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Jurnal Pendidikan Sains

Policies

Jurnal Pendidikan Sains (JPS) is committed to promoting responsible, transparent, and ethical scholarly publishing in science education. The journal maintains editorial independence and applies its publication policies to authors, reviewers, editors, and all parties involved in the publication process. JPS follows recognized principles of research and publication integrity and is guided by the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). These policies are intended to protect the quality, credibility, and integrity of the scholarly record published by JPS.

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts submitted to JPS are first evaluated by the editorial team to determine their relevance to the journal's aims and scope, originality, scholarly contribution, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and conformity with the journal's submission requirements. Manuscripts that satisfy the initial editorial assessment are considered for external peer review.

JPS applies a double-blind peer-review process, in which the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from one another. Each manuscript is normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise. Reviewers assess the originality, methodology, analysis, interpretation, clarity, relevance, and contribution of the manuscript to science education.

Reviewer recommendations support editorial decision-making but do not determine the final decision. The responsible editor makes the final decision based on the reviewers' assessments, scholarly merit of the manuscript, relevance to JPS, and compliance with the journal's ethical and editorial standards.

JPS aims to provide a first editorial decision within approximately three weeks (21 days). For manuscripts that successfully complete review, revision, final evaluation, and production, the journal aims to complete the process from submission to publication within approximately 12 weeks. These timelines are editorial targets and may vary according to reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, and the extent of revision required.

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Editorial Screening and Desk Rejection

JPS conducts an initial editorial screening before external peer review. A manuscript may be returned or rejected at this stage if it is outside the journal's scope, lacks sufficient originality or scholarly contribution, does not meet minimum methodological or reporting standards, contains significant ethical concerns, or does not adequately follow the journal's submission guidelines.

Similarity screening may form part of this assessment. Similarity percentages are treated as editorial indicators rather than automatic evidence of plagiarism. Manuscripts with an overall similarity exceeding 20% may receive additional editorial examination, but the final assessment considers the source, extent, and nature of the overlap.

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Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should reflect genuine scholarly contribution to the research and manuscript. Authors are expected to have contributed substantially to one or more key aspects of the work, such as its conception and design, methodology, data collection, analysis and interpretation, or preparation and critical revision of the manuscript. All listed authors must approve the final manuscript and accept responsibility for the integrity of their contributions.

JPS encourages authors to describe individual contributions using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). Individuals who contribute to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately. Guest, honorary, gift, or ghost authorship is not acceptable.

Changes to Authorship

The author list and order should be agreed upon before submission. Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be clearly justified and agreed to by all affected authors. The journal may request supporting documentation when an authorship change raises ethical or procedural concerns.

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Affiliations

Authors must provide accurate institutional affiliations corresponding to where the research was conducted, supported, or formally associated. If an author's affiliation changes after the research has been completed, the affiliation associated with the research should normally remain listed, while a current address or affiliation may be added where appropriate. Deliberate misrepresentation of affiliation may be treated as a publication-ethics concern.

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Acknowledgments

Individuals who made meaningful contributions to the research or manuscript but do not qualify for authorship may be acknowledged with their permission. Financial support should be reported separately under Funding. Relevant use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be disclosed in accordance with the JPS Generative AI policy.

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Competing Interests

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation. These may include employment, consultancy, funding relationships, grants, intellectual property, patents, personal relationships, or relevant institutional interests. Authors who have no competing interests should state this explicitly.

Editors and reviewers are also required to disclose potential competing interests and should not participate in the evaluation of manuscripts where their independence or impartiality may reasonably be questioned.

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Funding

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support related to the research and/or preparation of the manuscript. Where relevant, authors should describe the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the work for publication. If the research received no external funding, an appropriate statement should be provided.

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Research Ethics and Informed Consent

Research involving human participants, students, teachers, personal or sensitive data, educational interventions, or other activities requiring ethical oversight must comply with applicable institutional and national ethical requirements. Where ethical approval is required, the manuscript should identify the responsible ethics committee or institutional review body and provide the approval or reference number where available.

Informed consent must be obtained where required. Authors must protect participants' privacy and confidentiality and should avoid publishing personally identifiable information unless it is necessary for the research and appropriate consent for publication has been obtained. Studies involving children, students, vulnerable participants, or relationships involving unequal authority require particular attention to voluntary participation and protection from coercion.

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Research Data and Data Integrity

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the data supporting their research. Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, or misleading presentation of data is unacceptable. Authors should retain relevant research records and may be asked to provide supporting data or documentation if questions regarding research integrity arise.

Where ethical, legal, privacy, and confidentiality requirements permit, JPS encourages authors to make supporting research data available through appropriate repositories or supplementary materials and to include a Data Availability Statement explaining how the data may be accessed or why access is restricted.

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Images and Figures

Figures and images must accurately represent the original data or scholarly material. Authors must not selectively enhance, hide, remove, reposition, or introduce elements in a way that could mislead readers. Routine adjustments to brightness, contrast, or color balance may be acceptable when they do not obscure or alter the underlying information.

The journal may request original or unprocessed image files where necessary to assess image integrity. Authors are responsible for obtaining required permissions for copyrighted or identifiable visual material. The use of AI-generated or AI-altered images is subject to the journal's Generative AI policy.

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Citation Practices

References must be relevant, accurate, and used to support the scholarly content of the manuscript. Authors are responsible for verifying all cited sources. Citation practices intended primarily to manipulate citation counts or journal metrics—including excessive self-citation, citation padding, reciprocal citation arrangements, and citation cartels—are not acceptable.

Editors and reviewers should recommend additional references only when they are genuinely relevant to the manuscript and should not require authors to cite particular authors, reviewers, editors, or journals for non-scholarly reasons.

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Plagiarism and Similarity Screening

JPS does not tolerate plagiarism, including unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, presentation of another person's ideas as one's own, or substantial reuse of previously published material without appropriate acknowledgment.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. The similarity report supports editorial assessment but does not by itself establish whether plagiarism has occurred. As an internal screening indicator, manuscripts with an overall similarity exceeding 20% may receive additional examination. Editors consider the source, nature, extent, and context of overlapping material before making a decision.

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Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Manuscripts submitted to JPS must not be simultaneously under consideration by another journal. Authors should disclose related manuscripts, preprints, conference papers, datasets, or publications when relevant to assessing overlap.

Redundant publication or inappropriate fragmentation of one study into several publications without sufficient scholarly justification is discouraged. When a manuscript develops or extends previously published work, the earlier work must be cited and the new contribution clearly identified.

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Research and Publication Misconduct

JPS takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously. Potential misconduct includes plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, inappropriate image manipulation, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed competing interests, unethical research, copyright violations, and other practices that compromise the integrity of the scholarly record.

Suspected cases will be considered fairly and, where appropriate, with reference to COPE guidance. The journal may request clarification, supporting documentation, original data, or ethics records and may contact relevant institutions or other responsible bodies when necessary. Depending on the circumstances, editorial action may include rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other measures necessary to protect the scholarly record.

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Corrections and Retractions

JPS is committed to correcting the scholarly record when significant errors or integrity concerns are identified after publication. A correction may be issued when an error affects part of an article but does not invalidate its overall findings. An expression of concern may be used while a serious unresolved matter is under investigation. Retraction may be appropriate when findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct, plagiarism, unethical research, duplicate publication, manipulation of the publication process, or another serious breach of publication ethics.

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions will be clearly identified and linked to the original article whenever possible.

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Appeals and Complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe a significant error has occurred in the evaluation of their manuscript. Appeals should provide a clear scholarly justification and address the reasons stated in the editorial decision. Complaints concerning peer review, editorial conduct, authorship, ethical matters, or journal procedures should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

Appeals and complaints will be considered objectively. Editors directly involved in the matter should not participate in its resolution when a competing interest exists. Where appropriate, JPS may refer to COPE guidance in handling the matter.

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Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts, peer-review reports, editorial correspondence, and related materials are confidential. Editors and reviewers must not disclose submission content to unauthorized persons or use unpublished information obtained through peer review for personal, academic, competitive, or commercial advantage.

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Preprints

JPS permits authors to share manuscripts as preprints before formal publication. A legitimate preprint is not normally considered duplicate publication. Authors should disclose relevant preprints during submission and, after publication, are encouraged to update the preprint record with the citation and DOI of the final Version of Record.

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Third-party Material

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission where required to reproduce or adapt copyrighted third-party material, including text, figures, photographs, tables, questionnaires, datasets, maps, screenshots, audio, video, or other protected content. All reused or adapted material must be appropriately attributed, and evidence of permission may be requested by the journal.

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Authors retain copyright in articles published by JPS and grant the journal the rights necessary to publish, distribute, preserve, and make the work publicly available. Authors submitting material created by others must hold the necessary rights or permissions for its publication.

JPS publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. The license permits sharing and adaptation, including commercial reuse, provided that appropriate attribution is given, changes are indicated, the license is linked, and adapted material is distributed under the same license.

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Open Access

JPS provides immediate open access to its published articles. Readers may access scholarly content without subscription barriers, subject to the applicable Creative Commons license. The journal supports the principle that open access facilitates broader dissemination and exchange of research knowledge and is consistent with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).

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Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies

JPS recognizes that generative AI and AI-assisted technologies may support scholarly writing and research when used responsibly, transparently, and under appropriate human oversight. AI must not replace the intellectual contribution, critical judgment, interpretation, or accountability of human authors.

Use in Manuscript Preparation

Authors may use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to support manuscript preparation, including appropriate language and writing assistance. Authors must review and verify all AI-assisted output and remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, references, and integrity of the submitted manuscript. Routine spelling, grammar, and punctuation tools do not normally require disclosure when they do not generate substantive scholarly content.

Disclosure

Relevant use of generative AI in manuscript preparation must be disclosed in a section entitled Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in the Writing Process, placed immediately before the References.

“During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL/SERVICE] for [PURPOSE]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of the publication.”

AI and Authorship

AI systems, large language models, chatbots, and other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authorship responsibilities and accountability can only be assigned to human contributors.

Use of AI in Research Methods

When AI or AI-assisted technologies form part of the research methodology—for example in coding, classification, data processing, analysis, modeling, or simulation—their use must be described transparently in the Method section with sufficient detail for readers to understand the procedure.

AI-generated or AI-altered Images

Generative AI must not be used to create or manipulate images presented as research evidence in a manner that misrepresents the underlying information. When AI-assisted image processing is a legitimate part of the research methodology, its use must be transparently described.

Editors and Reviewers

Editors and reviewers must protect manuscript confidentiality and must not upload unpublished manuscripts, figures, supplementary materials, or confidential review information to publicly accessible generative AI systems where confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or data security could be compromised. AI must not replace independent scholarly judgment in peer review or editorial decision-making.

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