COPE Standard
Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement
Ethical standards, accountability, and integrity codes for authors, peer reviewers, editors, and the publisher.
AJETAS follows the core principles established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations. All participants in the publishing process must adhere to strict ethical standards.
1. Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
- Originality & Plagiarism: Authors must submit strictly original research. Direct quotes, concepts, or datasets from other works must be appropriately cited. Submitting redundant, dual, or concurrent manuscripts to multiple journals simultaneously is strictly prohibited.
- Authorship Criteria: Authorship must be limited to individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions to the conception, experimental design, execution, or interpretation of the study. All listed co-authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and consent to its submission.
- Data Integrity & Fabrication: Data fabrication, falsification, and selective omission of experimental discrepancies constitute severe scholarly misconduct. Authors must preserve raw datasets and make them available for editorial inspection upon request.
- Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: Authors must disclose any financial relationships, consultancies, employment, or personal interests that could influence the study outcomes or interpretations.
2. Ethical Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers
- Confidentiality: Manuscripts under review are privileged, confidential documents. Reviewers must not disclose, share, distribute, or retain unpublished manuscripts.
- Objectivity & Constructiveness: Reviewers must evaluate submissions impartially based solely on intellectual and scientific merit. Personal attacks, hostile remarks, or biases regarding author demographics are unacceptable.
- Disclosure of Competing Interests: Reviewers must recuse themselves immediately if they identify any conflict of interest with the authors, institutions, or corporate sponsors.
3. Ethical Duties of Handling Editors & EiC
- Editorial Independence: Editorial decisions are made purely on scientific merit, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal scope, without regard to commercial, financial, or political pressures.
- Handling Allegations of Misconduct: Editors investigate all credible allegations of plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship manipulation, and data fabrication in accordance with COPE flowcharts.