The Interdisciplinary Journal of Education (IJE) is committed to maintaining high standards of integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, editorial independence, and responsible scholarly communication throughout the publication process.

This Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, guest editors where applicable, editorial staff, and the publisher.

IJE's ethical and editorial practices are informed by internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing, including the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices.

1. Editorial Independence and Fairness

The Editor-in-Chief and designated handling editors have authority over editorial decisions concerning individual manuscripts. The publisher provides administrative, technical, and publishing support but does not interfere with decisions to accept or reject individual submissions.

Manuscripts are evaluated according to scholarly criteria without discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, disability, institutional affiliation, geographic location, political belief, socioeconomic background, or other personal characteristics unrelated to academic merit.

Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where an actual, potential, or reasonably perceived conflict of interest exists. Such manuscripts must be reassigned to another qualified and independent editor.

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, editorial board members, publisher personnel, close collaborators, colleagues, students, supervisors, family members, or other persons with whom an editor has a relationship that could affect impartiality must be handled independently and undergo the journal's normal editorial and peer-review procedures.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are expected to:

• submit original scholarly work that has not been published previously and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal;
• accurately report research design, methods, data, analyses, results, interpretations, limitations, and conclusions;
• refrain from fabrication, falsification, selective or misleading reporting, inappropriate image manipulation, data manipulation, or other forms of research misconduct;
• provide appropriate acknowledgment and citation of the work of others;
• obtain permission for copyrighted or otherwise protected third-party material where required;
• ensure that all listed authors satisfy appropriate authorship criteria;
• disclose all relevant financial and non-financial competing interests;
• identify sources of financial support and the role of funders where relevant;
• provide information regarding ethical approval, informed consent, research permissions, and participant protection where applicable;
• protect confidential, sensitive, and personally identifiable information;
• provide underlying data or supporting documentation when reasonably requested for the assessment of research integrity, subject to applicable ethical, legal, contractual, confidentiality, security, and privacy restrictions; and
• promptly inform the journal if a significant error, omission, ethical concern, or integrity issue is discovered in a submitted or published work and cooperate with appropriate corrective action.

3. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work and who accept responsibility and accountability for the submitted and published article.

Authorship should normally reflect meaningful contribution to one or more activities such as conception or design of the study, data acquisition, analysis or interpretation, methodological development, drafting of the manuscript, or substantial critical revision, together with approval of the final manuscript and accountability for the work.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that:

• all listed authors meet appropriate authorship criteria;
• all authors have reviewed and approved the submitted manuscript;
• all authors agree to submission and publication where accepted; and
• relevant author information and disclosures are accurate.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately.

Ghost authorship, guest authorship, honorary authorship, and gift authorship are not permitted.

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must include a clear explanation and written agreement from all affected authors. IJE may request additional documentation before approving an authorship change.

Authorship disputes that cannot reasonably be resolved by the journal may be referred to the relevant institution(s) or other appropriate authority.

4. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for:

• protecting the integrity and independence of the editorial process;
• selecting qualified and appropriately independent reviewers;
• maintaining confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial communications;
• identifying and appropriately managing conflicts of interest;
• making decisions on the basis of scholarly and ethical considerations;
• taking reasonable action when credible concerns regarding research or publication integrity are raised;
• preventing plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, or other publication misconduct; and
• protecting the integrity of the scholarly record through corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, editorial notes, or other appropriate post-publication actions.

Editors must not require authors to cite articles solely for the purpose of increasing citation metrics of the journal, editor, reviewer, author, institution, or publisher.

Any recommendation to add references must be based on genuine scholarly relevance.

5. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must:

• accept review assignments only when they have appropriate expertise and sufficient time to provide a meaningful assessment;
• treat submitted manuscripts and associated materials as confidential;
• not use unpublished information, ideas, methods, analyses, or data obtained through peer review for personal, academic, financial, competitive, or professional advantage;
• provide objective, constructive, respectful, evidence-based, and academically relevant comments;
• avoid personal criticism, discriminatory language, harassment, or inappropriate remarks;
• declare actual or potential conflicts of interest and decline the review where impartiality cannot reasonably be maintained;
• inform the editor of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, substantial undisclosed overlap, ethical concerns, data irregularities, citation manipulation, or other potential misconduct; and
• recommend additional citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.

Reviewers must comply with IJE's confidentiality requirements and Generative AI Policy. Confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, review reports, or identifiable manuscript content must not be uploaded to external AI systems when doing so could compromise confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or editorial integrity.

6. Peer Review Integrity

IJE uses a double-anonymous peer-review process. Authors and reviewers should not intentionally attempt to identify or contact one another during the review process.

Research manuscripts are normally evaluated by at least two appropriately qualified and independent reviewers. Additional reviews may be obtained where required.

IJE does not tolerate:

• fabricated reviewer identities;
• false reviewer accounts;
• peer-review rings;
• manipulated reviewer recommendations;
• undisclosed reviewer conflicts;
• coercive citation practices;
• unauthorized disclosure of confidential manuscripts; or
• other attempts to interfere with independent peer review.

Evidence of deliberate peer-review manipulation may result in rejection, withdrawal of a manuscript from consideration, correction or retraction of a published article, restrictions on future submissions, and/or notification of relevant institutions where appropriate.

View the IJE Peer Review Process

7. Research Ethics and Ethical Oversight

Research involving human participants must comply with applicable ethical standards, institutional requirements, and relevant laws and regulations.

Where required, authors must identify the approving ethics committee, institutional review board, or relevant authority and provide the approval/reference number where available.

Appropriate informed consent must be obtained where required. Authors must protect participant privacy, dignity, confidentiality, and personal data.

Where an article includes identifiable photographs, case details, audio, video, quotations, or other information that could reasonably identify an individual, authors must obtain appropriate consent for publication where required.

Research involving children, vulnerable populations, persons with reduced capacity to consent, or other groups requiring additional protection must include appropriate ethical safeguards.

Research involving animals, biological materials, clinical procedures, or other regulated activities must comply with applicable disciplinary, institutional, national, and international requirements.

8. Data Integrity, Availability, and Reproducibility

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, integrity, appropriate management, and retention of research data and supporting materials.

Where ethically and legally possible, authors are encouraged to make data, analytical code, research instruments, protocols, or supporting materials available through a trustworthy repository or appropriate data-access mechanism.

Restrictions arising from informed consent, participant confidentiality, privacy law, contractual obligations, institutional requirements, security, intellectual property, or other legitimate considerations should be stated transparently.

IJE may request relevant data, documentation, instruments, analytical outputs, or other supporting evidence where reasonable concerns about research integrity arise.

Failure to provide requested evidence without adequate justification may be taken into account during an integrity investigation.

9. Plagiarism, Text Recycling, and Redundant Publication

IJE does not tolerate plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate data or image manipulation, undisclosed duplicate publication, redundant publication, citation manipulation, fraudulent authorship, or other forms of research and publication misconduct.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software.

Similarity reports are editorial tools and are interpreted contextually. A numerical similarity percentage alone does not determine whether plagiarism or unacceptable text recycling has occurred.

Authors must appropriately cite previous publications, including their own relevant work.

Material substantially overlapping with previously published or publicly disseminated work must be transparently disclosed where relevant.

View IJE Originality, Plagiarism, and Similarity Screening Policy

10. Preprints and Prior Dissemination

Posting a manuscript as a legitimate scholarly preprint does not necessarily constitute prior publication.

Authors should disclose relevant preprint versions at submission and provide the preprint DOI or permanent link where available.

If the manuscript is published by IJE, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record, where technically possible, with a citation and DOI link to the published Version of Record.

Conference abstracts, theses, dissertations, institutional reports, working papers, and other forms of prior dissemination should be disclosed where they substantially overlap with the submitted manuscript.

The editor may assess the nature and extent of overlap to determine whether the submission constitutes an original scholarly publication.

11. Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and others involved in publication decisions must disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.

Conflicts may include financial, personal, professional, academic, institutional, intellectual, competitive, supervisory, collaborative, or other relevant interests.

Disclosure of a conflict does not automatically prevent publication or participation in the editorial process. The conflict must, however, be evaluated and appropriately managed.

12. Funding and Sponsor Influence

Authors must disclose all relevant sources of financial support and grant information.

Where a sponsor or funder had a role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit for publication, that role should be disclosed.

Funders, sponsors, advertisers, institutional partners, publication fees, or other commercial relationships must not determine editorial acceptance or rejection.

13. Allegations of Research or Publication Misconduct

IJE takes credible allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously, whether they concern submitted manuscripts, published articles, authors, reviewers, editors, editorial staff, or other participants in the publication process.

Allegations will be considered as objectively, confidentially, and fairly as reasonably possible.

The journal may request:

• an explanation from the involved parties;
• original or supporting data;
• ethical approval documentation;
• authorship documentation;
• research instruments;
• similarity reports;
• review records; or
• other relevant evidence.

Individuals subject to an allegation should normally be provided an appropriate opportunity to respond.

Where necessary, unresolved or serious concerns may be referred to the relevant university, research-integrity office, ethics committee, funding organization, employer, regulator, or other competent authority.

Editorial action will be proportionate to the available evidence.

14. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit reasonable complaints concerning editorial procedures, publication ethics, peer review, conflicts of interest, or other matters related to journal operations.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision where they believe that a significant scholarly, procedural, or factual issue justifies reconsideration.

An appeal should clearly identify the grounds for reconsideration and provide substantive evidence or scholarly justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the editorial outcome.

Where reasonably possible, a complaint or appeal should be assessed by an editor or publisher representative who was not directly involved in the matter concerned.

Complaints and appeals may be submitted to: ije@skillerindonesia.id.

15. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

IJE is committed to maintaining an accurate and trustworthy scholarly record.

When significant errors, unreliable findings, ethical concerns, publication misconduct, or other serious problems are identified after publication, the journal may issue an appropriate post-publication notice.

Possible actions include:

• correction;
• corrigendum;
• editorial note;
• expression of concern;
• retraction;
• article withdrawal in exceptional circumstances; or
• another appropriate amendment to the published record.

Post-publication notices should identify the affected article clearly and, where technically possible, be permanently linked to the Version of Record.

Retraction is intended to correct the scholarly record rather than punish authors.

Retracted articles should normally remain identifiable in the scholarly record with a clear retraction notice rather than being silently removed, except where removal is legally or ethically necessary.

16. Post-Publication Discussion

IJE supports responsible scholarly discussion concerning published articles.

Readers who identify a potentially significant factual error, methodological concern, ethical problem, undisclosed conflict, or other matter affecting the integrity of a published article may contact the editorial office.

Where appropriate, the journal may request a response from the authors and may publish a correction, editorial note, expression of concern, retraction, or other appropriate notice.

17. Generative Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

IJE maintains a dedicated policy governing generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies.

AI systems cannot qualify as authors because they cannot accept responsibility, accountability, copyright obligations, conflicts of interest, or ethical responsibility for scholarly work.

Human authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, evidence, data, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions contained in their manuscripts.

Substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be disclosed in accordance with journal policy.

Reviewers and editors must not compromise manuscript confidentiality through inappropriate use of external AI systems.

View IJE Generative AI Policy

18. Copyright, Licensing, and Intellectual Property

Authors retain copyright in articles published by IJE. Publication does not require transfer of copyright ownership to the journal or publisher.

Unless otherwise explicitly stated for an individual article, published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate permission for third-party copyrighted or otherwise protected material where required.

Third-party material that is expressly excluded from the article's Creative Commons license remains subject to the rights and licensing conditions specified by its respective rights holder.

View IJE Copyright and License Statement

19. Special Issues and Guest Editorial Arrangements

Where IJE publishes a special issue or uses a guest editor, the same standards of editorial independence, peer review, confidentiality, research integrity, conflicts-of-interest management, and publication ethics apply as for regular issues.

Guest editors must not make decisions on manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest. Such manuscripts must be reassigned to an independent editor.

The Editor-in-Chief retains oversight of the journal's ethical and editorial standards.

20. Publisher Responsibilities

The publisher, Sumber Belajar Sejahtera, supports the independent operation of IJE and is committed to responsible scholarly publishing.

The publisher is responsible for:

• respecting editorial independence;
• supporting appropriate editorial, technical, publication, security, and preservation infrastructure;
• helping protect confidentiality, research integrity, and the scholarly record;
• supporting reasonable investigation of ethical concerns and publication misconduct;
• ensuring that commercial considerations do not determine editorial acceptance or rejection;
• supporting corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, and other appropriate post-publication actions; and
• maintaining transparency concerning the journal's publisher, editorial policies, fees, access model, and relevant publishing information.

The publisher does not claim ownership of authors' copyright merely because an article is published in IJE.

21. Policy Transparency and Periodic Review

IJE periodically reviews its publication ethics and editorial policies to reflect developments in responsible scholarly publishing, research integrity, technology, legal requirements, and accepted international practice.

Where a dedicated IJE policy provides more detailed guidance, that policy should be read together with this Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.