by each journal. Authors must therefore consult the chosen journal's peer review page rather than relying on a publisher-level summary.

Editorial authority remains with the journal throughout. Reviewers provide assessments and recommendations, but the Editor-in-Chief and editorial board are responsible for accept, reject, or other editorial decisions under the journal's policies. ICPK supplies infrastructure and administrative support; it does not review manuscripts and does not participate in deciding whether a paper is accepted or rejected.

If work is accepted, the journal completes the steps required before issue assignment and publication. The published article is made freely available, assigned a Crossref-registered DOI, and accompanied by deposited metadata. The published PDF is held alongside the online record. Questions, complaints, or appeals are handled under the Complaints and Appeals policy, while post-publication changes follow Corrections and Retractions.

Rights, Access and Charges

All ICPK journals operate on a fully open access basis: published articles are available to everyone immediately, with no embargo and no reader-side charge. Authors retain copyright and grant the relevant journal a licence to publish; ICPK does not require copyright transfer. Authors may self-archive the published version in an institutional, subject, or other repository at any time without seeking permission and are asked only to link to the version of record using its DOI.

There is no fee to submit a manuscript. If a particular journal levies an article processing charge, that charge becomes payable only after acceptance. The amount, any applicable arrangements, and the journal's specific copyright and licence terms must be checked on that journal's own charges and licensing pages before submission. These matters are set per journal and are not uniform across ICPK's portfolio.

Payment, waiver, and funding information is kept separate from academic assessment: editors are not informed of an author's payment, waiver, or funding status while evaluating a manuscript. A submit manuscript open access decision should therefore be based on subject fit, editorial policies, and the journal-specific terms disclosed in advance. The publisher-wide model is explained in Open Access and Licensing.

Using AI Tools

ICPK's rules for artificial intelligence apply across its journals. Authors who use generative AI or AI-assisted tools must follow the AI Use Policy and any additional instructions stated by the selected journal. The policy—not a brief publisher-page summary—is the canonical source for permitted uses, disclosure expectations, and author responsibilities.

AI assistance does not remove or transfer human accountability. Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, reasoning, rights compliance, confidentiality, and integrity of everything submitted under their names. They should verify AI-generated or AI-assisted material carefully, because such systems may produce errors, unsupported claims, fabricated references, biased formulations, or text that overlaps with existing work.

Authors must also protect confidential or sensitive material. Manuscripts under confidentiality, personal data, participant information, unpublished findings, or material subject to contractual or ethical restrictions should not be entered into an AI service unless doing so is permitted by the applicable obligations and the tool's data practices. When AI use is relevant to a submission, authors should make the disclosure required by the policy and the selected journal rather than assuming that use is too minor to report.

Ready to submit? First confirm that your manuscript fits IJSPE and review its journal-specific author guidelines, peer review process, charges, licence terms, and submission checklist. IJSPE is the only ICPK journal currently accepting submissions online.