Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Borneo Journal of Language and Education (BENJOLE): Jurnal Penelitian Bahasa Arab dan Bahasa Inggris

Borneo Journal of Language and Education (BENJOLE): Jurnal Penelitian Bahasa Arab dan Bahasa Inggris is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the Faculty of Education and Teacher Training, UIN Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda.

BENJOLE is committed to maintaining integrity, transparency, objectivity, and accountability in scholarly publishing. This statement applies to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, editorial board members, reviewers, editorial staff, and the publisher.

This policy refers to the COPE Core Practices, relevant COPE guidance, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. All parties must avoid research misconduct, publication misconduct, and any action that may damage the scholarly record.

Ethical Guidelines for Journal Publication

The publication of an article in BENJOLE is part of the development of scholarly knowledge in language and education. A published article must reflect honest research, responsible authorship, fair peer review, and transparent editorial management.

Authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher share responsibility for maintaining ethical standards. Each party must act according to their role in submission, review, editing, publication, and post-publication processes.

Duties of Editors

Publication Decisions

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which submitted manuscripts should be published. Editorial decisions are based on the manuscript’s relevance, originality, methodological quality, clarity, validity, and contribution to the field.

Editors may consult reviewers, section editors, or editorial board members before making a decision. The final decision must follow the journal’s focus and scope, editorial policy, and publication ethics.

Fair Evaluation

Editors evaluate manuscripts based on academic merit only. Editors must not discriminate based on gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, political belief, institutional affiliation, or personal background.

Editorial decisions must not be affected by personal, commercial, political, or institutional interests. The review process must remain fair, objective, and accountable.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Information about a manuscript may only be shared with the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, editorial advisers, and the publisher when needed.

Editors must not use unpublished materials from a submitted manuscript for their own research. Written permission from the author is required before any unpublished material can be used.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Editors must declare any conflict of interest that may affect editorial decisions. A conflict may involve personal, academic, financial, institutional, or professional relationships with authors, reviewers, or related parties.

Editors must not handle manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest. Such manuscripts must be assigned to another editor who can make an independent decision.

Editorial Independence

The publisher must not interfere with editorial decisions. Acceptance, revision, or rejection must depend on academic quality and ethical compliance.

Editors must protect the independence of the editorial process. Sponsorship, institutional interest, or external pressure must not influence publication decisions.

Handling Misconduct

Editors must respond to suspected research or publication misconduct before or after publication. Misconduct may include plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, duplicate publication, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, authorship misconduct, and undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Editors will assess every allegation carefully and confidentially. When needed, the journal may contact authors, reviewers, institutions, or other journals to clarify the case.

Citation Ethics

Editors must not require authors to cite irrelevant articles. Citation requests must be based on academic relevance, not on journal citation advantage.

Editors, reviewers, and authors must avoid citation manipulation. Every citation must support the argument, method, data, or scholarly context of the manuscript.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review helps editors make publication decisions. It also helps authors improve the quality, clarity, and scholarly contribution of their manuscripts.

Reviewers should provide constructive, honest, and evidence-based comments. Reviewer recommendations must support the editorial decision, but the final decision remains with the editor.

Promptness

Reviewers who feel unqualified to review a manuscript must inform the editor. Reviewers who cannot complete the review on time must also notify the editor.

Reviewers should decline assignments when they lack expertise or cannot provide a timely review. This prevents unnecessary delay in the editorial process.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review are confidential documents. Reviewers must not share, copy, distribute, discuss, or use manuscript content without permission from the editor.

Reviewers must not use unpublished data, ideas, arguments, or interpretations for personal advantage. Confidentiality applies before, during, and after the review process.

Objectivity

Reviews must be objective and professional. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

Reviewers should explain their comments clearly and provide supporting arguments. Comments should help the editor and author understand the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript.

Acknowledgement of Sources

Reviewers should identify relevant works that have not been cited by the authors. Reviewers should also inform the editor about substantial similarity or overlap with published or submitted works.

Reviewers should report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data problems, ethical concerns, or citation manipulation. Such concerns must be communicated confidentially to the editor.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest before accepting a review assignment. Conflicts may arise from personal, academic, financial, collaborative, institutional, or competitive relationships.

Reviewers must decline manuscripts when conflicts may affect their objectivity. Reviewers must not use the review process to gain personal or professional advantage.

Use of AI Tools in Reviewing

Reviewers must protect manuscript confidentiality. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, data, images, tables, or review reports to external AI tools if this may breach confidentiality.

Any use of digital tools must not replace the reviewer’s own academic judgment. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the content of their review reports.

Duties of Authors

Reporting Standards

Authors must present accurate, original, and accountable research. The manuscript must contain sufficient details, data, references, and explanations to allow academic evaluation.

Authors must avoid false statements, unsupported claims, and misleading interpretations. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unethical and unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must ensure that their manuscript is original. Any use of words, ideas, data, figures, tables, teaching materials, instruments, or findings from other sources must be cited properly.

Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, improper paraphrasing, and unattributed use of others’ work are unacceptable. BENJOLE may use similarity-checking software to screen submitted manuscripts.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Authors must also avoid publishing the same research in more than one publication without proper justification.

Submitting the same manuscript concurrently to different journals is unethical. Redundant publication and overlapping publication may lead to rejection or post-publication action.

Authorship and Contribution

Authorship must be limited to individuals who made significant scholarly contributions. Contributions may include research design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, manuscript drafting, or critical revision.

The corresponding author must ensure that all listed authors have approved the final manuscript. The corresponding author must also ensure that no eligible contributor is excluded.

Gift authorship, guest authorship, and ghost authorship are prohibited. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

Changes in Authorship

Any change in authorship after submission must be explained to the editor. This includes adding, removing, or rearranging author names.

The journal requires written approval from all authors for authorship changes. The editor may request clarification before approving the change.

Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide raw data or supporting documents during editorial review. Authors should retain research data for a reasonable period after publication.

Authors must not fabricate or falsify data. Data, transcripts, test results, field notes, recordings, and other research materials must be handled responsibly.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, or professional conflict of interest. Any funding source or sponsor must also be stated clearly.

Authors must explain the role of funders when relevant. Funding sources must not influence data analysis, interpretation, or reporting.

Research Ethics, Consent, and Participant Protection

Authors must follow ethical standards for research involving human participants. This includes research involving students, teachers, classrooms, interviews, questionnaires, tests, observations, recordings, institutional documents, or personal data.

Ethical approval or institutional permission should be obtained when required by the research design or institution. Informed consent must be obtained when relevant.

Authors must protect participant privacy and confidentiality. Research involving minors, vulnerable participants, or sensitive data requires extra safeguards.

Use of AI Tools by Authors

AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authorship requires human accountability, final approval, and responsibility for the submitted work.

Authors who use AI tools for substantial writing assistance, translation assistance, data analysis, coding, transcription, image generation, or content generation must disclose this use in the manuscript. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, data, and integrity of the manuscript.

Authors must not use AI tools to fabricate data, create fake citations, manipulate findings, generate false reviewer identities, or hide plagiarism. Any misuse may lead to rejection, correction, or retraction.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works

Authors must immediately notify the editor when they find a significant error in their published article. Authors must cooperate with the journal to correct or retract the article when needed.

If the editor or publisher receives evidence of a significant error from another party, authors must respond promptly. Authors must provide evidence or support the correction process.

Duties of the Publisher

The Faculty of Education and Teacher Training, UIN Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda, as the publisher, supports editorial independence and publication integrity. The publisher provides the journal infrastructure, editorial support, and public access to journal policies.

The publisher must not interfere with editorial decisions. The publisher supports editors in handling complaints, corrections, retractions, ethical concerns, and publication misconduct.

The publisher helps preserve published content and maintain journal transparency. The publisher also supports clear information about copyright, licensing, archiving, author fees, and access policies.

Peer Review Integrity

BENJOLE applies a peer-review process to evaluate scholarly quality and ethical compliance. The detailed review model, number of reviewers, editorial workflow, and decision process are described on the Peer Review Process page.

The journal does not tolerate peer-review manipulation. This includes fake reviewer identities, fabricated reviewer accounts, coercive citation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and misuse of confidential review information.

Editors make the final decision based on reviewer comments, editorial judgment, journal scope, and ethical standards. Reviewers provide recommendations, but acceptance or rejection remains an editorial responsibility.

Plagiarism Screening

All submitted manuscripts may be checked for similarity. The journal may use similarity-checking software or other editorial tools to detect plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and text overlap.

Manuscripts with unacceptable similarity may be rejected before review. Published articles with confirmed plagiarism may be corrected, retracted, or subject to other editorial action.

Publication Misconduct and Handling Procedures

Publication misconduct includes plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, data fabrication, data falsification, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, image manipulation, authorship misconduct, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and unethical research involving participants.

Allegations of misconduct may be submitted to the editorial office at borneolanguagedu@gmail.com. The report should include clear information, supporting evidence, and article details when available.

The editor will conduct a preliminary assessment. The person accused of misconduct will be given an opportunity to respond.

The journal may contact authors, reviewers, institutions, funders, or other journals when needed. The process will be handled confidentially, fairly, and in accordance with COPE guidance.

Possible outcomes include rejection, revision, correction, retraction, expression of concern, editorial note, reviewer removal, or notification to the relevant institution. The action will depend on the severity and evidence of the case.

Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

BENJOLE is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. The journal may issue corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern when needed.

A correction may be issued when an article contains significant errors that do not invalidate the main findings. A retraction may be issued when findings are unreliable due to misconduct, honest error, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, or other serious problems.

An expression of concern may be issued when serious concerns are under investigation and the final evidence is not yet conclusive. Notices of correction, retraction, or expression of concern will be linked to the related article and remain publicly available.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision by submitting a written appeal to borneolanguagedu@gmail.com. The appeal must include the manuscript ID, decision letter, clear grounds for appeal, and supporting evidence.

An appeal will be reviewed by an editor who was not directly involved in the original decision when possible. The journal will communicate the result of the appeal in writing.

Complaints about editorial conduct, reviewer behavior, publication ethics, or journal management may also be submitted to the editorial office. Complaints will be handled fairly, confidentially, and in accordance with COPE guidance.

Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Licensing

Authors must respect intellectual property rights. Authors must obtain permission when using copyrighted materials that require permission.

The journal’s copyright, license, open access, and archiving policies are stated on the relevant journal policy pages. Authors must ensure that submitted materials do not violate copyright, privacy, or legal requirements.

Post-publication Discussions

Readers, authors, and other parties may raise concerns about published articles. The journal will review credible concerns and may invite authors to respond.

When necessary, the journal may publish corrections, editorial notes, expressions of concern, or retractions. This process aims to protect transparency and the accuracy of the scholarly record.

Reference to Ethical Standards

This statement refers to the COPE Core Practices, COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, COPE Retraction Guidelines, COPE guidance on Authorship and AI Tools, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Publication ethics contact: borneolanguagedu@gmail.com
Editorial office: Kampus 2, Jl. H.A.M. Rifaddin, Kecamatan Loa Janan Ilir
Last updated: 22 March 2026