Copyright & Licensing Policy

Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS)
Publisher: SMARCONS (Private) Limited

Copyright Ownership

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) allows authors to retain the copyright and full publishing rights of their published work without restrictions.

Authors are not required to transfer, assign, or surrender copyright to the Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences or SMARCONS (Private) Limited.

By publishing an article in JESS, the author(s) grant the journal and SMARCONS (Private) Limited a non-exclusive right of first publication and a non-exclusive license to publish, reproduce, distribute, preserve, archive, index, and make the article publicly available as the official version of record.

The author(s) remain the copyright holder(s) of the published work.

Each published article clearly identifies the copyright holder through the following statement:

Copyright © [Year] Author(s)

JESS does not use an “All Rights Reserved” statement for open-access scholarly articles because such restrictions are inconsistent with unrestricted open-access licensing. This approach is consistent with DOAJ guidance on author-retained copyright. Directory of Open Access Journals

Creative Commons License

All scholarly articles published in the Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) are made openly available under the:

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

The full license terms are available at:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Under the CC BY 4.0 license, readers and other users may share and adapt the published work for any purpose, including commercial use, provided that the requirements of the Creative Commons license are followed.

This includes the right to:

  • copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format;
  • share and distribute the published work;
  • adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material; and
  • use the material for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Users must:

  • give appropriate credit to the original author(s);
  • identify the original source of publication;
  • provide a link to the CC BY 4.0 license; and
  • indicate whether changes were made.

No additional legal or technological restrictions are imposed that would prevent users from exercising the rights permitted under the CC BY 4.0 license.

DOAJ specifically states that journals using Creative Commons licenses should not modify or add restrictions that contradict the selected Creative Commons license. Directory of Open Access Journals

Copyright and License Information on Published Articles

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) displays copyright and licensing information on its published articles.

Each published article contains the copyright notice:

Copyright © [Year] Author(s)

and the licensing statement:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons license icon and license link are displayed with the licensing information in the published article and/or its article webpage.

The license information links directly to the official Creative Commons license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Accordingly, copyright and licensing information is made clearly visible to readers at the article level and on the journal website.

This practice is consistent with DOAJ's transparency principles, which state that copyright terms and licensing information should be clearly described on the journal website and identified in the full text of published articles. Directory of Open Access Journals

Author Rights

Authors publishing in the Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) retain copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.

Authors may:

  • retain ownership of the copyright in their article;
  • share the published article immediately after publication;
  • deposit the published version of record in an institutional repository;
  • deposit the article in a subject or disciplinary repository;
  • upload the published article to a personal or institutional website;
  • share the article through academic and scholarly networking platforms;
  • use the article for teaching and educational purposes;
  • reproduce parts of the article in subsequent scholarly works;
  • include the article, or portions of it, in a thesis or dissertation;
  • reuse the article in books, edited volumes, reports, conference materials, or other scholarly publications, subject to appropriate acknowledgement of the original publication;
  • comply with institutional and research-funder open-access requirements; and
  • exercise their moral and intellectual rights as copyright holders.

Authors do not need to obtain additional permission from JESS or SMARCONS (Private) Limited to exercise these rights, provided that the original publication is appropriately acknowledged where necessary.

Self-Archiving Policy

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) permits authors to self-archive their work without embargo.

Authors may deposit:

  • the submitted manuscript;
  • the accepted manuscript; and
  • the final published Version of Record.

These versions may be deposited in:

  • institutional repositories;
  • subject repositories;
  • personal websites;
  • university or organizational webpages;
  • academic networking platforms; and
  • other lawful scholarly repositories.

There is no embargo period for self-archiving.

Authors may make the final published version publicly available immediately after publication.

No fee is charged for self-archiving.

DOAJ's copyright and licensing guidance specifically expects journals to clearly state their policies regarding posting author manuscripts and published articles in third-party repositories. Directory of Open Access Journals

Rights Granted to the Journal and Publisher

By submitting an article for publication and, upon acceptance, publishing it in JESS, the author(s) grant the Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences and SMARCONS (Private) Limited non-exclusive rights to:

  • publish the article as the official Version of Record;
  • make the article freely and permanently accessible through the journal website;
  • reproduce and distribute the article electronically and, where applicable, in print;
  • preserve and digitally archive the article;
  • submit article metadata to indexing and abstracting databases;
  • register and disseminate bibliographic and citation metadata;
  • provide metadata and article information to scholarly discovery services;
  • disseminate the article through repositories, academic databases, and scholarly communication platforms; and
  • promote the article and journal through appropriate academic and scholarly channels.

These rights are non-exclusive and do not transfer copyright ownership from the author(s) to the journal or publisher.

The journal and publisher do not impose conditions that conflict with the CC BY 4.0 license.

Third-Party Material

Authors are responsible for ensuring that any third-party copyrighted material included in their manuscript is used lawfully.

Third-party material may include:

  • figures;
  • photographs;
  • images;
  • illustrations;
  • tables;
  • charts;
  • maps;
  • questionnaires or instruments;
  • datasets;
  • extensive quotations; and
  • material previously published elsewhere.

Where permission is required, authors must obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder before publication.

Appropriate acknowledgement, source citation, copyright information, permission statements, or licensing information must be provided where applicable.

If third-party content included in an article is not covered by the article's CC BY 4.0 license, this must be clearly stated in the relevant figure caption, table note, credit line, article text, or other appropriate location.

DOAJ recognizes that individual articles may contain third-party material that is not covered by the article's open license, but such material must be clearly identified and appropriately attributed. Directory of Open Access Journals

Relationship Between Copyright and Licensing

Copyright ownership and licensing are treated as related but separate matters by the Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences.

The author(s) retain copyright in their work.

The CC BY 4.0 license establishes the terms under which readers and other users may reuse the published work.

Granting JESS and SMARCONS (Private) Limited non-exclusive publishing rights does not transfer copyright ownership to the journal or publisher.

The journal's copyright terms, licensing policy, open-access policy, and self-archiving policy are applied consistently and do not contradict one another.

This separation is important because DOAJ requires copyright terms to be clearly distinguished from licensing terms and from the copyright governing the journal website itself. Directory of Open Access Journals

Journal Website Copyright

The copyright terms described in this policy apply to scholarly articles published by JESS.

Copyright relating to the design, branding, logo, layout, administrative content, and other original material belonging to the journal website may be held separately by SMARCONS (Private) Limited, unless otherwise indicated.

Website copyright does not alter the copyright ownership or CC BY 4.0 licensing status of individual scholarly articles.

Standard Copyright and License Display

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) uses the following information with its published articles:

Copyright © [Year] Author(s)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Creative Commons license symbol is displayed with the licensing information, as applicable.

Policy Transparency

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences makes its copyright and licensing terms publicly available on the journal website.

Information concerning:

  • copyright ownership;
  • Creative Commons licensing;
  • author publishing rights;
  • self-archiving;
  • reuse of published material; and
  • third-party copyrighted material

is made available to authors and readers without requiring registration or payment.

This supports the transparency requirements applied by DOAJ to open-access journals. Directory of Open Access Journals

Policy Updates

The Journal of Excellence in Social Sciences (JESS) and SMARCONS (Private) Limited may review this policy periodically to maintain consistency with developments in open-access publishing, Creative Commons licensing, copyright requirements, scholarly communication standards, and relevant indexing requirements.