Malpractices and Misconduct Policy

IJDST is committed to maintaining high standards of honest research, academic responsibility, openness, and ethical publishing. Authors, reviewers, editors, and everyone involved in the publishing process must follow accepted ethical standards and help protect the accuracy of published work.

1. Types of Misconduct

Research and publishing misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

• Plagiarism, including using another person's work without proper credit.
• Fabrication, including making up research data, results, or findings.
• Falsification, including changing or wrongly presenting research data, results, images, or materials.
• Duplicate or repeated publication of the same or very similar work.
• Improper authorship, including adding people who did not contribute, leaving out people who did contribute, or changing the author list without permission.
• Citation manipulation, including adding unnecessary or unsuitable references to increase citation numbers or journal statistics.
• Peer-review manipulation, including using false reviewer names or trying to unfairly influence the review process.
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest that may affect the research or its interpretation.
• Image manipulation or duplication that gives a false impression of the research results.
• Misuse or unauthorized publication of private or third-party data.
• Research conducted without required ethical approval or informed consent, where applicable.
• Any other action that seriously harms the honesty of the research or publishing process.

These types of misconduct are widely recognized as serious problems in research and publishing.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors must ensure that their submitted manuscripts are original, accurate, properly referenced, and carried out in an ethical manner. Authors must provide truthful information about authorship, research methods, data, ethical approval, funding, and conflicts of interest. Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. They must also inform the Editorial Office promptly if they find an important error in a published article and cooperate with the journal to correct it.

3. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must review manuscripts fairly, privately, and without personal or professional bias. They must report any possible conflict of interest and must not use private information from a manuscript for personal benefit. Reviewers must not pressure authors to add references only to increase their own publications, the journal's statistics, or citation numbers.

4. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors must handle manuscripts fairly, independently, and privately. Editorial decisions should be based on the quality, originality, relevance, and honesty of the manuscript. Editors should examine reliable reports of misconduct and may ask authors, reviewers, institutions, or other suitable parties for explanations or supporting documents when needed.

5. Investigation of Allegations

IJDST takes reports of research or publishing misconduct seriously. When a reliable concern is received, the Editorial Office may carry out an initial review and ask the concerned author or authors for an explanation or supporting documents. When necessary, the matter may be sent to the author's institution, research organization, funding body, or another suitable authority for further investigation. All investigations will be handled as fairly and privately as reasonably possible.

6. Actions in Confirmed Cases

Depending on the seriousness and details of the case, IJDST may take one or more of the following actions:

• Reject the manuscript before publication.
• Ask for a correction or explanation.
• Withdraw an accepted manuscript.
• Publish a correction or editorial notice.
• Publish an Expression of Concern when appropriate.
• Retract a published article when its results or publication record are seriously affected.
• Inform the relevant institution or research authority.
• Limit future submissions from people involved in serious or repeated misconduct.
• Take any other suitable action needed to protect the accuracy of published work.

Retraction may be considered when there is clear evidence that published results cannot be trusted because of made-up data, changed data, plagiarism, repeated publication, unauthorized material, serious ethical problems, or other major breaches of publishing standards.

7. False or Harmful Allegations

IJDST encourages people to report genuine concerns about research or publishing ethics. However, knowingly false, misleading, or harmful allegations made to damage an author, reviewer, editor, or another person may also be treated as misconduct.

8. Privacy and Fair Treatment

IJDST will make reasonable efforts to keep investigations private. People involved in an investigation will be given a fair opportunity to answer the allegations and provide relevant evidence. The journal will make decisions based on the available evidence and accepted publishing standards.

9. Corrections and Retractions

IJDST is committed to keeping its published content accurate and reliable. If an error or misconduct seriously affects the reliability of a published article, the journal may publish a correction, an expression of concern, or a retraction, depending on the situation. The purpose of these actions is to keep published information accurate, not to punish authors.

10. Ethical Standards

IJDST follows widely accepted principles of ethical publishing and honest research, including relevant guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and common practices used by reputable journals. The journal may update its procedures when new ethical issues or accepted practices arise.