Publication Ethics

 

1. Editorial Integrity and Independence

Editorial decisions are based on the scholarly merit, relevance, methodological or analytical quality, originality, ethical integrity, and clarity of the manuscript.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, geographical location, professional status, political views, financial circumstances, or other characteristics unrelated to the scholarly content of the submission.

Commercial considerations, sponsorship, institutional relationships, Article Processing Charges, or eligibility for fee waivers must not influence editorial assessment, peer review, or publication decisions.

2. Confidentiality

Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff must treat submitted manuscripts, supplementary materials, reviewer reports, and editorial correspondence as confidential.

Unpublished information obtained through the editorial or peer-review process must not be shared with unauthorised individuals or used for personal, academic, financial, or professional advantage.

Information may be disclosed only where necessary for legitimate editorial, ethical, legal, or research-integrity purposes.

3. Peer Review Ethics

JERP operates a double-anonymous peer-review process. Manuscripts proceeding to external review are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers.

Reviewers are expected to provide scholarly, fair, constructive, specific, and evidence-informed assessments.

Reviewers must:

• maintain confidentiality;
• disclose relevant competing interests;
• avoid personal, discriminatory, hostile, or defamatory comments;
• distinguish essential revisions from optional suggestions;
• recommend additional citations only where academically relevant; and
• report suspected research or publication misconduct confidentially to the editor.

Reviewers should not contact authors directly concerning manuscripts under review.

Detailed procedures are provided in JERP’s Editorial and Peer Review Policy and Peer Review Process .

4. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication

Authors must submit original scholarly work and appropriately acknowledge all sources.

Plagiarism, inappropriate text recycling, duplicate or redundant publication, unattributed reuse of intellectual material, and misrepresentation of previously published work as original research are unacceptable.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. JERP does not determine plagiarism solely on the basis of a fixed similarity percentage. Similarity reports are treated as screening tools, and editors evaluate the source, extent, nature, attribution, and context of textual overlap.

Work derived from a thesis, dissertation, conference paper, preprint, or research report may be considered where the prior dissemination is appropriately disclosed and the manuscript otherwise meets JERP’s requirements.

Detailed requirements are provided in JERP’s Originality, Plagiarism, and Similarity Policy .

5. Accurate Reporting and Research Integrity

Authors are responsible for accurately and transparently reporting research procedures, data, analyses, findings, interpretations, and limitations.

The following practices are unacceptable:

• fabrication or falsification of data or findings;
• deceptive manipulation of data, images, or figures;
• selective alteration or omission intended to misrepresent findings;
• fabrication or falsification of references, quotations, or sources;
• citation manipulation;
• peer-review manipulation; and
• other deliberate practices that compromise the reliability of the scholarly record.

Authors should retain relevant research records in accordance with applicable institutional, ethical, legal, and disciplinary requirements.

6. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should reflect substantive intellectual contribution to the work.

All listed authors should:

• have contributed meaningfully to the research or manuscript;
• approve the submitted version;
• accept appropriate responsibility for the work; and
• approve significant changes made during the editorial process.

Guest, gift, ghost, fraudulent, or otherwise inappropriate authorship is unacceptable.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged where appropriate. JERP encourages transparent contributor statements, including use of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) where appropriate.

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be explained and may require written agreement from all affected authors.

Authorship disputes that cannot reasonably be resolved by the journal may be referred to the relevant institution or other appropriate body.

7. Research Ethics and Participant Protection

Research involving human participants, identifiable personal information, vulnerable populations, or sensitive data must comply with applicable ethical, institutional, and legal requirements.

Where relevant, authors should report:

• approval by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review body;
• the approving institution and relevant approval information;
• procedures for obtaining informed consent;
• assent where appropriate, including research involving children or young people;
• measures to protect privacy and confidentiality; and
• procedures for managing sensitive or identifiable information.

Where formal ethical approval was not required, authors should be able to explain the ethical basis on which the research was conducted.

Consent to participate in research does not automatically constitute consent to publish identifiable information. Separate consent for publication should be obtained where individuals may reasonably be identifiable.

8. Data and Research Transparency

Authors should provide sufficient information concerning methods, data sources, and analytical procedures to allow readers to understand how findings were obtained.

Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors are encouraged to make research data, instruments, protocols, code, or other supporting materials available through recognised repositories or supplementary files.

Data sharing is not required where it would conflict with:

• participant consent;
• privacy or confidentiality;
• ethical approval;
• legal or contractual restrictions;
• protection of vulnerable individuals or communities; or
• other legitimate restrictions.

Where relevant, authors should provide a data-availability statement.

9. Competing Interests and Funding

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose financial, professional, institutional, personal, intellectual, or other interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgement.

The existence of a competing interest does not necessarily prevent participation or publication, but it must be disclosed and appropriately managed.

Authors must disclose relevant sources of funding and, where applicable, describe the role of the funder in the design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, or reporting of the research.

10. Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies

AI systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work.

Human authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, attribution, ethical compliance, and integrity of all submitted content.

Basic mechanical or linguistic assistance that does not generate substantive scholarly content does not require disclosure.

Substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be transparently disclosed in accordance with JERP’s Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies Policy .

AI must not be used to fabricate or falsify data, findings, participant responses, quotations, citations, references, or other scholarly evidence.

Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to external AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual property, or data protection may be compromised.

11. Submissions by Editors and Editorial Board Members

Editors, Editorial Board members, and other individuals involved in the management of JERP may submit scholarly work to the journal, but such submissions are subject to the same editorial and peer-review standards as other manuscripts.

Where an editor or Editorial Board member is an author:

• they must not participate in the editorial assessment of the manuscript;
• they must not select or recommend reviewers;
• they must not participate in editorial deliberations;
• they must not influence or make the final decision; and
• the manuscript must be handled by an independent editor who has no relevant competing interest.

Where the Editor-in-Chief is an author or has another relevant competing interest, the manuscript must be assigned to an independent senior editor or another suitably qualified editor.

Where appropriate, the published article may include a statement explaining how the competing interest was managed.

12. Publication Misconduct and Investigations

JERP takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously, whether concerns arise before or after publication.

Potential misconduct may include:

• plagiarism;
• fabrication or falsification;
• inappropriate data or image manipulation;
• duplicate or redundant publication;
• inappropriate authorship;
• undisclosed significant competing interests;
• citation manipulation;
• peer-review manipulation;
• fraudulent identities or documents;
• systematic manipulation of the publication process; or
• unethical conduct of research.

The journal may request explanations, original data, ethics documentation, authorship information, or other relevant evidence. Where appropriate, the editorial process may be paused while a concern is assessed.

Where investigation falls beyond the journal’s authority, JERP may refer the matter to an institution, research-integrity office, funder, ethics committee, or other appropriate authority.

13. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

JERP is committed to maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

Correction	A correction may be issued where an error affects part of an article but does not invalidate the work as a whole.
Retraction	A retraction may be considered where there is reliable evidence that an article or its principal findings are substantially unreliable because of serious error, misconduct, unethical research, plagiarism, redundant publication, compromised peer review, or another significant integrity concern.
Expression of Concern	An expression of concern may be issued where serious questions have been raised but the available evidence remains inconclusive or an investigation is ongoing.

Retraction notices and other post-publication notices should be transparent, publicly accessible, linked to the affected article, and written in objective and factual language.

Removal of published content is reserved for exceptional circumstances involving compelling legal, privacy, safety, or comparable concerns.

14. Post-Publication Concerns

JERP welcomes responsible scholarly discussion of published work.

Readers may contact the journal regarding errors, methodological concerns, ethical issues, or other matters that may affect the interpretation, reliability, or integrity of an article.

Credible concerns will be assessed on their merits. Where appropriate, authors may be invited to respond.

Post-publication review may result in clarification, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or no editorial action, depending on the available evidence.

15. Complaints and Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision where they believe that a significant factual or procedural error affected the decision.

An appeal should provide a concise, evidence-based explanation. Disagreement with an editorial decision alone is not sufficient grounds for appeal.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, confidentiality, competing interests, publication ethics, or journal procedures will be considered fairly and, where practicable, by an individual who was not directly involved in the matter.

Appeals and complaints should be submitted through the journal’s editorial office or OJS system, as appropriate.

Further procedures are described in JERP’s Complaints and Appeals Policy .

16. Special Issues and Guest-Edited Collections

Special issues, thematic collections, and guest-edited content are subject to the same standards of peer review, research integrity, ethical oversight, competing-interest management, and editorial independence as regular submissions.

Guest Editors must disclose relevant competing interests and must not handle manuscripts where their impartiality may reasonably be questioned.

The Editor-in-Chief or a designated independent editor retains oversight of the integrity of special-issue and guest-edited content.

17. Copyright, Open Access, and Publication Charges

Copyright, licensing, and open-access arrangements are governed by JERP’s Open Access and Copyright Policy .

Submission fees, Article Processing Charges, and applicable waivers are stated in the journal’s Publication Fees policy.

18. Policy Review

JERP may revise this policy in response to developments in research integrity, scholarly communication, publication technology, and recognised ethical guidance.

The journal will consider each case on the basis of the available evidence, applicable policies, and the need to preserve procedural fairness and the integrity of the scholarly record.

Related JERP Policies

This policy should be read together with:

Editorial and Peer Review Policy	Peer Review Process
Originality, Plagiarism, and Similarity Policy	Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies Policy
Author Guidelines	Complaints and Appeals Policy
Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern	Open Access and Copyright Policy
Publication Fees