Publication Ethics

We encourage our authors, reviewers, and editors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

IJIEOR adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its partner organizations.

IJIEOR Commitments

IJIEOR is committed to:

  1. Maintaining editorial independence and integrity.
  2. Promoting ethical, transparent, and fair scholarly publishing practices.
  3. Maintaining accurate, transparent, and reliable academic records.
  4. Addressing allegations of research and publication misconduct in a fair and timely manner.

Authors' Responsibilities

Authors submitting manuscripts to IJIEOR are expected to:

  1. Ensure that the submitted work is original and represents their own scholarly contribution.
  2. Ensure that the manuscript has not been previously published and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal, except where explicitly permitted by the journal's policies.
  3. Properly acknowledge and cite all sources and obtain permission where necessary for the use of copyrighted, confidential, personal, or otherwise protected material.
  4. Ensure that reported data, results, figures, tables, and other research materials are accurate and have not been fabricated, falsified, or inappropriately manipulated.
  5. Disclose all relevant financial, professional, institutional, or personal conflicts of interest, including sources of research funding where applicable.
  6. Comply with applicable research ethics requirements, particularly for research involving human participants or animals.
  7. Represent authorship accurately and include all individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work.
  8. Obtain the approval of all listed authors before submission and ensure that all authors approve the final version of the manuscript.
  9. Clearly disclose any substantial overlap with previously published or submitted work.
  10. Cooperate with the journal in responding to questions concerning the integrity, originality, authorship, or ethical conduct of the research.

Authorship

All listed authors must have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the research and manuscript. All authors must approve the final version of the manuscript before submission.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all eligible contributors are appropriately included as authors and that no inappropriate authorship, including guest, gift, or ghost authorship, has occurred.

Any changes to authorship after submission must be approved by all authors and justified to the editorial office. The journal may request appropriate documentation before approving such changes.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

Reviewers are expected to:

  1. Maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and the peer-review process.
  2. Refrain from contacting authors directly regarding a manuscript under review without permission from the journal.
  3. Disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other competing interests that could affect their impartiality.
  4. Decline to review manuscripts when a conflict of interest could compromise the objectivity of the review.
  5. Conduct reviews fairly, objectively, constructively, and impartially.
  6. Base evaluations on the scientific quality, originality, relevance, methodology, and clarity of the manuscript.
  7. Identify relevant published work that has not been appropriately cited where reasonably possible.
  8. Inform the editor of any suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, falsification, or other research misconduct.
  9. Not use unpublished information obtained through peer review for personal, professional, or other advantage.
  10. Not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished material, or other confidential information to generative AI systems or external automated tools unless such use is explicitly permitted by the journal and appropriate confidentiality protections are in place.

Editors' Responsibilities

Editors are expected to:

  1. Apply the journal's editorial and ethical policies consistently and fairly.
  2. Maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and the peer-review process.
  3. Make editorial decisions independently based on the scientific quality, originality, relevance, methodological soundness, and overall contribution of the manuscript.
  4. Recognize, disclose, and appropriately manage conflicts of interest.
  5. Ensure that manuscripts are handled by appropriate editors and reviewers with relevant expertise.
  6. Ensure that peer review is conducted fairly and impartially.
  7. Protect the integrity and reliability of the published academic record.
  8. Investigate allegations of plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, authorship misconduct, and other forms of research misconduct when appropriate.
  9. Take appropriate corrective action when significant errors or misconduct are identified.
  10. Ensure that authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members are sufficiently informed about the journal's ethical and publishing policies.
  11. Not use generative AI tools to make editorial decisions or generate substantive peer-review assessments.

Editorial Board Responsibilities

Editorial Board members are expected to:

  1. Promote fairness, equality, and non-discrimination in editorial and scholarly activities.
  2. Support transparency and respect for the integrity of the academic record.
  3. Maintain the confidentiality of unpublished manuscripts and editorial information.
  4. Disclose potential conflicts of interest.
  5. Support the journal in maintaining high standards of research and publication ethics.
  6. Act in accordance with the journal's editorial policies and recognized principles of ethical scholarly publishing.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, or personal relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the evaluation, publication, or interpretation of a manuscript.

Potential conflicts of interest will be managed by the editorial office in accordance with the journal's ethical policies.

Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from handling or reviewing manuscripts where a conflict of interest could compromise their impartiality.

Human and Animal Research Ethics

Research involving human participants must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international ethical requirements. Authors should state whether ethical approval and informed consent were obtained whenever required by the nature of the research.

Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional and national guidelines for the ethical treatment and welfare of animals.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all required ethical approvals, permissions, and consents have been obtained before submission.

Plagiarism

IJIEOR takes plagiarism, copyright infringement, duplicate publication, and other forms of publication misconduct seriously.

All submitted manuscripts may be checked for plagiarism and text similarity using appropriate plagiarism-detection software, including iThenticate.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all sources are appropriately acknowledged and that any material reproduced from other sources is used with the necessary permission.

If plagiarism or other forms of misconduct are suspected, the journal may investigate the matter and request explanations, supporting documentation, or original research materials from the authors.

If plagiarism, data fabrication, image manipulation, duplicate publication, or other forms of research misconduct are confirmed, IJIEOR may reject the manuscript, retract the published article, publish a correction or expression of concern, and notify relevant institutions when appropriate.

Data Integrity

Authors must not fabricate, falsify, selectively manipulate, or misrepresent data, images, figures, tables, or experimental results.

The journal reserves the right to request original data, research materials, or supporting documentation when necessary to assess the integrity and reliability of reported findings.

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to IJIEOR must not be simultaneously submitted to another journal while under consideration by IJIEOR.

Duplicate submission and duplicate publication constitute unethical publishing behavior and may result in rejection, withdrawal, correction, or retraction of the affected publication.

Prior Publication

IJIEOR generally does not consider manuscripts that have been previously published or are simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

Manuscripts previously posted as preprints may be considered, provided that the authors disclose the preprint at submission and the manuscript meets the journal's publication requirements.

Substantially extended conference papers may also be considered when they contain significant new scholarly content and clearly acknowledge the earlier conference publication.

The editorial office will determine whether a submitted manuscript meets these requirements.

Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

IJIEOR may publish corrections, corrigenda, errata, retractions, or expressions of concern when necessary to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

Corrections and retractions will be linked to the original published article whenever technically possible.

Retractions may be considered in cases involving serious errors, unreliable findings, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, or other forms of research misconduct.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may submit complaints or appeals concerning editorial decisions, peer review, publication ethics, or editorial processes.

Complaints and appeals will be handled fairly, confidentially, and as promptly as reasonably possible by the editorial office.

Where appropriate, complaints or appeals may be referred to the Editor-in-Chief or another independent member of the editorial team for consideration.

Submitting a complaint or appeal does not guarantee a change in the original editorial decision.

Generative Artificial Intelligence

IJIEOR maintains a separate Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy describing the permitted and prohibited use of AI tools by authors, reviewers, and editors.

Authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to comply with the journal's AI policy and remain responsible for the accuracy, integrity, confidentiality, and ethical use of any AI-assisted content or processes.

Generative AI systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Contributor's Publishing Agreement

The standard license for articles published by IJIEOR is the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This license permits copying, sharing, distribution, adaptation, translation, text and data mining, and reuse of published content, including commercial use, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and the original publication.

For further information, please visit the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) .

Authors retain copyright of their published work in accordance with the journal's Copyright and Open Access Policy.

Additional Resources

For further guidance on publication ethics and research integrity, IJIEOR recommends the following resources:

  1. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
  2. Council of Science Editors (CSE)
  3. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
  4. World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)