Publication Ethics & COPE Compliance
JORMAR is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and follows the guidelines and Code of Conduct established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All parties — editors, authors, reviewers, and the publisher — are expected to adhere to these standards.
1. Duties of Authors
- Originality: Authors must ensure their work is original, properly cited, and has not been published or submitted elsewhere simultaneously.
- Authorship: All listed authors must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the work. Guest authorship, ghost authorship, and gift authorship are prohibited.
- Data integrity: Authors must present results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation, including image-based manipulation.
- Plagiarism: Plagiarism in any form — direct copying, paraphrasing without attribution, or self-plagiarism — is not acceptable. Manuscripts must not exceed 15% similarity as reported by a recognised plagiarism detection tool. A similarity report must be submitted with the manuscript.
- Conflict of interest: Authors must disclose any financial, personal, or professional relationships that could be perceived as influencing the work.
- Ethical approval: Where applicable, studies involving human subjects, animals, or sensitive data must include confirmation of ethical approval from a recognised institutional review board.
- AI disclosure: Authors must disclose the use of AI tools in preparing the manuscript. AI tools may only be used for language editing, grammar correction, and formatting — not for data generation, research interpretation, or original writing. AI systems may not be listed as authors.
2. Duties of Editors
- Editors must evaluate manuscripts solely on their scientific merit, without regard to the race, gender, nationality, institutional affiliation, or religion of the authors.
- Editors must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and other editorial advisors.
- Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where a conflict of interest exists and must assign such submissions to another editor.
- Editors must take reasonable steps to identify and prevent publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred.
3. Duties of Reviewers
- Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and must not use information from unpublished manuscripts for their own benefit.
- Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest and decline to review if a conflict exists.
- Reviewers must provide objective, constructive, and timely assessments. Personal criticism of the authors is not acceptable.
- Reviewers must alert the Editor-in-Chief to any suspected research misconduct, prior publication, or plagiarism detected in the reviewed manuscript.
4. Prohibited Practices
The following constitute research or publication misconduct and will result in manuscript rejection and potential reporting to the authors' institution:
- Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism)
- Duplicate or simultaneous submission
- Data fabrication or falsification
- Inappropriate image manipulation
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest
- Ghost or guest authorship
- Misuse of AI tools
5. Allegations of Misconduct
Allegations of misconduct — whether pre- or post-publication — will be investigated in accordance with COPE guidelines. Authors, reviewers, and third parties may report concerns to [email protected]. The Editor-in-Chief will oversee investigations and may issue corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions as appropriate. See the Retraction & Corrections Policy.
6. COPE Resources
JORMAR's policies align with COPE's Core Practices. Editors and authors are encouraged to consult COPE's flowcharts and guidelines at publicationethics.org.
Policy effective: 2026 | Reviewed annually | Questions: [email protected]