Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Journal Of Language Education and Literacy is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, academic integrity, transparency, and responsible scholarly communication.

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal involves authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher. All parties involved in the publication process are expected to adhere to recognized principles of ethical scholarly publishing.

JLEL follows the principles and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in addressing publication ethics, research integrity, conflicts of interest, authorship, peer review, corrections, retractions, complaints, appeals, and allegations of research or publication misconduct.

General Principles

1. Research Integrity

Authors must conduct and report research honestly, accurately, transparently, and responsibly. Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate manipulation of data or images, misleading reporting, and other forms of research or publication misconduct are not acceptable.

2. Research Ethics

Research involving human participants must comply with applicable ethical, institutional, and legal requirements.

Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate institutional ethics committee or review board before conducting the research. The manuscript should provide relevant information concerning ethical approval when applicable.

3. Informed Consent and Privacy

Where research involves identifiable human participants or personal information, authors must obtain appropriate informed consent in accordance with applicable ethical and legal requirements.

Personally identifiable or confidential information must not be published unless appropriate consent has been obtained.

Authors should retain relevant consent documentation and provide confirmation to the journal when requested. Confidential documents should not normally be submitted unless specifically requested and appropriate safeguards are in place.

4. Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any financial, professional, personal, institutional, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their work, review, or editorial decision.

Authors must include an appropriate conflict-of-interest declaration in their manuscript. If no relevant conflict exists, authors should state that they have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where a relevant conflict of interest exists.

5. Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support related to the research and publication of the manuscript.

Where applicable, authors should also describe the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

6. Confidentiality

Editors, editorial staff, and reviewers must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and associated correspondence.

Information contained in an unpublished manuscript must not be disclosed or used for personal advantage or for the benefit of another individual or organization.

7. Complaints and Appeals

Authors and other parties may submit complaints or appeals concerning editorial procedures, ethical matters, or editorial decisions to the journal.

Complaints and appeals must provide sufficient information and supporting evidence to allow appropriate investigation.

Where appropriate, JLEL will consider complaints and appeals in accordance with relevant COPE guidance and will seek to ensure that the matter is handled fairly and independently.

Editorial appeals do not guarantee that an editorial decision will be changed.

Authors' Responsibilities

1. Originality

Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts represent original scholarly work.

Material taken from other sources must be appropriately quoted, paraphrased, acknowledged, and cited.

2. Plagiarism and Textual Overlap

Plagiarism, including the unattributed use of another person's words, ideas, data, images, or other intellectual contributions, constitutes publication misconduct.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software such as Turnitin.

Similarity reports are evaluated by the editors based on the nature, source, extent, and significance of textual overlap. A numerical similarity score alone does not constitute a determination of plagiarism.

Manuscripts containing plagiarism, inappropriate textual reuse, or other serious forms of publication misconduct may be rejected or otherwise handled in accordance with the journal's publication ethics procedures.

3. Fabrication and Falsification

Authors must not fabricate data, results, participants, references, or other research information.

Authors must not falsify, manipulate, selectively alter, omit, or misrepresent data, images, research procedures, or findings in a manner that could distort the scholarly record.

4. Duplicate, Redundant, and Concurrent Submission

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

Manuscripts that have already been published substantially elsewhere should not be submitted as original publications unless transparent disclosure is made and republication is ethically and legally appropriate.

Authors must disclose potentially overlapping publications or manuscripts when requested by the editors.

5. Authorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the work and who accept responsibility for their contributions.

All listed authors must approve the submitted and final versions of the manuscript and agree to its submission to JLEL.

Gift, guest, honorary, and ghost authorship are not permitted.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately.

6. Changes in Authorship

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

Requests made after acceptance will be considered only in exceptional circumstances.

The Editor-in-Chief may request supporting documentation before approving an authorship change. Authorship disputes should normally be resolved by the authors and their institutions rather than by the journal.

7. Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies must not be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, and content of their manuscripts.

Where generative AI or AI-assisted technologies have been used in a manner that materially contributes to manuscript preparation, analysis, or presentation, authors must disclose their use transparently in accordance with the journal's author guidelines.

Authors must ensure that the use of AI tools does not compromise confidentiality, intellectual property, research integrity, or applicable ethical requirements.

8. Citations and References

Authors must appropriately acknowledge publications, data, theories, methods, and other sources that have directly influenced their work.

References should be relevant to the scholarly content of the manuscript.

Authors must not engage in citation manipulation, including unnecessary self-citation, coercive citation, citation cartels, or adding irrelevant references for the purpose of artificially increasing citation counts.

9. Data Availability and Transparency

Authors are responsible for maintaining accurate records of the data and materials underlying their research.

Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors are encouraged to make research data available through appropriate repositories or provide a Data Availability Statement explaining how supporting data may be accessed.

Editors or reviewers may request access to relevant supporting data when necessary for editorial assessment, subject to ethical, legal, privacy, and confidentiality requirements.

10. Reporting Errors

Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a submitted or published article must promptly inform the journal and cooperate with the editors in correcting, clarifying, or retracting the article when necessary.

11. Withdrawal

Authors who wish to withdraw a manuscript must submit a formal request explaining the reason for withdrawal.

A manuscript remains under consideration by JLEL until the journal confirms that the withdrawal has been accepted.

Authors should not submit the same manuscript to another journal while it remains under active consideration by JLEL.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

1. Expertise and Availability

Reviewers should accept review assignments only when they have appropriate expertise to evaluate the manuscript and can complete the review within the requested period.

Reviewers who cannot provide a timely and competent review should promptly inform the editor.

2. Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

Reviewers must not disclose, distribute, reproduce, or use unpublished manuscript content without appropriate authorization.

3. Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose relevant conflicts of interest and decline a review assignment when such conflicts could reasonably affect, or be perceived to affect, their impartiality.

4. Objectivity and Fairness

Reviews must be conducted objectively, respectfully, impartially, and professionally.

Reviewers should evaluate the scholarly content of the manuscript without discrimination based on characteristics unrelated to its academic merit.

Personal attacks, defamatory statements, hostile language, or inappropriate comments about authors are unacceptable.

5. Constructive Review

Reviewers should provide clear, evidence-based, and constructive comments that help editors evaluate the manuscript and help authors improve their work.

Recommendations should be supported by appropriate scholarly reasoning.

6. Identification of Potential Misconduct

Reviewers should inform the editor if they identify substantial similarity with other publications, suspected plagiarism, inappropriate image or data manipulation, duplicate publication, citation manipulation, or other potential research or publication misconduct.

Reviewers should provide relevant evidence where possible rather than directly contacting or accusing the authors.

7. Unpublished Material

Information, ideas, interpretations, or data obtained through peer review must not be used for the reviewer's personal research or advantage before publication without appropriate permission.

Editors' Responsibilities

1. Editorial Decisions

The Editor-in-Chief and designated editors are responsible for editorial decisions concerning submitted manuscripts.

Decisions must be based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological soundness, clarity, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, ethical compliance, and the evidence available through editorial and peer-review assessment.

Commercial interests, personal relationships, political considerations, or other inappropriate influences must not determine editorial decisions.

2. Initial Editorial Screening

All submissions undergo an initial editorial screening before external peer review.

The screening may consider relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, originality, scholarly contribution, methodological adequacy, ethical compliance, manuscript preparation, and adherence to submission requirements.

Manuscripts that clearly do not meet the journal's requirements may be declined without external peer review.

3. Peer Review

Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated through a double-blind peer-review process involving at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise.

Editors are responsible for selecting appropriate reviewers, managing the review process, considering reviewer reports critically, and making the final editorial decision.

Reviewer recommendations inform but do not determine the editor's final decision.

4. Fairness and Non-Discrimination

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

5. Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and information related to the peer-review process.

Information should be shared only with individuals who require access for legitimate editorial purposes.

6. Editorial Conflicts of Interest

Editors must disclose and appropriately manage conflicts of interest.

An editor must not make editorial decisions on a manuscript where a relevant personal, professional, financial, institutional, or collaborative conflict could compromise or reasonably appear to compromise impartiality.

Such manuscripts should be assigned to another qualified editor who can manage the process independently.

7. Submissions from Editors and Editorial Board Members

Manuscripts submitted by editors or members of the Editorial Board must undergo the same editorial and peer-review standards applied to other submissions.

The submitting editor or board member must not participate in reviewer selection, peer-review management, or the editorial decision concerning their own manuscript.

The process should be handled independently by another qualified editor.

8. Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Editors and the publisher will take reasonable steps to investigate credible allegations of research or publication misconduct relating to submitted or published work.

Where appropriate, JLEL will follow relevant COPE guidance and may seek clarification from authors, reviewers, institutions, or other relevant parties.

Depending on the circumstances and evidence, editorial action may include rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other appropriate measures.

9. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

JLEL is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

Significant errors that do not invalidate the main findings may be addressed through an appropriate correction notice.

An article may be retracted when there is reliable evidence that its findings are seriously unreliable, when serious research or publication misconduct has occurred, or when other circumstances justify retraction in accordance with recognized publication ethics guidance.

An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious questions have been raised but a conclusive determination cannot yet be made.

Corrections, retractions, and Expressions of Concern should be clearly identified, linked to the original article, and made publicly accessible.

10. Editorial Independence and Continuity

Changes in editorial leadership do not by themselves constitute grounds for reversing previous editorial decisions.

Previously published work should be reconsidered only when credible evidence raises concerns regarding its validity, integrity, ethics, or the reliability of the scholarly record.

Publisher's Responsibilities

The publisher supports the editorial independence of JLEL and works with the editorial team to maintain the integrity, accessibility, and reliability of the scholarly record.

The publisher should not interfere with editorial decisions for commercial, institutional, political, or other inappropriate reasons.

Where ethical concerns arise, the publisher will cooperate with the editors and relevant parties in implementing appropriate corrective actions.

Ethical Oversight

JLEL is committed to responding appropriately to ethical concerns before and after publication.

When an ethical issue is not explicitly addressed by this policy, the journal may consult relevant Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance and other recognized standards of responsible scholarly publishing.

Publication ethics policies will be reviewed periodically and may be updated to reflect developments in scholarly publishing and research integrity.