The Journal of Civil Engineering, The Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh provides a media through which the engineers can exchange and share professional, technical and academic knowledge on any aspect of Civil Engineering discipline. Information published in the journal stands as archival record of the technical advances of the Institution and the profession in general. As per the constitution and by-laws of the Institution, the Editorial Board is responsible to set the policies governing the Journal. Responsibility for reviewing manuscripts submitted to JCE, IEB for publication rests with the editor who is the Secretary to the Editorial Board of the Journal.

Papers, companion papers, technical notes, discussion/ closure and errata are published in the Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB. Authors need not be the members of IEB to submit material to the journals.

The Editorial Board of the Journal of Civil Engineering has adopted the following guidelines regarding the type and quality of material published in the Journal.
 
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Basic Requirements

To be acceptable for publication in the journal, a manuscript must be of value and interest to civil engineers. It must be an original review of past practice, present information of current interest, or probe new fields of civil engineering activity. It should be a thought-provoking study that contributes to the planning, analysis, design, construction, management, or maintenance of civil engineering works. A manuscript should contribute to the advancement of the profession in the forum provided by the journals for the exchange of experiences by engineers for their common advantage. It should include a practical applications section whenever possible; theoretical manuscripts should indicate areas of additional research to implement technology transfer. Practical papers are strongly encouraged.

The manuscript must be consistent with the purpose of the IEB, as set forth in its constitution, with established fact, and with the Code of Ethics. It must not contain purely speculative matter, although it can use scientific evidence to challenge current concepts or propose new ideas that will encourage progress and discussion.

The manuscript must be free of evident commercialism or private interest, but must neither obscure proper names when they are required for an understanding of the subject matter nor contain material that can be used to imply IEB endorsement of products, services, and so on. The manuscript must also be free of personalities, either complimentary or derogatory. The material must not be readily available elsewhere; i.e., it should not have been published previously by IEB (including a proceeding) or other professional or technical societies, government agencies, or commercial publishers. Manuscripts based on material available elsewhere may be published by Journal of Civil Engineering provided the manuscript has been significantly revised, updated, and condensed into a more concise and readable form, or otherwise made obviously and significantly more useful to the profession than the original material. The published material, however, must be supplied with such a submission. If a previously published manuscript is considered a highly significant advance in the field and its distribution has been very limited, the editor may permit waive the policy against dual publication.
 
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Initial Manuscript Evaluation

The Editor first evaluates all submitted manuscripts. The manuscripts that are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, have poor grammar or English language, or are outside the aims and scope of the journal, or do not meet other basic requirements are rejected at this stage. Those that meet the minimum criteria are passed on to the peer review process.
 
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The review policy mandates that a journal manuscript be reviewed by at least two competent reviewers. This journal employs single blind review, where the referee remains anonymous throughout the process. Two positive reviews are required for acceptance or two negative reviews for rejection. The Editorial Board’s goal is to have manuscripts reviewed within three months. Should the referees' reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed a further expert opinion will be sought. Authors are asked to, where possible, submit their revised manuscripts within 4 weeks. Revised manuscripts are usually returned to the initial referees within 2 weeks. Referees may request more than one revision of a manuscript. Revisions and rereview are frequently required conditions of acceptance.

The Editorial Board will not review or publish papers or technical notes whose authorship is in dispute.

If the author is a participant in a case study in a submitted manuscript, the manuscript should describe that precise involvement in the initial paragraphs of the work.

Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB does not accept multiple submissions; that is, a manuscript may not be submitted to more than one journal simultaneously, either outside IEB or among the IEB journals. In resubmitting a declined manuscript, the authors must inform the Editor that it was declined by a particular journal and reference the previously assigned file number.
 
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Referee reports

The review policy mandates that a journal manuscript be reviewed by at least two competent reviewers. This journal employs single blind review, where the referee remains anonymous throughout the process. Two positive reviews are required for an acceptance or two negative reviews are adequate for rejection. The Editorial Board’s goal is to have manuscripts reviewed within three months. Should the referees' reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed a further expert opinion will be sought. Authors are asked to, where possible, submit their revised manuscripts within 4 weeks. Revised manuscripts are usually returned to the initial referees within 2 weeks. Referees may request more than one revision of a manuscript. Revisions and rereview are frequently required conditions of acceptance.

The Editorial Board will not review or publish papers or technical notes whose authorship is in dispute.

If the author is a participant in a case study in a submitted manuscript, the manuscript should describe that precise involvement in the initial paragraphs of the work.

Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB does not accept multiple submissions; that is, a manuscript may not be submitted to more than one journal simultaneously, either outside IEB or among the IEB journals. In resubmitting a declined manuscript, the authors must inform the Editor that it was declined by a particular journal and reference the previously assigned file number.
 
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Contents of Referee Reports

Referees are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:

• Is original

• Is methodologically sound

• Follows appropriate ethical guidelines

• Has results which are clearly presented and support the conclusions

• Correctly references previous relevant work
   
  Referees are not expected to correct or copyedit manuscripts. Language correction is not part of the peer review process, rather it lies with the respective authors.

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A “tentatively approved” manuscript under rereview may have the following outcomes:

• Accepted if a single review with positive results is performed. If this single review is negative, two positive reviews are required to finally accept the paper or note.
   

• Declined if the author did not revise the manuscript as required by the reviewers, if new material was introduced that is considered to be of unacceptable quality, or if additional errors are found.

A manuscript that has been “declined with encouragement” to revise requires two positive reviews for acceptance and two negative reviews for rejection.

A manuscript that has been “decline final” may not be resubmitted to the journal unless it has been substantially revised and treated as a new submission.
 
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Final Report

If you are not currently a referee for the Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB but would like to be added to the list of referees, please contact the Editor. The benefits of refereeing for the Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB include the opportunity to see and evaluate the latest work in your research area at an early stage. You may also be able to cite your work for the Journal as part of your professional development requirements for various Professional Bodies and Organizations.
 
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Companion Papers

Papers submitted as sets of companion papers will be reviewed as separate papers if the editor determines that this is the most appropriate and logical presentation of the work. If the work would more logically be presented as a single paper, companion papers will be returned to the author(s) for revision and resubmission as a single paper. If the resulting single paper is over-length, it will be subject to the normal rules for over-length papers. When submitting manuscripts, authors are encouraged to provide a written justification for publishing their work as companion papers. Companion papers should be submitted together. Authors should recognize that review of companion papers may take longer than that for a single paper.
 
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Technical Notes

Technical notes present (1) original, practical information; (2) preliminary or partial results of research; (3) concisely presented research results; and (4) innovative techniques to accomplish design objectives.
 
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Ethical Standards for Publication

 
Obligations of Editor

1. The primary responsibility of the Journal editor is to ensure an efficient and fair review process of manuscripts submitted for publication, and to establish and maintain high standards of technical and professional quality. Criteria of quality are originality of approach, concept and/or application; profundity; and relevance to the civil engineering profession.

2. An editor shall give unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication and shall judge each on its merits without regard to any personal relationship or familiarity with the author(s), or to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, professional association, or political philosophy of the author(s).

3. The editor shall disclose no information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than those from whom professional advice regarding the publication of the manuscript is sought. The names of reviewers shall not be released by the editors.

4. An editor who authors or co-authors a manuscript submitted for consideration to the journal with which that editor is affiliated, shall not review that work. If after publication, the editor-author's work merits ongoing scientific debate within the journal, the editor-author shall accept no editorial responsibility in connection therewith.

5. An editor shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. An editor shall not send a manuscript to reviewers who are known to have personal bias in favor of or against the author(s) or the subject matter of that manuscript.

6. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of an editor, or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author (s) and with appropriate attribution.

7. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence in writing that the substance, conclusions, references or other material included in a manuscript published in the Journal are erroneous, the editor, after notifying the author(s) and allowing them to respond in writing, shall facilitate immediate publication of an erratum. If possible, an editor shall also facilitate publication of appropriate comments and/or papers identifying those errors.

8. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence in writing that a manuscript or published paper contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the editor shall forward such evidence to the Ethics Committee of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh for investigation.

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Obligations of Authors

1. An author's central obligation is to present a concise account of the research, work, or project completed, together with an objective discussion of its significance.

2. A submitted manuscript shall contain detail and reference to public sources of information sufficient to permit the author's peers to repeat the work or otherwise verify its accuracy.

3. An author shall cite and give appropriate attribution to those publications influential in determining the nature of the reported work sufficient to guide the reader quickly to earlier work essential to have an understanding of the present work. Information obtained by an author privately, from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties shall not be used or reported in the author's work without explicit permission from the persons from whom the information was obtained. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, shall be treated in the same confidential manner.

4. The submitted manuscript shall not contain plagiarized material or falsified research data. Plagiarism is defined as the use of the ideas or words of another person without giving appropriate credit to that source. [This definition is based on one used by the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, USA.] The Editorial Board of the Journal views any similar misappropriation of intellectual property, which may include data or interpretation, as plagiarism.

5. Fragmentation of research papers shall be avoided. An engineer or scientist who has done extensive work on a system or group of related systems shall organize publication so that each paper gives a complete account of a particular aspect of the general study.

6. It is inappropriate for an author to submit for review more than one paper describing essentially the same research or project to more than one journal of primary publication.

7. Scholarly criticism of a published paper may sometimes be justified; however, personal criticism is never appropriate.

8. To protect the integrity of authorship, only persons who have significantly contributed to the research or project and manuscript preparation shall be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author attests to the fact that any others named as co-authors have seen the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for co-authorship shall be included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name shall be given as an author or co-author. An author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts responsibility for having properly included all, and only, qualified co-authors.

9. It is inappropriate to submit manuscripts with an obvious commercial intent.

10. It is inappropriate for an author either to write or co-author a discussion of his or her own manuscript, except in the case of a rebuttal or closure to criticism or discussion offered by others.

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Obligations of Reviewers

1. Because qualified manuscript review is essential to the publication process, all engineers and scientists have an obligation to do their fair share of reviews.

2. If a reviewer feels inadequately qualified or lacks the time to fairly judge the work reported, the reviewer should immediately notify the editor and promptly return the manuscript.

3. A reviewer shall objectively judge the quality of a manuscript on its own merit and shall respect the intellectual independence of the author(s). Personal criticism is never appropriate.

4. A reviewer shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. If a manuscript submitted for review presents a potential conflict of interest or the reviewer has a personal bias, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly without review and so advise the editor.

5. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of a reviewer or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.

6. If a reviewer receives for review a manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the reviewer has a personal or professional relationship, the existence of this relationship shall be promptly brought to the attention of the editor.

7. A reviewer shall treat a manuscript received for review as a confidential document and shall neither disclose nor discuss it with others except, as necessary, with persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted shall be disclosed to the editor.

8. Reviewers shall explain and support judgments adequately so that the editor and author(s) may understand the bases for their comments. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported shall be accompanied by the relevant citation.

9. A reviewer shall call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published manuscript or any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.

10. A reviewer shall not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author(s) and with appropriate attribution.

11. If a reviewer has convincing evidence that a manuscript contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the reviewer shall notify the editor who upon review, shall send the evidence to the Ethics Committee of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh.

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Acknowledgments

The Peer Review Policy and Ethical Standards reported herein were drafted using the "AGU Policies and Procedures" of the American Geophysical Union, the “ASCE Author’s Guide” and “Peer Review Policy” of the International Journal of Plasticity The Editorial Board of the Journal of Civil Engineering, IEB acknowledges AGU, ASCE and International Journal of Plasticity for quoting from those works.