Protection of community members and individuals involved in published programs
Jurnal Pengabdian dan Pengembangan Masyarakat Indonesia (JPPMI) is committed to protecting the dignity, autonomy, safety, privacy, and welfare of individuals and communities involved in community engagement, community empowerment, program evaluation, and related scholarly activities.
Authors must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international ethical standards. They are responsible for determining whether an an activity requires formal ethics committee review, institutional exemption, community permission, individual informed consent, or consent for publication.
Not every community engagement activity constitutes research involving human participants. Routine education, mentoring, training, technical assistance, or community service may not require formal ethics committee approval when the activity is minimal risk and is not designed as human-participant research.
However, the description of an activity as “community service” does not automatically exempt it from ethical review. Ethics approval or a formal exemption may be required when systematic information is collected from individuals and analyzed for scholarly publication.
| Category | Examples | Expected Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| Routine minimal-risk community service | General education, mentoring, technical training, public information sessions, or non-sensitive community assistance | Community permission, voluntary participation, privacy protection, and consent for identifiable publication |
| Community program evaluation | Pre-test and post-test, surveys, interviews, observations, behavioral assessments, or collection of personal data | Ethics approval or formal institutional exemption when required by the responsible institution |
| Health-related intervention | Clinical or biological measurement, nutrition intervention, health screening, mental health assessment, or collection of health records | Prospective ethics approval and documented informed consent |
| Vulnerable participants or sensitive information | Minors, persons with impaired decision-making capacity, stigmatized populations, economically dependent groups, or sensitive personal and social information | Prospective ethics review, appropriate consent or assent, and additional participant-protection measures |
When there is uncertainty about whether ethics committee review is required, authors should seek a determination from an authorized body at their institution. Authors should not independently declare an activity exempt when institutional or national rules require an independent determination. The journal may request supporting documentation during editorial assessment.
When ethics approval is required, it should normally be obtained before recruitment, intervention, or data collection begins. The manuscript must report the name of the approving institution or ethics committee, approval number, and approval date.
If an authorized institutional body determines that formal ethics review is not required, authors should report the basis for exemption and provide the institutional reference number when available. Approval by an ethics committee does not prevent editors from independently assessing whether participant protection and reporting are adequate.
“This program and its evaluation were approved by [name of ethics committee/institution] under approval number [number], dated [date].”
“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].”
“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.”
Informed consent is an ongoing process rather than only a signed form. Participants should receive information that is understandable, culturally appropriate, and sufficient to support a voluntary decision.
Participants should be informed about:
Written consent is preferred when personal, sensitive, health-related, or identifiable information is collected. Oral consent may be acceptable for certain minimal-risk activities when written consent is impractical, culturally inappropriate, or waived by an authorized ethics body.
When oral consent is used, the manuscript should explain why it was appropriate and how the consent process was documented. Consent procedures must follow the requirements of the responsible institution or ethics committee.
Consent to participate in a community program is not necessarily the same as consent to publish identifiable information. Authors must obtain additional consent for publication when an individual may be recognized from a photograph, video, quotation, case description, voice recording, personal history, or combination of contextual details.
| Type of Consent | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Consent for participation | Agreement to participate in an intervention, survey, interview, assessment, or evaluation activity |
| Consent for publication | Agreement to publish identifiable photographs, quotations, personal information, recordings, or case details |
Additional safeguards are required when programs involve individuals whose ability to provide voluntary consent may be limited by age, health condition, disability, institutional status, economic dependence, social marginalization, or power imbalance.
Authors should obtain appropriate permission from community partners, schools, healthcare facilities, local authorities, organizations, or other institutions where the program is implemented. Institutional or community permission demonstrates authorization to conduct the activity but does not replace individual informed consent when individual consent is ethically required.
Authors should collect only the personal information necessary to achieve the stated program and evaluation objectives. Privacy protection must be considered during collection, analysis, storage, sharing, and publication.
Information available on social media or digital platforms is not automatically free from ethical and privacy considerations. Authors should consider user expectations, platform conditions, identifiability, sensitivity, and potential harm.
Names, account identifiers, profile photographs, messages, screenshots, location data, and other identifiable content must be removed or published with appropriate consent.
Data sharing must be consistent with the consent provided by participants, ethics approval, institutional requirements, and applicable data-protection rules. Authors must not publicly share identifiable or sensitive data unless explicit permission and an appropriate ethical basis exist.
When data cannot be shared because of privacy, confidentiality, community agreements, or legal restrictions, the Data Availability Statement should explain the restriction without disclosing protected information.
“Written informed consent was obtained from all participants before participation in the program and its evaluation.”
“Written consent was obtained from the participants' parents or legal guardians, and age-appropriate assent was obtained from the participating children.”
“Consent for publication was obtained from all identifiable individuals appearing in the photographs. For minors, consent was obtained from a parent or legal guardian.”
“Participant data were de-identified before analysis and reporting. Identifiable data are not publicly available because of privacy and confidentiality restrictions.”
Data originally collected for routine community-service purposes may require ethics review or a formal exemption before being used for a new research-oriented analysis or scholarly publication. Authors should consult an authorized institutional body when the original consent did not clearly cover secondary analysis and publication.
A retrospective institutional determination may clarify whether review was required, but it must not be represented as prospective approval.
The documentation requirements in this policy apply prospectively to manuscripts submitted on or after 1 September 2026. Under the journal's earlier editorial approach, formal ethics committee documentation was not routinely requested for conventional, minimal-risk community service activities.
The absence of a published ethics approval number in an earlier article should not, by itself, be interpreted as evidence of misconduct. Earlier publications will not be automatically reassessed solely because the journal's documentation requirements have changed. Nevertheless, JPPMI may investigate a specific article when credible evidence indicates possible harm, absence of required consent, serious privacy concerns, or another substantial ethical problem.
Editors may request ethics approval letters, exemption documents, consent forms, institutional permission, data-management information, or other relevant documentation. Sensitive documents should be submitted confidentially and should not be published with personal identifiers.
A manuscript may be declined when required ethical oversight or consent was not obtained, when participant protection is inadequate, or when authors provide inaccurate or misleading ethical information. For published articles, the journal may issue a clarification, correction, expression of concern, or retraction, depending on the severity of the issue.
Authors remain responsible for complying with the ethical requirements applicable to their institution, location, participants, and type of activity. Acceptance by JPPMI does not replace institutional ethical responsibility or remove the authors' obligation to protect the rights and welfare of participating individuals and communities.
