Guidance for Editors and Editorial Staff

IASSIST Quarterly (IQ) follows IASISST’s code of conduct, and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE’s) Core Practices. All editorial staff are expected to act in accord with these guidelines and other applicable ethical standards.

Publication decisions
Confidentiality
Disclosure
Privacy
Involvement and cooperation in investigations
Misconduct
Relevant COPE guidance
Other guidance

Publication decisions

Editors ensure that all manuscripts submitted as research articles and being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. Editors are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its originality and importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, appropriate ethical disclosures on issues, e.g., human subjects, GenAI, etc., and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. Editors may confer with other editorial staff and/or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play and editorial independence

Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity, practical value to the readership, and ethics) and relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, caste, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation. Decisions to edit and publish are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of the journal itself. Editors have full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.

Complaints and Appeals

We welcome genuine appeals to editorial decisions; however, appeals need to provide strong evidence of new data or information in response to the reviewers’ and/or editor’s comments. The journal follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/ guidelines on appeals to editor decisions and complaints about editorial management of the peer review process. The editor(s) will consider one appeal per article and all editorial decisions are final. Review of and decisions on new submissions will take priority over appeals. For more information about the appeals process, please contact the editor(s).

For complaints about the editorial management process, please contact the chair of IASSIST’s Communications Committee. See the list of IASSIST’s committees for the current chair’s contact information.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff will hold all information about submitting authors and their manuscripts confidential. They will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher (i.e. officers of IASSIST), as appropriate. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors and editorial staff will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Editorial staff and reviewers are prohibited from entering content from submitted manuscripts into public GenAI tools, as this would constitute a violation of the confidentiality of the peer review process. This is because, when information is entered into such tools, the organization which runs a tool will, in most cases, have access to this data and ingest them into its LLM.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers, and in these cases will invite a member of the editorial staff or board to make a decision regarding publication in their stead. Editors will file a signed agreement to this effect with the Chair of the IASSIST Communications Committee, and disclose any conflicts of interest, at the beginning of their editorial term. Editors will prompt reviewers to disclose conflicts of interest as well.

Privacy of Editorial Staff

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 editorial team and others involved in the editorial and publishing process (i.e. authors and reviewers) 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 that include non-public information about those involved in producing and reviewing them, in addition to public information about authors’ names, e-mails, and affiliations.

Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Editors (in conjunction with the publisher, IASSIST) will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. If an ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.

Misconduct

All forms of misconduct are taken seriously and will result in all necessary action in accordance with COPE guidelines. Examples of misconduct include, but are not limited to, affiliation misrepresentation, breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions, citation manipulation, duplicate submission/publication, avoiding international standards of research ethics, image or data manipulation/fabrication, peer review manipulation, plagiarism, text-recycling/self-plagiarism, irresponsible or undisclosed use of genAI, undisclosed competing interests, unethical research, etc.

Post publication discussion and corrections

Changes after an article has been published made necessary by misconduct will be done after careful consideration by the editor(s) in accordance with COPE guidance. Any necessary changes will be accompanied with a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original article, such as a correction notice, an expression of concern, or (in rare circumstances) a removal/retraction. These changes will persist with the article and ensure the integrity of the scholarly record. Retractions will follow best practices guidance from Retraction Watch.