The Advanced Journal of Science and Innovation (AJSI) is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics, research integrity, editorial independence, transparency, and responsible scholarly communication.
AJSI follows the principles and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including the COPE Core Practices. The journal expects authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and the publisher to act with honesty, accountability, fairness, confidentiality, and respect throughout the publication process.
All manuscripts submitted to AJSI are evaluated on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, relevance to the journal’s aims and scope, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, and clarity of reporting. Editorial decisions are made independently and without discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political views, institutional affiliation, seniority, or commercial interests.
1. Editorial Independence and Editors’ Responsibilities
The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team are responsible for ensuring that editorial decisions are based solely on the academic merit, originality, relevance, methodological quality, and ethical integrity of submitted manuscripts.
Editors must:
• Evaluate manuscripts fairly, objectively, and confidentially.
• Make editorial decisions without discrimination or improper influence.
• Declare and appropriately manage actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest.
• Recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where a conflict of interest exists, including submissions from themselves, close collaborators, family members, students, supervisors, institutional colleagues, or direct competitors.
• Select appropriately qualified and independent reviewers.
• Protect the confidentiality of authors, reviewers, editorial correspondence, and unpublished materials.
• Ensure that the peer-review process is conducted fairly, consistently, and in a timely manner.
• Take reasonable steps to identify and prevent publication misconduct, including plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship disputes, citation manipulation, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
• Handle ethical concerns, corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and complaints in accordance with the journal’s published policies.
• Maintain records relevant to editorial and ethics decisions in accordance with the journal’s record-retention practices.
The publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions. Acceptance or rejection is determined by the Editor-in-Chief or an authorized editor based on editorial assessment, peer-review reports, and the journal’s ethical and quality standards.
2. Peer Review and Reviewers’ Responsibilities
AJSI uses a peer-review process to assess the quality, originality, methodological soundness, and relevance of submitted manuscripts. The journal’s peer-review model and procedures are described on its Peer Review Process page.
Reviewers must:
• Review manuscripts objectively, constructively, and within the agreed review period.
• Treat all manuscripts and related communications as confidential.
• Not use, share, copy, distribute, retain, or disclose unpublished information obtained through peer review without written authorization from the editor.
• Declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting a review invitation.
• Decline the review invitation if they lack relevant expertise, cannot provide an objective assessment, have a conflict of interest, or cannot complete the review within a reasonable timeframe.
• Identify relevant published work that has not been cited where appropriate.
• Inform the editor promptly of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, unethical research, citation manipulation, or other concerns regarding research integrity.
• Avoid personal criticism, discriminatory language, defamatory statements, or comments unrelated to the scholarly evaluation of the manuscript.
Reviewers must not contact authors directly regarding a manuscript under review unless explicitly authorized by the editor.
3. Authors’ Responsibilities
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submissions are original, accurate, ethically conducted, and prepared in accordance with the journal’s policies.
Authors must:
• Submit only original work that has not been published previously and is not under consideration by another journal, publisher, or platform, except where the journal’s policies explicitly permit prior dissemination, such as a preprint, thesis, conference abstract, or repository version.
• Present an accurate, honest, and complete account of the research conducted and its findings.
• Retain underlying data and supporting materials for a reasonable period after publication and provide them for editorial review when justified and ethically permissible.
• Cite all sources accurately and appropriately, and obtain permission for copyrighted material reproduced from other works.
• Avoid plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, salami publication, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, and any attempt to manipulate the peer-review or publication process.
• Ensure that all listed authors have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or reporting of the study.
• Ensure that all authors have approved the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission to AJSI.
• Identify one corresponding author who is responsible for communication with the journal and for ensuring that all co-authors are informed of the submission, revisions, editorial decisions, and final publication.
• Disclose all financial, institutional, personal, professional, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research, interpretation, or publication of the work.
• Disclose all sources of financial support and the role of funders, where applicable.
• Promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief if they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their submitted or published work, and cooperate fully with any correction, clarification, expression of concern, or retraction that may be necessary.
4. Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the submitted work. Individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged, with their permission, where appropriate.
The corresponding author must ensure that:
• All eligible contributors are included as authors.
• No individual who has not made a substantial contribution is listed as an author.
• The order of authors has been agreed by all authors before submission.
• All authors have reviewed and approved the final manuscript.
Changes to authorship after submission, including the addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors, require a written explanation and written consent from all authors. Such changes may be considered only before acceptance except in exceptional circumstances.
AJSI encourages transparent reporting of individual author contributions, including the use of the CRediT taxonomy where appropriate.
5. Research Integrity, Originality, and Plagiarism
AJSI does not tolerate plagiarism, duplicate submission, redundant publication, text recycling without appropriate disclosure, falsification, fabrication, manipulation of images or data, unethical authorship practices, citation manipulation, or peer-review manipulation.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software and may be evaluated for concerns related to research integrity. Similarity reports are assessed by editors in context; a percentage score alone does not determine whether a manuscript is acceptable or unethical.
Where plagiarism or other misconduct is suspected, the journal may request clarification, supporting documentation, raw data, ethics approvals, contributor information, or institutional verification. Manuscripts may be rejected at any stage if serious ethical concerns are identified.
6. Human Participants, Animals, and Informed Consent
Research involving human participants, human material, personal data, animals, or sensitive information must comply with applicable laws, institutional requirements, and internationally accepted ethical standards.
For research involving human participants, authors must state in the manuscript:
• The name of the approving ethics committee or institutional review board, where applicable.
• The approval number or reference number, where available.
• That informed consent was obtained from participants when required.
• How privacy, confidentiality, and data protection were safeguarded.
Research involving animals must include a statement confirming compliance with relevant institutional, national, and international requirements for the care and use of animals in research.
For case reports, patient information, photographs, videos, or other potentially identifiable information, authors must obtain written informed consent for publication. Identifying information must be removed unless essential for scientific purposes and explicit consent for publication has been obtained.
7. Conflicts of Interest and Funding
All authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and publisher representatives must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that may influence, or appear to influence, their professional judgment.
Conflicts of interest may be financial, institutional, professional, personal, intellectual, political, or religious. Disclosure of a conflict does not necessarily prevent publication or participation; however, it enables the journal to assess and manage the situation fairly and transparently.
Authors must disclose all funding sources and describe the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
8. Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, integrity, and ethical compliance of all submitted work, including content prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools.
AI tools must not be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility for the content, approve the final manuscript, disclose conflicts of interest, or meet authorship criteria.
Where generative AI or AI-assisted tools have been used for writing, analysis, coding, image generation, translation, or other substantive aspects of the work, authors must disclose this use transparently in the manuscript or cover letter. Authors must verify all AI-generated output, ensure that confidential or personal information has not been improperly entered into external AI systems, and confirm that no fabricated references, data, images, or statements are included.
Editors and reviewers must not upload confidential manuscript content into public or unsecured AI tools without authorization from the journal and the authors.
9. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern
AJSI is committed to preserving the integrity of the scholarly record. When an error, ethical concern, or research-integrity issue is identified after publication, the journal will assess the matter and take appropriate action.
Depending on the nature and seriousness of the issue, actions may include:
• Publication of a correction, corrigendum, or erratum.
• Publication of an expression of concern while an investigation is ongoing.
• Retraction of an article when findings are unreliable, there is evidence of serious misconduct, ethical approval or informed consent was absent where required, plagiarism or duplicate publication is substantiated, or the peer-review or publication process was manipulated.
• Removal of content only in exceptional circumstances, such as legal requirements, serious privacy violations, or a substantial risk of harm.
Retraction notices will clearly identify the retracted article, state the reason for retraction where legally appropriate, remain permanently linked to the article, and preserve the scholarly record.
10. Allegations of Misconduct, Complaints, and Appeals
AJSI takes allegations of misconduct seriously, whether raised before or after publication. Allegations may relate to plagiarism, authorship disputes, duplicate publication, data or image manipulation, ethical approval, conflicts of interest, reviewer misconduct, editorial misconduct, or manipulation of the peer-review or publication process.
The journal will:
• Assess allegations objectively, confidentially, and on the basis of available evidence.
• Give the relevant author, reviewer, editor, or other party a reasonable opportunity to respond.
• Seek additional information or advice where necessary.
• Contact relevant institutions, funders, employers, or other responsible bodies when appropriate and justified.
• Keep appropriate records of the investigation and outcome.
Possible outcomes, proportionate to the evidence and seriousness of the concern, may include a request for clarification, correction, rejection, publication of an editorial notice, expression of concern, retraction, referral to an institution or funder, removal from editorial or reviewer duties, or restrictions on future submissions for a defined period.
Complaints and appeals concerning editorial decisions, peer review, journal processes, editorial conduct, or publication ethics should be submitted in writing to:
[Insert official journal email address]
All complaints will be reviewed fairly and independently. Where a complaint concerns an editor, it will be handled by another editor or an appropriate member of the publisher’s management who has no conflict of interest.
11. Publisher Responsibilities
The Canadian Academy for Science and Innovation (CASI Inc.) supports AJSI’s editorial independence and is responsible for maintaining appropriate publishing infrastructure, transparent journal policies, secure publication records, and mechanisms for addressing ethical concerns.
The publisher will:
• Support editors in handling allegations of misconduct and ethical concerns.
• Maintain confidentiality during ethics investigations to the extent permitted by law and due process.
• Ensure that business considerations, advertising, sponsorship, or publication charges do not influence editorial decisions.
• Support the publication of corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and other editorial notices when required.
• Maintain clear information about ownership, management, fees, licensing, archiving, and contact details on the journal website.
• Work with editors, authors, reviewers, institutions, and other relevant parties to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.
12. Contact
Questions about this policy, allegations of misconduct, ethics concerns, complaints, or appeals should be sent to:
Editor-in-Chief
Advanced Journal of Science and Innovation (AJSI)
Email: info.journal@ajsi.org
Website:www.ajsi.org