Publication ethics

The editorial team is committed to maintaining the highest standards of academic and publication integrity by ensuring the quality, originality, and rigor of published articles. Where necessary, the journal will issue appropriate corrections, clarifications, retractions, or expressions of apology to preserve the accuracy and credibility of the scholarly record.

Investigations of suspected misconduct are handled confidentially, fairly, and in a manner consistent with COPE guidance. Decisions are based on evidence, not on the identity or institution of the parties involved.

We sincerely appreciate the contributions of authors, reviewers, and editors who uphold the integrity of the work we publish.

Plagiarism is the use of another person's words, ideas, data, images, or structure without appropriate attribution. This includes copying from published or unpublished sources, from the internet, and from a co-author's work without acknowledgement.

Self-plagiarism (redundant reuse of one's own previously published text, figures, or data without citation and disclosure) is also publication misconduct. Brief, properly cited reuse of methods descriptions may be acceptable; substantial uncited overlap is not.

Manuscripts may be screened for similarity. Confirmed plagiarism can lead to rejection, notification of institutions, and, if already published, retraction.

Fabrication is inventing data, samples, sources, interviews, or results that were not actually collected or observed. Invented citations and fabricated peer-review reports are included.

Fabrication is a serious breach. It typically results in rejection or retraction and may be reported to the authors' institutions.

Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, images, or data so that the record does not accurately reflect the work. This includes inappropriate image processing, selective omission of inconvenient data, and statistical manipulation intended to mislead.

Authors must retain underlying data and be prepared to provide it on request during review or after publication. Unexplained discrepancies can lead to rejection or retraction.

A manuscript submitted to IJEGSI must not be under consideration elsewhere and must not have been published in substantially the same form in another journal or proceedings.

Preprints, theses, conference abstracts, and translations may be acceptable if they are disclosed at submission and the IJEGSI version is clearly identified as the version of record. Salami publication (splitting one study into overlapping papers without justification) should be avoided.

Undisclosed duplicate or redundant publication may result in rejection or retraction.

Authorship should be limited to those who made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the work; drafted or critically revised the manuscript; approved the final version; and agree to be accountable for the work.

Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are not permitted. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be named in the acknowledgements. The corresponding author must confirm that all listed authors qualify and that no qualifying author has been omitted.

Disputes among authors are first referred back to the group and, where relevant, to their institution. The journal will not arbitrate private disagreements about credit. Publication or indexing may be paused until the authors and their institution provide a written resolution. Changes to the author list after submission require agreement from all authors.

Submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, and editorial correspondence are confidential. Reviewers and editors must not share a manuscript with colleagues, use unpublished ideas in their own research, or discuss the work in public before publication, except with the editor's permission.

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts or identifiable excerpts to generative AI tools. Doing so can disclose confidential, unpublished work to a third party.

Identities of reviewers are not shared with authors unless a reviewer chooses to sign their report. Breach of confidentiality is reviewer or editorial misconduct.

Reviewer misconduct includes delaying a review in order to publish competing work, appropriating ideas or data from a manuscript, submitting an abusive or personally targeted report, concealing a conflict of interest, or asking authors to cite the reviewer's work without scholarly justification.

IJEGSI may terminate an assignment, discard the report, notify the reviewer's institution in serious cases, and decline future invitations.

Editors must decide on academic merit alone. Misconduct includes suppressing a paper for personal, commercial, or political reasons; using unpublished material from a submission; handling a paper in which they have a conflict of interest; or pressuring authors to cite the journal or the editor without scholarly reason.

Concerns about editorial conduct should be sent to editor@ijegsi.org and will be reviewed by an editor who was not involved in the original decision, or by the Editor-in-Chief.