Publication Ethics & Publication Malpractice Statement

The Asian Journal of Information Science and Technology (AJIST) is committed to integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, and editorial independence in scholarly publishing. AJIST expects authors, reviewers, editors, Editorial Board members, and the publisher to follow recognised standards of responsible research and publication practice. Ethical concerns are handled fairly and proportionately with reference, where applicable, to guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

This page is AJIST's principal Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement. It provides the journal's overarching ethical requirements and operates together with the more detailed Author Guidelines, Peer Review Process, Copyright and Licensing Policy, Generative AI Policy, and Post-Publication and Accountability Policy.

1. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the work, participated in drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content, approved the final version, and accept accountability for the integrity of the work. Individuals who contributed to the research but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

AJIST supports the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) for transparent reporting of individual contributions. Guest, gift, honorary, purchased, ghost, or otherwise misleading authorship is not acceptable. Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors should normally be made before acceptance and must include a clear reason and written agreement from all affected authors. Post-acceptance changes are considered only in exceptional circumstances and may require a formal correction.

2. Duplicate, Redundant, and Concurrent Publication

Manuscripts submitted to AJIST must be original and must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time. Authors must disclose relevant prior publications, preprints, conference abstracts, datasets, or closely related manuscripts where these may affect the assessment of originality or overlap.

Duplicate publication, redundant publication, salami publication intended to fragment one study inappropriately, and simultaneous submission to multiple journals are not permitted. Legitimate secondary publication may be considered only when it is ethically justified, transparently disclosed, appropriately cited, and permitted by the relevant editors and rights holders.

3. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism

AJIST does not permit plagiarism, including the unattributed use of another person's words, ideas, data, figures, tables, methods, or other intellectual work. Substantial reuse of an author's own previously published material without appropriate citation or disclosure may constitute self-plagiarism or redundant publication.

The journal may use similarity-detection software and other editorial checks before or during peer review. Similarity reports are interpreted by editors in context and are not treated as an automatic acceptance or rejection threshold. Suspected plagiarism is assessed according to the journal's research-misconduct procedures.

4. Fabrication, Falsification, and Data Integrity

Fabrication of data or results, falsification or selective alteration of research records, misrepresentation of methods or findings, and any manipulation that creates a misleading scholarly record are prohibited. Authors must report methods, data, results, limitations, and conclusions accurately and transparently.

Images, figures, and other visual research outputs must accurately represent the underlying data. Adjustments for clarity are acceptable only when they do not selectively enhance, obscure, remove, move, or introduce information in a way that could mislead readers. Editors may request original data, image files, analysis records, or other supporting documentation when integrity concerns arise.

5. Citation Manipulation

Citations must be relevant to the scholarly content and used to acknowledge sources, support claims, and place the work in context. Authors, reviewers, and editors must not request or add citations primarily to inflate citation counts, journal metrics, personal metrics, or the standing of a particular author, journal, institution, or group.

Coercive citation, citation cartels, fabricated references, irrelevant citation padding, and other forms of citation manipulation are considered publication malpractice.

6. Peer-Review Manipulation and Reviewer Integrity

AJIST uses a double-blind peer-review process for research manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening. Reviewer identities are withheld from authors and author identities are withheld from reviewers. Manuscripts suitable for external review are normally assessed by at least two independent external reviewers with relevant expertise.

Manipulation of peer review is prohibited. This includes fabricated reviewer identities, false contact details, impersonation, undisclosed relationships, coordinated review rings, inappropriate interference with reviewer selection, coercion, or any attempt to influence the review process improperly.

Reviewers must maintain confidentiality, disclose conflicts of interest, provide objective and evidence-based assessments, and must not use unpublished manuscript information for personal or professional advantage. Editors may investigate suspicious reviewer activity and may seek additional independent review where necessary.

7. Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose financial, professional, personal, institutional, academic, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived to influence their work, review, or editorial judgement.

Authors must disclose all sources of funding and, where applicable, describe the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit. Reviewers and editors must decline or recuse themselves from handling a manuscript when a conflict could compromise, or reasonably appear to compromise, impartiality.

8. Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Authors should provide sufficient methodological detail to permit critical evaluation and, where reasonably possible, reproducibility of the reported work. Manuscripts should include a Data Availability Statement explaining whether supporting data are openly available, available on reasonable request, subject to ethical, legal, commercial, or privacy restrictions, or not applicable.

The editorial office may request underlying data, methodological details, analysis files, or other documentation when needed to evaluate the validity, reproducibility, or integrity of a submission. Authors should retain research records for a period appropriate to their discipline, institutional requirements, funder requirements, and applicable law.

9. Ethical Oversight

Research involving human participants, personal or sensitive data, vulnerable groups, animals, or other activities requiring ethical oversight must comply with applicable institutional, national, legal, and disciplinary requirements.

Where ethics committee, institutional review, or other formal approval is required, the manuscript must identify the approving body and provide the approval or reference number where available. Where informed consent is required, authors must confirm that it was obtained and that privacy, confidentiality, and the rights of participants have been protected. Where prospective research registration is required by the study design, discipline, funder, institution, or reporting standard, the registry name and registration identifier should be provided.

10. Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Permissions

Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted material does not infringe copyright, database rights, trademarks, privacy rights, confidentiality obligations, or other intellectual-property rights. Material reproduced from third-party sources must be properly cited and, where required, accompanied by written permission from the relevant rights holder.

Following acceptance, copyright and licensing are governed by AJIST's Copyright and Licensing Policy and Author Declaration and Copyright Transfer Agreement. The published Version of Record is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), subject to the journal's stated copyright arrangements and author reuse rights.

11. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit complaints or appeals in writing to the editorial office. A submission should clearly identify the manuscript or article, describe the issue being raised, state the grounds for the complaint or appeal, and provide relevant supporting information.

Complaints and appeals are considered fairly, confidentially, and without unnecessary delay. An appeal against an editorial decision should identify a material error in the review or decision process and does not guarantee reconsideration or acceptance. Where a complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief or another editor directly involved in the matter, it should be assigned to an independent senior editor or publisher representative who was not involved in the original decision.

12. Corrections

AJIST may publish a correction when an error affects the accuracy, interpretation, attribution, or integrity of the scholarly record but does not invalidate the article as a whole. A correction notice should be linked to the original article and should clearly identify the nature of the change.

Minor typographical or formatting errors that do not affect meaning may be corrected without a formal notice where appropriate. Corrections must not be used to conceal significant errors or misconduct.

13. Expressions of Concern

AJIST may issue an Expression of Concern when substantial questions about the integrity or reliability of a published article remain unresolved and an investigation is incomplete, inconclusive, delayed, or dependent on information from another institution or responsible body. The notice should be linked to the article and updated when the matter is resolved.

14. Retractions

An article may be retracted when its findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct; when there is evidence of plagiarism, redundant publication, fabricated or falsified data, serious ethical non-compliance, manipulated peer review, or other circumstances that materially undermine the integrity of the article.

Retraction notices should explain the reason for the retraction and, where appropriate, identify who initiated it. The original article will normally remain part of the scholarly record and be clearly marked as retracted. Silent removal is avoided except where removal is necessary for compelling legal, privacy, or safety reasons.

15. Research Misconduct Allegations and Investigation

AJIST takes reasonable steps to identify, prevent, and address research and publication misconduct. Allegations may involve plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, fabricated or falsified data, image manipulation, citation manipulation, unethical authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, peer-review manipulation, misuse of confidential information, or other serious breaches of publication ethics.

Concerns are assessed objectively, fairly, and as confidentially as reasonably possible. Depending on the nature of the allegation, the journal may request an explanation or supporting records from the authors or other parties, seek independent expert advice, review peer-review and editorial records, consult relevant COPE guidance, or contact the relevant institution, employer, funder, ethics body, or other responsible organisation where appropriate.

The journal will distinguish, where possible, between honest error and deliberate misconduct. If a concern is substantiated, proportionate action may include rejection of a manuscript, correction, Expression of Concern, retraction, withdrawal where appropriate, removal of a compromised reviewer, notification to relevant institutions or responsible bodies, or other action necessary to protect the integrity of the scholarly record. Decisions will be documented and conflicts of interest will be managed.

16. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-Assisted Tools

AJIST requires transparency, human accountability, confidentiality, and research integrity in the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and AI-assisted tools. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors because authorship requires human accountability.

Authors may use GenAI or AI-assisted tools for limited assistive purposes, such as language refinement, organisation of text, coding assistance, data-visualisation support, or other research-support tasks, provided that such use does not replace the authors' scholarly judgement, verification, interpretation, or responsibility. Substantive use must be disclosed in the manuscript or accompanying declarations. Routine spelling or grammar checking that does not generate substantive content need not be disclosed unless required by the journal's submission system.

AI must not be used to fabricate or falsify data, images, references, quotations, or evidence. AI-generated references and factual claims must be verified against reliable original sources. Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, citations, permissions, analysis, interpretation, bias, confidentiality, and conclusions.

Peer-review and editorial decisions must remain human responsibilities. Reviewers and editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts, reviewer reports, or confidential editorial material to publicly accessible AI systems or other services whose terms could compromise confidentiality.

17. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently by the Editor-in-Chief and authorised editors on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and relevance to AJIST's Aims and Scope. Decisions must not be influenced by Article Processing Charges, an author's ability to pay, advertising, sponsorship, ownership interests, institutional relationships, marketing activity, commercial considerations, or pressure from external parties.

Editors must protect manuscript confidentiality, disclose and manage conflicts of interest, recuse themselves where impartiality may reasonably be questioned, and avoid using unpublished material for personal advantage. The publisher supports editorial independence and does not override editorial decisions for financial or promotional reasons.

18. Responsibilities of the Publisher

The Centre for Research and Innovation (CRI), as publisher of AJIST, supports the integrity and independence of the editorial process. The publisher is responsible for maintaining accurate public policies, ownership and contact information, access conditions, fees, copyright and licensing information, and preservation arrangements.

The publisher supports investigations into publication misconduct and the publication of corrections, Expressions of Concern, retractions, or other notices when necessary. Revenue, advertising, marketing, and administrative considerations are kept separate from editorial decision-making.

19. Reporting an Ethical Concern

Ethical concerns relating to a submitted manuscript, published article, peer review, authorship, editorial conduct, or any other matter covered by this statement should be submitted in writing to the AJIST editorial office with sufficient information and supporting evidence to permit an appropriate assessment.

Editorial Office: Centre for Research and Innovation (CRI), 9/865, Maruthi Nagar, Rakkipalayam Post, Coimbatore - 641031, Tamil Nadu, India. Email: editorial@crijournals.org.