Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Journal of Awareness (J. Aware.) is committed to maintaining high ethical standards in scholarly publishing. The journal follows the COPE Core Practices and internationally recognized principles of publication ethics.

This statement defines the ethical responsibilities of all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher.

1. Responsibilities of Authors

Originality and Attribution: Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts are original and that all sources, ideas, text, data, images, and other materials taken from previous work are properly cited and acknowledged.

Authorship and Contribution: All listed authors must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution to the manuscript. Individuals who have not contributed to the work must not be listed as authors. All contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged where appropriate.

Multiple Submission and Duplicate Publication: Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time and must not have been previously published in substantially the same form.

Data Accuracy and Research Integrity: Authors are responsible for the accuracy, reliability, and integrity of the data, analysis, findings, and conclusions presented in their manuscripts.

Ethics Committee Approval: Ethics committee approval is required for research involving human participants, personal data, surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, experiments, clinical data, or other methods requiring ethical review. Authors must state the name of the ethics committee, approval date, and approval number in the manuscript where applicable.

Informed Consent: For research involving human participants, authors are responsible for obtaining informed consent where required and for protecting participant privacy and confidentiality.

Conflict of Interest: Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, or academic conflicts of interest that may influence, or be perceived to influence, the research or publication process.

Funding and Acknowledgements: Authors must disclose all sources of financial support, grants, institutional support, or other assistance related to the submitted work.

Error Reporting: If authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a submitted or published work, they must promptly notify the journal and cooperate in issuing a correction, clarification, or retraction where necessary.

2. Editors' Responsibilities and Editorial Roles

2.1 General Principles

Editorial Independence and Impartiality: Editorial decisions are based solely on academic merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and relevance to the journal's aim and scope.

Confidentiality: Editors must keep submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities, author information, and all editorial correspondence confidential, in accordance with the journal's double-blind peer-review policy.

Conflict of Interest: Editors must not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest. In such cases, the manuscript must be assigned to another qualified editor.

Peer Review Management: Editors are responsible for ensuring that the peer-review process is fair, timely, constructive, and conducted by independent reviewers with relevant expertise.

Final Decision: The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for final editorial decisions, taking into account reviewer reports, editorial assessments, ethical considerations, and the journal's policies.

2.2 Editorial Roles and Responsibilities

Editor-in-Chief

• Determines and oversees the journal's editorial policies, scope, and quality standards.
• Manages the peer-review process and makes final editorial decisions.
• Ensures compliance with publication ethics and research integrity standards.
• Represents the journal in academic and professional contexts.

Managing Editor

• Coordinates administrative, technical, and operational editorial processes.
• Facilitates communication among authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher.
• Conducts technical checks and coordinates DOI, metadata, and production workflows.
• Monitors editorial timelines and publication schedules.

Associate Editors / Section Editors

• Evaluate manuscripts within their areas of expertise.
• Select suitable reviewers and assess reviewer reports.
• Make editorial recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief.

Editorial Board

• Contributes to the journal's academic development, policies, and quality standards.
• Provides peer-review support and expert advice when requested.
• Supports the visibility, reputation, and scholarly development of the journal.

3. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Objectivity and Constructive Evaluation: Reviewers should provide objective, evidence-based, constructive, and respectful evaluations that help editors make informed decisions and help authors improve their work.

Confidentiality: Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents and must not be shared, discussed, or used for personal advantage.

Conflict of Interest: Reviewers must decline a review invitation if they have any conflict of interest or if they cannot provide an impartial evaluation.

Use of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant uncited literature, methodological weaknesses, ethical concerns, or similarities with previously published work where appropriate.

Timeliness: Reviewers should complete their evaluations within the agreed timeframe or inform the editor promptly if an extension is needed.

4. Plagiarism, Similarity, and Research Misconduct

Journal of Awareness has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, ghost authorship, honorary authorship, and salami slicing. Submitted manuscripts are screened for similarity using iThenticate or other appropriate similarity-checking tools.

Manuscripts that contain serious ethical violations may be rejected before peer review. If misconduct is identified after publication, the journal may publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction in accordance with COPE guidance.

5. Data Sharing and Transparency

Authors are responsible for maintaining accurate records of data, methods, and analysis. Where appropriate and ethically possible, authors are encouraged to make research data, materials, and analysis codes available in open repositories or to provide them upon reasonable editorial request.

Data sharing must comply with ethical approvals, informed consent, confidentiality requirements, privacy regulations, and any legal or contractual restrictions.

6. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

Corrections: Corrections, errata, or corrigenda may be published when errors are identified that do not invalidate the main findings of the article.

Retractions: Articles may be retracted in cases of serious ethical violations, unreliable findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, data falsification, or other forms of research misconduct.

Expressions of Concern: Where an investigation is ongoing and the reliability or integrity of a published article is uncertain, the journal may issue an expression of concern.

All correction, retraction, and expression of concern procedures are handled in accordance with COPE Core Practices.

7. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Policy

Authors must disclose any use of artificial intelligence tools or large language models in the preparation of the manuscript, including writing assistance, language editing, coding support, data processing, or reference checking.

AI tools must not be listed as authors. Authorship requires human responsibility, accountability, and the ability to approve the final version of the work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, data, analysis, findings, and conclusions of their manuscripts, including any content generated or supported by AI tools.

The journal does not use AI tools to make editorial decisions. Editorial decisions are made by human editors based on academic merit, reviewer reports, ethical compliance, and journal policies.

8. Publisher's Responsibilities

The publisher supports the editorial independence of the journal and works to ensure the integrity, accessibility, preservation, and ethical management of the published scholarly record.