Publication Ethics

Purpose and scope

These rules bind the authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher of the Journal of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Research (JNSMR). The publisher is the Faculty of Science and Technology of Universitas Islam Negeri Walisongo Semarang. The rules apply at every stage, from submission to the archive.

They apply to every manuscript that we receive, review, or publish after the approval date at the foot of this page. The rules against fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism apply to every article in the archive, whatever its date.

We base the rules on the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (version 4.0), on guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for retractions, expressions of concern, and peer reviewers, and on the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, January 2026). For details on peer review, misconduct, copyright, and fees, read our pages on the Peer Review Process, Allegation of Research Misconduct, Copyright Notice, and Author Fees (APC).

Authors

You answer for everything in your manuscript: the data, text, figures, code, and references.

Originality and duplicate publication

Submit original work. In the cover letter and the author agreement statement, you confirm that the manuscript is original, that it has not appeared elsewhere, and that no other journal is considering it. Do not send the same manuscript, or a version with the same results, to another journal while we review it.
Tell the editors in the cover letter about any earlier report that overlaps with the manuscript, such as a preprint, a conference paper, or a thesis chapter, and cite it. The editors decide whether the overlap is acceptable.
Publish each study once. Do not split one study into several manuscripts to raise your publication count, and do not reuse your own text, tables, or figures without a citation. If someone else holds the copyright, get permission. We reject a manuscript with an undisclosed duplicate, and we may retract a published article that proves to be one.

Plagiarism and similarity checks

Write your own text. Credit the source of each idea, passage, datum, figure, and line of code that you take from someone else, and put copied wording in quotation marks with a citation. You owe a citation whether you reword a passage yourself or with a paraphrasing tool. We treat plagiarism as misconduct.
We check every submission with similarity-checking software. The software marks passages that match other texts. An editor reads each marked passage and decides whether it is plagiarism, acceptable reuse, or a quotation with a citation. We do not decide on a similarity score alone.

Authorship and contributions

We follow the ICMJE criteria. You are an author if you meet all four of these:

You made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
You drafted the work or made a critical review of it for important intellectual content.
You approved the final version for publication.
You agree to answer for all aspects of the work.

Each author must be able to say which co-authors are responsible for the other parts of the work. Raising funds, supervising a group in general, or editing language does not make a person an author. Thank such contributors in the Acknowledgments, with their written permission. Do not list a person who made no contribution, and do not leave out a person who meets the criteria. All authors approve the order of names.

Describe what each author did in the Author contributions section, with at least one of the 14 roles of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) for each author.
Ask the editors in writing before publication to add, remove, or reorder an author. Every author, including each person you add or remove, confirms the change in writing.
If authors disagree about authorship, the editors ask the authors’ institution to investigate. The editors do not settle authorship disputes.
The corresponding author is the single contact for the editorial process, keeps the co-authors informed, and answers the journal’s requests for data and documents after publication.

Data, images, and records

Report the data you collected. Do not fabricate data, falsify results, or leave out observations to change a conclusion.
You may adjust brightness, contrast, or color balance across a whole image if the change hides nothing in the original. Do not add, remove, move, or blur a feature of a photograph, micrograph, spectrum, blot, or plot. Keep the original files, because the editors may ask for them.
Describe your methods in enough detail for another researcher to repeat the work, and name the software and its version.
Keep the raw data, code, and laboratory or field records behind the article for at least ten years, the period that ICMJE recommends, and give them to the editors on request.
Deposit the data in a public repository if they are not confidential, and cite the data set in the References. The manuscript template shows the APA 7 pattern for a data set or software. State in Methods where readers can find the data and code, or why you cannot share them.

Ethical oversight of research

Research with people. Get approval from an independent ethics committee before you start and informed consent from each participant, and follow the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2024. State the committee and the approval reference number in Methods. Do not publish information that could identify a person without that person’s written consent.
Research with animals. Get approval from an animal ethics committee. State the approval and its reference number in Methods, and say whether you followed institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals.
Field work, collections, and safety. Get every permit that the law of the country where you work requires, for example to collect specimens, to enter a protected area, or to use genetic resources, and name the permits in Methods. Describe any unusual hazard in your work, such as toxic or reactive chemicals, ionizing radiation, or high pressure, and the safety measures you used.
No approval needed. If your work needed no approval, say so in Methods and give the reason. The editors may ask for the documents and form their own judgment of the ethics of the work.

Citations

Cite the sources you used, and read each one before you cite it. Do not add citations to raise the citation count of a person or a journal. We treat citation manipulation as misconduct.

Suggested reviewers

The cover letter asks for three suggested reviewers from two or three countries. Suggest experts who can judge the work and have no conflict of interest with you. Do not suggest a co-author, a mentor, a student, a colleague at your institution, or a person who collaborated with you or held a grant with you in the last three years. Give an institutional e-mail address for each reviewer if one exists. The editors check each name before they send an invitation, and they may choose other reviewers. Do not try to learn who reviews your manuscript, and do not contact reviewers about it.

Reviewers

Each manuscript goes to at least two reviewers in a closed double-blind process, and the Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision. As a reviewer, you:

Keep the manuscript and your report confidential. Do not share or discuss the manuscript, and delete your copy after the review. If a colleague could help you, ask the handling editor first.
Decline the invitation if you have a conflict of interest. COPE advises you to decline if you work at the same institution as an author, if you were an author’s mentor, mentee, close collaborator, or joint grant holder in the last three years, or if your own work and the manuscript cover the same ground. Declare any other relationship that could bias you, and let the editor decide.
Use nothing from the manuscript for your own advantage before the authors publish it.
Write an objective, constructive report that helps the authors improve the work. Leave out personal remarks about the authors.
Suggest a citation if it strengthens the science of the manuscript. Do not ask authors to cite your own work, or your colleagues’ work, to raise citation counts.
Respond to each invitation without delay, and accept it if you have the expertise and can meet the deadline.
Tell the editor in your confidential comments if you suspect fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, or undisclosed use of artificial intelligence (AI), and give your evidence. Leave the investigation to the editors.
Keep generative AI tools away from the manuscript and your report, unless the handling editor gives you written permission first (see Use of artificial intelligence).

Editors

Editors are the Editor-in-Chief, the Managing Editors, the Associate Editors, and the Editors who handle manuscripts. As an editor, you:

Judge a manuscript on its scientific merit: its originality, validity, and clarity, and its fit with the journal’s scope. Do not let an author’s nationality, gender, religion, institution, or political view influence the decision.
Choose reviewers for their expertise and their freedom from conflicts. Check that each suggested reviewer exists, works at the stated institution, and uses a verifiable e-mail address before you send an invitation.
Keep each submission confidential. Tell no one except the authors and the reviewers that a manuscript exists, what its status is, what the reviewers said, or how it ended. If someone alleges dishonesty or fraud, you may share the relevant facts with the authors’ institution or funder after you inform the affected authors or reviewers.
Keep reviewers’ identities from the authors. Publish or share a review after you obtain written permission from the reviewer and the authors.
Use no information from a manuscript for your own research or gain.
Process manuscripts without delay and answer authors’ questions about status. Reject a manuscript that we will not publish as soon as you can, so that the authors can submit elsewhere. Tell each reviewer the final decision.
Make each decision yourself. No AI tool makes, recommends, or drafts a decision (see Use of artificial intelligence).

Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest is a financial or non-financial relationship or activity that could bias a judgment, or that readers might think could. Examples include a financial tie to a company, a personal relationship or rivalry with another researcher, academic competition, and a strong belief about the subject. Authors, reviewers, and editors all declare conflicts (ICMJE, Section II.B).

Declare any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could influence your work in the Conflicts of interest section of the manuscript. If you have none, write: “The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.” Name every funder in the Acknowledgments.
Do not handle a manuscript if you are a co-author, supervisor, student, collaborator, close colleague, or competitor of an author, or if you have a financial tie to the work. Take no part in the review, in the choice of reviewers, or in the decision. The Editor-in-Chief assigns another editor, and a Managing Editor does so if the conflict is the Editor-in-Chief’s.
Manuscripts from editors. An editor who has no conflict with the author handles a manuscript from the Editor-in-Chief, a Managing Editor, an Associate Editor, an Editor, or an editorial board member, and we review it through the normal process. The author takes no part in choosing reviewers or in the decision and has no access to the review record. If the Editor-in-Chief is an author, a Managing Editor or an Associate Editor without a conflict takes charge.

Use of artificial intelligence

We set the rules for AI use in manuscripts, peer review, and editorial work in our Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence. They start with Vol. 12 No. 2 (December 2026). In brief:

An AI tool cannot be an author.
Authors declare each use of generative AI in a section titled “Declaration of AI use” before the References, and they check and answer for everything that a tool produced.
Authors may not use generative AI to fabricate data, or to create or alter figures, photographs, spectra, or graphical abstracts, unless a generative model is the subject of the study.
Reviewers do not use generative AI to read, summarize, assess, or draft a review, and no reviewer or editor uploads a manuscript, a report, a decision letter, or confidential correspondence to a generative AI tool. A reviewer who thinks a tool would help in a defined way asks the handling editor for written permission first.
We treat fabricated data, images, or references that an AI tool produced as fabrication.

Copyright, permissions, and licensing

Authors transfer the copyright of the published article to the journal on the Copyright Transfer Agreement form, and we license each article under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). See our Copyright Notice for the terms.
You may use your own article for any legal purpose if you acknowledge this journal as the place of first publication.
Get written permission before you reproduce a figure, table, or long passage that someone else owns. Cite the source in the caption and mention the permission you hold, because material that others own stays under their terms. Do not submit material that you have no right to share, such as another group’s unpublished results.

Editorial independence, fees, and revenue

The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the content of the journal and the timing of publication. The publisher does not interfere in the evaluation, selection, scheduling, or editing of an individual article, and it needs a substantial reason to dismiss an editor (ICMJE, Section II.D).

The journal accepts no advertising. For the sources of its income, read the page on Revenue Sources, Advertising, and Direct Marketing Policies. No funder or sponsor has a say in a decision on a manuscript.

We state the article publication charge (APC) and the volume from which it applies on the Author Fees (APC) page, and we ask for the charge after we decide to accept an article. Editors and reviewers judge a manuscript on scientific grounds before any charge arises, and the charge does not change a decision.

Complaints and appeals

Complaints. Write to the editorial office through the Contact page if you have a complaint about the editorial process, the conduct of an editor or a reviewer, or a published article. Address the message to the Editor-in-Chief and include the manuscript title or the article DOI, your account of the problem, and any evidence. Address a complaint about the Editor-in-Chief to the publisher, the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology. We acknowledge each complaint in writing and tell the complainant the outcome. An editor who is the subject of a complaint takes no part in handling it.

Appeals. If we reject your manuscript, you may appeal in writing to the Editor-in-Chief. Point to the error of fact or procedure in the decision, or add new evidence that answers the reviewers’ concerns. A board member who did not handle the manuscript reviews the appeal and may ask a new reviewer for an opinion. The Editor-in-Chief tells you the outcome, and the outcome is final.

We do not retaliate against a person who raises a concern in good faith, and we keep that person’s identity confidential as far as the investigation allows.

Allegations of misconduct

Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and citation manipulation are research misconduct. We treat undisclosed duplicate publication, false authorship, and breach of confidentiality in peer review as serious violations of these rules.

We handle every allegation through the process on our Allegation of Research Misconduct page, and we use COPE guidance in each case. We assess the allegation and any conflict of interest of the person who raises it. We write to the corresponding author, who answers for all co-authors. We weigh the response and may consult reviewers or experts, such as a statistical reviewer. We ask the authors’ institution to investigate. The Editor-in-Chief decides after consulting an editorial board member who has no conflict of interest. If the allegation concerns the Editor-in-Chief, the publisher appoints an editor without a conflict to decide. The same process applies to allegations against reviewers and editors.

The outcome depends on the evidence. It can be a correction, a retraction with or without a replacement, rejection of a manuscript under review, or notice to the authors’ institution. For severe or repeated cases, the Editor-in-Chief may decline future submissions from the authors. A reviewer who breaks confidentiality or manipulates a review receives no further invitations, and we inform the reviewer’s institution in serious cases.

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions

We issue corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions to keep the literature reliable. See Table 1 for the notice that fits each situation.

Table 1. Notices for published articles

Situation	Notice
An honest error that leaves the findings intact, such as a wrong label, a missing funder, or a missing declaration	Correction notice
Credible concerns without clear evidence that the work is unreliable, or an investigation in progress	Expression of concern; we replace it with a correction, a retraction, or a final note when we reach an answer
A serious error that changes the findings, with sound underlying scholarship and methods	Retraction with replacement
Results or conclusions that we no longer trust: fabricated, falsified, or manipulated data or images, plagiarism, unethical research, compromised peer review, or an undisclosed major conflict of interest	Retraction

Corrections

We publish a correction notice as soon as we confirm an error. In the notice, we cite the original article, describe what changed, and link to it, and we link the corrected article back to the notice. If you find a significant error in your published article, write to the editors so that we can issue a correction.

Expressions of concern

We publish an expression of concern when credible concerns exist and the evidence does not yet show whether the work is unreliable, when a formal investigation is under way, or when the authors cannot provide requested information at once. An expression of concern does not suit a case that we can resolve within a few weeks, a case in which the main findings remain reliable, or a dispute about authorship. We state the reason in neutral, factual wording, identify the article by title and authors, link the notice and the article to each other, and replace the notice with a correction, a retraction, or a final note when we reach an answer.

Retractions

We retract an article when we no longer have confidence in its results or conclusions. Grounds include fabricated, falsified, or manipulated data or images, major errors, plagiarism or unattributed overlap with earlier work, unethical research, compromised peer review, an undisclosed major conflict of interest, and undisclosed use of AI (COPE, 2025).

In the retraction notice, we identify the article by title, authors, and DOI, label the notice as a retraction, say who retracts the article and why, and keep to proven facts in neutral wording. We link the notice and the article to each other and make the notice free to read. We keep the retracted article online with every version marked as retracted, and we update its DOI record so that databases show the retraction. In rare cases, such as a privacy violation, a court order, or a serious risk to health or the environment, we remove content and keep the metadata and the notice.

The Editor-in-Chief decides on a retraction. If the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest, an editor without a conflict decides, and the publisher may support the investigation. We do not need the authors’ agreement: if some or all authors disagree or do not respond, we proceed. We do not wait for an institution to finish its investigation when we are confident that the article is unreliable, and we publish an expression of concern if we expect more information. We consider a request for retraction from the authors or their institution and decide on the documents they provide. For a serious error that changes the findings and leaves the scholarship and methods intact, we may retract the article and publish a replacement.

Discussion of published articles

Send a comment, question, or criticism about a published article to the editorial office through the Contact page, with your name and affiliation. We pass substantive criticism to the authors and ask them to respond, as ICMJE advises (Section III.E). We may publish the exchange as a letter to the editor. If the criticism points to an error or to misconduct, we act under the sections on corrections and misconduct.

Review of this page and contact

The editorial board reviews this page once a year and after any change in COPE or ICMJE guidance. We give each revision a version number and a date. If you are unsure whether a plan complies with these rules, write to the editorial office through the Contact page before you submit.