The International Journal of Psychology and Strategic Communication (IJPSC) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, accountability, and editorial independence.

This Publication Ethics & Research Integrity Policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, Editorial Board members, guest editors, and all other persons involved in the submission, evaluation, publication, and post-publication handling of scholarly articles published by IJPSC.

IJPSC follows recognised principles of responsible scholarly publishing and requires all participants in the publication process to act honestly, independently, transparently, and in accordance with applicable ethical, institutional, professional, and legal standards.

1. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based exclusively on scholarly quality, relevance to the journal’s aims and scope, methodological or conceptual soundness, research integrity, ethical compliance, and the results of the journal’s editorial and peer-review procedures.

Editorial decisions are independent of commercial interests, funding arrangements, author fees, institutional affiliations, academic position, personal relationships, nationality, political views, or other non-scholarly considerations.

The Editor-in-Chief retains overall responsibility for the scholarly and editorial integrity of IJPSC.

2. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must accurately reflect responsibility for and substantive contribution to the scholarly work.

All persons listed as authors must have made a substantive intellectual or scholarly contribution to the manuscript and must approve the submitted and final published versions.

All authors must accept responsibility for the integrity of the work and must cooperate in resolving questions concerning the accuracy, originality, or integrity of the manuscript.

The following practices are prohibited:

• guest authorship;
• honorary authorship;
• gift authorship;
• purchased or sold authorship;
• ghost authorship;
• addition of individuals who did not make an appropriate contribution; and
• omission of individuals who meet the journal’s criteria for authorship.

Contributors who do not meet the requirements for authorship may be acknowledged where appropriate, provided that their contribution is described accurately and any required consent has been obtained.

3. Changes to Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified and approved by all affected authors.

Authorship changes after acceptance are permitted only in exceptional circumstances and require documented editorial approval.

IJPSC may request written confirmation from all authors before approving a change to the authorship record.

4. Originality and Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to IJPSC must constitute original scholarly work and must not be simultaneously under consideration by another journal or publisher.

Authors must disclose relevant overlap with previously published or publicly available work, including related articles, reports, working papers, conference papers, dissertations, theses, and preprints.

Duplicate publication, redundant publication, and undisclosed substantial republication of previously published material are prohibited.

5. Plagiarism

Plagiarism in any form is prohibited.

This includes:

• copying text, ideas, data, images, figures, tables, or other material without appropriate attribution;
• presenting another person’s work or ideas as one’s own;
• inadequate paraphrasing of source material;
• self-plagiarism or inappropriate reuse of substantial parts of previously published work without disclosure and citation; and
• use of unattributed material generated or reproduced from other sources.

Submitted manuscripts are subject to editorial integrity assessment and may be examined using plagiarism-detection and similarity-checking tools.

Automated similarity results do not independently determine an editorial decision. All relevant findings are reviewed by an editor or another appropriately qualified person.

6. Fabrication, Falsification and Manipulation

Fabrication, falsification, manipulation, or deliberate misrepresentation of research data, methods, results, sources, images, figures, tables, references, or other evidence is prohibited.

Authors must not invent, alter, suppress, selectively report, or misrepresent data or findings in a manner that creates a misleading account of the research.

Images, figures, and other visual material must not be manipulated in a way that distorts the scholarly record or misrepresents the underlying evidence.

7. Citation and Reference Integrity

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, relevance, and integrity of all citations and references.

The following practices are prohibited:

• fabricated or non-existent references;
• references to sources that do not support the associated claims;
• citation manipulation;
• coercive citation;
• citation cartels;
• irrelevant citation intended primarily to increase citation counts; and
• misleading or excessive self-citation.

IJPSC may use automated and manual procedures to assess reference integrity. Automated findings are subject to human editorial review.

8. Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, editors, Editorial Board members, and guest editors must disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgement, conduct, or interpretation.

Conflicts of interest may include financial, professional, institutional, academic, collaborative, supervisory, competitive, legal, or personal relationships.

Authors must disclose relevant conflicts of interest within the manuscript or during the submission process.

Reviewers and editors with a relevant conflict of interest must decline participation in the review or editorial decision concerning the affected manuscript.

9. Funding and Competing Interests

Authors must disclose sources of financial or material support relevant to the submitted research.

Where a funder or other external organisation has influenced the research design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit, the nature of that involvement must be disclosed.

Funding or sponsorship does not confer editorial influence over peer review, acceptance, rejection, or publication decisions.

10. Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants, identifiable personal information, interviews, surveys, experiments, observations, or other forms of human-subject research must comply with applicable ethical, institutional, professional, and legal requirements.

Where ethical approval is required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate ethics committee, institutional review board, or equivalent authority before conducting the research.

The manuscript must include an appropriate ethics statement where ethical approval was required.

11. Informed Consent and Privacy

Authors must obtain informed consent where required by applicable ethical, professional, institutional, or legal standards.

Personally identifiable or confidential information must not be published without an appropriate lawful and ethical basis.

Authors are responsible for ensuring appropriate anonymisation, pseudonymisation, confidentiality, and data protection where required.

12. Research Data and Reproducibility

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the data, evidence, and analytical procedures underlying their manuscript.

Research methods and analytical procedures must be described with sufficient transparency to permit scholarly evaluation of the research.

Where appropriate and legally, ethically, and technically possible, authors are encouraged to make underlying research data, analytical materials, code, protocols, or other relevant research materials available through appropriate repositories or supplementary materials.

Where research data cannot be shared because of confidentiality, data-protection obligations, legal restrictions, contractual restrictions, ethical requirements, security considerations, or other legitimate reasons, authors should state the relevant limitation.

13. Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Tools

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, validity, integrity, and scholarly quality of manuscripts prepared with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence or other automated tools.

Generative artificial intelligence systems, large-language models, chatbots, and other automated tools cannot be listed or credited as authors.

Authors must disclose substantive use of generative AI in preparing a manuscript when such use goes beyond routine spelling correction, grammar correction, language editing, or formatting.

Authors must independently verify the accuracy and validity of all information, data, analyses, references, citations, and other outputs produced using automated tools.

Generative AI must not be cited as an authoritative scholarly source.

Peer reviewers and editors must preserve the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Confidential manuscript material, reviewer reports, or unpublished research must not be entered into external generative AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual property, data protection, or the integrity of the editorial process could be compromised.

Generative AI must not independently produce peer-review assessments or editorial decisions.

Any routine use of automated integrity or editorial tools by IJPSC remains subject to human oversight. Automated findings concerning similarity, reference integrity, image manipulation, undeclared AI use, reviewer suggestions, or other integrity matters are verified by an editor or appropriately qualified person before editorial action is taken.

14. Peer Review Integrity

Peer review must be independent, confidential, objective, and free from inappropriate influence.

Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts solely on scholarly criteria and must not use information obtained through peer review for personal, professional, commercial, or competitive advantage.

Attempts to manipulate reviewer selection, reviewer identities, peer-review reports, editorial decisions, or the peer-review process are considered serious publication misconduct.

The detailed IJPSC peer-review procedure is set out separately in the journal’s Peer Review Policy.

15. Research and Publication Misconduct

IJPSC investigates credible allegations of research or publication misconduct relating to submitted or published manuscripts.

Potential misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

• plagiarism;
• fabrication or falsification;
• data manipulation;
• image manipulation;
• citation manipulation;
• peer-review manipulation;
• authorship manipulation;
• duplicate or redundant publication;
• undeclared conflicts of interest;
• misrepresentation of ethical approval or informed consent;
• paper-mill activity;
• fabricated reviewer identities;
• fabricated references; and
• other conduct that compromises the reliability or integrity of the scholarly record.

16. Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Allegations of misconduct are assessed objectively and confidentially.

Where concerns appear credible, IJPSC may:

• request an explanation or supporting documentation from the author or authors;
• request underlying data, ethical approvals, consent documentation, or other relevant records;
• consult reviewers, Editorial Board members, independent experts, institutions, or other relevant parties where necessary;
• suspend editorial consideration while concerns are investigated;
• reject a manuscript;
• issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction after publication; and
• contact the relevant institution or other responsible authority where serious misconduct is reasonably suspected.

Authors and other affected persons are given an appropriate opportunity to respond to substantive allegations before a final editorial action is taken, except where immediate action is required to protect participants, confidential information, legal rights, or the integrity of the scholarly record.

17. Complaints

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other affected persons may submit a reasoned complaint concerning editorial procedures, publication ethics, research integrity, published material, or journal conduct.

Complaints should identify the publication, manuscript, decision, or conduct concerned and provide sufficient information to permit an objective assessment.

Complaints are reviewed by an editor who was not directly responsible for the matter complained of whenever this is necessary to ensure impartial consideration.

18. Appeals of Editorial Decisions

Authors may appeal an editorial decision where they believe that a material error occurred in the editorial or peer-review process.

An appeal must provide a clear scholarly or procedural justification and must address the reasons given for the editorial decision.

An appeal is not a mechanism for obtaining a different decision solely because an author disagrees with reviewer criticism or the outcome of peer review.

Appeals are assessed independently of the original decision-maker where practicable. The outcome of the formal appeal constitutes the journal’s final editorial decision on the appeal.

19. Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers must treat submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, unpublished data, and other confidential materials as confidential.

Confidential material obtained through submission, peer review, or editorial handling must not be disclosed or used for personal advantage or unrelated purposes.

Confidential information may be disclosed where necessary to investigate credible ethical or integrity concerns or where disclosure is required by law.

20. Intellectual Property

Authors retain copyright and full publishing rights in their peer-reviewed scholarly articles without restriction.

Published peer-reviewed scholarly articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

The detailed copyright and licensing terms are defined in the journal’s Copyright & Licensing Policy and Open Access Policy.

21. Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions

IJPSC maintains the integrity of the scholarly record after publication.

Where a published article contains significant errors, unreliable findings, ethical concerns, research-integrity problems, or other issues affecting the scholarly record, IJPSC may publish a correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other appropriate post-publication notice.

Published articles are not silently altered or removed in order to conceal substantive errors or integrity concerns.

The detailed procedures governing corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and related post-publication actions are set out in the journal’s Corrections and Retractions Policy.

22. Post-Publication Discussion

IJPSC welcomes substantiated scholarly comments, concerns, corrections, and evidence relating to published articles.

Readers may contact the editorial office regarding potential errors, methodological concerns, ethical issues, data-integrity concerns, citation problems, or other matters affecting the reliability of the scholarly record.

Substantive post-publication concerns are assessed by the editorial team and may lead to further investigation or formal post-publication action where warranted.

23. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for:

• maintaining editorial independence;
• protecting the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts;
• ensuring appropriate and independent peer review;
• identifying and managing conflicts of interest;
• assessing research-integrity concerns objectively;
• avoiding discrimination and inappropriate influence;
• maintaining accurate editorial records;
• ensuring that corrections and retractions are handled transparently; and
• protecting the reliability and integrity of the scholarly record.

24. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must:

• provide objective, evidence-based, and constructive assessments;
• maintain confidentiality;
• declare conflicts of interest;
• evaluate manuscripts according to scholarly criteria;
• avoid personal, discriminatory, hostile, or inappropriate comments;
• not use unpublished material obtained through peer review for personal advantage;
• identify serious research-integrity concerns where detected; and
• submit reviews honestly and independently.

25. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for:

• the originality and integrity of the submitted work;
• the accuracy of data, evidence, citations, and references;
• appropriate authorship attribution;
• disclosure of conflicts of interest and relevant funding;
• compliance with applicable ethical and legal requirements;
• obtaining required ethical approvals and informed consent;
• responding accurately and transparently to reviewer and editorial questions;
• correcting significant errors identified before or after publication; and
• cooperating with legitimate investigations concerning research or publication integrity.

26. Relationship to Other IJPSC Policies

This Publication Ethics & Research Integrity Policy forms part of the overall IJPSC editorial framework and must be read together with the journal’s:

• Submission Guidelines;
• Peer Review Policy;
• Open Access Policy;
• Copyright & Licensing Policy; and
• Corrections and Retractions Policy.

Where a specialised IJPSC policy provides more detailed requirements for a specific matter, the specialised policy applies together with the general principles established here.