Research Ethics

Integrity, Transparency, and Responsibility in Academic Scholarship

IJELS upholds the highest international standards of research and publication ethics. The journal's ethical framework is informed by the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Helsinki, and the broader norms governing responsible conduct of research as established by international academic and scientific communities. Compliance with these standards is a non-negotiable condition of publication in IJELS.

All authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to be familiar with and to observe these ethical principles throughout the research, submission, review, and publication process. IJELS takes a zero-tolerance approach to research misconduct in all its forms and will act decisively in cases where violations are confirmed.

Research involving human participants — including surveys, interviews, experimental studies, observational research, and the analysis of personal data — must have received prior ethical clearance from an appropriately constituted Institutional Review Board (IRB), Research Ethics Committee (REC), or an equivalent body. Authors must provide a clear statement within the manuscript confirming the name of the approving body and the approval reference number.

Participation must be voluntary, free from coercion, and based on the provision of adequate, comprehensible information about the nature and purpose of the study. Written informed consent must be obtained from all participants, or from legally authorised representatives where participants lack capacity. Where consent was obtained verbally (e.g., in sociolinguistic field research), the rationale and the mechanism by which consent was recorded must be described. The anonymity and confidentiality of participants must be preserved: personally identifying information must be removed or altered unless participants have provided explicit written consent to its disclosure.

Plagiarism — the presentation of another's ideas, data, text, or intellectual property as one's own, without proper attribution — constitutes a serious ethical violation and is grounds for immediate rejection or retraction. IJELS employs industry-standard plagiarism detection software to screen all submissions prior to review. Manuscripts exhibiting a similarity index above the journal's stated threshold, or containing evidence of unattributed reproduction, will be returned to the authors or rejected outright.

Self-plagiarism — the reuse of substantial portions of an author's own previously published work without disclosure and appropriate citation — is equally impermissible. Authors who draw on their prior publications in a new submission must clearly identify the earlier work and explain the distinct contribution of the new manuscript. Duplicate submission (submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously) is strictly prohibited and, if discovered, will result in rejection and notification to the editors of all journals concerned.

Authorship carries both credit and accountability. IJELS subscribes to the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) framework and the authorship criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), adapted appropriately for humanities and social science research. To qualify as an author, an individual must have: (a) made a substantial intellectual contribution to the conception, design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of the work; (b) participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript; and (c) approved the final version for submission and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Ghost authorship (the exclusion of genuine contributors from the author list) and gift or honorary authorship (the inclusion of individuals who have not met authorship criteria) are strictly prohibited. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the submitted manuscript and that no eligible contributors have been omitted. Changes to the authorship list after submission — including additions, deletions, or reordering — require written justification and must receive explicit approval from the editor.

The accuracy and integrity of research data are foundational to scholarly trust. Authors must report all data, methods, and results honestly and completely. Selective reporting — the omission of unfavourable or inconvenient findings — misrepresents the body of evidence and is considered a form of research misconduct. The fabrication of data (inventing results that were not obtained) and the falsification of data (manipulating or selectively removing data to alter findings) are serious violations that will result in rejection, retraction, and institutional notification.

Where research involves visual data such as photographs, micrographs, or figures, all images must accurately represent the original data. Inappropriate image manipulation — including the splicing, duplicating, or enhancing of images in ways that misrepresent the data — is prohibited. IJELS strongly encourages authors to include data availability statements in their manuscripts and, where appropriate, to deposit datasets in recognised open-access repositories, thereby facilitating reproducibility and scholarly scrutiny.

Full transparency regarding the sources and conditions of research funding is essential to the integrity of the scholarly record. All authors must disclose, within the manuscript, any financial support received for the research, including grants, fellowships, institutional support, and in-kind contributions from private or commercial entities. Authors must explicitly state whether funding bodies or sponsors had any role in study design, data collection or analysis, interpretation of findings, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Acknowledgements should identify all individuals who contributed meaningfully to the research but who do not meet the criteria for authorship — such as research assistants, statistical consultants, or language editors. The absence of external funding should be stated explicitly. IJELS reserves the right to request documentary evidence of funding declarations where queries arise.