Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

1. Ethical Principles

Albuchuts: Journal of Arabic Literary Studies is committed to maintaining integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, and scholarly independence throughout the publication process.

This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement applies to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher.

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly quality, originality, methodological and theoretical soundness, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, and contribution to Arabic literary studies. Commercial considerations, institutional relationships, personal interests, or other inappropriate influences must not determine editorial decisions.

2. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently by the editorial team.

The publisher supports the operation of the journal but does not interfere with decisions concerning the acceptance or rejection of individual manuscripts.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the editorial process and ensuring that manuscripts are evaluated in accordance with the journal's policies and scholarly standards.

Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have a competing interest.

A manuscript submitted by an editor, editorial board member, close colleague, family member, or other person whose relationship may create a competing interest must be handled independently by another qualified editor.

3. Fairness and Non-Discrimination

Editors evaluate manuscripts on the basis of their scholarly content, quality, originality, and relevance to the journal.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author's race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, political views, or other personal characteristics unrelated to the scholarly merit of the manuscript.

4. Peer Review

Albuchuts applies a double-blind peer-review system.

Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise relevant to the subject of the submission.

The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.

Editors are responsible for selecting reviewers who:

• possess appropriate scholarly expertise;
• can provide an independent and objective assessment;
• do not have significant competing interests;
• are able to complete the review within a reasonable period.

Additional reviewers may be invited when the initial reviews substantially disagree, specialized expertise is required, or the editor considers an additional assessment necessary.

The final editorial decision remains the responsibility of the editor and is not determined automatically by reviewer recommendations.

5. Duties of Editors

Editors are responsible for:

• evaluating manuscripts fairly and independently;
• ensuring that the peer-review process is appropriate and timely;
• selecting reviewers on the basis of relevant expertise;
• protecting the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts;
• identifying and managing competing interests;
• preventing inappropriate citation practices;
• investigating credible concerns regarding research or publication integrity;
• safeguarding the integrity of the published scholarly record;
• arranging corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, or other appropriate measures when necessary.

Editors must not use unpublished information obtained through submitted manuscripts for personal research, professional advantage, or any other purpose without appropriate permission.

6. Editorial Competing Interests

Editors must disclose financial, professional, institutional, academic, or personal relationships that could reasonably be perceived as affecting their judgment.

An editor must not participate in the editorial decision for a manuscript:

• authored or co-authored by the editor;
• authored by a close family member or personal associate;
• originating from a relationship that may reasonably compromise editorial independence;
• concerning a matter in which the editor has a direct financial or professional interest.

Such manuscripts must be assigned to another editor who is independent of the authors and the research.

7. Duties of Reviewers

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and may assist authors in improving their manuscripts.

Reviewers are expected to:

• assess manuscripts objectively and constructively;
• base comments on scholarly considerations;
• provide clear reasons for major criticisms or recommendations;
• complete reviews within the agreed period;
• decline a review when they lack appropriate expertise or cannot complete it in a timely manner;
• identify relevant scholarship that may have been overlooked where this is academically significant;
• alert the editor to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, or other possible misconduct;
• declare potential competing interests before accepting a review assignment.

Personal criticism, hostile language, discriminatory comments, or unsupported accusations are unacceptable.

8. Reviewer Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents.

Reviewers must not:

• distribute or reproduce a manuscript without authorization;
• discuss its content with unauthorized persons;
• use unpublished data, interpretations, arguments, translations, or ideas for personal benefit;
• disclose confidential information concerning the manuscript or review process.

The obligation of confidentiality continues after the review has been completed.

9. Reviewer Competing Interests

Reviewers should decline an invitation when a relationship with an author, institution, research project, or subject matter may reasonably affect their impartiality.

Potential competing interests may include recent collaboration, employment at the same institution, close personal relationships, direct academic competition, supervisory relationships, or financial interests.

Where a reviewer is uncertain whether a relationship constitutes a competing interest, the reviewer should inform the editor before accepting the assignment.

10. Citation Ethics in Peer Review

Reviewers and editors may recommend additional literature when it is genuinely relevant to the manuscript.

They must not request citations primarily for the purpose of increasing:

• their own citation counts;
• citations to their associates;
• citations to a particular journal;
• institutional citation metrics.

All suggested citations should have a clear scholarly justification.

11. Duties of Authors

Authors are responsible for the integrity of their submitted work.

Authors must:

• present original research and analysis accurately;
• provide an honest account of methods, evidence, interpretations, and findings;
• distinguish their own ideas from material originating from other sources;
• cite and acknowledge sources appropriately;
• disclose relevant limitations;
• retain research materials or documentation where necessary for verification;
• respond appropriately to legitimate questions concerning the accuracy or integrity of the work;
• comply with applicable research ethics requirements.

Authors remain responsible for all content included in their manuscripts.

12. Originality and Plagiarism

Manuscripts must represent original scholarly work.

Plagiarism includes the use of another person's words, arguments, interpretations, ideas, data, translations, images, or other intellectual material without appropriate acknowledgement.

Inappropriate paraphrasing, unattributed translation, and the reproduction of material without proper citation are also considered violations of publication ethics.

All submissions to Albuchuts are subject to similarity screening.

The journal applies the following screening thresholds:

• maximum overall similarity: 20%;
• maximum similarity from any individual source: 2%.

These percentages are indicators rather than automatic measures of plagiarism. Editors also evaluate the location, nature, extent, and context of detected similarities.

13. Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal.

A manuscript that has already been published in substantially the same form should not be submitted as an original publication.

Substantial duplication of previously published text, data, arguments, translations, or analysis must be disclosed and appropriately cited.

Material developed from a thesis, dissertation, conference paper, research report, or similar academic work may be considered when:

• the journal article represents a substantial scholarly development of the earlier work;
• previous dissemination is disclosed where appropriate;
• copyright and licensing obligations are respected.

14. Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication or falsification of research materials is prohibited.

This includes:

• inventing data, sources, manuscripts, participants, interviews, observations, or results;
• altering evidence so that it no longer accurately represents the research;
• selectively manipulating evidence with the intention of misleading readers;
• presenting fictional, unverifiable, or fabricated citations as genuine sources.

Authors must be able to provide supporting information when legitimate questions concerning the integrity of the research arise.

15. Authorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the research and manuscript.

All listed authors must:

• have contributed meaningfully to the work;
• approve the final manuscript;
• agree to its submission;
• accept responsibility for their contribution.

Individuals whose contributions do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, ghost authorship, and deliberate exclusion of eligible contributors are unacceptable.

Where appropriate, Albuchuts encourages the use of the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy to describe individual contributions.

16. Changes in Authorship

The list and order of authors should be agreed upon before submission.

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be accompanied by:

• a clear explanation;
• agreement from all authors;
• consent from any individual being added or removed.

Changes after acceptance will be considered only in exceptional circumstances and must not be used to conceal disputes or inappropriate authorship practices.

17. Acknowledgement of Sources and Use of Literary Materials

Authors must cite relevant sources accurately and fairly.

Citation practices must reflect the intellectual and textual basis of the research.

Authors working with literary texts, archival documents, manuscripts, translations, illustrations, photographs, or other copyrighted material must clearly identify their sources and comply with applicable copyright, licensing, and permission requirements.

Where authors provide their own translations of quotations, this should be made clear when relevant. Published translations should be properly cited.

Authors should avoid:

• irrelevant citations;
• excessive self-citation;
• citation exchanges or coordinated citation arrangements;
• citations added solely to manipulate citation metrics;
• references to sources that have not been read or reasonably verified.

Where a DOI is available, authors are encouraged to include it in the reference list.

18. Competing Interests

Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose interests that may reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.

Competing interests may be:

• financial;
• professional;
• institutional;
• academic;
• personal.

Authors must declare relevant competing interests when submitting a manuscript.

Where no competing interest exists, an appropriate statement may be provided.

Funding sources and, where relevant, the role of funders in the research must also be disclosed.

19. Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving people, including interviews, questionnaires, ethnographic observation, educational research, oral histories, personal data, recordings, or identifiable materials, must comply with applicable ethical and institutional requirements.

Where formal ethics approval is required, authors should state:

• the name of the approving institution or committee;
• relevant approval or reference information.

Where research has been formally exempted from ethical review, authors should explain the basis for the exemption where appropriate.

Informed consent must be obtained where applicable.

The privacy, dignity, safety, and confidentiality of research participants must be respected.

Special care should be taken when research involves children or other participants requiring additional protection.

20. Privacy and Identifiable Information

Authors must avoid publishing identifiable personal information unless its inclusion is necessary for the scholarly purpose of the article and appropriate permission has been obtained.

Names, photographs, recordings, screenshots, private correspondence, unpublished archives, or other materials capable of identifying individuals must be handled carefully.

Anonymization or pseudonymization should be used where appropriate.

21. Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies

Albuchuts permits the responsible use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies as supporting tools.

Authors remain responsible for:

• verifying the accuracy of AI-assisted output;
• checking facts, quotations, citations, and references;
• correcting incomplete, misleading, biased, or fabricated information;
• ensuring that the manuscript represents the authors' own scholarly contribution;
• protecting confidential, personal, unpublished, and copyrighted material.

AI systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Substantive use of generative AI during manuscript preparation must be disclosed transparently. Routine spelling, grammar, or punctuation checking does not require disclosure.

Where AI forms part of the research method, its use must be described sufficiently in the Method section or other appropriate part of the manuscript.

AI must not be used to fabricate or improperly alter research data, textual evidence, references, translations, quotations, or findings.

Further provisions are set out in the journal's Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies Policy.

22. Use of AI by Reviewers and Editors

Editors and reviewers must protect the confidentiality of unpublished manuscripts.

Submitted manuscripts, review reports, author information, or confidential editorial materials must not be uploaded to external generative AI systems where doing so could expose confidential information, intellectual property, personal data, or unpublished research.

AI may not replace the independent scholarly judgment of an editor or reviewer.

Where an AI-assisted tool is used in a permitted supporting capacity, human oversight and responsibility remain mandatory.

23. Integrity of Research Materials, Texts, Images, and Data

Texts, manuscripts, archival materials, images, figures, tables, transcripts, datasets, translations, and other research materials must accurately represent the evidence on which the study is based.

Authors must not manipulate textual, visual, archival, or other evidence in a manner that changes its scholarly meaning or misleads readers.

Quotations, textual variants, translations, transcriptions, and references to primary sources must be presented accurately.

Adjustments made solely to improve presentation may be acceptable when they do not obscure, remove, distort, or introduce relevant information.

24. Fundamental Errors in Published Work

Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a published article must inform the journal promptly.

Authors are expected to cooperate with the editors in determining whether a correction, retraction, or other amendment to the scholarly record is necessary.

Failure to cooperate with a legitimate investigation may raise additional concerns about research integrity.

25. Allegations of Research or Publication Misconduct

Albuchuts takes credible allegations of misconduct seriously.

Concerns may include:

• plagiarism;
• fabrication or falsification;
• inappropriate authorship;
• undisclosed competing interests;
• duplicate publication;
• citation manipulation;
• peer-review manipulation;
• falsified identities;
• unethical research practices;
• inappropriate use of generative AI;
• misrepresentation of primary or archival sources;
• other conduct that compromises the integrity of the scholarly record.

The journal will assess allegations fairly, impartially, and confidentially.

Where appropriate, the person concerned will be informed of the relevant allegation and given a reasonable opportunity to respond and provide supporting information before a conclusion is reached.

The journal may seek additional information from reviewers, institutions, research bodies, or other relevant parties when necessary.

An allegation alone will not be treated as proof of misconduct.

26. Corrections

A correction may be published when an otherwise reliable article contains an error that requires amendment but does not invalidate its central findings or scholarly contribution.

A correction should:

• identify the original article;
• explain the material being corrected;
• be permanently linked to the published article where technically possible.

Minor typographical or formatting errors that do not affect scholarly meaning may not require a formal correction.

27. Retractions

Retraction may be considered when reliable evidence indicates that:

• findings are seriously unreliable;
• data, textual evidence, or research materials have been fabricated or falsified;
• substantial plagiarism has occurred;
• the work has been published improperly elsewhere;
• authorship has been seriously misrepresented;
• unethical research has occurred;
• another serious breach makes continued reliance on the article inappropriate.

Retraction is intended to protect the integrity of the scholarly record rather than to punish authors.

Where an article is retracted, Albuchuts will seek to preserve the bibliographic record and clearly indicate its retracted status.

28. Article Removal

Complete removal of published content will be considered only in exceptional circumstances, such as when continued availability creates serious legal, privacy, safety, or other significant harm that cannot be addressed adequately through correction or retraction.

The journal seeks to preserve the scholarly record whenever possible.

29. Expressions of Concern

An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious questions have been raised about an article but:

• an investigation remains incomplete;
• available evidence is inconclusive;
• an institutional investigation is pending;
• a definitive editorial action cannot yet be taken.

The notice may later be replaced or supplemented by a correction, retraction, or other appropriate action.

30. Complaints and Appeals

Authors and other stakeholders may raise complaints regarding:

• editorial procedures;
• peer review;
• ethical concerns;
• published content;
• other matters related to journal management.

Authors may also appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant scholarly or procedural error occurred in the evaluation of the manuscript or application of journal policy.

An appeal should explain the grounds for reconsideration and provide relevant scholarly or procedural information.

Appeals will be considered independently and do not guarantee reversal of the original decision.

Personal disagreement with reviewer comments, without substantive scholarly or procedural grounds, is not sufficient in itself to justify an appeal.

Further procedures are set out in the journal's Complaints and Appeals Policy.

31. Confidentiality of Ethical Investigations

Ethical concerns and allegations of misconduct will be handled as confidentially as reasonably possible.

Information will be shared only with individuals or institutions whose involvement is necessary for assessment, investigation, or resolution.

The journal will avoid public accusations before the available evidence has been adequately assessed.

32. Protection of the Scholarly Record

Albuchuts regards the published literature as a permanent scholarly record.

Post-publication changes that affect scholarly meaning will therefore be made transparently through appropriate notices rather than through silent alteration of published articles.

Corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, and other post-publication actions will be linked to the original article whenever technically possible.

33. Duties of the Publisher

The Arabic Literature Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sebelas Maret, as publisher of Albuchuts, supports the journal by:

• providing institutional and publication infrastructure;
• supporting open access publication;
• safeguarding editorial independence;
• assisting in maintaining publication continuity;
• supporting appropriate responses to ethical and legal concerns;
• protecting the integrity and accessibility of the published scholarly record.

The publisher does not determine manuscript acceptance on the basis of financial considerations.

Albuchuts does not charge submission fees, article processing charges, or publication fees.

34. Ethical Policy Review

Publication ethics continue to develop alongside changes in scholarly communication, research practices, technology, and legal and institutional requirements.

Albuchuts may revise this policy when necessary to maintain responsible and transparent publishing practices. Material changes will be reflected on the journal website.