Publication Ethics & Research Integrity Policy

The International Journal of Psychology and Strategic Communication (IJPSC) is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics and research integrity. This policy sets out the responsibilities of authors, reviewers and editors, and explains how IJPSC prevents, detects and handles unethical practices. It applies to every manuscript submitted to IJPSC and to every article published by the journal.

IJPSC is published by the International Journal of Psychology and Strategic Communication, Cologne, Germany, and funded by the Anneliese and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Waldemar Wittmann Foundation (see Publisher, Ownership & Funding). Editorial decisions are made independently of the funder, of funders of individual projects and of any commercial interest.

1. Principles and Standards

IJPSC is guided by the Core Practices and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including the COPE flowcharts for handling suspected misconduct. For authorship, IJPSC follows the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), adapted to the social sciences. Research involving human participants must comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and with the ethical codes of the relevant professional bodies, such as the American Psychological Association (APA) or the German Psychological Society (DGPs).

This policy works together with the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Corrections and Retractions Policy, Copyright & Licensing Policy and Open Access Policy.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

By submitting a manuscript, authors confirm that:

• the work is original, has not been published before and is not under consideration by another journal;
• all listed authors meet the authorship criteria in Section 3 and have approved the submitted version;
• all sources, data and ideas taken from others are cited correctly;
• the research was conducted ethically and, where required, approved by an ethics committee (Section 8);
• all funding sources and all potential conflicts of interest are disclosed (Section 9);
• any substantive use of generative artificial intelligence is disclosed (Section 10);
• they will inform the editor without delay if they discover a significant error in their submitted or published work and cooperate in correcting it.

3. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must reflect a substantial intellectual contribution. Every author must have (a) contributed substantially to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data; (b) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; (c) approved the final version; and (d) agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

People who do not meet these criteria – for example those who provided funding, general supervision, language editing or technical support only – are named in the acknowledgements, not as authors. Guest, gift and ghost authorship are not accepted.

The corresponding author acts on behalf of all authors in the submission and review process. Changes to the author list after submission (additions, removals or changes of order) require a written explanation and the signed agreement of all authors, and are decided by the editor. After publication, authorship changes are handled as a correction under the Corrections and Retractions Policy.

Authors are encouraged to describe individual contributions using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) roles and to provide ORCID iDs.

4. Originality, Plagiarism and Text Recycling

Plagiarism – presenting the words, data, ideas or images of others as one’s own without proper attribution – is research misconduct. This includes copying from one’s own earlier publications without citation (self-plagiarism or text recycling), paraphrasing without attribution and the unacknowledged use of translated text.

All submissions are screened for similarity and plagiarism before peer review, together with checks of reference and DOI consistency. The results of automated tools are advisory; every finding is assessed by an editor before any decision is taken. Depending on its extent, plagiarism leads to rejection, a request for revision or, after publication, a correction or retraction.

5. Duplicate and Redundant Publication, Preprints

Manuscripts must not have been published elsewhere and must not be submitted to another journal while under consideration by IJPSC. Publishing the same data, results or conclusions in more than one article without clear cross-reference and justification (duplicate or redundant publication, “salami slicing”) is not acceptable.

Preprints on non-commercial servers, conference abstracts and theses do not count as prior publication, provided they are disclosed at submission. Translations of previously published articles are considered only with the permission of the original publisher and with full citation of the original.

6. Citation Integrity

References must be accurate, relevant and verifiable. Citation manipulation – including excessive self-citation, coordinated citation among authors or journals, and citations added at the request of reviewers or editors solely to increase citation counts – is not permitted. Reviewers and editors must not ask authors to cite their own work unless it is genuinely relevant to the manuscript.

7. Data, Reproducibility and Research Materials

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of their data. Fabrication (inventing data or results) and falsification (manipulating research materials, processes or data, or omitting data so that the research is not accurately represented) are research misconduct.

IJPSC encourages authors to make the data, materials and analysis code underlying their findings available in a trusted repository, and to state in the article where and how they can be accessed. Where data cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons – for example to protect participants – this must be explained in a data availability statement. Authors must be able to provide the underlying data to the editor on request during review and after publication.

8. Research Involving Human Participants

Research with human participants – including surveys, interviews, experiments, observations and the analysis of personal data – must have been conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible institution or national research committee and with the Declaration of Helsinki.

• Ethics approval: Where approval by an ethics committee or institutional review board is required, the manuscript must name the approving body and, where available, the approval number. Where approval was not required, authors must explain why.
• Informed consent: Participants must have given informed consent. For minors or persons unable to consent, consent must have been obtained from a legal guardian.
• Privacy and anonymity: Participants must not be identifiable from the published text, tables, figures or supplementary material unless they have given explicit written consent for publication. Personal data must be processed in accordance with applicable data-protection law, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• Vulnerable groups: Research involving vulnerable persons – including people affected by war, displacement or crisis – requires particular care, and authors must describe the safeguards used.

Editors may ask for copies of approvals or consent documentation and may reject manuscripts that do not meet these standards.

9. Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors must disclose all financial and non-financial interests that could be perceived as influencing the work, including employment, consultancies, grants, honoraria, personal relationships and institutional affiliations. All sources of funding for the research and for the article must be named, together with grant numbers where available. If there are no conflicts, this must be stated.

Reviewers and editors must declare conflicts of interest and withdraw from handling a manuscript where a conflict exists, as set out in the Peer Review Policy. Manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial board are handled by another editor without the author’s involvement and are subject to the same double-blind review.

10. Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Authors must disclose any substantive use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the research or in writing the manuscript – for example to generate text, analyse data or create images – in the methods section or acknowledgements, naming the tool and describing how it was used. Routine use for spelling, grammar or formatting does not need to be disclosed.

AI tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality and integrity of all content, including content produced with the help of AI. AI-generated text must not be presented as a citable source.

Reviewers and editors must not enter confidential manuscripts, reports or correspondence into external generative AI systems and must not use generative AI to produce peer-review assessments or editorial decisions (see Peer Review Policy).

11. Figures, Images and Third-Party Material

Figures and images must not be manipulated in a way that obscures, removes, adds or misrepresents information. Adjustments of brightness, contrast or colour are acceptable only if they are applied to the whole image and do not change its meaning. Authors must hold the necessary permissions for all third-party material and cite it correctly (see Copyright & Licensing Policy).

12. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers assess manuscripts objectively, confidentially and in good time. They do not use information obtained through peer review for their own advantage, do not contact authors directly and report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication or other misconduct to the editor. The full obligations of reviewers are set out in the Peer Review Policy.

13. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on their academic merit, relevance to the journal’s scope, originality and methodological quality, without regard to the authors’ gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political views or institutional affiliation. They keep all information about submitted manuscripts confidential, ensure that at least two independent external reviewers assess every scholarly article before acceptance, and document their decisions. Editors take reasonable steps when concerns about research integrity arise, publish corrections, retractions or expressions of concern where needed, and do not allow commercial or funding interests to influence editorial decisions.

14. Handling Suspected Misconduct

Concerns about possible misconduct – in a submitted manuscript or a published article – can be raised by anyone, including readers, reviewers and authors, by writing to editor@ijpsc.org. Anonymous concerns are considered if they are supported by sufficient evidence.

IJPSC handles such concerns following the COPE flowcharts:

1. The editor reviews the concern and the available evidence confidentially.
2. The authors are informed of the concern and given the opportunity to respond.
3. Where necessary, the editor seeks independent expert advice.
4. If the response is not satisfactory, or the matter cannot be resolved by the journal, IJPSC may contact the authors’ institution(s), employer or funder and ask them to investigate.
5. The editor decides on the outcome and documents the process.

While a concern is being investigated, the handling of a submitted manuscript may be suspended, and an expression of concern may be published for a published article.

15. Consequences

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the case, consequences may include rejection of the manuscript, a correction, a retraction or an expression of concern (see Corrections and Retractions Policy), notification of the authors’ institution or funder, and a temporary or permanent exclusion of the authors from submitting to IJPSC.

16. Appeals and Complaints

Appeals. Authors who believe that a material error occurred in the editorial or peer-review process concerning their manuscript may appeal the decision (see Peer Review Policy). The procedure is as follows:

1. The appeal is sent in writing to editor@ijpsc.org within 30 days of the decision. It must give a clear scholarly or procedural justification and address the reasons given for the decision. Disagreement with reviewer criticism or with the outcome of peer review alone is not a ground for appeal.
2. The editorial office acknowledges receipt of the appeal.
3. The appeal is assessed by an editor or Editorial Board member who was not involved in the original decision, where practicable. This editor may consult the original reviewers or appoint an additional independent reviewer.
4. The authors are informed of the outcome in writing, with reasons.

The outcome of the formal appeal constitutes the journal’s final editorial decision on the matter. A manuscript under appeal must not be submitted to another journal until the appeal is concluded, unless the authors withdraw the appeal.

Complaints. Complaints about the conduct of the journal, its editors or its processes can be sent to editor@ijpsc.org and will be answered in writing. Complaints about an editor are reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board who is not involved in the matter; complaints about the Editor-in-Chief are reviewed by another member of the Editorial Board.

17. Editorial Independence and Author Charges

IJPSC does not charge authors any fees, so payment can never influence editorial decisions (see Publisher, Ownership & Funding). Neither the journal’s funder, the Wittmann Foundation, nor funders of individual projects, including the Ukraine Digital programme, have any influence on the review or publication of manuscripts.

18. Contact

Questions about this policy and reports of concerns: Editorial Office, International Journal of Psychology and Strategic Communication, editor@ijpsc.org.