Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
(These guidelines are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics-COPE’s Code of Conduct and its Guidance.)
Duties and Responsibilities of the Publisher
As a non-profit academic association, the Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS), and White Tiger Legal, Business and Research Consultants Co., Ltd. (WTLBRC), as a research service provider, are committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. Although we are not yet members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we adhere to COPE's Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines throughout our academic publishing processes.
ALPS recognizes its academic role and responsibilities, which include:
1. Promoting Knowledge Dissemination: Providing a platform for the publication of research findings and new academic knowledge that have undergone rigorous and appropriate research processes and have been impartially reviewed by experts, free from bias and unnecessary restrictions.
2. Developing Academic Publications: Considering the feasibility of publishing new academic publications with potential, developing publication plans, selecting and appointing editors, editorial board members, and qualified reviewers with expertise in relevant fields, and managing the editorial process, production, publication, and dissemination of publications to target audiences.
3. Providing Support and Education: Supporting editors, editorial board members, reviewers, and authors; and providing education and promoting understanding of research and publication ethics to protect academic freedom, promote ethical expression, and strive for academic excellence throughout the peer review process.
4. Maintaining Independence: Guaranteeing the independence of editors, editorial board members, and reviewers in their decision-making, free from any interference or pressure that may lead to deviation from the highest academic standards.
5. Continuously Improving Standards: Monitoring and evaluating best practices in academic publishing, particularly in research and publication ethics, to continuously improve and update ALPS's standards and operating procedures to be international and up-to-date.
6. Correcting Errors: Taking swift and transparent action to correct or clarify any errors that may occur in publications.
7. Handling Complaints: Investigating and addressing complaints regarding publication ethics fairly and effectively.
Duties and Responsibilities of Editors
The editor plays a crucial role in maintaining the academic standards and credibility of the Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS) academic journals, with the following duties and responsibilities:
1. Publication Decisions: The editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
2. Peer Review: The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Research articles must typically be reviewed by at least three external and independent reviewers, and where necessary, the editor should seek additional opinions. The editor shall select reviewers who have suitable expertise in the relevant field and shall follow best practice in avoiding the selection of fraudulent peer reviewers. The editor shall review all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions for self-citation made by reviewers in order to determine whether there is any potential for bias.
3. Fair Play: An editor at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
4. Confidentiality: The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.
6. Vigilance over the Published Record: The editor should work to safeguard the integrity of the published record by reviewing and assessing reported or suspected misconduct (research, publication, reviewer, and editorial), in conjunction with the publisher (or society).
7. Correcting Errors: When significant errors are identified in published articles, the editor must cooperate with the publisher and authors to correct the errors as quickly as possible. This may involve issuing a correction (erratum), retraction, or expression of concern.
8. Ensuring Data Accuracy: The editor should have processes in place to ensure the accuracy of data presented in articles, especially data that may impact public health, safety, or confidence.
Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers play a crucial role in evaluating the quality and accuracy of academic articles submitted to the Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS) academic journals, with the following duties and responsibilities:
1. Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions, and editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
2. Promptness: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
3. Confidentiality: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
4. Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
5. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
6. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
7. Providing Constructive Feedback: Reviewers should provide specific and constructive feedback to help authors improve the quality of their articles, such as suggesting ways to improve the analysis, interpretation, or presentation of results.
Duties and Responsibilities of Authors
Authors have a duty and responsibility to present quality research that adheres to academic ethical principles, so that the Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS) academic journal can publish knowledge that is useful and reliable. The duties and responsibilities of authors include:
1. Reporting Standards: Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
2. Data Access and Retention: Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review and should be prepared to provide public access if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
3. Originality and Plagiarism: The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
4. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication: An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
5. Acknowledgement of Sources: Proper acknowledgment of the work of others is paramount. Authors should adhere to the following principles:
• Accuracy: Verify the accuracy of all citations in the article, especially information derived from external sources.
• Completeness: Cite all relevant and influential works, including current and reliable literature, to support claims made in the article.
• Verifiability: Ensure that all cited sources can be verified through a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or other permanent identifier.
• Appropriateness: Avoid excessive and unnecessary self-citation and do not engage in agreements to cite each other's work without legitimate academic justification.
• Conciseness: Avoid excessive citations to support a single statement.
However, editors and reviewers may provide guidance to authors on exploring and citing additional resources during the manuscript review process. If there is a suggestion to cite the work of the editors, reviewers, or related individuals, it must be for explicit academic reasons only and not for personal gain to increase the citation count.
6. Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
7. Safety and Ethics in the Use of Experimental Animals and Humans: If the work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that may cause danger, the authors must clearly specify those details in the manuscript. If the research involves the use of experimental animals or humans, the authors must certify that the manuscript contains a statement indicating that all of the processes complied with the relevant laws and guidelines of the related institutions and were approved by the proper committee(s). The authors must state in the manuscript that informed consent was received from the human subjects in the case of using humans as test groups. The personal rights of the research participants must always be respected. For research involving humans, the authors must certify that the research adheres to the principles of The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. All animal experiments should comply with the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines. Appropriate consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in an ALPS publication. Written consents must be retained by the author, and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to ALPS on request.
8. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
9. Fundamental Errors in Published Works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
10. Image Integrity: It is not acceptable to enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce a specific feature within an image. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Manipulating images for improved clarity is accepted, but manipulation for other purposes could be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. Authors should comply with any specific policy for graphical images applied by the relevant journal, e.g., providing the original images as supplementary material with the article or depositing these in a suitable repository.
11. Clinical Trial Transparency: ALPS supports clinical trial transparency. For relevant journals, authors are expected to conform to industry-best standards in clinical trial registration and presentation, for example, the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines, as further set out in the policies of the relevant journal.
Guidelines for Protection of Human and Animal Research Subjects
The Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS) academic journal places the highest priority on protecting the rights and welfare of research subjects. Therefore, all authors and researchers must adhere to the following guidelines:
1. Protection of Human Subjects: Research involving human subjects must be performed according to the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki. All original articles must state the approval number of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), related method sections, and full name of the institutional review committee. In the case of individual cases or case series, informed consent for patient information or images must be clearly stated in the informed consent obtained from the patient or legally authorized representative.
2. Care and Use of Animals: All research related to animals must be approved by an ethics committee where the studies were carried out. All animal experiments should comply with the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines, and appropriate consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained. The editorial board reserves the right to reject manuscripts involving needless pain, distress, suffering, or lasting harm to animals, based on related ethics or animal welfare principles.
3. Clinical Trial Registration and Reporting: From 2019, all clinical trials involving assigning a health-related intervention to human subjects submitted to the journal must be registered with one of the primary registers in the WHO Registry Network or in ClinicalTrials.gov before the first patient enrollment. The registration must contain complete information on the minimum 20-item trial registration dataset. Clinical trials should follow the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines.
AI Tools and Authorship
ALPS Position Statement
Association of Legal & Political Studies (ALPS) joins organisations, such as Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network among others, to state that AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper.
AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.
Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Research Methodology (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
Generative AI Usage Key Principles
• Copywriting: Copywriting any part of an article using a generative AI tool/LLM would not be permissible, including the generation of the abstract or the literature review, for as per the journal’s authorship criteria, the author(s) must be responsible for the work and accountable for its accuracy, integrity, and validity.
• Illustrative Purposes: In line with standard academic practice, however, the journal permits the use of examples of generative AI for illustrative purposes as part of scholarly critique and discussion, with the exception of images created by AI tools or large-scale generative models; these examples must be appropriately flagged in the text and be fully cited and referenced in accordance with formatting requirements.
• Generation or Reporting of Results: The generation or reporting of results using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permissible, for as per the journal’s authorship criteria, the author(s) must be responsible for the creation and interpretation of their work and accountable for its accuracy, integrity, and validity.
• Reporting of Statistics: The in-text reporting of statistics using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permissible due to concerns over the authenticity, integrity, and validity of the data produced, although the use of such a tool to aid in the analysis of the work would be permissible.
• Copy-editing: Copy-editing an article using a generative AI tool/LLM in order to improve its language and readability would be permissible as this mirrors standard tools already employed to improve spelling and grammar and uses existing author-created material, rather than generating wholly new content, while the author(s) remains responsible for the original work.
• Images: The submission and publication of images created by AI tools or large-scale generative models is not permitted.
References
- Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) Guidelines.
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
- COPE's Position on Authorship and AI Tools.
- CONSORT Standards for Randomized Trials.
- Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network.
- World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
- World Medical Association (WMA) Helsinki Declaration for Medical Research in Human Subject.
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