Publication Etics

Sustainability Education Review (SuER) is committed to maintaining the integrity, reliability, transparency, and quality of the scholarly record. This Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement establishes the responsibilities of authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher and provides a framework for handling concerns that may arise before or after publication.

The journal's publication-ethics practices are informed by internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing, including the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Reference to these principles does not imply organizational membership or formal endorsement unless such membership or endorsement is explicitly stated elsewhere by the journal.

1. Editorial Principles and Independence

Editorial decisions are based on the scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, relevance, clarity, integrity, and alignment of a manuscript with the aims and scope of SuER.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by the authors' nationality, institutional affiliation, ethnicity, gender, religion, political beliefs, commercial relationships, or other characteristics unrelated to the scholarly evaluation of the manuscript.

The Editor-in-Chief has responsibility for safeguarding editorial independence. Commercial, financial, institutional, sponsorship, or other non-scholarly considerations must not determine whether a manuscript is accepted or rejected.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and transparency of the work they submit. By submitting a manuscript to SuER, authors affirm that:

the work is original and has not been fabricated, falsified, or plagiarized;
the manuscript is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal;
the work has not been previously published in substantially the same form unless this is transparently disclosed and permitted by journal policy;
all sources have been appropriately acknowledged and cited;
all individuals listed as authors meet the journal's authorship requirements;
all relevant funding sources and competing interests have been disclosed;
research involving human participants, vulnerable populations, animals, confidential information, or other ethically sensitive matters has been conducted in accordance with applicable ethical and legal requirements;
the data, analyses, images, references, quotations, and other research materials presented are accurate to the best of the authors' knowledge;
the authors will cooperate with reasonable editorial requests for clarification, documentation, corrections, data verification, or investigation of integrity concerns.

3. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should reflect substantial intellectual contribution to the work. All listed authors should have made meaningful contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or scholarly development of the study; participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript; approved the final version; and agreed to be accountable for their contribution.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately, subject to their consent where required.

Guest, gift, honorary, and ghost authorship are not acceptable. Authors should provide an accurate contribution statement where required by the journal, and SuER encourages the use of a recognized contributorship framework such as the CRediT taxonomy where appropriate.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be supported by a reasonable explanation and the agreement of all affected authors. The journal may request documentary confirmation before approving an authorship change.

Artificial intelligence systems, chatbots, large language models, and other non-human tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for published work. The use of AI-assisted technologies is governed by the journal's separate Artificial Intelligence Policy.

4. Originality, Plagiarism, and Textual Overlap

All manuscripts must represent original scholarly work and appropriately acknowledge the ideas, words, data, images, and other intellectual contributions of others.

SuER may use appropriate similarity-detection software and other research-integrity tools to identify possible textual overlap or related concerns. Similarity reports are interpreted editorially. No numerical similarity percentage alone determines whether plagiarism has occurred.

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, presenting another person's ideas or data as one's own, and substantial reuse of previously published material without appropriate disclosure or citation.

Material concerns may result in editorial inquiry, rejection, correction, retraction, or other appropriate action.

5. Duplicate Submission, Redundant Publication, and Prior Publication

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to SuER and another journal.

Redundant or duplicate publication of substantially the same research without transparent disclosure, appropriate justification, and necessary permission is not acceptable.

Authors must disclose relevant prior dissemination of the work, including closely related publications, accepted manuscripts, reports, conference papers, or other materials when such disclosure is necessary to allow editors to assess overlap.

Preprints are handled according to the journal's separate preprint and prior-publication policy.

6. Data Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication, falsification, manipulation, or selective misrepresentation of research data, findings, images, records, or procedures constitutes serious research misconduct.

Authors must present data and analyses accurately and must not alter, omit, create, or manipulate information in ways that misrepresent the research record.

Where serious concerns arise, the journal may request underlying data, analytic materials, documentation, or other evidence necessary to evaluate the integrity of the work.

7. Citation Practices and Citation Manipulation

Citations should be relevant, accurate, and used to acknowledge prior scholarship and provide appropriate intellectual context.

Authors must not add irrelevant citations for the purpose of artificially increasing citations to particular authors, journals, institutions, editors, reviewers, or themselves.

Editors and reviewers must not require authors to add citations unless the requested references are genuinely relevant to improving the scholarly quality, context, or interpretation of the manuscript.

Coercive citation and organized citation manipulation are not acceptable.

8. Conflicts of Interest and Competing Interests

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their scholarly judgment.

Competing interests may be financial or non-financial and may include employment, consultancy, funding, institutional relationships, personal relationships, intellectual commitments, collaborative relationships, or other circumstances relevant to the manuscript.

The existence of a competing interest does not necessarily prevent publication, but transparency is required so that the journal can manage the situation appropriately.

Editors and reviewers with a relevant conflict of interest must recuse themselves from handling or evaluating the manuscript.

9. Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose sources of financial and material support relevant to the research and publication of the manuscript. The role of funders in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions should be stated when relevant.

Where no external funding was received, authors may be required to state this explicitly.

10. Ethical Oversight of Research

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

Where formal ethics review is required, authors should provide the name of the approving ethics committee or institutional review body and the approval number or reference where available.

Where formal ethical approval was not required, authors should be able to explain the ethical basis for the study and its compliance with applicable institutional or disciplinary standards if requested.

Particular care is required in research involving children, students, vulnerable populations, Indigenous or local communities, sensitive personal information, or unequal relationships of authority.

Research involving animals, where relevant to the journal's scope, must comply with applicable ethical and welfare standards.

11. Informed Consent, Privacy, and Confidentiality

Authors are responsible for obtaining informed consent from research participants when required.

For participants who cannot legally provide consent, appropriate permission from parents, guardians, or authorized representatives must be obtained where required, together with participant assent where appropriate.

Personally identifiable information should not be published unless its publication is necessary for legitimate scholarly purposes and appropriate consent has been obtained.

Authors must take appropriate measures to protect participant privacy, confidential data, and sensitive information.

12. Data Availability, Transparency, and Reproducibility

Authors should describe research methods and analytical procedures with sufficient transparency to permit scholarly evaluation and, where appropriate, replication or verification.

Authors may be required to provide a Data Availability Statement explaining whether and how supporting data can be accessed.

Where ethical, legal, contractual, privacy, Indigenous data governance, or confidentiality considerations prevent public sharing, authors should state the relevant restriction rather than disclose protected information.

Editors may request underlying data or supporting documentation when necessary to clarify questions about the reliability or integrity of submitted or published work.

13. Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

The use of generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies by authors, reviewers, and editors is governed by SuER's separate Artificial Intelligence Policy.

Human authors remain accountable for all submitted content. AI tools cannot assume authorship, responsibility, consent, or accountability.

Undisclosed or inappropriate AI use that results in fabricated references, false information, plagiarism, manipulated data, breaches of confidentiality, or other research-integrity problems may constitute publication misconduct.

14. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to:

provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and respectful assessments;
review only manuscripts for which they possess appropriate expertise;
declare relevant conflicts of interest;
maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and review materials;
avoid using unpublished information for personal or professional advantage;
identify relevant scholarly or integrity concerns when reasonably possible;
avoid discriminatory, hostile, defamatory, or personally directed comments;
avoid coercive citation requests;
comply with the journal's Artificial Intelligence Policy and Peer Review Process.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not by themselves determine the final editorial decision.

15. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring the fairness, confidentiality, independence, integrity, and scholarly quality of the editorial process.

Editors should:

make decisions based on scholarly merit and relevance;
select appropriately qualified and independent reviewers;
protect confidential manuscript and reviewer information;
manage competing interests transparently;
avoid discriminatory decision-making;
respond appropriately to allegations of misconduct;
maintain the integrity of the published scholarly record;
issue corrections, retractions, or other post-publication notices when warranted;
ensure that submissions from editors, board members, or individuals associated with the journal receive independent editorial handling.

16. Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents. Editors, reviewers, editorial staff, and other individuals involved in the evaluation process must not disclose or use unpublished information obtained through peer review except as necessary for legitimate editorial purposes.

Confidential manuscripts must not be shared with unauthorized third parties.

17. Allegations of Research and Publication Misconduct

SuER takes allegations of research or publication misconduct seriously, whether they concern submitted manuscripts or published articles and whether they originate from authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, whistleblowers, or other sources.

Potential misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

plagiarism;
data fabrication or falsification;
inappropriate image or figure manipulation;
duplicate or redundant publication;
undisclosed competing interests;
authorship manipulation;
citation manipulation;
peer review manipulation;
paper-mill activity;
unethical research;
misrepresentation of data, methods, identities, affiliations, or approvals;
serious misuse of artificial intelligence.

Allegations will be assessed fairly and proportionately. The journal may request explanations, documentation, underlying data, institutional information, or other evidence required to evaluate a concern.

Where appropriate, the journal may contact authors' institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, or other relevant bodies when independent investigation is necessary.

The journal will distinguish, as far as reasonably possible, between honest error and intentional misconduct.

18. Corrections and Amendments

SuER recognizes its responsibility to maintain an accurate scholarly record.

When an error or omission does not invalidate the central findings of an article but requires correction, the journal may publish an appropriate correction or amendment linked to the original article.

Material changes to the published scholarly record should be transparent and traceable.

19. Retractions

An article may be considered for retraction when there is reliable evidence that its findings are substantially unreliable, when serious research or publication misconduct has occurred, when the work substantially duplicates previously published material without appropriate justification, when plagiarism materially affects the publication, or when the research is found to have been conducted unethically.

Retraction notices should clearly identify the affected article, explain the reason for retraction to the extent appropriate, and remain publicly available. Retracted articles should normally remain part of the scholarly record and be clearly marked as retracted rather than silently removed.

20. Expressions of Concern

The journal may publish an Expression of Concern when serious questions have been raised about a published article but available evidence is inconclusive, an investigation is incomplete, or the journal is unable to obtain sufficient information to reach a final determination within a reasonable period.

The status of the article may subsequently be updated when reliable evidence becomes available.

21. Article Removal

Complete removal of published content is reserved for exceptional circumstances, such as situations involving serious legal requirements, substantial privacy or safety risks, or content whose continued availability would itself cause significant harm.

Where removal is necessary, the journal should preserve an appropriate bibliographic record or explanatory notice whenever legally and technically possible.

22. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may raise concerns regarding editorial procedures, publication ethics, journal staff, or published content.

Complaints and appeals should be supported by relevant evidence and handled fairly, respectfully, and independently of individuals directly involved in the matter where possible.

Appeals against editorial decisions must identify a significant factual, procedural, or scholarly basis for reconsideration. Mere disagreement with a reviewer recommendation is not normally sufficient.

Detailed procedures are provided in the journal's separate Complaints and Appeals Policy.

23. Post-Publication Discussion

SuER supports responsible scholarly discussion after publication. Readers may bring substantive errors, ethical concerns, or scholarly issues to the attention of the editorial office.

Where a post-publication concern materially affects the reliability, interpretation, attribution, or ethical status of an article, the journal will assess whether correction, clarification, retraction, Expression of Concern, or another response is appropriate.

24. Special Issues and Guest Editors

Special issues and guest-edited collections are subject to the same standards of peer review, research integrity, editorial independence, authorship, competing-interest disclosure, and publication ethics as regular issues.

Guest editors must not use their role to provide preferential treatment to collaborators or associates. Potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed and managed.

The Editor-in-Chief retains overall responsibility for the integrity of journal content and may reject or investigate submissions where normal editorial safeguards have not been followed.

25. Intellectual Property and Copyright

Authors, editors, and reviewers must respect copyright, licensing terms, permissions, and other intellectual-property rights.

The journal's copyright ownership, author rights, reuse permissions, repository rights, and applicable Creative Commons license are described separately in the Copyright and Licensing Policy.

26. Sanctions and Editorial Actions

Where a serious breach of publication ethics is established, SuER may take proportionate action, including:

requesting clarification or correction;
rejecting a submitted manuscript;
withdrawing a manuscript from editorial consideration;
publishing a correction, retraction, or Expression of Concern;
restricting future submissions in serious cases where appropriate;
informing relevant institutions, ethics committees, funders, or other responsible bodies when an independent investigation may be required.

Actions will be based on available evidence, seriousness of the concern, protection of the scholarly record, and principles of procedural fairness.

27. Policy Review

SuER will periodically review and update its publication-ethics policies in response to developments in research integrity, scholarly communication, technology, legal requirements, and recognized international publishing practices.