JPPMI | PUBLICATION INTEGRITY
Ethical responsibilities and standards for authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher.
Jurnal Pengabdian dan Pengembangan Masyarakat Indonesia (JPPMI) is committed to maintaining integrity, transparency, accountability, fairness, and respect throughout the scholarly publication process.
This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and the publisher. It also recognizes the ethical responsibilities associated with community engagement and the protection of community participants.
JPPMI follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices and considers relevant institutional, national, professional, and research-ethics standards when evaluating manuscripts and responding to publication concerns.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that:
Editors are responsible for:
Peer reviewers must:
Submitted manuscripts must represent original scholarly work. Plagiarism, unattributed copying, misleading paraphrasing, duplicate publication, redundant publication, and inappropriate reuse of previously published material are unacceptable.
In community engagement publishing, the fragmentation of one program into multiple manuscripts with minimal substantive differences may constitute redundant publication.
JPPMI may use text-similarity detection software during editorial screening. Similarity reports are interpreted contextually rather than solely through a numerical percentage. Properly attributed quotations, references, standard methodological language, and legitimate textual overlap are considered during assessment.
Fabrication, falsification, selective omission, misleading presentation, inappropriate image manipulation, invention of participants, falsification of ethical documentation, and unsupported claims of program effectiveness constitute serious breaches of publication integrity.
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception or design of the program, its implementation or data acquisition, analysis or interpretation, manuscript preparation, and approval of the submitted version, according to the journal's authorship criteria.
Guest, honorary, gift, purchased, and ghost authorship are prohibited. Holding an administrative position, providing funding, offering general supervision, or participating in a community activity does not automatically justify authorship.
Contributions that do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately. Author contributions must be described transparently using suitable contributor roles.
Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose relationships that could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, the work or its evaluation.
Potential conflicts may involve financial, employment, institutional, supervisory, personal, academic, ideological, or commercial relationships.
Authors must identify sources of financial and material support and disclose the funder's role, if any, in program design, implementation, evaluation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.
JPPMI recognizes that community engagement activities differ in their purpose, procedures, and level of risk. Not every community service activity constitutes human-participant research or automatically requires formal research ethics committee approval.
Routine education, mentoring, training, technical assistance, and low-risk community service may not require formal research ethics review when the activities do not constitute human-participant research and applicable institutional rules do not require approval.
Nevertheless, describing an activity as community service does not automatically exempt it from ethical oversight. Formal ethics approval or an authorized exemption determination may be required when activities include systematic human data collection, research-oriented analysis, health interventions, sensitive personal information, clinical measurements, biological specimen collection, prospective participant assignment, or participation by vulnerable populations.
| Activity Category | Examples | Expected Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| Routine low-risk community service | General education, mentoring, technical training, or non-sensitive assistance. | Community permission, voluntary participation, privacy safeguards, and consent for identifiable publication. |
| Program evaluation involving human data | Pre-test and post-test, interviews, surveys, behavioral assessment, or scholarly analysis. | Ethics approval or an authorized formal exemption/determination where required. |
| Higher-risk or sensitive activities | Clinical procedures, health interventions, sensitive information, vulnerable participants, or identifiable health records. | Prospective ethics review and informed consent according to the applicable requirements. |
Important: When institutional or regulatory rules require ethics committee review or an exemption determination, authors must follow those rules. A self-declared exemption must not replace a required institutional decision.
In earlier publication periods, JPPMI did not routinely require formal ethics committee approval documentation for conventional low-risk community engagement manuscripts. Such activities were generally distinguished from research involving human participants.
Accordingly, the absence of an ethics approval number in an article published under the earlier policy does not, by itself, establish ethical misconduct. Earlier articles are assessed in relation to the applicable policy, institutional practices, nature of the activity, and information available at the time.
Effective Date: 1 September 2026
Updated ethical-oversight documentation requirements apply prospectively to manuscripts submitted on or after this date.
JPPMI does not automatically reassess all previously published articles solely because its documentation requirements have changed.
Credible concerns involving harm, consent, privacy, misrepresentation, or serious ethical misconduct may nevertheless justify investigation and appropriate corrective action, regardless of publication date.
Manuscripts submitted on or after 1 September 2026 must contain an ethics statement accurately reflecting the program's ethical review status.
Authors should select the appropriate form of declaration below and provide the necessary information.
Applicable when an authorized ethics committee approved the program or its evaluation.
"This program and its evaluation were approved by [name of ethics committee/institution] under approval number [number], dated [date]."
Applicable when an authorized institutional body formally determined that ethics committee review was not required.
"The responsible institutional body determined that this activity was exempt from formal ethics committee review because [brief reason]. The exemption was issued by [institution], reference number [number], dated [date]."
Applicable when formal ethics review was not required under the relevant institutional and regulatory rules.
"Formal research ethics committee review was not required because this activity constituted a routine, minimal-risk community service program and did not involve research-oriented participant assignment, sensitive personal data, clinical procedures, or biological specimen collection."
Ethics approval should normally be obtained before the relevant activity or data collection begins. Approval issued after completion must not be represented as prospective approval.
Where appropriate, an institutional letter issued retrospectively may clarify whether formal review was required. Its timing, purpose, and status must be disclosed transparently.
Authors must respect the dignity, autonomy, privacy, and safety of community participants.
Generative artificial intelligence systems cannot be listed as authors. Human authors remain fully responsible for manuscript originality, factual accuracy, citations, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions.
Permitted use of generative AI must be disclosed transparently in accordance with the journal's policy.
AI must not be used to fabricate data, community participants, quotations, references, images, ethics approval documents, consent records, or program outcomes.
Editors and reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts or review materials to external AI systems that cannot provide appropriate confidentiality and data protection.
Allegations of publication misconduct are evaluated objectively, confidentially, and without an automatic presumption of wrongdoing.
Depending on the concern, JPPMI may:
JPPMI is committed to maintaining an accurate and reliable scholarly record.
Minor production errors may be corrected directly when they do not materially affect the interpretation of an article. Substantive errors are addressed through an appropriate published correction.
Retraction may be necessary when findings are unreliable, serious misconduct is established, or significant ethical violations invalidate the publication.
An expression of concern may be issued when substantial unresolved questions require readers' attention. Relevant notices are linked to the affected article and DOI record where applicable.
Editorial decisions are based on manuscript relevance, originality, scholarly quality, methodological transparency, ethical integrity, and contribution to community engagement and development.
Decisions must not be influenced by article processing charges, institutional affiliation, personal relationships, sponsorship, or commercial considerations.
Manuscripts submitted by editors or individuals affiliated with the publisher must be handled by an independent editor without a relevant conflict of interest.
Authors, reviewers, readers, community participants, and other interested parties may report concerns involving publication ethics, editorial conduct, participant protection, or the integrity of published articles to the journal's editorial office.
Reports should identify the relevant manuscript or article, describe the concern clearly, and provide supporting information where available.
JPPMI will consider credible concerns fairly and confidentially, following applicable editorial procedures and its complaints, correction, and retraction policies. Appropriate actions will depend on the evidence and circumstances of each case.
