Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Ethical Commitment

Jurnal Sosiologi Agama Indonesia (JSAI) is committed to maintaining the integrity, reliability, transparency, and accessibility of the scholarly record. All parties involved in publication—including authors, editors, reviewers, editorial staff, and the publisher—are expected to comply with recognized standards of research and publication ethics.

The journal addresses suspected misconduct in accordance with applicable guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), relevant institutional requirements, and principles of procedural fairness. Allegations are assessed objectively, confidentially, and without presuming misconduct before the relevant evidence has been examined.

Responsibilities of the Publisher

The publisher supports the editorial independence of JSAI and does not interfere with academic decisions concerning the acceptance, rejection, correction, or retraction of individual manuscripts.

The publisher is responsible for supporting the continuity of the journal, the maintenance of its publishing platform, the preservation of published content and metadata, the transparent administration of publication charges, and the implementation of decisions required to protect the scholarly record.

Commercial, institutional, political, personal, or reputational considerations must not override the journal’s academic standards or publication-ethics obligations.

Responsibilities of Editors

• Editors evaluate manuscripts on academic merit, originality, methodological adequacy, relevance, ethical compliance, and conformity with the journal’s scope.
• Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author’s race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, disability, political position, or ability to pay publication charges.
• Editors must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, author information, reviewer identities, review reports, and editorial correspondence.
• Editors must disclose and appropriately manage relevant conflicts of interest.
• Editors must not use unpublished manuscript content for personal research or advantage without the authors’ explicit permission.
• Editors must take reasonable action when credible concerns about research or publication integrity are reported before or after publication.
• Final editorial decisions must be supported by academic evidence, peer-review reports, journal policy, and applicable ethical standards.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

• Reviewers must provide objective, specific, evidence-based, and constructive assessments.
• Personal criticism, discriminatory comments, hostile language, and unsupported allegations are unacceptable.
• Reviewers must treat manuscripts and review materials as confidential.
• Reviewers must not use unpublished data, arguments, methods, or findings for personal benefit.
• Reviewers must disclose relevant conflicts of interest and decline assignments that they cannot evaluate independently.
• Reviewers should identify relevant omitted literature and alert the editor to suspected plagiarism, duplication, citation manipulation, data irregularities, or other integrity concerns.
• Reviewers who cannot complete an assessment competently or within the agreed period should notify the editor promptly.

Responsibilities of Authors

• Authors must submit original work and properly cite or quote all material derived from other sources.
• Authors must provide an accurate and transparent account of the research design, data, analysis, findings, limitations, and significance of the study.
• Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, image manipulation, deceptive reporting, and suppression of material findings are prohibited.
• A manuscript must not be submitted simultaneously to another journal.
• Substantially redundant or previously published work must not be submitted without disclosure and legitimate scholarly justification.
• Authors must disclose funding, financial interests, personal relationships, institutional interests, or other conflicts that could affect the research or its interpretation.
• Authors must retain relevant research records and provide supporting documentation when legitimately requested during review or an integrity investigation.
• Authors must notify the journal promptly when they discover a material error in a submitted or published work.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship is reserved for individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work, participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, approved the final version, and agreed to be accountable for the integrity of the work.

Guest, honorary, purchased, coercive, fabricated, and ghost authorship are prohibited. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged according to their actual contribution.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission require a written explanation and documented agreement from all affected authors. The editor may reject the request or investigate it when the proposed change raises an authorship-integrity concern.

Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants, identifiable personal information, vulnerable populations, sensitive religious identities, or potentially harmful disclosures must comply with applicable ethical and legal requirements.

Authors must state whether ethical approval was required and obtained, identify the approving body and approval reference where applicable, and explain the consent procedure. When formal institutional review was not required or available, authors must describe the ethical safeguards applied and the basis for that determination.

Participant privacy, confidentiality, anonymity, dignity, safety, and voluntary participation must be protected. Identifiable information may be published only when academically necessary and supported by valid consent.

Plagiarism and Textual Similarity

Citation Ethics

Citations must be selected because they are relevant to the argument, method, evidence, or scholarly context of the manuscript. Authors, reviewers, and editors must not request or insert citations primarily to increase citation counts, benefit particular individuals or journals, or create a misleading appearance of scholarly support.

Excessive self-citation, coercive citation, citation cartels, irrelevant references, fabricated references, and citation padding are prohibited.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, institutional, professional, academic, ideological, personal, or other relationships that could reasonably influence—or be perceived to influence—the research, review, or editorial decision. Disclosure does not automatically disqualify a manuscript or reviewer, but relevant conflicts must be assessed and managed transparently.

Funding Disclosure

Authors must identify all financial and material support received for the research and publication. The role of a funder in research design, data collection, analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions must be disclosed. When no external funding was received, the manuscript should state this explicitly.

Data Integrity and Availability

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, authenticity, and lawful use of their data. Data must not be fabricated, falsified, selectively manipulated, or misrepresented.

Authors should include a data-availability statement explaining whether relevant data are publicly available, available on reasonable request, subject to ethical or legal restrictions, or unavailable for a justified reason. Data sharing must not violate participant confidentiality, informed consent, intellectual-property rights, or applicable law.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Suspected Misconduct

Concerns may relate to plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, authorship, duplicate publication, peer-review manipulation, citation manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, unethical research, copyright infringement, data irregularities, or other conduct affecting the reliability of the scholarly record.

1. The editor conducts an initial assessment of the allegation and available evidence.
2. The authors or other relevant parties are ordinarily given a reasonable opportunity to respond.
3. Supporting documents, original data, ethical approval, authorship statements, similarity reports, or other evidence may be requested.
4. The journal may consult reviewers, specialists, the publisher, institutions, ethics committees, funding bodies, or other journals where necessary.
5. The evidence is evaluated fairly and confidentially.
6. Appropriate action may include rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, notification of relevant institutions, or no further action when the allegation is unsupported.

Corrections and Retractions

JSAI maintains the integrity of the scholarly record through transparent procedures for corrections, retractions, withdrawal, and expressions of concern. Notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action to the extent legally and ethically appropriate, remain permanently accessible, and be linked to the original publication.

Post-Publication Discussion

Readers, authors, and other interested parties may submit evidence-based comments, requests for clarification, or concerns regarding published articles to the editorial office. Submissions must identify the relevant article and provide sufficient explanation or supporting evidence.

The editor will assess whether the matter requires an author response, clarification, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or no further action. Substantive post-publication discussions and resulting notices will be handled transparently and linked to the published article where appropriate.

Advertising Policy

JSAI does not accept commercial advertising on its website, article pages, published PDFs, editorial correspondence, or other publication channels. Institutional logos, indexing information, journal metrics, scholarly tools, and links to academic services are displayed only for informational purposes and are not treated as commercial advertisements.

Advertising, sponsorship, institutional support, or financial arrangements must not influence editorial screening, reviewer selection, peer review, manuscript acceptance, publication order, corrections, retractions, or any other editorial decision.

Direct Marketing Policy

Any call for papers, manuscript invitation, newsletter, or direct communication issued by JSAI must be accurate, appropriately targeted, professionally presented, and non-intrusive. Journal communications must not promise manuscript acceptance, guaranteed indexing, accelerated peer review, citation advantages, or publication within a fixed period.

JSAI does not purchase, scrape, sell, or distribute personal contact lists for unsolicited mass solicitation. The journal does not authorize agents, brokers, or third parties to solicit manuscripts or guarantee publication on its behalf. Recipients may request not to receive further promotional communications.

Related Journal Policies

This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement should be read together with the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Plagiarism Policy, Complaints and Appeals Policy, Corrections, Retractions, Withdrawals, and Expressions of Concern Policy, Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy, Copyright and Licensing Policy, Article Processing Charges Policy, and Archiving Policy.

Where a specific matter is governed by a more detailed policy, the journal will apply that policy consistently with the general ethical principles stated on this page.