Publication Ethics and Research Integrity
ASTESJ is committed to publication ethics, research integrity, transparent editorial handling, and accurate scholarly records. Authors, reviewers, editors, Guest Editors, and editorial staff must follow the ethical requirements described on this page.
This policy should be read together with the Instructions for Authors, Instructions for Reviewers, Instructions for Editors, Editorial Process, and AI Policy pages.
ASTESJ uses guidance from recognized publication ethics and reporting organizations where applicable, including the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and discipline-specific reporting standards.
Editorial Governance
Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are based on manuscript scope, originality, technical quality, reporting clarity, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and author responses. Article processing charges, institutional relationships, author identity, reviewer service, special issue status, or editorial board membership must not determine acceptance.
ASTESJ staff may coordinate technical screening, correspondence, file preparation, reviewer communication, production, and website publication. ASTESJ staff do not make acceptance decisions on research manuscripts.
Manuscripts submitted by editors, Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors, editorial staff, or related authors must be handled by an independent editor with no conflict of interest and must receive the required independent peer review.
Peer Review Integrity
For all primary research articles submitted to ASTESJ, peer review is normally conducted as a double-blind assessment with at least two independent external reviewer reports before any acceptance decision. Reviewers provide recommendations, while authorized academic editors make decisions.
Reviewers must have relevant expertise and must not have conflicts with the authors, institutions, funders, manuscript topic, or competing work. Reviewers should not be from the same institution as any author and should not have recent co-authorship, active collaboration, direct supervision, close personal relationship, or financial conflict with the authors.
Peer-review manipulation is not permitted. This includes fabricated reviewer identities, false reviewer contact details, reviewer impersonation, undisclosed author involvement in review reports, coercive citation requests, or attempts to influence reviewers or editors outside the official editorial process.
Author Disclosure and Responsibility
Authorship and Contribution Changes
Authorship should be limited to individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions to the work and accept responsibility for the manuscript. ASTESJ follows authorship principles consistent with the ICMJE authorship recommendations.
- All authors must approve the submitted version and any revised version submitted to ASTESJ.
- All authors must agree to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.
- Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with permission.
- Guest authorship, gift authorship, and ghost authorship are not permitted.
Any change to the author list after submission must be explained in writing and approved by all authors, including any author added or removed. ASTESJ may request signed confirmation before processing an authorship change.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors, reviewers, editors, Guest Editors, and editorial staff must disclose any relationship or interest that could influence, or appear to influence, manuscript handling, peer review, interpretation, or publication decisions.
- Financial conflicts include employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents, grants, sponsorship, paid travel, or paid expert testimony.
- Non-financial conflicts include personal relationships, academic rivalry, institutional relationships, professional competition, advisory roles, or strong personal beliefs directly related to the work.
- Editors and reviewers must decline assignments where a conflict prevents independent assessment.
Authors must include a conflict-of-interest statement in the manuscript. If no conflicts exist, the manuscript should state: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Funding Disclosure
Authors must disclose all funding sources, grant numbers, sponsors, institutional support, and any role of the funder or sponsor in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, or publication decisions.
If the funder had no role in the research process or publication decision, this should be stated. If no external funding was received, authors may use: This research received no external funding.
Research Integrity
Plagiarism and Text Recycling
Plagiarism includes copying or closely paraphrasing text, ideas, methods, results, images, tables, data, code, or technical content without proper citation and permission where required. ASTESJ does not use a fixed similarity percentage as an automatic acceptance or rejection rule.
Similarity reports are screening tools. Editorial assessment considers the source of overlap, the amount of overlap, the location of overlap, the type of content copied, whether the source is cited, and whether reuse affects the originality of the work.
- Overlap in references, standard methods, author affiliations, or common technical phrases is assessed differently from overlap in original analysis, results, discussion, conclusions, figures, tables, or code.
- Text recycling from an author’s own previous work must be cited, limited, and justified by the technical context.
- Substantial unattributed overlap may lead to rejection, correction, expression of concern, or retraction depending on the stage and severity.
Authors should cite the original source when reusing text, methods, data, images, tables, or software. Permission must be obtained for copyrighted material where required.
Data Fabrication and Falsification
Data fabrication means creating data, results, observations, measurements, images, simulations, or records that did not exist. Data falsification means manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, data, results, or analysis so that the record no longer reflects the actual work performed.
ASTESJ does not accept fabricated or falsified data. Authors must preserve original data, source files, code, lab records, simulation files, survey records, approvals, and analysis outputs where relevant. Editors may request supporting files during review or after publication.
Confirmed data fabrication or falsification may result in rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, notification of institutions or funders, and restrictions on future submissions.
Image Manipulation
Images must accurately represent the original data. Authors must not add, remove, move, obscure, enhance, duplicate, or selectively adjust image features in a way that changes interpretation.
- Global adjustments to brightness, contrast, or color are acceptable only when applied consistently and when they do not hide or misrepresent information.
- Splicing, grouping, or cropping must be clearly indicated where it affects interpretation.
- Original uncropped or unprocessed image files should be retained and provided to ASTESJ if requested.
Manipulated or misleading images may lead to rejection or post-publication action.
Research Ethics Approval and Consent
Human Participants
Research involving human participants, human data, human tissue, personal information, surveys, interviews, images, audio, video, health records, or behavioral data must include ethics approval or a documented exemption from an appropriate ethics committee.
The manuscript should state the approval body, approval date, approval number or project code where available, and the consent process. Research should follow applicable institutional, national, and international requirements. Authors may consult the Declaration of Helsinki where relevant.
Animal Research
Studies involving animals must state the approval body, approval date, approval number where available, and the national or institutional regulations followed. Authors should report animal species, housing, husbandry, anesthesia or pain management, welfare monitoring, and humane endpoints where applicable.
ASTESJ supports reporting practices consistent with the ARRIVE guidelines.
Clinical Trial Registration
Studies that report clinical trials or interventional human-subject research must include a public trial registration number and registry name. Registration should occur before participant enrollment where required by the study type, institution, funder, or national regulation.
Authors may use recognized registries such as ClinicalTrials.gov or registries listed by the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.
Informed Consent
Identifiable participant information must not be published without appropriate informed consent for publication. This includes names, images, case details, videos, audio recordings, personal data, medical details, or combinations of information that may identify a participant.
Authors should keep consent records and provide confirmation to ASTESJ if requested. If consent was waived or not required, the manuscript should state the approving body and reason.
Data and AI Transparency
Data Availability
Authors should state where data, code, materials, protocols, or supplementary files can be accessed, or explain why access is restricted. Restrictions may include privacy, confidentiality, security, legal, ethical, commercial, or intellectual property limits.
Data availability statements should be clear enough for editors, reviewers, and readers to understand what is available, where it is available, and under what conditions it can be accessed.
AI-Assisted Writing and AI-Generated Content
Authors must disclose the use of AI-assisted tools when such tools contributed to writing, editing, coding, image generation, data processing, data analysis, literature screening, or other manuscript content. AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and ethical compliance of the work.
Authors remain fully responsible for checking AI-assisted content, including factual accuracy, originality, citations, privacy, confidentiality, data handling, image integrity, and ethical compliance.
Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, review reports, figures, tables, data, or editorial correspondence to public or third-party AI tools unless ASTESJ has provided explicit permission and confidentiality is protected.
Detailed requirements are provided on the ASTESJ AI Policy page.
Post-Publication Updates
Corrections
Corrections may be issued when an error affects the accuracy, clarity, metadata, authorship information, funding information, data availability statement, figure, table, or interpretation of a published article, but the main findings remain reliable.
Authors should notify the Editorial Office promptly if they identify an error after publication. Readers, reviewers, or editors may also report potential errors with supporting details.
Retractions
Retractions may be issued when published findings are unreliable because of misconduct, serious error, data fabrication, data falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, peer-review manipulation, duplicate publication, or other serious publication integrity concerns.
ASTESJ considers retraction guidance from COPE Retraction Guidelines where applicable. Retraction notices should identify the article, state the reason for retraction, and remain linked to the published record.
Expressions of Concern
An expression of concern may be issued when a serious concern has been raised but the investigation is incomplete, delayed, inconclusive, or dependent on information from authors, institutions, funders, or other parties.
An expression of concern is not a final finding of misconduct. It alerts readers while the concern is assessed.
Appeals, Special Issues, and Reviewer Ethics
Appeals and Complaints
Authors may appeal a rejection by sending a detailed appeal to the Editorial Office. The appeal should explain the grounds for appeal and respond to editor or reviewer concerns. Appeals based only on disagreement with the editorial decision may not be sufficient.
Complaints about editorial handling, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, corrections, or post-publication actions should be sent to the Editorial Office. Where possible, complaints are reviewed by an editor or responsible person not directly involved in the original decision.
Special Issue Ethics
Special issue manuscripts follow the same peer-review, ethics, conflict-of-interest, and editorial decision standards as regular submissions. Special issue status does not guarantee acceptance, faster acceptance, or different editorial criteria.
Guest Editors must declare conflicts of interest and must not handle manuscripts where they have a personal, financial, academic, institutional, supervisory, collaborative, or competitive conflict. Manuscripts submitted by Guest Editors or related authors must be handled by an independent editor.
Special issue proposals should be submitted through the Special Issue Proposal Application. Published special issues are listed on the Special Issues page.
Reviewer Confidentiality
Manuscripts under review are confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the manuscript, abstract, figures, data, supplementary files, review invitation, review report, or editorial correspondence with anyone unless the Editorial Office gives written permission.
Reviewers must not use confidential information from peer review for personal, professional, financial, or competitive advantage. Reviewer guidance is available on the Instructions for Reviewers page and in the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
Sanctions for Misconduct
If misconduct or serious policy breach is suspected, ASTESJ may request an explanation, supporting data, original files, ethics approval documents, consent documentation, or institutional clarification. Failure to respond may affect editorial handling.
Depending on the stage, severity, and evidence, ASTESJ may apply one or more actions:
- Return or reject the manuscript.
- Require correction of the manuscript before review or publication.
- Publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
- Remove a reviewer, editor, or Guest Editor from an assignment or role.
- Notify relevant institutions, funders, publishers, or ethics bodies where appropriate.
- Restrict future submissions, reviews, or editorial participation for a defined period.
Editorial Contact
Publication ethics questions, correction requests, appeals, complaints, and research integrity concerns may be sent to the Editorial Office at m-editor@astesj.com. General contact information is available on the Contact ASTESJ page.