Ethic Statement

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

International Education Trend Issue (IETI) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, academic independence, and responsible scholarly communication.

This statement is informed by the principles and Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and, where relevant, recommendations from the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

These principles apply to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, editorial board members, reviewers, publishers, and other contributors.

The journal does not claim membership in COPE or any other organization unless such membership has been formally obtained and can be independently verified.

1. Editorial Independence and Publication Decisions

Editorial decisions at International Education Trend Issue (IETI) are made independently on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, relevance to the journal's aims and scope, ethical compliance, clarity, and potential contribution to the field.

Commercial considerations, advertising relationships, article processing charges, institutional relationships, sponsorship, or other financial interests shall not influence editorial decisions.

The Editor-in-Chief or designated handling editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection of a manuscript. Editors may consult reviewers, associate editors, or other qualified editorial advisers when necessary.

Editorial decisions must comply with applicable laws and recognized standards concerning copyright, plagiarism, defamation, privacy, research ethics, and scholarly integrity.

Editorial Independence from the Publisher

The publisher respects the editorial independence of the Editor-in-Chief and editorial team. The publisher shall not interfere with individual manuscript decisions or require the acceptance or rejection of articles for commercial, personal, institutional, or other non-academic reasons.

2. Fair and Non-Discriminatory Evaluation

Manuscripts are evaluated on their academic and scholarly content without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, political belief, institutional affiliation, geographic location, socioeconomic background, or other characteristics unrelated to scholarly merit.

3. Confidentiality

Editors, editorial staff, and reviewers must treat submitted manuscripts and associated materials as confidential documents.

Information concerning a manuscript may be disclosed only to individuals directly involved in the editorial and peer-review process, such as the corresponding author, assigned editors, reviewers, potential reviewers, authorized editorial advisers, and the publisher when operationally necessary.

Unpublished information obtained through manuscript handling or peer review must not be used for personal research, competitive advantage, financial gain, or any other purpose without appropriate authorization.

4. Conflicts of Interest

Editors

Editors must disclose actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest and must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where their impartiality could reasonably be questioned.

Conflicts may arise from financial, professional, institutional, competitive, personal, supervisory, collaborative, or other relationships with authors, organizations, sponsors, or research described in the manuscript.

Manuscripts submitted by an editor, editorial board member, publisher, or an individual with a close relationship to the editorial team must be assigned to an independent editor with no relevant conflict of interest. Such manuscripts must undergo the same peer-review standards as all other submissions.

Reviewers

Reviewers must disclose conflicts of interest before accepting a review assignment. A reviewer who cannot provide an independent and objective evaluation must decline the invitation.

Authors

Authors must disclose all financial and non-financial competing interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their research, interpretation, or presentation of results.

All sources of funding, sponsorship, grants, institutional support, and relevant financial relationships must be disclosed in the manuscript. Where applicable, authors should also state the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and the decision to submit the work for publication.

5. Peer-Review Ethics

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists editors in evaluating the validity, originality, methodological rigor, relevance, clarity, and scholarly contribution of submitted manuscripts. Constructive peer review may also assist authors in improving their work.

Promptness

A reviewer who believes that they lack the necessary expertise or cannot complete the review within the requested period should promptly inform the editor and decline or withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality

Reviewers must keep manuscripts and all associated review materials confidential. They must not share, reproduce, distribute, discuss, or use unpublished material without authorization from the editor.

Objectivity and Professional Conduct

Reviews must be objective, evidence-based, constructive, respectful, and focused on the scholarly content of the manuscript. Personal attacks, hostile remarks, discriminatory comments, and unsupported allegations are unacceptable.

Acknowledgement of Relevant Literature

Reviewers should identify significant published work that has not been appropriately acknowledged and should alert the editor to substantial similarities, overlap, duplicate publication, or other potential research integrity concerns of which they become aware.

Use of Artificial Intelligence by Reviewers

Reviewers must protect the confidentiality of manuscripts. Manuscripts, figures, tables, supplementary files, reviewer reports, or confidential editorial information must not be uploaded to publicly accessible generative AI systems or other external services if doing so could compromise confidentiality, intellectual property, privacy, or data protection.

Any substantive use of AI-assisted technologies in producing a review must comply with journal policy and should be transparently disclosed to the handling editor where required. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, and integrity of their review.

6. Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

Reporting Standards

Authors of original research must provide an accurate, transparent, and sufficiently detailed account of the research conducted. Research methods, analyses, results, limitations, and interpretations must be reported honestly and in sufficient detail to allow scholarly evaluation and, where applicable, replication or verification.

Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation of data, deceptive reporting, knowingly inaccurate statements, and intentional misrepresentation constitute serious breaches of research integrity and are unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must submit original work and appropriately acknowledge all sources of ideas, words, data, images, methods, theories, software, and other intellectual contributions used in the manuscript.

Direct quotations must be clearly identified and appropriately cited. Plagiarism, including substantial unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, or the presentation of another person's work or ideas as one's own, is prohibited.

The journal may use similarity-detection software as one component of its editorial screening. Similarity percentages shall not be used as the sole determinant of plagiarism; editorial assessment must consider the nature, source, context, and extent of textual overlap.

Multiple, Duplicate, Redundant, and Concurrent Publication

Authors must not simultaneously submit substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal.

Publication of substantially identical research in more than one primary publication without transparent disclosure, appropriate justification, and permission where required is unacceptable.

Authors must disclose related manuscripts, conference papers, preprints, datasets, reports, theses, or other publications when these are relevant to the assessment of originality or possible overlap.

Citation and Reference Integrity

Proper acknowledgement of relevant scholarly work is mandatory. Authors should cite literature that genuinely contributed to the conception, theoretical foundation, methodology, analysis, interpretation, or discussion of their research.

Authors must not engage in citation manipulation, including unnecessary self-citation, coercive citation, citation cartels, fabricated references, or the inclusion of citations solely for the purpose of artificially increasing citation metrics.

7. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be based on substantial intellectual contribution to the work and must carry responsibility and accountability for the published research.

Individuals listed as authors should have made meaningful contributions to one or more major aspects of the work, such as the conception or design of the study, data acquisition, analysis, interpretation, methodological development, or substantive preparation or revision of the manuscript.

All authors must review and approve the final manuscript and agree to be accountable for the integrity of their contribution.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the journal's authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately rather than listed as authors.

Ghost authorship, guest authorship, gift authorship, purchased authorship, and the inclusion or exclusion of authors for improper purposes are prohibited.

Author Contributions

Authors are encouraged to provide a transparent author contribution statement using an established taxonomy such as CRediT or an equivalent contributorship framework where appropriate.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be supported by a clear explanation and written agreement from all affected authors. The journal may investigate authorship changes where there are concerns regarding research integrity.

8. Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international ethical principles and legal requirements.

Where ethical review is required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate institutional review board, research ethics committee, or equivalent body before conducting the research.

The manuscript should identify the approving body and, where available and appropriate, the approval or protocol number.

Informed Consent

Researchers must obtain appropriate informed consent from participants when required. For minors or individuals who are unable to provide legally valid consent, permission or consent from parents, guardians, or legally authorized representatives must be obtained where required, together with participant assent when appropriate.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Authors must protect participants' privacy and confidentiality. Personally identifiable information must not be published unless it is scientifically necessary and appropriate consent for publication has been obtained.

Particular care must be taken with educational records, student data, assessment results, photographs, audio recordings, videos, interviews, classroom observations, and other potentially identifiable information.

Ethics Exemption

Where formal ethics approval is not required, authors should state the reason and provide sufficient information for editors and readers to understand the ethical basis of the study.

9. Data Integrity, Transparency, and Availability

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of their research data and analyses. Data must not be fabricated, falsified, selectively altered, or misleadingly presented.

Where ethically and legally possible, authors are encouraged to make data, instruments, protocols, code, supplementary materials, and other research outputs available in a reliable repository or through another appropriate mechanism.

Authors should provide a Data Availability Statement explaining where supporting data can be accessed or, where access is restricted, the reason for the restriction.

Restrictions may be justified by participant confidentiality, informed consent conditions, intellectual property, contractual limitations, legal requirements, security concerns, or other legitimate considerations.

Authors should retain research records for an appropriate period in accordance with institutional policies, funder requirements, applicable laws, and disciplinary standards.

10. Research Misconduct

Research and publication misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

  • fabrication or falsification of data;
  • plagiarism;
  • duplicate or redundant publication;
  • inappropriate image or data manipulation;
  • citation manipulation;
  • peer-review manipulation;
  • identity or affiliation misrepresentation;
  • undisclosed conflicts of interest;
  • unethical authorship practices;
  • breaches of participant consent or confidentiality;
  • fabricated reviewers or reviewer identities;
  • manipulation of the editorial or publication process; and
  • other conduct that compromises the integrity of the scholarly record.

The journal takes allegations of misconduct seriously regardless of whether they arise before or after publication.

Where concerns are raised, the journal will conduct an appropriate assessment and may request explanations, original data, ethics documentation, source files, or other supporting material. Where appropriate, the journal may seek guidance from COPE procedures and may contact relevant institutions, funders, ethics committees, publishers, or other responsible bodies.

Allegations shall be handled as confidentially and fairly as reasonably possible, and findings shall not be presumed before appropriate assessment.

11. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the published scholarly record.

When a significant error is discovered in a published article, the journal may issue a correction or other appropriate notice.

A retraction may be considered where there is reliable evidence that the findings are seriously unreliable, the article contains substantial plagiarism, unethical research has occurred, duplicate publication has taken place, the peer-review or publication process has been manipulated, or another serious breach of research integrity has materially compromised the publication.

An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious questions have been raised but an investigation is incomplete or the evidence remains inconclusive.

Corrections, retractions, and Expressions of Concern shall be clearly identified, permanently linked to the original article, and designed to preserve the transparency and integrity of the scholarly record.

Retracted articles will not ordinarily be silently deleted from the journal website except in exceptional circumstances involving overriding legal, privacy, security, or ethical considerations.

12. Post-Publication Discussion

The journal welcomes responsible scholarly discussion of published work. Readers, researchers, authors, and institutions may contact the editorial office regarding substantive errors, ethical concerns, data integrity issues, or other matters affecting the reliability of an article.

Credible concerns will be assessed and, where necessary, appropriate post-publication action will be taken.

13. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit complaints concerning editorial procedures, publication ethics, peer review, conflicts of interest, or other aspects of journal practice.

Complaints will be considered objectively and, where appropriate, by an editor or responsible person who was not directly involved in the matter under dispute.

Appeals Against Editorial Decisions

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual, procedural, or scholarly error affected the decision. An appeal must present specific academic or procedural grounds rather than merely expressing disagreement with reviewer recommendations.

An appeal does not guarantee reconsideration or acceptance. The outcome of an appropriately conducted appeal constitutes the journal's final editorial decision unless exceptional circumstances justify further review.

14. Funding and Sponsorship Transparency

Authors must disclose all funding sources and grant numbers where applicable. The role of funders or sponsors in study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to publish must be transparently reported.

Editors shall evaluate manuscripts independently of the identity or commercial interests of research sponsors.

15. Article Processing Charges and Editorial Decisions

Payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC), where applicable, does not guarantee manuscript acceptance and shall have no influence on peer-review outcomes or editorial decisions.

Editorial evaluation and peer review must be completed independently of authors' ability or obligation to pay publication charges.

16. Intellectual Property and Copyright

Authors must ensure that they possess the necessary rights or permissions for copyrighted materials included in their manuscripts.

Any third-party figures, tables, images, instruments, extensive quotations, or other protected materials must be appropriately attributed and used in accordance with copyright law, applicable licenses, and permissions.

17. Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies Policy

International Education Trend Issue (IETI) recognizes that generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies may be used in scholarly writing and research. Such technologies must be used responsibly, transparently, and under meaningful human oversight.

17.1 Human Responsibility

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, validity, integrity, citations, ethical compliance, and scholarly content of their manuscripts, regardless of whether AI-assisted technologies have been used.

AI-generated output must be critically reviewed and independently verified by the authors. Authors are responsible for identifying and correcting fabricated information, false citations, bias, inaccurate interpretation, inappropriate attribution, or other unreliable output.

17.2 AI Systems Cannot Be Authors

Generative AI systems, large language models, chatbots, AI agents, and other non-human technologies must not be listed as authors or co-authors.

Authorship requires responsibilities, accountability, approval of the final manuscript, management of conflicts of interest, and the ability to respond to questions concerning the integrity of the work. These responsibilities must be fulfilled by human authors.

17.3 Disclosure of Generative AI Use

Substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies during manuscript preparation must be disclosed transparently.

Authors should include a statement titled:

Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in the Writing Process

The declaration should be placed immediately before the References section unless otherwise instructed by the journal.

The disclosure should identify, where applicable:

  • the name of the AI system or tool;
  • the version or model, where known;
  • the developer or provider;
  • the purpose for which the technology was used;
  • the manuscript sections or research activities affected; and
  • the nature of human review, verification, and oversight.

A separate declaration is generally not required when software is used solely for basic spelling, grammar, punctuation, or reference-formatting assistance without generating or materially changing scholarly content.

17.4 AI Used as Part of the Research Methodology

When AI is an object of study or is used for data analysis, modeling, classification, educational intervention, automated assessment, instrument development, image generation, synthetic data production, content generation, or another substantive research procedure, its use must be described in the Methods section in sufficient detail to support evaluation and reproducibility.

Where relevant, authors should report:

  • tool or model name;
  • version;
  • developer or provider;
  • access date;
  • relevant prompts or input procedures;
  • parameters or settings;
  • output processing;
  • human validation procedures; and
  • limitations relevant to interpretation.

17.5 Confidentiality, Privacy, and Intellectual Property

Authors must not upload confidential, restricted, personally identifiable, proprietary, or sensitive information to AI services in a manner that violates participant consent, privacy obligations, data protection laws, institutional policies, contractual obligations, copyright, or other rights.

Authors are responsible for reviewing the terms of service, data-use conditions, privacy practices, intellectual-property provisions, and retention policies of AI tools before using them with research materials.

17.6 AI-Generated or AI-Manipulated Images

AI technologies must not be used to fabricate or deceptively manipulate research images, figures, photographs, graphs, or other visual evidence.

Limited technical adjustments such as brightness, contrast, sharpness, or color balance may be acceptable where they are applied appropriately and do not obscure, remove, fabricate, selectively enhance, or misrepresent information.

Where generative AI-produced images or synthetic visual materials are a legitimate component or object of the research itself, their generation, purpose, methodology, validation, and limitations must be transparently reported.

17.7 Verification of AI-Related Research

When necessary to evaluate the integrity or reproducibility of AI-related research, editors may request appropriate supporting information, including prompts, logs, datasets, code, source files, original images, model information, or other research records, subject to ethical, privacy, legal, and intellectual-property constraints.

17.8 AI Use by Editors

Editors must safeguard the confidentiality and intellectual property of submitted manuscripts. Confidential manuscript material must not be uploaded to external generative AI systems where confidentiality, data protection, intellectual property, or author rights cannot be adequately protected.

AI tools must not replace human editorial responsibility or independent editorial judgment. The assigned human editor remains accountable for all editorial decisions.

18. Fundamental Errors Discovered by Authors

When authors discover a significant error, omission, inaccuracy, ethical concern, or other problem in their submitted or published work, they must promptly inform the editorial office and cooperate with appropriate corrective action.

19. Responsibility of the Publisher

The publisher supports the integrity, accessibility, preservation, and independence of the scholarly record and shall cooperate with editors in addressing ethical concerns and allegations of misconduct.

The publisher shall not interfere with editorial decisions for commercial or other improper purposes and shall support appropriate corrections, retractions, Expressions of Concern, and other actions necessary to preserve publication integrity.

20. Commitment to Publication Integrity

International Education Trend Issue (IETI) considers publication ethics and research integrity continuing responsibilities rather than requirements limited to manuscript submission.

The journal may revise its policies periodically to reflect developments in scholarly publishing, research integrity, artificial intelligence, data protection, publication technology, and recognized international best practices.

Where circumstances are not explicitly addressed in this policy, the journal may consult relevant COPE guidance and other recognized standards of responsible scholarly publishing.