The KDU Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (KJMS) is a peer-reviewed journal, which publishes original research articles from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches open to all researchers of diverse disciplines. The Editorial Board of KJMS consists of research experts from diverse research disciplines to handle manuscripts submitted to the journal. The KJMS adopts a double-blind peer-review process to ensure the quality of publications with protection from plagiarism. For ethical reasons, we do not publish more than one paper by a single author in a single journal issue, and we do not consider manuscripts from Editorial Board Members for publication in the journal to avoid conflict of interest.

A manuscript submitted to the KJMS is considered confidential material. KJMS will not disclose a submitted manuscript to anyone other than individuals directly involved in the processing and preparing the manuscript for publication, namely the editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors. To avoid conflict of interest, author details are removed from the manuscripts prior to being sent to reviewers.

Reviewers should disclose any conflict of interest and, if necessary, decline the review of any manuscript they perceive to have a conflict of interest. Such manuscripts will be re-assigned to other reviewers by the editorial board.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of KJMS and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. The full privacy policy of SLJOL can be viewed here.

5.1. The editorial board may request retraction due to evidence of plagiarism, unethical issues, unreliable data, or duplication of the manuscript submitted.

5.2. The requests from the author for retraction could be considered only depending on the publication stage of the article and the procedure and the feasibility based on the decision of the Editorial Board.

6.1  REVIEWING PROCESS

The reviewing process consists of the following steps:

• Submit the soft copy of the manuscript in Word format with the duly filled author declaration form downloaded from the journal website: (URL:https://kdu.ac.lk/kjms/).
• A preliminary review process will be conducted to check its suitability for the reviewing process. All the submitted manuscripts are subjected to a technical reviewing process to check whether the authors have followed the guidelines published on the website
• Check the similarity index using a Licensed latest version of Turnitin® checker before sending them to reviewers.
• If the similarity Index is less than 20%, the manuscript is acceptable for nomination of Reviewers by the editorial Board.
• If improvements are needed, manuscripts will be sent back to the authors for required changes.
• Notification of acknowledgment of the manuscript for reviewing will be sent to the author together with the screening report and the Similarity Index report.
• The abstract, shall not exceed a word count of 300, and the complete manuscript, excluding references and tables, shall have a word count of 4000 to 5000 words. Any exceptions have to be approved by the Editorial Board (EB).
• The EB nominates subject-matter experts (from around the world) for the rigorous double-blind peer review process.
• According to the reviewer's comments, the possible decisions include:

                   (1)  Accept,

                   (2)  Minor revisions,

                   (3)  Major revisions,

                   (4)  Reject.

• If one reviewer rejects the manuscript and the other accepts it with minor or major revisions, a third reviewer is nominated to make the final judgment. The manuscripts rejected by two out of three reviewers will be rejected with the Editorial Board's approval.
• Re-submission of the manuscript is encouraged after the incorporation of reviewer comments.
• Once the authors submit the final drafts after incorporating amendments as per the reviewer comments, they will be resent to the relevant reviewers to check whether the suggested revisions are incorporated to their satisfaction.
• The reviewers shall provide a confirmation report for acceptance to accept the manuscript for publication with the approval of the EB.
• This process may be repeated several times as required until the peer reviewers and the editors are satisfied.
• Based on the reviewers’ final comments, the Editor-in-Chief decides on the acceptance of the manuscript with the approval of the EB.

  6.2  PUBLICATION PROCESS

• All the manuscripts approved by the EB are subjected to language editing by a professional English language editor to maintain the standards of the publication.
• The final formatting of the manuscripts will be done according to the journal guidelines.
• After English editing and formatting, the final version of the papers will be sent to the authors for proofreading and for their confirmation to publish.
• Finally, with the approval of the Editorial Board, papers processed through this system will be accepted for publishing in the KJMS and sent to Sri Lanka Journal Online (SLJOL) to upload to the website.
• Once it is uploaded in SLJOL with the Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), the KJMS online publication will be uploaded to the KJMS website, followed by printed versions.