Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

A peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University and supervised by the Deanship of Scientific Research.

Preamble

The journal upholds the highest standards of scholarly integrity at every stage of publication, and compliance with publication ethics is a condition for acceptance and publication. This statement sets out the duties of the editorial board, reviewers, authors and the publisher, the forms of malpractice, and the procedures followed when malpractice is suspected.

Basis

This statement is based on Chapter Ten (Research Integrity) of the Regulation for Scientific Research and Innovation in Universities and its executive rules, on the university’s intellectual property policy, and — for research involving human participants or personal data — on the Law of Ethics of Research on Living Creatures and the Personal Data Protection Law and their implementing regulations. Where any conflict arises, the approved laws and regulations prevail.

This statement applies to all who publish in the journal, whether from within the university or outside it.

Duties of the Editorial Board

• Fairness and impartiality: manuscripts are assessed on their scholarly merit, originality and relevance to the journal’s scope, regardless of the author’s gender, nationality or institutional affiliation.
• Double-blind peer review: the identities of reviewers are withheld from authors, and the identities and affiliations of authors are withheld from reviewers.
• Confidentiality: submitted manuscripts and related information are kept confidential and are not used or copied for any purpose other than review and publication.
• Conflict of interest: an editor with an interest in a manuscript or a relationship with its author withdraws from handling it; manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial board are handled through procedures that safeguard impartiality.
• Independence of decisions: no financial or commercial consideration influences screening, review or acceptance decisions.
• Screening and quality: submissions are screened, including for plagiarism, before being sent for review, and are verified against quality standards and publication requirements before approval.
• Communication: effective communication with authors and readers, and handling of complaints under the procedures below.

Duties of Reviewers

• Competence: declining to review a manuscript outside one’s field of expertise, or one previously contributed to or reviewed for another outlet.
• Conflict of interest: disclosing any conflict of interest before starting, and declining where impartial review is not possible.
• Confidentiality: keeping the manuscript confidential, and neither copying nor retaining any version of it.
• Objectivity: reviewing objectively and fairly, directing comments at the work rather than the author, and keeping criticism constructive.
• Timeliness: providing clear comments within the stated period, or declining early.
• Alerting: informing the editorial board of any breach of scholarly integrity in the manuscript under review.
• Artificial intelligence: not uploading the manuscript or any part of it to generative AI tools, in order to preserve its confidentiality.

Duties of Authors

• Scholarly honesty: the manuscript must contain no copying or quotation of others’ work without attribution, and its results — or those of others — must not be distorted or fabricated.
• Quotation and citation: every quotation must be attributed to its source, and documented quotation must not exceed 25% of the manuscript’s words from all sources combined, or 10% from a single source.
• No simultaneous submission: the manuscript must not have been published previously, nor be under consideration by another journal at the same time.
• Authorship: only those who made a substantive contribution may be listed as authors; the order of names must reflect the extent of contribution; affiliations of all authors must be stated; and in work derived from a master’s or doctoral thesis the student is listed as first author.
• Funding and conflict of interest: disclosure of funding sources and of any conflict of interest.
• Human participants: obtaining the required ethical approvals and the informed consent of participants without coercion, and protecting their privacy and the confidentiality of their data.
• Artificial intelligence: disclosure of any use of generative AI tools and its scope; the author remains fully responsible for the content, and such tools are not credited as authors.
• Correcting errors: notifying the journal immediately of any substantive error in a published article and cooperating in its correction or retraction.

Publisher’s Commitments

• Safeguarding the independence of editorial decisions from financial or commercial considerations.
• Providing the systems required for review management, plagiarism screening and permanent digital archiving of content.
• Supporting the editorial board in investigating allegations of malpractice and in publishing corrections and retraction notices.

Forms of Malpractice

• Plagiarism: appropriating others’ ideas, results or words, including through paraphrase or translation without attribution, or drawing on unpublished work or students’ research without citation.
• Fabrication and falsification: presenting misleading information or results, altering results, deleting data, changing instruments or procedures, or concealing negative results or excluding outliers to create artificial consistency.
• False documentation: submitting fabricated certificates, ethical approvals, acceptance letters, questionnaires or research samples.
• Redundant publication: republishing a work, or producing a new work from the author’s earlier work, without substantial change and without disclosure.
• Authorship manipulation: listing someone who did not contribute, transferring credit for one’s work to another, or claiming ownership of another’s work.
• Peer-review manipulation: suggesting reviewers with false identities, or collusion in the review process.
• Citation manipulation: requiring citation of particular works, or reciprocal citation without scholarly justification.
• Breach of confidentiality: disclosing the content of manuscripts under review.

Reporting Malpractice and Investigation Procedures

• Reports are received at the journal’s email address [ ], and the identity of the reporting party is kept confidential unless they consent otherwise.
• The editor-in-chief conducts an initial assessment of the seriousness of the report and of the evidence supporting it.
• The party concerned is informed of the allegation and given an opportunity to respond within a period set by the editorial board.
• Processing of the manuscript in question is suspended until the matter is resolved.
• Cases in which a serious concern is substantiated are referred to the competent research integrity body at the university, and the author’s institution is notified where appropriate.
• Depending on the findings, the editorial board takes one or more of the following actions: rejection of the manuscript, publication of a correction, publication of an expression of concern, retraction of the published article, or barring the author from submitting to the journal for a period determined by the board.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retraction

• Correction: the journal publishes a correction for errors that do not affect the validity of the results.
• Expression of concern: the journal publishes an expression of concern where serious indications remain unresolved.
• Retraction: a published article is retracted where malpractice or a substantive error invalidating its results is established; a retraction notice linked to the article is published stating the reason, and the article remains available marked “Retracted”.

Policy on the Use of Generative AI Tools

A peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University and supervised by the Deanship of Scientific Research.

Scope and Definition

This policy applies to authors, reviewers and members of the editorial board of the journal. It forms part of the journal’s research integrity policies and is to be read together with the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

Generative AI tools are understood here as tools that produce text, images, data or code in response to user prompts.

Authors

• Permitted use: AI tools may be used for language improvement, style, proofreading and technical assistance.
• Disclosure: authors must disclose any use of such tools in a separate section preceding the reference list, stating the name and version of the tool and the purpose and scope of its use.
• Prohibited use: AI tools may not be credited as authors or cited as sources of information, and may not be used to fabricate data, results or references, or to generate or alter research images and figures, unless this forms part of the research method and is clearly described in it.
• Responsibility: the author bears full responsibility for the accuracy and originality of the content and the validity of its references, whatever tools were used in preparing it.

Reviewers

• Confidentiality: the manuscript, any part of it, or the review report may not be uploaded to generative AI tools, in order to preserve the confidentiality of the work and the rights of its author.
• Originality of the report: the review report must be the reviewer’s own work and may not be generated, wholly or in part, by such tools.

Editorial Board

• Publication decisions: generative AI tools are not used in making acceptance or rejection decisions, and the content of manuscripts under consideration is not uploaded to them.
• Approved tools: plagiarism and similarity-checking tools approved by the university may be used, in accordance with their conditions of use.

Breach of this Policy

Failure to disclose the use of such tools, or any prohibited use set out in this policy, is considered a form of publication malpractice and is handled under the journal’s Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.