Publication Ethics

JMABS: Journal of Management, Accounting, and Business Studies is a peer-reviewed and open-access scholarly journal published by GRM Academic Press, an academic publisher managed by PT Global Research Media Group.

This publication ethics statement serves as a code of conduct for all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and journal management. JMABS: Journal of Management, Accounting, and Business Studies is committed to maintaining high standards of academic integrity, transparency, accountability, objectivity, and ethical scholarly publishing.

The journal upholds the following fundamental principles:

  • Neutrality, by ensuring that editorial decisions are free from inappropriate personal, institutional, financial, commercial, or other conflicts of interest;

  • Fairness, by recognizing authorship and scholarly contributions appropriately and ensuring an objective editorial and peer-review process; and

  • Honesty, by requiring all published works to be free from plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, citation manipulation, data manipulation, and other forms of academic misconduct.

This publication ethics policy refers to the Regulation of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) Number 5 of 2014 concerning the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publication and generally recognized principles of ethical scholarly publishing.

Duties and Responsibilities of Journal Management

The journal management is responsible for:

  1. defining and maintaining the journal’s name, focus and scope, publication frequency, editorial policies, and institutional identity;

  2. establishing and maintaining a qualified Editorial Board;

  3. maintaining professional relationships among the publisher, editors, reviewers, authors, and other stakeholders;

  4. protecting the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and editorial information;

  5. respecting intellectual property rights, copyright, licensing, and publication policies;

  6. periodically reviewing and communicating journal policies;

  7. establishing and implementing codes of conduct and publication ethics;

  8. ensuring that the journal is published according to its established publication schedule;

  9. providing adequate editorial and technical resources to support the publication process;

  10. developing cooperation, indexing, dissemination, digital preservation, and other activities that improve the visibility and sustainability of the journal; and

  11. maintaining appropriate administrative and legal documentation relating to journal management and publication.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining the quality, integrity, fairness, and independence of the editorial process.

Editors must:

  1. ensure that manuscripts are evaluated according to their academic quality and relevance;

  2. continuously improve the academic and editorial quality of the journal;

  3. manage the editorial and peer-review process objectively, fairly, and confidentially;

  4. protect academic freedom and encourage responsible scholarly discussion;

  5. maintain the integrity of the scholarly record;

  6. take appropriate action when corrections, clarifications, expressions of concern, or retractions are required;

  7. ensure consistency with the journal’s formatting, citation, and publication requirements;

  8. consider constructive feedback from authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders;

  9. periodically evaluate journal policies and editorial practices;

  10. take reasonable steps to prevent plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, duplicate publication, and other misconduct;

  11. ensure that research involving human participants, employees, customers, consumers, organizations, confidential corporate information, or personal data meets relevant ethical requirements;

  12. promote awareness of publication ethics among authors and reviewers;

  13. periodically evaluate the impact and effectiveness of editorial policies;

  14. remain open to new academic perspectives, methodologies, and approaches relevant to the journal’s scope; and

  15. avoid personal, professional, institutional, financial, commercial, ideological, or academic conflicts of interest that may influence editorial decisions.

Editorial decisions must be based on the manuscript’s academic merit, originality, relevance, methodological quality, ethical compliance, clarity, and contribution to management, accounting, business, finance, entrepreneurship, or related fields.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author’s institutional affiliation, nationality, gender, religion, professional position, commercial status, or other characteristics unrelated to the scholarly quality of the manuscript.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers play an important role in maintaining the academic quality and credibility of the journal.

Reviewers are expected to:

  1. provide objective and academically justified assessments of manuscripts;

  2. decline a review invitation when they lack appropriate expertise or have a conflict of interest;

  3. maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and review materials;

  4. provide constructive, respectful, clear, and professional comments;

  5. avoid personal criticism or discriminatory statements toward authors;

  6. identify relevant scholarly works that have not been appropriately cited;

  7. report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data manipulation, citation manipulation, unethical research, or other academic misconduct;

  8. evaluate revised manuscripts when further review is requested; and

  9. complete review assignments within the agreed period.

Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts according to factors including:

  • originality and novelty;

  • relevance to the journal’s focus and scope;

  • theoretical or conceptual contribution;

  • appropriateness of research design and methodology;

  • validity and reliability of data and analysis;

  • appropriateness of statistical, financial, accounting, or managerial analysis;

  • clarity and consistency of research findings;

  • quality of discussion and interpretation;

  • practical, managerial, accounting, financial, or business implications;

  • appropriateness of references; and

  • overall scholarly contribution.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for ensuring the originality, integrity, accuracy, and ethical compliance of their manuscripts.

Authors must:

  1. ensure that authorship is limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work;

  2. appropriately acknowledge individuals who contributed to the study but do not qualify for authorship;

  3. accept collective responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the manuscript;

  4. present research findings accurately, objectively, honestly, and transparently;

  5. provide sufficient information regarding methods, data collection, instruments, sampling, analytical techniques, and other relevant procedures;

  6. properly acknowledge and cite theories, concepts, data, reports, financial information, organizational documents, and other sources used in the manuscript;

  7. disclose all sources of research funding, sponsorship, or institutional support where applicable;

  8. disclose any financial, professional, institutional, commercial, or other conflicts of interest;

  9. explain relevant research limitations;

  10. obtain ethical approval, informed consent, institutional permission, or other authorization when required;

  11. protect the privacy, confidentiality, dignity, and rights of research participants, employees, customers, consumers, organizations, or other parties involved in the research;

  12. respond professionally and within a reasonable period to reviewer and editorial comments;

  13. immediately notify the Editorial Board if significant errors or inaccuracies are discovered in a submitted or published manuscript;

  14. follow appropriate procedures if manuscript withdrawal is necessary; and

  15. ensure that the manuscript is original and is not simultaneously submitted to or under consideration by another journal.

Authorship and Contribution

Authorship must accurately reflect substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, drafting, or critical revision of the manuscript.

The journal considers guest authorship, honorary authorship, gift authorship, and the exclusion of individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to be unethical publication practices.

Any proposed addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors after manuscript submission must be accompanied by a reasonable explanation and approval from all affected authors and the Editorial Board.

All authors are expected to approve the final version of the manuscript and accept responsibility for its scholarly integrity.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must submit only original scholarly works.

All ideas, theories, methods, statements, data, tables, figures, financial reports, corporate information, and other materials derived from external sources must be properly acknowledged and cited.

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:

  • direct copying without attribution;

  • inappropriate paraphrasing;

  • mosaic or patchwork plagiarism;

  • unauthorized use of another person’s ideas or data;

  • inappropriate reuse of previously published work; and

  • presenting another person’s work as one’s own.

The journal may use iThenticate or other reliable similarity-detection software to evaluate submitted manuscripts.

Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal.

Previously published work that is substantially identical to a submitted manuscript is generally not eligible for publication unless there is a legitimate scholarly justification, appropriate disclosure, and editorial approval.

Inappropriate reuse of substantial portions of an author’s previously published work without appropriate citation or disclosure may be considered redundant publication or self-plagiarism.

Data Integrity and Research Ethics

Authors must ensure that data and research findings are presented accurately and honestly.

The journal does not tolerate:

  • fabrication of data or research results;

  • falsification or unauthorized alteration of data;

  • selective manipulation of observations;

  • deliberate omission of relevant information;

  • misleading statistical analysis;

  • manipulation of financial, accounting, organizational, market, consumer, or business data; or

  • presentation of results in a manner intended to create misleading conclusions.

Research involving employees, managers, consumers, customers, entrepreneurs, investors, organizations, financial records, corporate documents, or other identifiable individuals or institutions must comply with applicable ethical, legal, institutional, and confidentiality requirements.

Where applicable, authors may be required to provide evidence of:

  • ethical approval;

  • informed consent;

  • institutional authorization;

  • organizational permission; or

  • authorization to use confidential or proprietary data.

Confidential and Proprietary Business Information

Research in management, accounting, and business may involve confidential organizational information, financial records, internal company documents, customer databases, employee information, or other proprietary data.

Authors must ensure that confidential information is used only with appropriate authorization.

Names, identities, commercially sensitive data, confidential financial information, and other protected organizational information should not be disclosed without legitimate permission.

The Editorial Board may request evidence that appropriate authorization or anonymization procedures have been applied where necessary.

Publication Misconduct

Publication misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

  1. plagiarism or self-plagiarism;

  2. duplicate or redundant publication;

  3. data fabrication;

  4. data falsification or manipulation;

  5. misleading analysis or misrepresentation of research findings;

  6. citation manipulation;

  7. inappropriate or fraudulent authorship;

  8. undisclosed conflicts of interest;

  9. manipulation of the peer-review process;

  10. unethical use or disclosure of confidential business or personal data;

  11. manipulation of financial information, tables, figures, images, documents, or research evidence; and

  12. other practices that compromise the integrity of scholarly publication.

When suspected misconduct is identified, the Editorial Board may request clarification or supporting documentation from the authors.

Depending on the seriousness and stage of the case, the journal may:

  • suspend the editorial process;

  • reject the manuscript;

  • request correction or clarification;

  • issue an expression of concern;

  • publish a correction;

  • retract a published article; or

  • take other appropriate editorial actions.

Conflict of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any potential conflict of interest that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, the research or publication process.

Conflicts of interest may include:

  • financial interests;

  • employment relationships;

  • consulting relationships;

  • business ownership;

  • investment interests;

  • professional competition;

  • institutional relationships;

  • personal relationships;

  • academic relationships; or

  • other circumstances that may affect objectivity.

Editors and reviewers must decline involvement in manuscripts where a significant conflict of interest may compromise impartial evaluation.

Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts, unpublished data, author information, reviewer identities, review reports, and editorial correspondence.

Information or ideas obtained through the peer-review process must not be disclosed, used for personal benefit, or used to obtain academic, professional, financial, or commercial advantage before publication.

Corrections, Retractions, and Clarifications

JMABS: Journal of Management, Accounting, and Business Studies is committed to maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

A correction or clarification may be issued when a published article contains an error that does not fundamentally invalidate the research.

Retraction may be considered when a published article contains serious problems such as:

  • plagiarism;

  • data fabrication or falsification;

  • serious methodological or analytical errors;

  • duplicate publication;

  • unethical research;

  • manipulation of research findings;

  • fraudulent authorship; or

  • other serious publication misconduct.

Where an investigation is incomplete but significant concerns exist, the journal may publish an Expression of Concern.

All correction, clarification, expression of concern, and retraction decisions will be handled as objectively, fairly, transparently, and consistently as possible.

Through this publication ethics policy, JMABS: Journal of Management, Accounting, and Business Studies is committed to maintaining scholarly integrity and promoting responsible research and publication practices in the fields of management, accounting, business, finance, entrepreneurship, and related disciplines.