Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The Journal of Innovative Teaching Strategies in Primary Education (JITSPE) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics, academic integrity, and responsible scholarly communication. This publication ethics statement applies to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, editorial staff, and the publisher.

JITSPE publishes scholarly work in the field of primary education, particularly studies related to innovative teaching strategies, classroom pedagogy, literacy and numeracy, educational technology, learning media, classroom assessment, inclusive education, curriculum implementation, classroom management, and teacher professional development. Because many studies in primary education involve children, teachers, schools, and classroom communities, JITSPE places strong emphasis on ethical oversight, participant protection, confidentiality, informed consent, and responsible data reporting.

This statement is prepared in accordance with internationally recognized principles of publication ethics and best practices in scholarly publishing, including guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and related standards for responsible journal management.

1.      General Ethical Principles

JITSPE upholds the following ethical principles:

• Manuscripts must be original, accurate, and free from plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, duplicate publication, citation manipulation, and other forms of academic misconduct.
• Editorial decisions must be based on scholarly merit, relevance to the journal scope, methodological quality, ethical compliance, clarity of presentation, and contribution to primary education.
• The peer review process must be conducted fairly, objectively, confidentially, and without discrimination.
• Research involving human participants, especially primary school pupils, teachers, parents, school principals, or school communities, must protect participant rights, privacy, dignity, and welfare.
• Authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher must disclose any conflict of interest that may affect the integrity of the publication process.
• Published articles must be corrected, clarified, retracted, or updated when necessary to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.

2.      Duties of Editors

2.1 Editorial Decision

The Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and assigned editors are responsible for deciding whether a submitted manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected. Editorial decisions are based on the manuscript’s relevance to JITSPE’s focus and scope, originality, academic quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reviewer recommendations, and contribution to the field of primary education.

Editors must not make decisions based on the authors’ nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political belief, institutional affiliation, seniority, or other personal characteristics.

2.2 Fair Play

Editors must evaluate manuscripts solely on their academic content and scholarly merit. Manuscripts must be handled fairly and consistently according to the journal’s editorial policies and peer review procedures.

2.3 Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must keep all submitted manuscripts confidential. Information about a submitted manuscript may only be disclosed to the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, editorial advisers, and the publisher when necessary for the editorial process.

Editors must not use unpublished materials, ideas, data, instruments, classroom observations, interview transcripts, or other confidential information from submitted manuscripts for personal advantage or their own research without the authors’ written permission.

2.4 Conflict of Interest

Editors must declare any conflict of interest related to a submitted manuscript. Editors must not handle manuscripts in which they have a personal, professional, financial, institutional, supervisory, or competitive conflict of interest with the authors or the research context.

When a conflict of interest exists, the manuscript must be assigned to another qualified editor.

2.5 Ethical Oversight

Editors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts involving human participants comply with ethical standards. For studies involving primary school pupils, teachers, parents, schools, or classroom communities, editors may require authors to provide information about research permission, informed consent, participant anonymity, school approval, or ethical clearance where applicable.

Editors may reject manuscripts that fail to demonstrate adequate ethical protection of child participants, teachers, schools, or educational institutions.

2.6 Handling Misconduct

Editors must take reasonable steps when ethical concerns are raised about a submitted or published manuscript. These concerns may include plagiarism, duplicate submission, fabricated data, falsified findings, unethical research procedures, authorship disputes, undeclared conflicts of interest, citation manipulation, or misuse of artificial intelligence.

Editors may request clarification, supporting documents, raw data, ethical approval documents, or institutional confirmation from authors. When necessary, editors may issue corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, or other editorial notices.

3.      Duties of Reviewers

3.1 Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Reviewers assist editors in making editorial decisions and help authors improve the quality of their manuscripts. Reviews should provide constructive, clear, evidence-based, and academically relevant feedback.

Reviewers should evaluate the manuscript based on originality, relevance to primary education, appropriateness of the research design, quality of data analysis, clarity of presentation, ethical compliance, and contribution to teaching practice, educational theory, or school policy.

3.2 Promptness

Reviewers who feel unqualified to review a manuscript or are unable to complete the review within the required time should inform the editor as soon as possible and withdraw from the review process.

3.3 Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share, discuss, distribute, copy, or use the manuscript or its contents without permission from the editor.

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, tables, figures, classroom data, student data, interview transcripts, or unpublished materials to public artificial intelligence tools or external platforms that may compromise confidentiality.

3.4 Objectivity

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Reviewers should not make personal criticism of the authors. Comments should be clear, respectful, specific, and supported by academic reasoning.

Reviewers should identify strengths and weaknesses in the manuscript and provide suggestions for improving the research problem, theoretical basis, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.

3.5 Acknowledgement of Sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors when such work is important to the manuscript. Reviewers should also inform the editor if they detect substantial similarity, overlap, duplicate publication, plagiarism, or suspected data problems.

3.6 Conflict of Interest

Reviewers must decline to review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest. Conflicts may arise from personal, academic, professional, institutional, financial, collaborative, or competitive relationships with the authors, institutions, funders, or research context.

4.      Duties of Authors

4.1 Reporting Standards

Authors must present an accurate, complete, and objective account of the research conducted. The manuscript must contain sufficient detail to allow readers to understand the research design, participants, instruments, procedures, data analysis, findings, and implications.

Fraudulent, fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or knowingly inaccurate statements are unethical and unacceptable.

4.2 Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must ensure that their manuscripts are original. Any work, words, ideas, data, instruments, figures, tables, or materials from other sources must be properly cited or acknowledged.

Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable. This includes direct plagiarism, paraphrasing without citation, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, unauthorized translation, and unattributed use of text, data, or learning materials.

4.3 Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Authors must not publish substantially similar research in multiple publications unless clearly justified, transparently disclosed, and approved by the editor.

Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently is unethical and unacceptable.

4.4 Data Accuracy and Retention

Authors must present research data accurately and honestly. Authors may be asked to provide supporting data, instruments, coding records, observation sheets, interview guides, statistical outputs, or other relevant materials for editorial review.

Authors should retain research data for a reasonable period after publication, while respecting privacy, confidentiality, ethical approval, and institutional data protection requirements.

For studies involving children, teachers, schools, or sensitive educational data, authors must not make identifiable data publicly available unless explicit permission and ethical approval have been obtained.

4.5 Ethical Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants must be conducted ethically. Studies involving primary school pupils, teachers, parents, school principals, or school communities should include appropriate ethical safeguards.

Authors must explain, where applicable:

• How school or institutional permission was obtained;
• How informed consent was obtained from relevant parties;
• How assent was obtained from child participants when appropriate;
• How participant anonymity and confidentiality were protected;
• How identifiable school, teacher, or student information was removed or protected;
• How data were collected without coercion, harm, or unfair pressure;
• How vulnerable participants were protected.

Manuscripts that include identifiable photographs, names, student work, school identities, classroom records, assessment scores, or interview excerpts must ensure that appropriate permission has been obtained.

4.6 Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made a significant scholarly contribution to the study. Contributions may include conceptualization, research design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, writing, critical revision, supervision, or final approval of the manuscript.

All listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission. Individuals who contributed to the research but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

Guest authorship, gift authorship, honorary authorship, ghost authorship, and omission of eligible authors are unethical.

4.7 Corresponding Author Responsibility

The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal during submission, peer review, revision, publication, and post-publication processes.

The corresponding author must ensure that:

• All eligible authors are included;
• No ineligible authors are included;
• All authors have approved the manuscript;
• Author names, affiliations, and email addresses are accurate;
• All required declarations are submitted;
• All revisions and responses to reviewers are coordinated properly.

4.8 Acknowledgement of Sources

Authors must properly acknowledge the work of others. Publications, theories, instruments, datasets, learning media, teaching modules, assessment tools, or classroom materials that influence the study must be cited accurately.

Authors should not engage in citation manipulation, excessive self-citation, irrelevant citation, or coercive citation.

4.9 Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support, grants, sponsorships, institutional funding, or other support related to the research or manuscript preparation.

If the research received no external funding, authors should state that no external funding was received.

4.10 Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Authors must disclose any financial, personal, professional, institutional, or academic conflict of interest that could influence the research, interpretation, or publication of the manuscript.

If there is no conflict of interest, authors should state that they have no conflict of interest.

4.11 Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Authors must disclose any use of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools in manuscript preparation, language editing, data analysis, coding assistance, image generation, reference checking, or any other research-related process.

AI tools must not be listed as authors or co-authors because they cannot take responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, originality, and ethical compliance of the work.

Authors remain fully responsible for all content, including text, data, citations, images, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions.

Authors must not upload identifiable student data, teacher data, school data, classroom observation notes, interview transcripts, assessment results, photographs, or confidential institutional documents to public AI platforms unless the data have been fully anonymized and such use has been ethically approved.

4.12 Fundamental Errors in Published Works

When authors discover a significant error, inaccuracy, ethical problem, or omission in their published work, they must promptly notify the editor and cooperate with the journal to correct, retract, or clarify the article.

5.      Duties of the Publisher

The publisher of JITSPE is responsible for supporting editorial independence, publication integrity, digital access, journal sustainability, and ethical publishing practice.

The publisher must not interfere with editorial decisions. Editorial decisions must remain the responsibility of the editorial team and must be based on scholarly merit, ethical compliance, and journal policy.

The publisher supports the journal in handling corrections, retractions, complaints, appeals, and publication misconduct according to accepted publication ethics standards.

6.      Research Ethics in Primary Education

Because JITSPE publishes studies in primary education, the journal requires special attention to ethical issues involving children and school communities.

Authors must ensure that research involving primary school pupils is conducted with care, respect, and protection. Participation should be voluntary, non-coercive, and appropriate to the age and context of the participants.

Research must not expose pupils, teachers, parents, schools, or communities to unnecessary risk, stigma, discrimination, embarrassment, or harm.

Identities of children, teachers, schools, and research sites must be anonymized unless written permission has been obtained and disclosure is ethically justified.

7.      Plagiarism and Similarity Screening

All manuscripts submitted to JITSPE may be screened for similarity and plagiarism. Manuscripts with unacceptable similarity, unattributed copying, duplicate publication, text recycling, fabricated references, or other academic integrity issues may be returned to authors, rejected, or handled according to the journal’s publication ethics procedures.

The similarity score should normally not exceed the journal’s acceptable threshold. However, editorial judgment will consider the nature, source, and location of the similarity.

8.      Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, or other parties may submit complaints or appeals related to editorial decisions, publication ethics, peer review, conflicts of interest, corrections, or published content.

Complaints and appeals must be submitted in writing with clear evidence and explanation. The editorial team will review the case objectively, confidentially, and fairly.

Appeals against editorial decisions will be considered when authors provide strong evidence of procedural error, reviewer bias, misunderstanding, or relevant new information. The final decision remains the responsibility of the editorial team.

9.      9. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

JITSPE is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. When necessary, the journal may issue:

• Correction: when a published article contains errors that do not invalidate the main findings;
• Retraction: when findings are unreliable due to misconduct, major error, plagiarism, unethical research, duplicate publication, or other serious problems;
• Expression of Concern: when serious concerns exist but the investigation has not yet been completed or evidence remains inconclusive.

Corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern will be published transparently and linked to the original article where appropriate.

10.  Post-Publication Discussion

JITSPE allows readers, authors, reviewers, and other stakeholders to raise scholarly concerns about published articles. Concerns must be submitted respectfully and supported by evidence.

The editorial team will evaluate post-publication discussions and determine whether clarification, correction, retraction, or further investigation is needed.

11.  Intellectual Property and Copyright

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all materials included in the manuscript comply with intellectual property and copyright requirements.

Permission must be obtained for third-party figures, tables, photographs, instruments, learning media, assessment tools, teaching modules, or other copyrighted materials when required.

Authors must properly acknowledge all sources and must not use copyrighted materials unlawfully.

12.  Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Authors are encouraged to provide sufficient methodological detail to allow readers to understand and evaluate the study.

Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors may share anonymized data, instruments, or supplementary materials. However, data involving children, teachers, schools, interviews, classroom observations, or assessment results may be restricted due to privacy, ethical, or institutional considerations.

Authors must clearly state the availability or restrictions of research data in the manuscript.

13.  Sanctions for Ethical Violations

When ethical violations are identified, JITSPE may take appropriate action, including but not limited to:

• Returning the manuscript to the author;
• Rejecting the manuscript;
• Requesting correction or clarification;
• Publishing an expression of concern;
• Retracting the article;
• Notifying the authors’ institution or relevant authority when necessary;
• Refusing future submissions from authors involved in serious misconduct for a defined period.

All actions will be taken based on the seriousness of the case and available evidence.

14.  Final Statement

JITSPE expects all authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity and publication ethics. Ethical publishing is essential to maintaining trust in scholarly communication and supporting the advancement of primary education research.