International Journal of Economic Sciences (IJES) takes credible concerns relating to research and publication ethics seriously. Suspected unethical behaviour or publication misconduct may be reported to the Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Office, or Publisher at any stage of the submission, peer-review, publication, or post-publication process.
Concerns may be raised by authors, reviewers, readers, editors, institutions, or other interested parties. Reports should provide sufficient information to allow the journal to understand and assess the concern and, where available, should include relevant documentation or supporting evidence.
Ethical concerns may be assessed regardless of when they are identified, including concerns relating to articles published several years earlier. The existence of an allegation alone does not establish that misconduct has occurred.
All credible allegations will be considered seriously and assessed according to their nature, seriousness, and the available evidence. The Editor-in-Chief or an appropriately appointed independent editor will normally conduct or oversee the initial assessment.
Where an editor has a relevant conflict of interest concerning the manuscript, individuals involved, or circumstances of the case, that editor will not participate in the assessment or decision-making process. The matter will be assigned to an appropriate independent editor or other suitably qualified individual.
The journal may request additional information, documentation, underlying data, source files, correspondence, ethical approvals, authorship documentation, funding information, computational files, source images, or other materials reasonably necessary to evaluate the concern.
Information relating to an allegation or assessment will be treated confidentially to the extent reasonably possible and will normally be shared only with individuals or organizations whose involvement is necessary for appropriate evaluation or investigation.
Individuals whose conduct or work is the subject of a substantive allegation will normally be informed of the relevant concern and given a reasonable opportunity to respond before the journal reaches a conclusion or takes substantial editorial action, except where legal, regulatory, confidentiality, or other compelling considerations require a different approach.
The journal will distinguish, where reasonably possible, between honest error, legitimate differences in scholarly interpretation, minor breaches of publication standards, questionable research or publication practices, and potentially serious misconduct. Editorial action will be proportionate to the nature and seriousness of the concern and the evidence available.
Potential unethical behaviour or publication misconduct may include, but is not limited to:
Authors must not fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or intentionally misrepresent data, observations, results, analyses, methods, experimental procedures, computational outputs, figures, images, references, participant information, ethical approvals, funding information, or other material aspects of the research.
Fabrication includes making up data, observations, results, experiments, participants, sources, references, or other research information and presenting them as genuine.
Falsification includes manipulating research materials, processes, data, images, analyses, computational procedures, or results, or selectively omitting or altering information in a manner that materially misrepresents the research or its findings.
Authors must also ensure that information supplied during submission, peer review, revision, and publication is accurate and not intentionally false or misleading. This includes information concerning authorship and author contributions, affiliations, funding, conflicts of interest, ethical approval, informed consent, data availability, prior dissemination, research methods, datasets, results, and references.
Honest errors or legitimate differences in scholarly interpretation are not, by themselves, considered fabrication or falsification. Authors who identify a material error in their submitted or published work should promptly inform the Editorial Office.
Data and results must accurately reflect the research conducted. Authors must not invent observations, selectively alter or remove data to create a misleading result, manipulate statistical analyses to misrepresent findings, or report analyses as having been performed when they were not actually conducted.
Figures, images, tables, charts, and other research records must accurately represent the underlying information. Processing or adjustment must not be used to create, remove, conceal, move, enhance, or otherwise alter features in a manner that materially misrepresents the underlying data or results.
Authors are responsible for accurately reporting computational models, algorithms, software, parameter settings, simulations, statistical analyses, optimization procedures, and other analytical methods that materially contribute to the reported findings. Computational outputs must not be fabricated or selectively altered to support a preferred conclusion.
Authorship must accurately reflect individuals who have made appropriate scholarly contributions to the work and who accept responsibility for the published article. Guest, gift, ghost, purchased, fabricated, or otherwise misleading authorship is not acceptable.
Authors must not provide false information concerning author identities, affiliations, contributions, or corresponding-author status. Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors during the editorial process must have a legitimate basis and may require explanation and confirmation from the affected authors.
A manuscript submitted to IJES must not be simultaneously under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose closely related manuscripts that have been published, submitted, accepted, or are under consideration elsewhere where such information is relevant to assessing potential overlap.
Legitimate dissemination through theses, dissertations, recognized preprint servers, conference presentations, working papers, or similar scholarly channels does not automatically constitute duplicate publication. Such dissemination should be transparently disclosed and appropriately cited or linked where relevant.
Redundant publication involves inappropriate publication of substantially the same research, data, analysis, or findings more than once without adequate disclosure, justification, and cross-referencing. Where substantial overlap exists with earlier work, authors must clearly identify the relationship between the works and the new scholarly contribution of the submitted manuscript.
IJES does not tolerate practices intended primarily to manipulate citation counts or citation-based indicators.
Authors must not add irrelevant or unnecessary references for the purpose of artificially increasing citations to their own publications, publications of particular researchers, articles published in IJES, or articles published in another journal.
Editors and reviewers must not pressure or require authors to cite their own publications, the work of colleagues or associates, IJES articles, or publications from particular journals unless the suggested references are genuinely relevant and reasonably necessary to improve the scholarly quality, accuracy, or completeness of the manuscript.
Citation recommendations made during peer review or editorial assessment must be based on scholarly relevance rather than personal, institutional, journal-level, or metric-related interests.
Attempts to manipulate or improperly influence the peer-review or editorial process constitute serious publication misconduct.
Such conduct may include providing false reviewer identities or contact information, impersonating another individual, creating or using fraudulent reviewer accounts, attempting to influence reviewer selection through deceptive means, submitting fabricated reviews, coordinating reviews inappropriately, interfering with editorial communications, or otherwise seeking to compromise the independence or integrity of peer review.
Editors, reviewers, authors, and other participants must not engage in arrangements intended to predetermine editorial outcomes or circumvent the journal's established peer-review procedures.
IJES may assess matters that fall within its editorial responsibilities. However, the journal does not normally have the authority or resources to conduct formal institutional investigations of research misconduct requiring access to employment records, institutional documentation, confidential administrative information, or other evidence unavailable to the journal.
Where appropriate, the journal may refer a concern to an author's, reviewer's, or editor's institution, employer, research integrity office, ethics committee, funding organization, professional body, regulatory authority, or other competent organization and may request that the matter be formally investigated.
The journal may take into account the findings of an institutional or other competent investigation when determining what editorial or post-publication action is necessary. The journal may nevertheless take appropriate editorial action on the basis of the information available to it where necessary to protect the peer-review process or scholarly record.
Depending on the nature and seriousness of the concern and the stage at which it is identified, IJES may take one or more appropriate actions, including:
In cases involving established serious or repeated breaches of research or publication ethics, IJES may impose proportionate restrictions on future submissions, reviewing activities, or editorial involvement for a defined period.
Restrictions will not be imposed solely on the basis of an allegation. Before a substantial restriction is applied, the individual concerned will normally be informed of the relevant findings and given a reasonable opportunity to respond.
Where a temporary restriction is imposed, the journal should define its scope and duration. Such measures may be reviewed where significant new evidence becomes available.
Editorial restrictions imposed by IJES are distinct from formal findings of research, academic, employment, professional, regulatory, or legal misconduct made by institutions or other competent authorities.
Publication does not prevent the journal from assessing credible concerns identified subsequently. Where concerns arise after publication, IJES may review the published article and relevant documentation and take appropriate action to protect the accuracy, reliability, transparency, and integrity of the scholarly record.
Formal actions affecting a published article, including Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions, will be handled in accordance with the journal's Retraction and Correction Policies.
Cases may be reconsidered if significant new evidence or relevant information becomes available after an earlier assessment has been completed.
Concerns specifically involving plagiarism or inappropriate textual reuse are addressed in the journal's Plagiarism Policy. Conflicts of interest are addressed in the Conflict of Interests policy. Copyright, permissions, and intellectual property matters are addressed in the Copyright and Licensing policy.
In assessing allegations of research or publication misconduct, IJES will consider relevant principles and guidance provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
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