Jurnal Pendidikan Sains (JPS) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics and research integrity. The journal follows internationally recognized principles of scholarly publishing and is guided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices in addressing matters related to authorship, peer review, competing interests, research integrity, allegations of misconduct, corrections, and retractions.

All parties involved in the publication process—including editors, reviewers, and authors—are expected to uphold the ethical responsibilities described below.

Publication Decisions and Editorial Independence

The Editor-in-Chief and designated editors are responsible for deciding which manuscripts submitted to JPS are suitable for publication.

Editorial decisions are based on the manuscript's scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigor, relevance to the aims and scope of the journal, research integrity, and recommendations from qualified reviewers.

Editorial decisions must remain independent of commercial considerations or inappropriate external influence.

Editors evaluate manuscripts based on their academic and intellectual merit without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, citizenship, institutional affiliation, political philosophy, or other personal characteristics unrelated to scholarly merit.

Peer Review

Editors are responsible for ensuring that the peer-review process is fair, objective, confidential, and conducted within a reasonable timeframe.

Manuscripts selected for peer review should normally be evaluated by qualified reviewers with appropriate expertise in the relevant field.

Editors should take reasonable steps to identify and avoid reviewers with competing interests or other circumstances that could compromise the independence or objectivity of the review.

The final editorial decision remains the responsibility of the editor and is not determined solely by reviewer recommendations.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and all communications associated with the editorial and peer-review process.

Information concerning a submitted manuscript must not be disclosed to anyone other than those directly involved in the evaluation and publication process, except where disclosure is required to investigate suspected research or publication misconduct.

Unpublished material contained in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research or for personal advantage without the explicit written permission of the author.

Competing Interests

Editors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other competing interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their editorial judgment.

An editor must not participate in the evaluation or decision-making process for a manuscript when a significant competing interest exists.

Submissions authored or co-authored by members of the editorial board must undergo the journal's standard editorial and peer-review procedures and must be handled independently by an editor who has no involvement in the submitted work.

Relations with Authors

Editors should provide authors with clear information regarding editorial procedures, peer review, manuscript preparation, publication ethics, and editorial decisions.

Authors should be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to reviewer comments and editorial concerns.

Editorial decisions should be communicated clearly and, where appropriate, should provide sufficient reasons to help authors understand the basis of the decision.

Relations with Reviewers

Editors should provide reviewers with clear guidance regarding the scope, confidentiality, ethical requirements, and expected standards of peer review.

Reviewers should be encouraged to identify potential ethical concerns, including plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate image manipulation, fabricated or falsified data, citation manipulation, undeclared competing interests, or substantial overlap with previously published work.

Editors may disregard, edit, or withhold reviewer comments that contain personal attacks, discriminatory language, unsupported allegations, inappropriate citation requests, or other unprofessional content.

Reviewers who repeatedly fail to meet the journal's standards of professionalism, confidentiality, timeliness, or research integrity may be removed from the reviewer database.

Citation Practices and Journal Metrics

Editors must not attempt to manipulate journal metrics or citation indicators.

Authors must not be required to cite articles from JPS, articles written by editors or reviewers, or any other publications unless those references are genuinely relevant to the scholarly content of the manuscript.

Suggestions for additional citations must be based on legitimate academic considerations and must not be used primarily to increase citation counts or journal metrics.

Safeguarding the Published Record

Editors are responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Concerns regarding suspected research or publication misconduct must be considered seriously regardless of whether they arise before or after publication.

Where appropriate, JPS may request explanations, original data, supporting documentation, ethical approval records, or other relevant evidence from authors.

When credible evidence indicates that the published record requires correction, the journal may publish a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other appropriate notice in accordance with its editorial policies and recognized publication-ethics guidance.

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Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists editors in evaluating the scholarly quality, validity, originality, significance, and suitability of submitted manuscripts.

Reviewers should provide constructive, evidence-based, objective, and professionally expressed assessments that help editors make informed decisions and help authors improve their manuscripts.

The recommendation of a reviewer is advisory. Final responsibility for editorial decisions rests with the journal's editors.

Expertise and Timeliness

A reviewer who believes that they lack sufficient expertise to evaluate a manuscript appropriately should decline the invitation.

A reviewer who cannot complete the review within the requested timeframe should promptly inform the editor.

Reviewers should accept review assignments only when they can provide a competent and timely assessment.

Objectivity and Professional Conduct

Reviews must be conducted objectively and respectfully.

Personal criticism, hostile language, discriminatory remarks, unsupported accusations, or comments unrelated to the scholarly merits of the manuscript are inappropriate.

Reviewers should explain their assessments clearly and, where possible, support critical comments with scholarly reasoning or relevant evidence.

Confidentiality

Reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts, figures, data, or review reports to public generative AI services without explicit journal authorization and adequate confidentiality safeguards. AI-generated assessments must not replace the reviewer's independent scholarly judgment.

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

Reviewers must not share, distribute, reproduce, discuss, or otherwise disclose manuscript content to unauthorized persons without prior permission from the editor.

Reviewers must not contact authors directly regarding a manuscript under review unless specifically authorized by the editor.

Information, ideas, methods, or unpublished findings obtained through peer review must not be used for the reviewer's own research, publication, commercial benefit, or personal advantage.

Competing Interests

Reviewers must disclose any potential competing interest that could affect, or reasonably be perceived to affect, the impartiality of their evaluation.

Potential competing interests may include recent collaboration with the authors, institutional relationships, personal relationships, direct academic competition, financial interests, or other circumstances that could create actual or perceived bias.

When a substantial competing interest exists, the reviewer should decline the review or consult the editor before proceeding.

Acknowledgment of Sources and Overlapping Publications

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been appropriately acknowledged when such omission materially affects the evaluation of the manuscript.

Reviewers should alert the editor if they become aware of substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript and another published or submitted work.

Any allegation of plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, or other misconduct should be communicated confidentially to the editor and supported with appropriate evidence whenever possible.

Citation Recommendations

Reviewers must not request authors to cite the reviewer's own publications, the publications of associates, or particular journals unless the recommended citations are genuinely relevant and academically justified.

Citation suggestions must not be made for the primary purpose of increasing citation counts, enhancing personal visibility, or influencing journal metrics.

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Detailed operational requirements for data availability, informed consent, authorship changes, preprints, AI disclosures, licensing, and post-publication actions are set out in the separate Policies and Guidelines page. This statement establishes the ethical responsibilities of the parties involved.

Reporting Standards

Authors must present an accurate, complete, transparent, and objective account of the research conducted.

The manuscript should provide sufficient information regarding the research question, methodology, analysis, results, and interpretation to enable readers to evaluate the work appropriately and, where relevant, facilitate reproducibility.

Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation of data, misleading reporting, or intentional omission of information that materially affects interpretation of the findings constitutes unethical publication practice.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts represent original work.

When authors use the words, ideas, data, figures, methods, or other intellectual contributions of others, the original source must be appropriately acknowledged and cited.

Plagiarism, including direct copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, unattributed reuse of material, or presenting another person's intellectual contribution as one's own, is unacceptable.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission where copyrighted material requires authorization for reuse.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal.

Publication of substantially overlapping research in more than one journal without appropriate disclosure, justification, or cross-reference is generally considered unacceptable.

Authors must disclose related manuscripts, preprints, conference papers, datasets, or other publications where these are relevant to evaluating potential overlap or redundant publication.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the work.

The corresponding author must ensure that all appropriate contributors are included as authors, that individuals who do not meet the journal's authorship requirements are not listed as authors, and that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final submitted version.

All authors share responsibility for the integrity of the published work and should cooperate in addressing questions concerning the accuracy or integrity of any part of the article.

Contributors who have assisted with the research or manuscript but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be appropriately acknowledged where applicable.

Changes to Authorship

Authors should carefully determine the author list and order before initial submission.

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be accompanied by a clear explanation and agreement from all affected authors.

JPS reserves the right to request additional documentation when considering authorship changes and may decline requests that are insufficiently justified or that raise ethical concerns.

Acknowledgment of Sources and Citation Practices

Authors must cite relevant, reliable, and appropriately verified sources that support statements made in the manuscript.

References should be used for legitimate scholarly purposes.

Authors must avoid excessive self-citation, citation padding, citation cartels, reciprocal citation arrangements, or other practices intended primarily to manipulate citation indicators.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that every reference is accurate and that cited sources genuinely support the statements for which they are used.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants, personal or sensitive data, animals, or other activities requiring ethical oversight must comply with applicable ethical standards, institutional requirements, and relevant laws or regulations.

Where applicable, authors should provide information regarding ethics committee or institutional review approval, approval numbers, informed consent, participant consent, or other relevant ethical safeguards.

Authors must be able to provide supporting documentation when requested by the journal.

Data Integrity and Availability

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the data supporting their research.

Data must not be fabricated, falsified, selectively manipulated, or presented in a misleading manner.

Where appropriate and permitted by ethical, legal, contractual, privacy, or confidentiality requirements, authors are encouraged to preserve research data and make supporting data available in accordance with the journal's data policies.

Editors may request access to relevant data or documentation when necessary to evaluate questions regarding research integrity.

Image Integrity

Authors must not manipulate images in a manner that misrepresents the original data.

It is not acceptable to selectively enhance, obscure, remove, move, or introduce specific features within an image when doing so alters the interpretation of the research.

Routine adjustments to brightness, contrast, or color balance may be acceptable when applied appropriately to the entire image and when they do not obscure, remove, or misrepresent information.

The journal may request original or unprocessed image files where necessary to assess image integrity.

Disclosure of Competing Interests

Authors must disclose financial and non-financial relationships or circumstances that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the conduct, interpretation, presentation, or publication of the research.

Potential competing interests may include employment, consultancies, funding arrangements, grants, honoraria, intellectual property interests, patents, personal relationships, institutional affiliations, or other relevant interests.

If no competing interests exist, authors should provide an appropriate statement indicating this.

Funding Disclosure

All sources of financial support for the research and/or preparation of the manuscript must be disclosed.

Where relevant, authors should describe the role of the funding body in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the article for publication.

If the funder had no involvement in these activities, this may be stated explicitly.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works

If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article, the author must promptly inform the journal and cooperate with the editor in determining the appropriate corrective action.

Depending on the nature and severity of the issue, corrective action may include publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other notice necessary to maintain the integrity of the scholarly record.

When concerns regarding a published article are raised by a third party, authors are expected to cooperate with reasonable requests from the journal and provide relevant evidence or documentation where required.

Research and Publication Misconduct

JPS takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously.

Potential misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

• plagiarism;
• fabrication or falsification of data;
• duplicate or redundant publication;
• inappropriate authorship;
• undisclosed competing interests;
• citation manipulation;
• peer-review manipulation;
• inappropriate image manipulation;
• unethical research involving human participants or animals; and
• other actions that may compromise the integrity of the scholarly record.

Suspected cases may be investigated in accordance with JPS policies and recognized publication-ethics guidance. Where appropriate, the journal may contact authors, reviewers, institutions, research-integrity officers, funding bodies, or other relevant parties.

Appropriate editorial action may include rejection, correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other measures necessary to protect the integrity of the published record.

For further guidance on publication ethics, please visit the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

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