Guidance for Authors

As the providers of content, authors are crucial to scholarly publishing. The journal relies on their diligent research and assiduous adherence to high ethical standards in order to produce quality issues that will be valued by our readership. The IASSIST Quarterly endorses the World Conferences on Research Integrity's (WCRI's) 2010 international standards for authors, known as the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity.

Key Information
Note about Privacy & the Right to Be Forgotten
Use of GenAI in Manuscripts
Authorship and Contributorship
Acknowledging Sources
Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests
Data
Copyright
Review
Complaints and Appeals
- Complaints & Plagiarism
- Appeals
-- Elements of an Appeal
-- Timing of Appeals and Timeline of Appeals Process
-- Process
Relevant Resources

Key Information

Authors retain rights to articles published in the IASSIST Quarterly. Authors are encouraged to deposit the published version of their article in an institutional or disciplinary repository immediately on publication. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in the IASSIST Quarterly as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (like the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.

Authors are not charged any fees for publishing in the IASSIST Quarterly.

Guidance about required formatting of articles is provided in the author template, linked in the Author Guidelines section of the Submissions page. Manuscripts that do not use the template will be returned for authors to convert to the proper format. Please be aware that the "placeholder" text of the template contains important formatting information and also instructions for how to upload revisions following peer review.

Note about Privacy & the Right to Be Forgotten

As a general rule but in compliance with the European Union’s GDPR and other privacy laws, IASSIST Quarterly collects minimal personal information from authors, reviewers, and editors. Only three fields are required: name, email address, and country. Editors use the GDPR's minimisation principle to limit the amount of personal data retained. In scholarly publishing, however, data concerning the authors, editors, reviewers, and others involved in the editorial and publishing process remain necessary for the purposes of the journal, and, as such, form part of a record that the GDPR allows “for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes the preservation of which is in the public interest” (Recital 65). Consequently, the journal's practice is to maintain permanent records for all published articles including authors’ names, e-mails, and affiliations, as well as non-public information about those involved in producing them.

Those who are not published and not part of the publication process (i.e., readers) retain the right to be forgotten. Editorial staff lose access to submission records as soon as they decline a manuscript, but non-published authors who wish to be removed from the system entirely may contact the editors to request this (we would need to submit such requests to the platform host). Visitors to the site have the right to decline session cookies and read anonymously.

Use of Generative AI (GenAI) in Manuscripts

Responsible conduct of research requires that authors take responsibility for properly attributing ideas and credit; ensuring the accuracy of facts; and relying on authentic sources. Therefore, authors must be prepared to assume responsibility for the entire content of their manuscript, certifying its originality and accuracy, including any and all content sourced from GenAI tools. Use of GenAI tools should never replace human judgement, assessment, and confirmation of apparent results. For these reasons, use of GenAI for writing the text of an article is prohibited. Authors must also disclose the extent to which they have used GenAI tools (specifically the kind based on Large Language Models [LLMs]), in the course of their research, detailing in the methodology or acknowledgements sections (as appropriate) which tools were used at which steps for what purposes. This includes all content sourced from such tools, e.g., figures, code, etc. Citations for such use must be included in the Reference list and should contain a link to the search where possible.

Purposes for which GenAI tools might legitimately be employed in preparing manuscripts include (but are not limited to) use of GenAI or GenAI-assisted tools for research ideation; as part of the research design or research method (e.g., data exploration or processing); searching for relevant literature; translating text into English from another language; polishing (e.g., correcting spelling and grammar); and so forth. Such uses should be included in the methodology or acknowledgements section, as appropriate. (Please note that for the purposes of this policy, the term GenAI does not include grammar-checking tools, citation software, or plagiarism detectors which don’t employ the use of LLMs. Use of these kinds of tools does not need to be disclosed or cited in submitted manuscripts.)

In addition, authors must be aware that when information is entered into most GenAI tools, the organization which runs the tool will, in most cases, ingest the entire query (including any attachments) into its LLM. Authors should be aware of this possibility and how it may impact the privacy of participants in their studies, as well as how it may impact their own privacy and intellectual property. For this reason, editorial staff and reviewers may not enter materials from submitted manuscripts into GenAI tools as this would constitute a violation of the confidentiality of the peer review process.

Authorship and Contributorship

Only persons who meet the following authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; and (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. (However, the list of contributors may well be longer. Authors should reference the Contributor Role Taxonomy [CRediT] for more information about roles that must be considered. More information about implementing CRediT is available here.)

Please note: As the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) points out, GenAI tools cannot be listed as an author since they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. More fully, “[a]s non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.”

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate coauthors are included in the authors’ list, and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication. It is the collective responsibility of all the individuals who have conducted the work to determine who should be listed as authors, as well as the order in which authors should be listed.

Aside from authors, all persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (according to the previously mentioned Contributor Role Taxonomy [CRediT]) should be mentioned in the "Acknowledgements" section after their written permission to be named has been obtained.

A detailed list of contributors is required in the authors’ Publication Agreement, which must be signed by all contributors and submitted with the manuscript (e-signing is accepted). If the Agreement is missing or incomplete, it must be provided to editorial staff before a manuscript will be sent for review.

Acknowledging Sources

Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the relevant work(s).

Authors must cite specific content that was obtained using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools. See additional information in the Use of GenAI in Manuscripts section above.

Authors must cite their own data, whether collected themselves and archived in a data repository or used under license from any other source.

Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

All authors must declare any competing interests relevant to the article. A competing interest can occur when an author has a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations or with the people which could influence the research or interpretation of the results. Authors should also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.

Data

As a journal representing the work of data professionals, authors are expected to collect or acquire data in accordance with generally accepted research protocols. These must be approved by their institutional review boards as appropriate and/or properly licensed for research use by the publisher.

IASSIST Quarterly strongly encourages authors to deposit datasets used in their research publication in data repositories to enable interlinking of articles and data and support FAIR data principles. Data could be deposited in Zenodo, OpenICPSR, the author’s institutional repository, or another open repository. Data should be reciprocally cited, i.e., the manuscript must include a citation for the data source in the Reference list, and any repository record for the dataset should include a citation for the article. (Repository records can be edited after deposit to include retroactively a citation for the article.)

Copyright

Authors retain copyright to articles published in the IASSIST Quarterly. The Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial License 4.0 International applies to all works published by IASSIST Quarterly.

Authors are encouraged to deposit the published version of their article in an institutional or disciplinary repository immediately on publication. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in the IASSIST Quarterly as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.

Review

Two reviewers will be assigned to every manuscript. Should the reviewers submit conflicting recommendations, a third reviewer may be assigned or the editors may resolve the issue themselves.

IQ uses double-anonymous review procedures: authors will not know who is reviewing their paper; neither will reviewers know whose paper they are reviewing. If authors have questions about suggested revisions, they should ask the editors for guidance. Regardless of the review decision, authors should not attempt to identify reviewers.

Authors may view the journal's Guidance for Reviewing IASSIST Quarterly Submissions within the Guidance for Reviewers on this site.

As volunteers, the editorial team has limited time and resources. Therefore, if a paper is poorly written, it may be returned to the authors for more thorough proofreading and editing before moving forward with the review and publication process. Authors for whom English is a second language may want to request a review of their paper by someone fluent in the written language before submitting their manuscript.

Complaints and appeals

Complaints & Plagiarism

Complaints about published articles or journal processes should be directed to the editors at editor.iassistquarterly@gmail.com. If the complaint is about the editors, it should be directed to the Chair of the IASSIST Communications Committee as noted in the Committee Chairs section of the IASSIST officials webpage and/or to the IASSIST president listed near the top of that same page.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of plagiarism is, “The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.” Plagiarism may happen by accident, when an author forgets to include a citation to earlier work, or does not realize an assertion should be cited. It may happen deliberately when an author knowingly includes material they know to be someone else’s without citing that person. Either way, the IASSIST Quarterly upholds ethical scholarly practice which demands proper attribution. Complaints about plagiarism or uncited material in an article will be handled in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). If disputes between co-authors cannot be resolved between them, the matter may be referred to the authors’ institution(s) for resolution. In such circumstances or when investigations may take substantial time, the editors may choose to post an expression of concern to highlight potential issues with an article.

Corrections will result in the journal publishing a new version of the article with the correction permanently noted at the top. Retractions will be handled in accordance with guidance from Retraction Watch. Notes about both corrections and retractions will appear in the next issue’s Editors’ Notes. Permanent notices of retractions will be displayed on the landing page of the article and will replace the article itself, using the same DOI as the original article. Notice of retractions will be sent to the IQ’s indexing services for them to display the retraction note as well. Authors found to have plagiarized another’s work deliberately will be permanently banned from publishing with the IQ.

Appeals

Lead (first) authors may appeal an adverse publication decision of IASSIST Quarterly under limited circumstances. Rejection decisions by the editors without reviews (“desk rejections”) cannot be appealed. An author may initiate an appeal for a manuscript that has been reviewed by sending a request to the journal email address (editor.iassistquarterly@gmail.com) with “Appeal: [Manuscript number]” in the subject line. The body of the message should describe the basis for the appeal with regard to the criteria noted in the next section. Authors must refrain from submitting rejected manuscripts they have appealed to any other journal until the appeal is resolved.

Elements of an Appeal

In order for the editors to consider the appeal, the lead author must detail substantive grounds for the appeal. Simply disagreeing with the editors’ reasoned decision is unlikely to be successful and the IQ strongly discourages such appeals. Appropriate grounds include:

Significant errors of fact in the letter or reviews
Procedural irregularities or improprieties in the review process, including conflicts of interest on behalf of the editors
Unethical behavior by reviewers
Other exceptional circumstances

The appeal email should also establish that these concerns have had a substantial effect on the decision to reject the manuscript. Allegations of irregularities in the process or impropriety on the part of editorial staff or reviewers must be substantiated by supporting evidence.

Timing of Appeals and Timeline of Appeals Process

The IQ will not consider an appeal until two full weeks after a decision has been sent to the author. An appeal must be submitted within 45 days of the date of the original decision email.

Due to the inherent consultations necessary in evaluating an appeal, as well as the possibility of additional reviews, authors should expect the timeline for an appeal to be the same as for any manuscript submission.

Process

The IQ editors will initially review the appeal. If the appeal does not meet the threshold for further consideration, it will be rejected.
If the editors deem the appeal has merit, they will invite a member of the editorial board with no ties to the author to consult. (Should no editorial board member be available without ties to the author, the editors may recruit a member of the IASSIST Publication Committee or Administrative Committee.) That consultant will review the manuscript, its reviews, and the appeal, and either:

Agree with the appeal and decide on an appropriate course of action. Appropriate action might include consulting with additional members of the editorial board, or recommending the editors solicit additional reviews (and possibly suggesting potential reviewers).
Disagree with the appeal. The consultant will then summarize why the original decision should stand in spite of the appeal.

Any decision on the appeal must be agreed upon by at least the editors and the consulting member of the editorial board or, if more board members are consulted, a majority of those involved. Unresolvable disagreements will result in review by the full (voting) editorial board (i.e. excluding ex officio members). In the case of tied board votes, one of three ex officio officers will cast the deciding vote: in order of availability, 1) the Communication Committee chair; 2) the IASSIST president; or 3) the IASSIST vice president. Full board consideration of an appeal will not be delayed until the next scheduled board meeting but will instead be handled asynchronously by email to expedite its resolution. Voting will be handled by anonymous asynchronous ballot.

If additional reviews are agreed upon, the editors will notify the appealing author before those proceed. However, authors should be aware that being sent for additional reviews does not guarantee publication.

When the process is complete, the editors will then communicate the final decision on the appeal. If additional reviews are performed, the editors will communicate those to the appealing author together with the appeal decision.

Relevant Resources

WCRI's Guidance for Authors: Singapore Statement on Research Integrity

The Editorial Reference Handbook is one of the deliverables of the EU funded TIER2 Pilot projects to improve reproducibility across multiple contexts. "Co-created by over 20 journals from academic and commercial scholarly publishers, the Handbook targets in-house staff managing the manuscripts primarily, but it will also benefit reviewers, authors and even those providing services to publishers by making the fundamental checks and requirements transparent and understandable."