Publication Ethics Requirements

Editorial Policy

Research Integrity Authorship Peer Review Transparency

Core Requirement. All authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial staff participating in the publication process are expected to uphold the highest standards of academic honesty, scholarly responsibility, procedural fairness, and ethical transparency. Manuscripts that fail to meet the journal’s ethical requirements may be rejected, suspended from review, corrected after publication, or formally withdrawn where necessary.

Submitted manuscripts must be original works that have not been previously published and are not under consideration elsewhere at the time of submission. Authors must not submit the same manuscript, or substantially similar versions of it, to more than one journal simultaneously.

Any overlap with previously disseminated materials, including preprints, conference papers, theses, reports, or working papers, should be disclosed at the time of submission where relevant.

The journal does not accept plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, image plagiarism, citation manipulation, or the unauthorized use of another person’s ideas, language, data, or intellectual contributions.

All sources must be properly cited. Authors are responsible for ensuring that borrowed arguments, quotations, datasets, visual materials, and methodological frameworks are acknowledged accurately and appropriately.

Authors must not fabricate data, falsify results, manipulate evidence, distort citations, alter images in misleading ways, or misrepresent the nature, scope, or outcomes of their research.

Tables, figures, illustrations, transcripts, coding results, and all forms of supporting evidence must accurately reflect the underlying research record. Selective omission designed to mislead readers is not acceptable.

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript. All listed authors must approve the final version before submission and agree to be accountable for the content of the work.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately rather than listed as authors. Ghost authorship, guest authorship, honorary authorship, and undisclosed third-party writing assistance are not acceptable.

Any changes to authorship after submission, including addition, removal, or reordering of authors, must be explained to the journal and approved by all affected authors.

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, professional, personal, political, or ideological interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research, interpretation, or publication of the work.

Reviewers and editors are likewise expected to disclose relevant conflicts and recuse themselves where impartial evaluation cannot be ensured.

Research involving human participants, private communications, identifiable personal information, sensitive communities, or confidential institutional materials must be conducted in accordance with relevant ethical standards, applicable laws, and institutional requirements.

Where appropriate, authors should confirm that informed consent, confidentiality protection, anonymization, and ethics approval procedures were followed. The journal may request documentation where necessary for editorial assessment.

Authors must maintain accurate research records and preserve relevant data, documentation, and supporting materials where reasonably possible. Where questions arise during review or after publication, authors may be asked to provide materials necessary to clarify methodology, evidence, or interpretation.

Data availability should be handled in accordance with the journal’s Data Policy and with due regard to ethical, legal, and privacy limitations.

Authors who use artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technologies in any meaningful way during the preparation of the manuscript or research materials must disclose such use transparently and remain fully responsible for the final content.

AI systems may not be listed as authors. Fabricated references, synthetic evidence, undisclosed AI-generated substantive content, or misleading AI-assisted image or data manipulation are not acceptable. Further details are set out in the journal’s AI & Research Integrity Policy.

Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, confidential, and timely evaluations. Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents and must not be shared, used, or exploited for personal or professional advantage.

Reviewers should decline invitations where they lack relevant expertise, cannot provide a timely assessment, or have a conflict of interest that could compromise impartial judgment.

Editors are responsible for making fair, academically grounded, and ethically informed decisions. Editorial decisions should be based on scholarly merit, relevance to the journal’s scope, methodological quality, originality, and integrity.

Editorial decisions must remain independent of commercial considerations, institutional pressure, personal preference, or discriminatory treatment based on nationality, affiliation, gender, religion, or political belief.

Where significant errors, ethical breaches, unreliable findings, or serious integrity concerns are identified in a published article, the journal may issue a correction, clarification, editorial note, expression of concern, or retraction, as appropriate.

Such actions are undertaken to preserve the accuracy, transparency, and reliability of the scholarly record.

Allegations of plagiarism, authorship disputes, data irregularities, peer review manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, or other publication ethics concerns will be reviewed seriously and handled in a fair, confidential, and evidence-based manner.

Authors may submit reasoned appeals regarding editorial decisions where a significant procedural or factual issue is believed to have affected the evaluation process.

By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors confirm that the work complies with the journal’s publication ethics requirements, that all necessary disclosures have been made, and that the submission reflects honest, original, and responsible scholarship.

The journal reserves the right to request clarification or documentation where ethical concerns arise and to take appropriate editorial action where these requirements are not met.