Publication Ethics Statement

Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement

Language, Technology, and Social Media (LTSM) is committed to maintaining the integrity, transparency, independence, and reliability of the scholarly record. This statement defines the ethical responsibilities of the publisher, editors, reviewers, authors, and other parties involved in the journal's publication process.

LTSM's publication-ethics framework is informed by internationally recognised principles of responsible scholarly publishing, particularly the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices . Reference to COPE guidance describes the ethical framework used by the journal and does not, by itself, constitute a claim of COPE membership.

1. General Principles

LTSM publishes scholarly work on the basis of academic merit, originality, methodological and analytical rigor, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's aims and scope, and contribution to the scholarly community.

The journal does not tolerate research or publication practices that compromise the integrity of the scholarly record, including plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, undisclosed competing interests, manipulation of peer review, or other forms of research and publication misconduct.

Ethical responsibilities apply throughout the publication lifecycle, including submission, peer review, editorial decision-making, publication, and post-publication assessment.

2. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, political, institutional, personal, or other inappropriate external influence.

The publisher, WISE Pendidikan Indonesia, supports the journal's editorial infrastructure but does not interfere with decisions concerning whether individual manuscripts should be accepted or rejected.

Article Processing Charges, sponsorship, advertising, institutional relationships, or other sources of journal income have no influence on editorial screening, reviewer selection, peer-review outcomes, revision requirements, or final publication decisions.

3. Responsibilities of the Publisher

WISE Pendidikan Indonesia is responsible for supporting the integrity and continuity of the journal's scholarly publishing process.

The publisher shall:

• respect and protect editorial independence;
• maintain appropriate publishing infrastructure and journal records;
• support transparent editorial and publication policies;
• ensure that commercial considerations do not determine editorial decisions;
• support investigations into credible allegations of research or publication misconduct;
• cooperate with editors, authors, reviewers, institutions, and other relevant parties when ethical concerns require investigation;
• support corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, or other post-publication actions when necessary; and
• work to preserve the reliability and integrity of the published scholarly record.

4. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are assessed fairly, consistently, confidentially, and on their scholarly merits.

Fair and Academic Decision-Making

Editors evaluate manuscripts on the basis of originality, academic contribution, methodological or analytical quality, ethical compliance, clarity, and conformity with the journal's aims and scope.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author's race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, political position, personal relationship, academic seniority, or other characteristics unrelated to scholarly merit.

Confidentiality

Editors must protect confidential information obtained through submitted manuscripts and peer review. Unpublished manuscript content may not be disclosed or used for personal advantage, research advantage, or the benefit of another person without appropriate authorisation.

Competing Interests

Editors must disclose and appropriately manage conflicts of interest. An editor who has a relationship or competing interest that could reasonably affect impartial handling of a manuscript must recuse themselves from the editorial process.

Submissions from Editors and Editorial Board Members

Manuscripts authored or co-authored by an Editor-in-Chief, editor, editorial-board member, publisher representative, or other person involved in the journal must undergo the same scholarly standards as other submissions. The author-editor must not participate in reviewer selection, access confidential reviewer identities where inappropriate, influence the review process, or make the final decision on their own manuscript. Responsibility must be assigned to another qualified and independent editor.

5. Ethical Management of Peer Review

LTSM uses a double-anonymous peer-review model. Manuscripts considered suitable after initial editorial assessment are normally evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers.

Reviewer selection must be based on relevant expertise, independence, availability, and the absence of inappropriate competing interests.

Editors will not intentionally select reviewers solely because they are likely to provide a favourable or unfavourable recommendation.

The complete workflow is described in the Peer Review Process .

6. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to:

• accept review assignments only when they have appropriate expertise and sufficient time;
• provide objective, evidence-based, constructive, and professionally expressed assessments;
• avoid personal, discriminatory, hostile, or derogatory comments;
• declare actual, potential, or perceived competing interests promptly;
• decline the review where a competing interest prevents an impartial evaluation;
• maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, supplementary files, editorial communications, and review materials;
• not contact authors directly concerning a manuscript unless explicitly authorised by the journal;
• not use unpublished ideas, methods, data, or findings obtained through peer review for personal or professional advantage;
• alert the editor to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated data, unethical research, citation manipulation, or other irregularities; and
• return reviews within the agreed timeframe or notify the editorial office promptly when this is not possible.

7. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the integrity of the work they submit and publish.

Authors must:

• present research honestly, accurately, and transparently;
• ensure that data, evidence, quotations, images, and references are authentic and accurately represented;
• not fabricate, falsify, manipulate, suppress, or selectively misrepresent research findings;
• appropriately acknowledge intellectual contributions and sources;
• ensure that the manuscript is original and does not constitute unlawful or unethical duplicate publication;
• not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to multiple journals;
• disclose related publications, preprints, conference papers, datasets, reports, or manuscripts where relevant;
• disclose funding sources and relevant competing interests;
• obtain appropriate ethical approval and informed consent when required;
• cooperate with legitimate editorial requests for clarification, underlying data, ethics documentation, authorship information, or other evidence necessary to assess research integrity;
• notify the journal promptly when a significant error is identified in a submitted or published work; and
• cooperate with appropriate corrections or other post-publication actions.

8. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must accurately represent scholarly responsibility for the work. Individuals listed as authors should have made substantial intellectual contributions, participated in drafting or substantive critical revision, approved the final version, and accepted accountability for their contribution.

Persons who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately, subject to their permission where relevant.

Authors must provide an Author Contributions statement. LTSM encourages the use of the CRediT contributor taxonomy where appropriate.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors must be explained and supported by agreement from all affected authors. The journal may request written confirmation and additional contribution or competing-interest information. Editors do not adjudicate substantive authorship disputes and may refer unresolved disputes to the relevant institution or other competent body.

9. Originality, Plagiarism, and Research Misconduct

LTSM takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously, regardless of whether concerns are raised before or after publication.

Potential misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

• plagiarism and unattributed use of another person's work;
• inappropriate text recycling or redundant publication;
• fabrication of data, participants, results, images, references, or documentation;
• falsification or deceptive alteration of research materials, data, images, or results;
• citation manipulation or coercive citation practices;
• peer-review manipulation;
• false ethical-approval statements or fabricated ethics documentation;
• misrepresentation of authorship, affiliation, identity, funding, or competing interests;
• submission of substantially the same work to more than one journal at the same time; and
• other conduct capable of materially compromising the reliability of the scholarly record.

Similarity-detection software may assist editorial assessment, but a numerical similarity score is not treated as an automatic determination of plagiarism. Editors evaluate the nature, context, source, extent, and scholarly significance of identified overlap.

Additional information is available in the Screening for Plagiarism Policy and Allegations of Research Misconduct Policy.

10. Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Credible allegations will be assessed fairly, confidentially, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been considered.

Depending on the circumstances, the journal may:

1. conduct a preliminary assessment of the concern;
2. request an explanation and supporting documentation from the corresponding author and, where necessary, other authors;
3. seek confidential advice from reviewers, statistical experts, research-integrity specialists, or other appropriate experts;
4. request original data, instruments, ethics documentation, or other relevant materials;
5. contact an author's institution, research-integrity office, funding body, ethics committee, or another competent authority where appropriate;
6. reject or withdraw a manuscript when serious concerns are substantiated before publication; or
7. issue a correction, editorial notice, expression of concern, retraction, or other appropriate action after publication.

The journal's primary purpose in investigating concerns is to protect the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record rather than to impose disciplinary sanctions, which generally remain the responsibility of institutions and other competent authorities.

11. Ethical Oversight of Research

Research must comply with relevant ethical, legal, institutional, and disciplinary requirements.

Where applicable, manuscripts involving human participants, identifiable personal information, vulnerable populations, animals, sensitive data, or other research requiring formal ethical oversight must report appropriate approval and consent information.

Authors may be required to provide:

• the name of the approving ethics committee or institutional review board;
• approval or protocol number where available;
• evidence of informed consent or an appropriate explanation of waiver or exemption;
• procedures used to protect confidentiality, privacy, welfare, and participant rights; and
• additional supporting documentation where an ethical concern requires verification.

Vulnerable individuals or communities should receive safeguards appropriate to the research context. Identifiable information should not be published without appropriate justification and permission.

See the journal's Ethical Clearance Policy.

12. Conflicts of Interest and Competing Interests

A competing interest exists when a financial, personal, professional, academic, institutional, ideological, or other relationship could reasonably be perceived as influencing judgment concerning a manuscript or published work.

Authors

Authors must disclose relevant financial and non-financial competing interests. The absence of a competing interest should also be declared where required by the journal template.

Reviewers

Reviewers must declare relationships or interests that could affect impartiality and should decline an assignment when an appropriate independent assessment cannot reasonably be provided.

Editors

Editors must recuse themselves from manuscripts where a personal, academic, institutional, financial, or other relationship could compromise or reasonably appear to compromise editorial independence.

13. Funding and Sponsor Transparency

Authors must identify relevant financial support and funding sources, including grant numbers where applicable.

Where a funder or sponsor participated in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit for publication, that role should be disclosed where relevant.

Funding does not excuse authors, reviewers, or editors from their responsibility to maintain scholarly independence and research integrity.

14. Data, Transparency, and Reproducibility

LTSM supports transparent reporting and responsible availability of research materials where sharing is ethically, legally, and practically appropriate.

Authors are encouraged to:

• describe methods in sufficient detail to permit scholarly evaluation;
• provide an appropriate Data Availability Statement;
• deposit data, code, instruments, or other relevant materials in a suitable repository where possible;
• cite datasets and other research objects appropriately; and
• retain research records for an appropriate period consistent with institutional and disciplinary requirements.

Data sharing is not required where legitimate restrictions arise from participant confidentiality, informed-consent conditions, privacy, law, security, contractual obligations, cultural sensitivity, or intellectual-property concerns. Such restrictions should be explained transparently where appropriate.

15. Generative Artificial Intelligence

Artificial-intelligence systems and generative-AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, interpretations, ethical compliance, and integrity of material submitted to LTSM.

Where generative AI or AI-assisted technology has been used in manuscript preparation in a manner requiring disclosure under journal policy, authors must provide a transparent declaration.

Use of artificial intelligence as part of the research methodology should be described transparently and with sufficient methodological detail for scholarly assessment.

See the complete Generative AI Policy .

16. Citation Ethics

References should be selected because they are academically relevant to the manuscript and necessary to support, contextualise, compare, or interpret the research.

The following practices are unacceptable:

• fabricating references;
• citing sources that have not been appropriately verified;
• adding irrelevant references solely to increase citation counts;
• systematically manipulating citations to authors, journals, institutions, or publishers;
• requiring unnecessary citations as a condition of favourable peer review or acceptance; and
• using citations in a misleading manner that misrepresents the cited source.

17. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, editors, and other stakeholders may raise substantiated concerns regarding editorial decisions, peer-review management, publication ethics, editorial conduct, or journal procedures.

Appeals against Editorial Decisions

An appeal should explain clearly why the author believes that a material error occurred in the editorial or peer-review assessment. Authors should respond specifically to relevant editorial or reviewer comments and may provide evidence of technical error or an undisclosed reviewer competing interest where applicable.

An appeal is not a new round of peer review and does not guarantee reconsideration or acceptance. Repeated appeals that do not provide materially new information may be closed without further review.

Complaints

Complaints should identify the matter clearly and include relevant supporting information. Complaints involving an editor will, where practicable, be handled by another appropriate editor or publisher representative who is not directly involved in the matter.

18. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

Publication does not end the journal's responsibility for the integrity of the scholarly record. Credible concerns regarding published articles will be assessed and addressed proportionately.

Retraction is not used merely to punish authors. Its principal purpose is to correct the literature and alert readers when published findings or the publication itself should no longer be relied upon.

Where practicable, correction, expression-of-concern, and retraction notices will be clearly identified, publicly accessible, and linked to the original article.

A retracted article will normally remain part of the scholarly record with a clear retraction notice rather than being silently deleted. Removal of content may be considered only in exceptional circumstances involving compelling legal, privacy, safety, or similar concerns.

See the complete Correction and Retraction Policy .

19. Post-Publication Discussion

LTSM welcomes legitimate scholarly discussion concerning its published content. Readers, authors, and other researchers may notify the editorial office of substantive errors, methodological concerns, research-integrity issues, or other matters requiring editorial attention.

Where appropriate, the journal may seek a response from the original authors, obtain independent expert advice, request supporting data, or publish an appropriate editorial notice or correction.

20. Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Licensing

Authors must respect intellectual-property rights and obtain appropriate permission to reproduce copyrighted material when permission is legally required.

Authors retain copyright in their published work under the journal's applicable copyright policy. Published LTSM articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Complete terms are available in the Copyright Notice .

21. Commercial Considerations and Advertising

Advertising, sponsorship, publication charges, institutional relationships, and other commercial considerations are managed separately from editorial decision-making.

Acceptance of advertising or financial support does not constitute endorsement by the journal and must not influence editorial content, peer review, or publication decisions.

22. Confidentiality and Privacy

Information obtained through manuscript submission and peer review is treated as confidential except where disclosure is authorised, required to investigate a legitimate ethical concern, necessary for journal operations, or required by law.

Personal data collected by the journal are used for legitimate editorial, publishing, indexing, communication, and scholarly-record purposes in accordance with the journal's Privacy Statement and applicable requirements.

23. Reporting Ethical Concerns

Concerns about a submitted or published manuscript, editorial conduct, peer review, authorship, data integrity, plagiarism, research ethics, conflicts of interest, or other potential publication misconduct may be reported to the editorial office.

Reports should identify the publication or manuscript concerned and provide sufficient information or supporting evidence for the journal to assess the matter. Anonymous allegations may be considered when they contain specific and credible information capable of assessment.

Related Publication-Ethics Policies

This statement should be read together with the journal's more detailed operational policies.

LTSM will review its publication-ethics policies periodically in response to developments in research integrity, scholarly communication, publication technology, and internationally recognised publishing practices.