Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

1. Introduction

At the Ianna Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (IJIS), our commitment to the integrity of our academic content and publishing process is absolute. Researchers are encouraged to conduct their studies in line with appropriate practices, institutional guidelines, and the codes of conduct established by relevant professional or internationally regulated bodies.

2. Research Integrity

We uphold a high standard of academic rigour at the Ianna Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Our contributors across all disciplines and institutions are expected to abide by the following fundamental principles:

Academic honesty and intellectual integrity in all aspects of research.
Thoroughgoing peer review, accuracy, and excellence in research practice.
Research communication executed with heightened transparency and ethical standards.
Respect, care, and protection for all human participants and subjects of research.

3. Editorial Process

At IJIS, we are committed to guaranteeing an elevated standard throughout our editorial and production pipelines. Our peer-review and editorial systems are interactive and rigorous. The comprehensive editorial process follows these stages:

Preliminary Screening: Upon submission, all manuscripts undergo an initial check. A manuscript can be accepted for formal peer evaluation only when:
- The manuscript falls squarely within the scope of the journal.
- Authorship information is complete, verified, and well-grounded.
- The overall presentation meets our standard of selection.
- The required ethical statements and disclosures are included.
- The manuscript complies with the journal’s maximum similarity index threshold.
External Evaluation: Once a submission passes the initial check, independent and qualified external reviewers are contacted to critically assess the work.
Editorial Decision: Following a critical evaluation of the reviewers' comments, the editors will decide whether to accept the manuscript, reject it, or request a revision from the authors.
Re-evaluation: After an author submits a revised manuscript, it is typically sent back to the original reviewers for a rerun evaluation. Based on this second round, the editors make the final decision.
Production Pipeline: Once a manuscript is formally accepted, it enters the production stage, which includes layout editing, author proofreading, format conversion, and language structure editing prior to final publication.

4. Peer Review

We employ a strict double-blind peer-review model to assess all submitted manuscripts. The journal conducts external peer reviews, and all selected reviewers operate independently of the publisher.

At IJIS, we acknowledge the indispensable role of critical assessment in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. Reviewers are required to adhere to the following fundamental standards:

Expertise and Timeliness: Reviewers should only agree to assess manuscripts for which they possess the requisite subject expertise and which they can realistically evaluate within the stipulated timeframe.
Confidentiality: Reviewers must maintain strict confidentiality regarding the peer-review process and must not disclose any details of a manuscript or its review, during or after the evaluation, except for information officially released by the journal.
Ethical Use of Information: Reviewers must not use information or details obtained during the assessment process for their personal advantage, for the advantage of another individual, or to the disadvantage or discredit of others.
Conflict of Interest: Reviewers must declare all prospective conflicting interests and solicit advice from the Editorial Office if they are unsure whether a specific relationship or association constitutes a relevant interest.
Objectivity: Reviewers must ensure their evaluations are not influenced by the geographic origin of a manuscript, the authors' nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender, commercial deliberations, or any other demographic characteristics.
Tone and Professionalism: Reviewers must remain unprejudiced and constructive in their feedback, completely abstaining from hostile, provocative, or defamatory personal comments.
Reciprocity: Reviewers should recognise that peer review is a reciprocal academic effort and should endeavour to accomplish their fair share of reviews promptly.
Accurately Representing Profile Metadata: Reviewers must supply the journal with precise personal and professional information that accurately represents their current academic and research proficiency. The impersonation of another individual during any stage of the review process is considered serious ethical misconduct.

5. Special Issue Policies

The journal applies the following strict regulatory policies for its special issues:

Frequency: Special issues are optional, and a maximum of one special issue will be published per calendar year.
Editorial Appointment: The Editor-in-Chief may serve as the editor for the issue, or an external Guest Editor (or panel of Guest Editors) with a proven publication record and expertise on the specific theme will be formally appointed.
Coordination and Final Decision: The designated Guest Editor will screen initial submissions, invite reviewers, coordinate the evaluation process, and offer final recommendations. However, the journal's Editor-in-Chief retains absolute authority and makes the final decision to accept or reject any manuscript.
Conflict of Interest Mitigation: Where a Guest Editor shares an institutional affiliation with an author, that Guest Editor will be entirely recused from the peer-review coordination and decision-making loop for that specific manuscript.
Rigour: The review process for special issues follows the exact same double-blind, rigorous peer-review procedures as regular journal issues.
Institutional Diversity: While a special issue featuring authors from a single institution is permissible under exceptional thematic circumstances, the peer review must follow our standard external independent procedure, and the theme must align completely with the journal's scope.

6. Authorship

Authorship carries significant academic, legal, and ethical implications. Published works confer long-term accountability and liability. When enlisting authors, research teams must adhere to the following criteria:

Qualification for Authorship: Authorship must be restricted to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; and the drafting or critical revision of the manuscript text.
Role of the Corresponding Author: The position of a corresponding author does not imply academic superiority over co-authors. The corresponding author simply assumes primary administrative responsibility for managing communication with the journal during manuscript submission, peer review, and the production process.
Acknowledgements: Individuals who contributed to the project but do not meet the full criteria for authorship (such as data collectors, laboratory managers, or professional writing assistants) must be acknowledged in a brief Acknowledgements section rather than being listed as co-authors.

7. Management of Author Affiliation and Contact Information Changes

Core Purpose and Scope: This policy outlines the strict procedures governing requests for changes to author affiliations and contact information (including institutional and email addresses) after a manuscript has been submitted. The primary objective is to preserve the accuracy of the scholarly record by maintaining the institutional affiliation under which the research and writing were initially executed.
General Policy Statement: The institutional affiliation published in the final article must strictly and solely reflect the author's primary affiliation at the time the manuscript was written and finalised for submission. Changes to primary affiliations due to new employment, promotions, or relocation after the writing period are prohibited, as they compromise the historical record of the work's institutional origin.
Affiliation Modifications by Production Stage:
- Stage 1: Pre-Acceptance (Under Review or Revision): If a submitted affiliation contains a minor typographical error (e.g., department name misspelling or street address typo), corrections are permitted. A complete change of institution is prohibited, as the primary metadata must reflect where the research was conducted.
- Stage 2: Post-Acceptance / Pre-Proofing: Only minor administrative corrections to an existing affiliation are permitted. Any request for a complete change of institution will be rejected. For any administrative correction, the corresponding author must secure explicit written confirmation from all co-authors approving the adjustment.
- Stage 3: Post-Proof Approval / Archived Version Lock: Requests to change a primary affiliation or any article metadata at this late stage are strictly prohibited. Once the galley proofs have been formally approved by the authors and the final version has been assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and deposited with external repositories (such as Zenodo), the scholarly record is locked and immutable.
Accommodation for Current Affiliation: In the event an author wishes to indicate a change in status that occurred after the manuscript was written, and if the article has not yet been archived with its final DOI, the Editorial Office may include a non-editable footnote. The author may request a Present Address or Current Affiliation note on the first page, indicating their current institution without altering the mandatory primary institutional affiliation metadata.
Management of Corresponding Author Email Changes: Updates to the corresponding author's email address are permitted at any stage up to the point of publication. However, the original email address used within the submission system will remain associated with the manuscript record for historical, archival, and tracking purposes.

8. Plagiarism

We utilise Turnitin to rigorously screen all manuscripts submitted to IJIS. The use of another author’s language, ideas, expressions, or thoughts without explicit attribution is a severe ethical violation.

Threshold of Acceptability: At IJIS, the maximum permissible range for similarity is 20% and below. Any manuscript exceeding this similarity index will be rejected or returned for restructuring.
Self-Plagiarism: Self-plagiarism is strictly discouraged. This occurs when an author reuses substantial portions of their own previously published work without proper cross-referencing or citation. This ranges from modifying a past paper to duplicating a publication across multiple venues.
Mandatory Author Guidelines: To avoid plagiarism, authors must:
- Avoid the exact duplication of another person's text without clear block quotation formatting and explicit source acknowledgement.
- Avoid rearranging, rewording, or rephrasing another source's ideas without inserting a proper academic citation.
- Avoid uncredited use of digital content, internet materials, or open-access web sources.

9. Generative AI Use

A. Policy for Authors

Scope: The AI policy of IJIS refers strictly to the writing and text-generation stage. It does not bar the use of basic AI tools or software algorithms to analyse raw datasets or draw analytical insights as part of a formal research design.
Text Generation Prohibited: Authors are strictly prohibited from utilizing generative AI to draft or fabricate the core text of their manuscripts. Manuscripts must be authored by the human researchers themselves.
Language and Readability Optimization: Where authors deploy generative AI and AI-assisted tools during the writing process, these technologies must only be used to improve readability, grammar, and linguistic flow.
Human Oversight and Accountability: The use of AI technologies must be executed under close human oversight and control. Authors must carefully review and edit the tool's output, as generative AI can produce authoritative-sounding statements that are incorrect, biased, or incomplete. Human authors remain solely and fully accountable for the entire content of the published work.
Banned Authorship Attributions: Authors must not list generative AI or AI-assisted technologies as authors or co-authors, nor may they cite an AI tool as a source author. Authorship implies professional responsibilities and ethical tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by human beings.

B. Generative AI in Figures, Images, and Artwork

Image Alteration Restrictions: Authors are not permitted to use generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create, manipulate, or alter images within submitted manuscripts. This includes enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing specific features within an image or figure.
Permissible Adjustments: Routine adjustments to brightness, contrast, or colour balance are acceptable, provided they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original capture. Image forensics tools and specialized software may be deployed by the editorial office to detect irregularities.
Design Method Exceptions: The only exception to this rule is if an AI-assisted imaging tool is an explicit part of the study's formal research design or methodology (e.g., AI-assisted imaging approaches in biomedical diagnostics). In such scenarios, the application must be detailed in a fully reproducible manner within the Methods section, explicitly naming the model, tool version, extension numbers, and manufacturer.
Graphical Abstracts and Artwork: The use of generative AI in the production of artwork, including graphical abstracts, is prohibited.
Cover Art Regulations: The use of generative AI in the production of cover art may be permitted on a case-by-case basis, provided the author obtains prior written permission from the journal editor and publisher, demonstrates full rights clearance, and provides accurate content attribution.

C. Policy for Reviewers

Confidentiality Mandate: Manuscripts under review are strictly confidential documents. Reviewers are forbidden from uploading a submitted manuscript, or any part of it, into a generative AI tool. Doing so violates the author's proprietary and intellectual property rights and may trigger severe data privacy breaches if the text contains personally identifiable information.
Review Report Protection: This confidentiality extends to the peer-review report itself. Reviewers must not upload their evaluation reports into an AI tool, even if the primary intent is merely to refine language or improve readability.
Human Evaluation Core: Peer review is a human-centric responsibility requiring critical thinking, original assessment, and academic judgment—capabilities that fall outside the scope of generative text models. Reviewers must not utilize AI to generate scientific assessments, as these tools carry a high risk of generating incorrect, incomplete, or biased conclusions. Reviewers remain fully accountable for the content of their reports.

D. Policy for Editors

Editorial Confidentiality: Submitted manuscripts must be treated with absolute confidentiality. Editors must not upload any part of a submitted manuscript, notification letter, or editorial decision text into a generative AI tool, protecting the authors' confidentiality and data privacy rights.
Human Decision-Making: Managing the editorial evaluation and final decision loop is an exclusive human responsibility. Editors must not use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to assist in evaluating or making decisions on manuscripts, ensuring that critical academic thinking remains uncompromised by algorithmic biases or errors.

10. Average Publication Timeline

On average, the timeline spanning from initial article submission to final publication is 16 weeks.

11. Research with Animals or Human Participants

Research involving animal or human subjects must be thoroughly evaluated and formally approved by a certified research ethics committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) before the study begins. The privacy rights of all participants must be respected.

In addition, informed consent must be systematically secured. Authors are reminded that informed consent is not a mere form to be signed; it is an active process through which participants are made fully aware of their roles, the research objectives, and any potential risks posed by the study.

12. Research Involving Vulnerable Groups

When a study involves vulnerable populations, the following strict parameters must be met and documented:

For studies involving children or minors (individuals under 18 years of age), their parents or legal guardians must execute a formal written consent form prior to participation.
The vulnerable group and their guardians must be given a comprehensive explanation regarding the full implications of their participation.
They must explicitly consent to the public dissemination and publication of the study's findings.
Authors are under a strict obligation to provide clear, empirical evidence that these ethical requirements were fully satisfied upon editorial request.

13. Conflicts of Interest (COI) and Funding

To protect our issues from inappropriate commercial or personal influence, all authors must provide clear disclosures covering all financial conflicts of interest relevant to the work within the past three years, alongside any relevant non-financial potential conflicts of interest.

Libel and Defamation Disclaimer: We strictly discourage any form of false publication or statement that threatens the reputation of individuals, groups, or organisations. If defamatory text is identified, our legal team will act immediately to address the issue.

14. Retractions, Corrections, and Expressions of Concern

IJIS actively encourages the correction of the scholarly record when errors are identified. A formal retraction, correction, or expression of concern may be initiated by the journal editors, the authors, or their home institutions. Retractions will be issued in a clear, objective manner, specifying the reasons for the retraction and identifying the party initiating the action, in strict compliance with COPE guidelines.

15. Falsification, Fabrication, and Image Manipulation

Data falsification, result fabrication, and inappropriate image manipulation are severe forms of scientific misconduct. Authors must exercise extreme care and transparent evaluation when modifying empirical data presented in visual forms. Painstaking preservation of original data characteristics is crucial to preventing the misrepresentation of research outcomes.

16. Fraudulent Research and Misconduct Handling

In cases where fraudulent research or severe research misconduct is uncovered, the Editorial Office will collaborate immediately with the relevant editors, indexing bodies, and home institutions to launch a formal investigation. Any published paper found to contain fraudulent content will be promptly retracted, or a formal expression of concern will be issued.

17. Data and Supporting Evidence

Authors are highly encouraged to practice complete transparency regarding data coding, protocols, and materials. Authors are expected to store accurate raw data and supporting evidence within a recognised, secure repository. This enables independent researchers to access, verify, understand, and replicate the findings with ease.

18. Copyright and Licensing

By submitting a manuscript to IJIS, authors formally agree to the following legal framework:

Copyright on all articles published by IJIS is retained fully by the author(s).
The authors grant IJIS a non-exclusive license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
Authors grant third parties the right to use the article freely under the provisions of the open-access license, provided its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details, and publisher are clearly identified.
Institutional Exceptions: Where an author's employer or government agency prevents them from holding individual copyright, minor administrative adjustments will be made. Authors requiring such variations must notify the IJIS editorial team immediately upon manuscript acceptance.

19. Author Declarations Policy

A. Policy Implementation and Effective Date

Please note that this updated Author Declarations Policy is officially effective and strictly enforced starting with the publication of Volume 8, Issue 2 (June 2026). All manuscripts slated for this issue and all subsequent volumes must strictly comply with these disclosure requirements prior to receiving final galley proof approval. Papers published in volumes prior to June 2026 remain governed by the guidelines in place at their respective times of publication.

To maintain the highest standards of transparency, scientific integrity, and publication ethics, the Ianna Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies requires all manuscripts to include a mandatory Declarations section. This section must be placed at the very end of the manuscript text, immediately preceding the reference list. Submissions that omit these statements or fail to use the required templates will be returned to the authors during the initial screening or galley proof stage.

Authors must provide explicit statements for each of the following six components:

19b. Component Disclosures and Mandatory Templates

Ethical Approval Statement: The journal is committed to upholding rigorous ethical standards for research involving human participants. Authors must declare compliance with international frameworks, specifically the Declaration of Helsinki. To accommodate varying institutional frameworks and research designs, authors must present one of the two following options:

Standard Institutional Approval: For studies requiring formal institutional oversight, authors must specify the reviewing body, the official protocol/approval code, and the date of approval.
- Template: This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Institutional Review Board of [INSTITUTION NAME] (Protocol code [NUMBER] and date of approval).
Exemptions for Anonymous/Minimal-Risk Research: For low-risk, voluntary, and completely anonymised research (such as online surveys and questionnaires), where institutional regulations do not trigger a formal board review, authors must explicitly state this justification while maintaining accountability to global ethical baselines.
- Template: This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Formal institutional ethical approval was not required for this study as the survey was completely anonymous, voluntary, and carried no risk to participants.

Note: The final legal and professional responsibility for ensuring true ethical compliance, participant confidentiality, and adherence to institutional rules rests entirely and solely with the authors.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Statement: In alignment with evolving digital publishing ethics, the journal requires full transparency regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies.

If AI technologies were utilised: Authors must declare the specific tool used, the reason for its deployment, and confirm that human oversight was maintained over the final output.
- Template: During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON, e.g., language editing and clarity improvement]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.
If no AI technologies were utilised: Authors must explicitly confirm the sole human production of the text.
- Template: The authors confirm that no Artificial Intelligence tools were used in the writing or production of this manuscript.

Data Availability Statement: To foster scientific transparency and reproducibility, authors must clarify the availability of their research data.

Template: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [AUTHOR INITIALS], upon reasonable request. (Alternative standard repository statements may be used if data are hosted publicly).

Funding Statement: Authors must completely disclose all sources of financial support related to the execution of the research.

Template: [List the funding body and grant number]. (If unfunded, use the following text): This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Conflict of Interest: Authors must declare any potential financial, personal, or professional relationships within the past three years that could be perceived as inappropriately influencing or biasing their work.

Template: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Authors’ Contributions: To ensure appropriate academic accountability, an explicit breakdown of individual author roles must be provided using author initials.

Template: [AUTHOR INITIALS] conceived and designed the study; [AUTHOR INITIALS] performed the data collection; [AUTHOR INITIALS] analysed the data; [AUTHOR INITIALS] wrote the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

20. License Agreement

In submitting an article to IJIS, the corresponding author certifies on behalf of all co-authors that:

I am fully authorised by my co-authors to enter into these legal agreements.
The article is entirely original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not currently under consideration by any other journal, and does not infringe any existing copyright or third-party intellectual property rights.
We are the sole authors of the article and hold full authority to grant publishing rights to IJIS without breaching any external obligations.
The article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract, confidence, or legal commitment to secrecy.
Due care has been taken to ensure the scientific integrity of the article. To the current state of accepted scientific knowledge, all factual statements contained within the text are accurate, and any formula or instruction will not, if followed accurately, cause injury, illness, or damage to the user.
All authors agree that the article, if accepted, shall be permanently licensed in accordance with official IJIS licensing policies.

Important Note: Regardless of whether authors execute a physical form, this license agreement applies automatically to all articles submitted to the journal. Submission implies unconditional acceptance of these terms.

21. Licensing Framework

All articles published by IJIS are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Under this open-access framework, readers are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of our articles for lawful, non-commercial purposes, provided the original source and authors are credited appropriately and any derivative works are distributed under the same license terms.

22. Archiving and Repository Policy

The journal's self-archiving and repository protocols are structured across three manuscript versions:

A. Submitted Version (Preprint)

Policy: If authors have deposited their initial unreviewed manuscript as a preprint in a public repository, they must disclose this details upon submission so the Editorial Office can accurately configure similarity screening tools to account for the repository match.
Embargo:
Permitted Location: Public preprint repositories or private institutional systems.

B. Accepted Version (Author Accepted Manuscript - AAM)

Policy: Once a manuscript passes peer review and is formally accepted, authors are permitted to deposit the accepted version into an institutional repository or any secure subject-based repository of their choice.
Embargo:
Permitted Location: Institutional sites, personal websites, and public or non-commercial subject-based archives.

C. Published Version (Version of Record - VoR)

Policy: Following formal publication, authors are encouraged to archive the final publisher-formatted PDF document.
Embargo Period: There is no embargo period.
Distribution and Archiving: Open-access papers are digitally archived on the official journal website and permanently preserved across the PKP Preservation Network (PN), LOCKSS, and CLOCKSS engines.
Permitted Location: Journal website, institutional archives, personal websites, and open-access public or non-commercial subject-based repositories.
Conditions: The published source must be fully cited according to standard citation criteria, and a direct hyperlink to the article’s official URL/DOI on the publisher's platform must be included.

LAST UPDATED: June 1, 2026