IJARST Publication Ethics & Plagiarism Policy

The International Journal of Advanced Research in Science and Technology (IJARST) holds authors, reviewers, and editors to a single, public ethics standard. This page is the canonical version. Any conflict between this page and informal communication elsewhere is resolved in favour of what is written here.

Our framework draws on the principles set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for editors and reviewers, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations on authorship. We apply the same rules consistently to every submission, regardless of author seniority or institution.

1. Originality and prior publication

Manuscripts submitted to IJARST must be original, must not have been published elsewhere, and must not be under simultaneous review at any other journal. Authors must disclose any prior conference proceedings, preprint server postings, or thesis chapters that overlap with the submitted work, with citations to the prior version.

2. Plagiarism screening

Every submitted manuscript is screened for textual similarity at the editorial-desk stage, before peer review. Manuscripts whose similarity index exceeds our acceptance threshold are returned to the authors for revision or rejected without further review. The screening covers similarity to:

• previously published research articles, conference papers, and theses;
• preprint server postings and institutional repositories;
• publicly indexed web content.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all sources are correctly cited. Verbatim text reuse, paraphrasing without citation, and self-plagiarism (re-using one's own previously published text without disclosure) all qualify as plagiarism under this policy.

3. Authorship

Authorship is reserved for individuals who have made a substantive intellectual contribution to the research and the manuscript — specifically, who have contributed to the conception or design, the acquisition or analysis of data, or the drafting or revision of the manuscript, and who have approved the final version. Other contributors are acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section, not listed as authors.

Gift authorship, ghost authorship, and changes to the author list after acceptance without the written consent of all authors are violations of this policy and will result in editorial action up to and including retraction.

4. Conflicts of interest

Authors must disclose at submission any financial, employment, institutional, or personal relationships that could be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation — including industry funding, paid advisory roles, equity holdings, and patent applications. Reviewers and editors must disclose conflicts and recuse themselves where the conflict is material.

5. Data integrity and image manipulation

Authors must not fabricate data, falsify results, or manipulate images in a way that misrepresents the underlying observations. Acceptable image processing (contrast, cropping for presentation, false-colouring) must be applied uniformly across the entire image, and any quantitative comparison must be made on the unmodified data. On request, authors must be able to provide raw data to support published findings.

6. Human and animal research ethics

Research involving human participants must have been reviewed by an appropriate institutional ethics committee, and the manuscript must state which committee approved the study. Informed consent must be obtained from all participants. Research involving animals must comply with the relevant national guidelines and have been approved by an institutional animal-care committee.

7. Peer review confidentiality

IJARST operates double-blind peer review: authors do not know who their reviewers are, and reviewers do not know who the authors are. Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential documents, must not share them with anyone outside the review, and must not use the unpublished work to advance their own research.

8. Corrections and retractions

If an honest error is identified after publication, the authors should contact the editorial office and a correction (erratum) will be published, linked to the original article via CrossRef. Where a paper is found to involve plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate publication, or unresolved authorship dispute, the paper will be retracted. Retraction notices are published in the journal, registered with CrossRef, and travel with the DOI permanently — we do not silently delete papers.

9. Reporting misconduct

Anyone who suspects an IJARST publication or submission has breached this policy can write to editorijarst@gmail.com. Allegations are reviewed confidentially, the corresponding author is given an opportunity to respond, and where a breach is established the editorial team will publish a correction or retraction as appropriate.

10. Editor and reviewer conduct

Editors must make decisions on the basis of the manuscript's scientific quality and fit with the journal's scope, not on the identity, nationality, religion, or political views of the authors. Reviewers must provide constructive, professional feedback within the agreed timeline and decline reviews where they cannot meet that standard.

Read the full editorial workflow for the procedural detail behind these rules, or Submit a manuscript