Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The International Journal of Engineering, Science and Environment (IJESE) (e-ISSN 2839-5360), published by Engineering, Science and Environmental Research Publications, Alwar, Rajasthan, India, is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics, research integrity and transparency. IJESE follows the core practices and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) at every stage of the editorial and peer-review process.

IJESE is a diamond open access journal and charges no fees of any kind. All manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent experts, and all articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence, with authors retaining copyright.

Questions about this policy can be sent to editor@ijese.in.

Responsibilities of Authors

By submitting a manuscript to IJESE, authors confirm that:

The work is original, has not been published before, and is not under consideration by another journal.
The data, methods and results are reported accurately and honestly, and no data, images or references have been fabricated, falsified or manipulated.
All sources are properly cited, and every reference has been checked against the original publication.
Permission has been obtained for any third-party material, such as figures, tables, photographs or datasets.
All listed authors have approved the submission and agree to be listed.
Conflicts of interest, funding and any use of AI tools are fully disclosed, as described below.
Any significant error found after submission or publication will be reported promptly to the editor.

Authorship and Contributions

Authorship should be limited to those who made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the work, helped draft or revise it, approved the final version, and accept responsibility for it.
Each author's role is recorded using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) during submission.
Others who helped, such as technical staff or data providers, should be thanked in the Acknowledgements section rather than listed as authors.
Changes to the author list after submission require a written request, signed by all authors, explaining the reason. Gift, guest and ghost authorship are not acceptable.

Research Involving People, Animals and Field Data

Studies involving human participants, including surveys, interviews and focus groups, must have approval from an institutional ethics committee or equivalent body, or explain why approval was not required. Participants' informed consent must be obtained, and the manuscript must state this.
Personal data must be anonymised, and no participant should be identifiable from the published article.
Studies involving animals must follow institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of animals, with approval details stated in the manuscript.
Fieldwork, sampling and the use of public or government datasets must follow the relevant permits and data-use terms, which should be acknowledged.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors must declare any financial or personal relationship that could be seen to influence their work, or state "The authors declare no conflict of interest."
All sources of funding must be listed, including grant numbers, or the manuscript must state that the work received no specific funding.
These statements are placed before the References section.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to:

Provide objective, constructive and timely evaluations based on scientific merit.
Keep manuscripts confidential, and not use or share any part of them.
Decline to review, or tell the editor, if they have a conflict of interest, such as a close working relationship with the authors or a competing project.
Alert the editor to any suspected plagiarism, data problems, unverifiable references or other ethical concerns.
Not attempt to identify the authors, in keeping with double-blind review.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are expected to:

Make decisions solely on academic merit, originality, relevance to the journal's scope and the reviewers' reports, regardless of the authors' nationality, institution, gender, religion or beliefs.
Ensure a fair, rigorous and double-blind peer-review process.
Keep all manuscripts and reviewer identities confidential.
Declare and step aside from any manuscript in which they have a conflict of interest.
Investigate ethical concerns and take action in line with COPE guidance.

Submissions by the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members

Editor-in-Chief: To avoid conflicts of interest, IJESE does not consider manuscripts by the Editor-in-Chief or by authors from his institution.
Editorial Board members and reviewers: Their manuscripts are welcome and follow the same double-blind peer review as all other submissions. The author has no access to the manuscript's records in the editorial system and no role in selecting reviewers or making the decision.
Any editor or board member with a conflict of interest in a manuscript steps aside, and it is handled by an editor without a conflict.
Articles by Editorial Board members carry a note stating that the paper was handled independently of the author.

Plagiarism and Research Misconduct

IJESE has a zero-tolerance policy toward plagiarism, duplicate submission, data fabrication or falsification, fabricated references and other research misconduct.

Every submission is checked with similarity-detection software before peer review. An editor reads each similarity report; no percentage leads to automatic acceptance or rejection.

As a guide, manuscripts with overall similarity above 10%, or more than 5% from any single source, excluding properly quoted and cited material and the reference list, are returned to the authors or rejected.
Copying text, data, figures or ideas without attribution, and reusing substantial parts of the authors' own published work without citation (text recycling), are not acceptable.
References may be checked against Crossref, Google Scholar or the original source. Fabricated, inaccurate or unverifiable references are treated as misconduct.

Depending on its seriousness, misconduct may result in:

Rejection of the manuscript.
Correction, expression of concern or retraction of a published article.
Notification of the authors' institutions or funders.
A ban on future submissions from the authors involved.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Authors

AI tools, including large language models such as ChatGPT, cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work.
Authors must disclose any use of AI tools for writing, editing, data analysis, image generation or code, stating the tool, its version and how it was used, in a statement placed before the References section. Basic spelling and grammar checking does not need to be disclosed.
Authors are fully responsible for all content, including anything produced with AI assistance. Every reference must be checked against the original source.
AI-generated images and figures are not permitted, unless the use of AI is the subject of the research and is clearly described in the methods.

Reviewers and Editors

Manuscripts under review are confidential and must not be uploaded, in whole or in part, to any AI tool.
Reviewers must not use AI tools to write their reports and remain responsible for their content.

Data Availability

Every research article must include a Data Availability Statement before the References section, explaining where the data supporting the results can be found.
Authors are encouraged to deposit data and code in a public repository, such as Zenodo, Figshare, Mendeley Data or GitHub, and to cite it with a persistent identifier such as a DOI.
Public datasets, such as government monitoring or survey data, must be cited with their source and the version or date accessed.
Where data cannot be shared, for reasons of privacy, confidentiality, licensing or law, the statement must explain why and how access may be requested.
Example statements: "The data supporting this study are openly available in [repository] at [DOI]." / "The data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request." / "No new data were created in this study."
Editors and reviewers may ask to see the underlying data during review.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions

IJESE follows the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Published articles are never removed or altered without a record; every change is announced in a notice linked to the article.

Types of notice

Correction: for an honest error that affects part of the article but not its main findings. A corrected version is published as a new version, and earlier versions remain available in the article's version history.
Expression of concern: for serious concerns that are still being investigated, or where an investigation cannot reach a conclusion.
Retraction: where the findings are unreliable because of misconduct or major error, or in cases of plagiarism, fabricated data or references, duplicate publication, undisclosed conflicts of interest that affect the findings, or unethical research.

Procedure

Anyone may raise a concern about a published article by writing to editor@ijese.in.
The journal acknowledges the concern within 5 working days and makes an initial assessment.
The authors are given the evidence and asked to respond, normally within 30 days. Where appropriate, their institution is also informed.
The Editor-in-Chief decides the outcome with at least one Editorial Board member who has no conflict of interest. Where the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict, the decision is made by Editorial Board members without one.
The notice is published promptly, titled "Correction:", "Expression of Concern:" or "Retraction:", and states the reason and who initiated it.
A retracted article remains online, clearly marked "RETRACTED" on its page and its PDF, so the scholarly record stays complete.

Complaints and Appeals

IJESE handles complaints and appeals promptly, fairly and confidentially, following COPE guidance. There is no charge for raising a complaint or an appeal.

Complaints

Anyone may complain about the editorial process, a published article, an author, a reviewer or an editor. Email editor@ijese.in with the subject line "Complaint", giving the article title or manuscript ID, a description of the concern and any supporting evidence.

Complaints are acknowledged within 5 working days.
They are investigated by a member of the editorial team who is not involved in the matter.
We aim to respond in full within 30 days, or explain why more time is needed.
Complaints about the Editor-in-Chief are handled by Editorial Board members from other institutions.

Appeals against editorial decisions

Authors may appeal a rejection once per manuscript by emailing editor@ijese.in within 30 days of the decision, with the subject line "Appeal". The appeal must explain why the decision should be reconsidered and respond point by point to the reviewers' and editor's comments.

The appeal is assessed by an Editorial Board member who was not involved in the original decision, who may also obtain an additional independent review.
We aim to give a decision within 30 days. The outcome of an appeal is final.
The manuscript must not be submitted to another journal while the appeal is under consideration.

If a complainant is not satisfied once our process is complete, they may refer the matter to COPE (publicationethics.org).

Commitment to Ethical Publishing

Through these policies, IJESE aims to ensure that everything it publishes in engineering, science and environmental studies is original, trustworthy and openly available. This policy is reviewed regularly and was last updated on 27 October 2026.