Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics (e-ISSN 2598-5981) is a peer-reviewed journal published by Diploma III Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Sebelas Maret. This statement clarifies the ethical behaviour of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in this journal, including the author, the chief editor, the Editorial Board, the peer-reviewer­­­­­ and the publisher. This statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Ethical Guideline for Journal Publication

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed IJAI journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is, therefore, important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher, and the society.  

Universitas Sebelas Maret as the publisher of Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics  takes its duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously, and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities. We are committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. Also, the Universitas Sebelas Maret and Editorial Board will assist in communications with other journals and/or publishers where this is useful and necessary.

Publication decisions

The editor of Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics  is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers must always drive such decisions. The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editors may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play

An editor at any time evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions 

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness 

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality 

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorised by the editor.

Standards of Objectivity 

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgment of Sources 

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest 

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards 

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Data Access and Retention 

Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Originality and Plagiarism 

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication 

An author should not, in general, publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources 

Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the Paper 

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects 

If the work involves chemicals, human, animals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest 

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published work 

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Plagiarism Policy

Every manuscript submitted for publication in IJAI is checked for plagiarism after submission and before being sent to an editor for editorial review.

IJAI uses ‘Turnitin Software’ to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts.

How are manuscripts with plagiarism handled?

The manuscripts in which plagiarism is detected are handled based on the extent of plagiarism present in the manuscript.

<5% plagiarism - The manuscript is assigned a manuscript ID and it is immediately sent back to the authors for content revision.
5–20% plagiarism - The manuscript is NOT assigned a manuscript ID and it is immediately sent back to the authors for content revision.
>25% plagiarism - The manuscript is rejected without editorial review. The authors are advised to revise the plagiarized parts of the manuscript and resubmit it as a fresh manuscript.

To ensure that the articles are free from plagiarism,  Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics  (IJAI) using plagiarism software by Turnitin.com. More detail visit: https://www.turnitin.com/login_page.asp?lang=en_us

Withdraw/Retracted

IJAI Article Withdrawal and Retraction Policy

It is a fundamental principle of scholarly communication that journal editors are fully and independently responsible for deciding which submitted articles will be published. In making these decisions, editors follow the journal’s editorial board policies and are bound by applicable legal requirements concerning defamation, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. As a result, the integrity of the scholarly archive—as a permanent and historical record of article transactions—is paramount. Published articles should remain accessible, unchanged whenever possible. However, exceptional circumstances may arise where an article must be withdrawn or even removed. Such actions are not taken lightly and are reserved for extraordinary situations. In all cases, IJAI’s official archive will retain all versions of the article, including those that have been withdrawn or removed.

Article Withdrawal

Withdrawal applies to articles that represent early versions and may contain errors or were accidentally submitted more than once. In rare cases, withdrawal may also apply to violations of professional ethics, such as duplicate submission, false authorship claims, plagiarism, misuse of data, or similar issues. A “Withdrawn” article means that its content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a notice stating that the article has been withdrawn in accordance with IJAI’s policy.

Article Retraction

Retraction is used in cases of professional misconduct—such as duplicate submission, false authorship claims, plagiarism, or data misuse—and occasionally to correct errors in submission or publication. Retraction by authors or editors, often advised by members of the scholarly community, has long been a recognized practice in academia. IJAI adopts best practices for retraction as developed by various scientific bodies:

• Print Version: A retraction notice titled “Retracted: [Article Title]”, signed by the author(s) and/or editor, is published in a subsequent issue and listed in the table of contents.
• Electronic Version: A link is provided to the original article. The online article begins with a retraction notice screen, which readers must pass through to access the article. The original article remains unchanged except for a watermark on the PDF indicating “Retracted” on each page.
• The HTML version of the document is removed.

Article Removal

In extremely limited cases, legal constraints may require the removal of an article from the online database. This will only occur if the article is clearly defamatory, violates legal rights, is subject to a court order, or poses a serious health risk if acted upon. In such cases, while metadata (title and authorship) will be preserved, the text will be replaced with a screen stating that the article has been removed for legal reasons.

Article Replacement

If an article poses a serious health risk, the original author may wish to retract the flawed document and replace it with a corrected version. In this case, the retraction procedure will be followed, and the database will publish a link to the corrected and republished article along with its revision history.

This policy adheres to the guidelines set forth by COPE 

(Committee on Publication Ethics).

https://publicationethics.org/node/19896

Indexing and Abstracting

Abstracting, Indexing, and Distributing.
IJAI (Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics) has been covered by the following services:

Copyright Notice

By submitting their work to IJAI (Indonesian Journal of Applied Informatics), authors retain full copyright upon publication, while granting IJAI the right of first publication under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). This arrangement allows authors to maintain control over their intellectual property while enabling the journal to distribute the work openly.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship is reserved for individuals who have made substantial and meaningful contributions to a manuscript. These contributions must go beyond routine or administrative tasks and involve intellectual input at various stages of the research process. To be listed as an author, one must meet all of the following conditions: (1) significantly contributed to the study’s conception or design, data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation; (2) participated actively in drafting the manuscript, providing substantial revisions, or critically reviewing it for important intellectual content; (3) approved the final version of the manuscript for submission and publication; and (4) agreed to be accountable for the integrity of the entire work, including resolving any questions related to its accuracy or ethical conduct.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that every listed co-author fulfills these criteria and that no inappropriate authors are included. All co-authors must have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission. Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors are discouraged after submission and will only be considered under special circumstances. In such cases, the corresponding author must provide a detailed justification and written consent from all affected authors. Once a manuscript is accepted, changes in authorship are subject to editorial approval and may be declined if appropriate documentation is not provided. If a change is required post-publication, it will be handled through a formal correction notice.

Contribution Details

To enhance transparency in scholarly publishing, The journal encourages authors to clearly outline the specific contributions made by each co-author. This should be done using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) framework, which provides standardized terms for different roles such as conceptualization, methodology, software development, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing-original draft, writing-review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. Each author’s name should be followed by the roles they performed, and this contribution statement will appear alongside the published article. At least one author should serve as the guarantor who accepts full responsibility for the integrity of the work from start to finish.

In addition to named authors, individuals who contributed to the project in other capacities such as through technical support, funding acquisition, general supervision, or scholarly discussion should be acknowledged in a dedicated Acknowledgments section. Their full name and affiliation must be included, and authors are responsible for notifying them and obtaining their consent to be listed. If groups or institutions contributed to the study in a collective capacity (e.g., clinical investigators or supporting institutions), their role should be briefly described.

Any assistance from AI-based tools (such as large language models used for drafting or editing text) must be explicitly disclosed in the manuscript. While these tools may assist the writing process, the human authors remain fully responsible for ensuring the originality, accuracy, and ethical compliance of the content.

Allegation of Research Misconduct

Research misconduct involves fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, or plagiarism in conducting, reviewing, or reporting research and writing articles. When authors are found guilty of such misconduct or other serious irregularities in published articles, Editors must maintain the scientific record's accuracy and integrity.

In suspected misconduct cases, Editors and the Editorial Board will follow COPE's best practices to resolve the complaint and address the issue fairly. This includes an investigation by the Editors. Manuscripts found to contain misconduct will be rejected. If a published paper is found to have misconduct, a retraction will be issued and linked to the original article.

The first step is to validate the allegation and assess if it aligns with the definition of research misconduct. This initial step also includes determining if the complainants have any conflicts of interest.

If there is a possibility of scientific misconduct or significant research irregularities, the allegations are shared with the corresponding author, who is asked to provide a detailed response on behalf of all coauthors. After evaluating the response, further review and expert involvement (e.g., statistical reviewers) may be necessary. If it appears unlikely that misconduct occurred, clarifications, additional analyses, or corrections published as letters to the editor, along with a correction notice, may suffice.

Institutions are expected to conduct thorough investigations of scientific misconduct allegations. Authors, journals, and institutions must ensure the scientific record's accuracy. By appropriately addressing concerns about scientific misconduct and taking necessary actions, such as corrections, retractions with replacement, and retractions, the journal will uphold the scientific record's validity and integrity.

Conflict of Interest

This journal is dedicated to upholding the highest standards of transparency and ethical conduct in academic publishing. This policy provides definitions of conflicts of interest and describes procedures for addressing conflicts of interest involving authors, reviewers, editors, the journal, and the publisher, whether identified prior to or after publication. The journal adheres to the Core Practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

1. Definition of Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or entity has financial, personal, professional, or academic relationships or interests that could influence or appear to influence their objectivity, integrity, or decision-making in the context of research, review, editorial work, or publication processes.

2. Identification of Conflicts of Interest

All participants in the publication process including authors, reviewers, editors, and others are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest relevant to the work they are submitting, reviewing, editing, or publishing. These potential conflicts may include, but are not limited to:

Financial interests: Funding sources, stock ownership, employment, consultancy arrangements, or other financial ties related to the research.

Personal relationships: Close personal or familial relationships with individuals involved in the research or publication process.

Academic relationships: Collaborations or academic affiliations that could affect objectivity or create perceptions of bias.

Competing affiliations: Relationships with competing organizations that might have conflicting interests in the research or its outcomes.

Intellectual property: Ownership of patents, copyrights, or intellectual property rights potentially impacted by the research or publication.

3. Handling Conflicts of Interest

The management will address conflicts of interest with diligence and transparency.

For Authors: Authors are required to disclose all potential conflicts of interest during the manuscript submission process. If a conflict of interest is identified after publication, authors should promptly inform the editorial board. The editorial board will address the conflict transparently and, if necessary, issue corrections or retractions.

For Reviewers: Reviewers must decline invitations to review if they have conflicts of interest that could compromise their impartiality. If a conflict arises during the review process, reviewers should immediately notify the editorial board for appropriate action.

For Editors and Journal Staff: Editors and journal staff involved in the review and publication process must recuse themselves from handling submissions in which they have conflicts of interest. When uncertainty arises, the editorial board will decide on the appropriate course of action.

For Publishers: The publisher must implement policies to address potential conflicts of interest within its organization. The publisher should ensure that editorial decisions and processes are free from financial or competing interests.

4. Transparency and Disclosure

This journal will clearly outline its conflicts of interest policy and inform all stakeholders of the requirements for disclosure. Disclosures made by authors, reviewers, editors, and other stakeholders will be published alongside the relevant articles, reviews, or editorials to ensure transparency. Additionally, the journal will limit or restrict access to the publication process for editors, reviewers, and stakeholders who co-author articles submitted to the journal.

Post-publication Discussions

We recognizes that scholarly discourse continues beyond publication. The journal encourages constructive and respectful discussion of published articles as a means to advance understanding, clarify findings, and refine knowledge according to the focus and scope. In accordance with COPE’s core practices and WAME’s guidance, post-publication discussions should contribute to the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

Readers and authors may submit letters to the editor or short commentaries addressing articles published in the journal. Submissions should be concise, supported by relevant evidence, and directly related to the article under discussion. All submissions will undergo editorial assessment to ensure their relevance, scholarly value, and respectful presentation. Where online commenting is available, comments may be moderated to maintain constructive discussion.

Authors of the original article will normally be given an opportunity to respond to substantive comments or critiques. Accepted commentaries and author responses may be published and linked to the original article to facilitate further scholarly exchange. Discussions that identify potential errors or concerns about research integrity will be assessed under the journal’s Corrections and Retractions policy.

Ownership and Management

This journal is published by Universitas Sebelas Maret. The journal is committed to maintaining high standards of academic integrity, ethical publishing, transparency, and operational sustainability in accordance with international best practices in scholarly publishing.

This journal upholds full editorial independence. All editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit, including originality, scientific quality, relevance, clarity, and compliance with publication ethics. Editorial decisions are made independently by the Editor-in-Chief and editorial team without interference from the publisher or external parties.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Policy

1. Purpose and Scope

This policy establishes ethical standards for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the preparation, review, and publication of scholarly works in this journal.
The journal follows COPE’s Core Practices, emphasizing integrity, accountability, and transparency in AI usage across research and publication activities.

2. Definition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

AI tools include, but are not limited to, large language models (e.g., ChatGPT, GPT-5, Gemini), generative AI for text, images, translation, or data analysis, and AI-assisted software for writing, paraphrasing, or visualization.
Use of such tools is acceptable only when transparent, ethical, and compliant with COPE standards.

3. Authorship and AI Contributions
Authors must declare any use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) or AI-assisted tools in the writing process of their manuscript at the time of submission. This policy applies only to the preparation of text and does not include the use of AI in data analysis or research methods.

1. Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies may be used only to enhance language, grammar, and readability of the manuscript.
2. Use of such tools must be under human oversight and editorial control. Authors must carefully check, revise, and approve the content, as AI-generated text may be inaccurate, incomplete, or biased.
3. Full responsibility and accountability for the article rests with the authors.
4. Generative AI or AI-assisted tools must not be listed or cited as authors or co-authors.

4. Declaration of Generative AI in Scientific Writing

A declaration must be included in a separate section before the References list.

5. AI Use in Peer Review and Editorial Process

Editors and reviewers must not upload unpublished manuscripts or confidential content into AI tools.

AI may only be used to assist with grammar, summarization, or metadata analysis, ensuring confidentiality and data protection.
Peer review decisions must remain fully human-driven.

6. Transparency and Disclosure

All AI use in manuscript preparation, data analysis, or visualization must be clearly described.

The journal may request details about the tools used, including version, platform, and prompts.
Undisclosed AI use may trigger a research misconduct investigation.

7. Data privacy and Intellectual Property

Authors must not input confidential or copyrighted data into AI tools.

AI outputs may lack copyright protection; authors are responsible for verifying ownership and avoiding IP infringement.
The journal is not liable for legal issues from unauthorized AI use.

8. Generative AI in Figures, Images, and Artwork

Generative AI use in visual materials is subject to strict regulation. Figures, images, and artwork represent an essential component of the scientific record. Improper use of AI-assisted technologies may compromise accuracy, originality, and copyright compliance. Therefore, the journal establishes the following rules:

1. Authors must not use generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create, modify, or enhance images, figures, or artwork in submitted manuscripts.
2. Authors may use AI-assisted tools only when these tools form part of the research methodology (for example, biomedical imaging). In this case, authors must report the use clearly in the Methods section by including:
• The name of the tool or model
• The version and extension numbers
• The manufacturer or source
3. Authors must not use generative AI or AI-assisted tools to produce graphical abstracts.