The International Center for Promoting Knowledge (ICPK) publishes this publication ethics policy as the umbrella standard for all its journals. It explains the duties shared by authors, reviewers, editors, editorial boards, and the publisher, and connects the detailed policies governing particular ethical questions.

ICPK follows widely used principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing as a matter of practice. ICPK is not a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This distinction applies wherever ICPK describes its approach to scholarly publishing ethics.

ICPK provides publishing infrastructure, policy, and administrative support. It does not review manuscripts and does not participate in decisions to accept or reject them. Editorial authority rests with each journal's Editor-in-Chief and editorial board. Each journal applies this policy alongside its own publicly available peer review process, author guidance, editorial board information, and other journal-level requirements.

1. Scope and ethical framework

This policy applies before submission, during editorial assessment and peer review, at publication, and after publication. It supports fair decisions, responsible research communication, appropriate attribution, transparent disclosure, and correction of the record when necessary.

The policy should be read with ICPK's related publisher policies:

• Authorship & Contributorship
• Research Integrity & Misconduct
• Research Data & Ethics Approval
• AI Use Policy
• Corrections & Retractions
• Complaints & Appeals
• Editorial Independence

Those policies provide detailed procedures for their respective subjects. This page establishes the common ethical duties that connect them. Journal-specific matters — including aims and scope, peer review, author instructions, charges, copyright and licence terms, and indexing status — remain on the relevant journal's pages.

2. Responsibilities of authors

Authors are accountable for the integrity, accuracy, and ethical presentation of the work they submit. Every listed author must understand the submission and accept responsibility appropriate to their contribution, as further explained in the Authorship & Contributorship Policy.

Originality and accurate presentation

Authors must submit original work and must represent their methods, evidence, analysis, and conclusions honestly. Material taken from another source must be clearly identified and cited. Quotation, paraphrase, data, images, ideas, methods, and other attributable material must not be presented as the authors' own.

ICPK journals use Turnitin, additional third-party similarity tools, and comparisons against ICPK's archive of published and submitted manuscripts as part of similarity and plagiarism screening. A similarity result is an indicator requiring informed evaluation; it is not, by itself, a final finding of misconduct. Suspected fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other serious departures from research integrity are handled under the Research Integrity & Misconduct Policy.

Duplicate and concurrent submission

A manuscript must not be under consideration by more than one journal at the same time. Authors must not submit substantially the same work concurrently elsewhere or attempt to obtain multiple publications of the same work without transparent justification and disclosure.

Authors must disclose closely related manuscripts, conference papers, preprints, reports, datasets, or prior publications when they are relevant to evaluating the originality or status of the submission. Prior dissemination does not automatically make a work ineligible, but concealment prevents editors from making an informed decision. Authors should explain the relationship and provide the relevant material when requested.

Citation and acknowledgement

Citations must be relevant, accurate, and used to acknowledge the intellectual and evidential foundations of the work. Authors must not omit sources to disguise dependence on earlier work, add citations solely to manipulate citation patterns, or cite material they have not used in a way that misrepresents its relevance. Contributions that do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately and with any necessary permission.

Research participants, data, and approvals

Authors are responsible for obtaining and reporting any ethics approval, consent, permission, or lawful basis required for their research. They must protect participants and confidential information and must describe the availability and limits of supporting data accurately. Detailed expectations are set out in the Research Data & Ethics Approval Policy.

Disclosure and cooperation

Authors must provide complete conflict of interest disclosures and identify relevant financial, professional, and personal relationships. They must also disclose applicable uses of artificial intelligence in accordance with the AI Use Policy.

If an ethical question arises, authors must respond honestly and promptly, retain and provide relevant records where reasonably required, and cooperate with the journal's assessment. Authors remain responsible for notifying the journal if they discover a material error in a submitted or published work. Post-publication action is governed by the Corrections & Retractions Policy.

3. Responsibilities of reviewers

Peer reviewers act as confidential scholarly advisers to the journal. Their role is to assess a manuscript on its scholarly merit and to provide a reasoned report that assists the editor's independent decision.

Competence, care, and objectivity

A reviewer should accept an invitation only when able to assess the relevant subject matter with sufficient competence and within the requested period. A reviewer who lacks the necessary expertise, cannot provide a sufficiently careful assessment, or cannot complete the work responsibly should decline promptly.

Reports should address the quality, validity, clarity, relevance, and support for the manuscript's claims. Criticism must concern the work rather than the identity or characteristics of its authors. Reviewers should explain significant concerns and, where useful, identify relevant sources, but must not use the review process to pressure authors into unnecessary citations.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts, associated files, correspondence, and review assignments must be treated as confidential. Reviewers must not share them, discuss them with unauthorized persons, or involve another person in preparing a report without prior editorial permission. Confidentiality continues after the review has concluded.

Unpublished ideas, data, methods, arguments, or other material learned through review must not be used for a reviewer's own research, publication, commercial activity, personal advantage, or the disadvantage of another person. Reviewers must not attempt to identify, contact, or influence authors outside the journal's process.

Conflicts and inability to review

A reviewer must promptly disclose any relationship or circumstance that could reasonably affect — or appear to affect — an impartial assessment. Where the conflict cannot be managed appropriately, the reviewer should decline or withdraw. Reviewers should also alert the editor to suspected overlap, unattributed material, or significant ethical concerns without conducting an independent investigation or contacting the authors.

Reviewer and editor coordination occurs by email. ICPK does not operate an online reviewer dashboard, reviewer login, or automated review-round tracking system.

4. Responsibilities of editors and editorial boards

The Editor-in-Chief and editorial board of each journal hold responsibility for editorial assessment and publication decisions. ICPK, as publisher, supports this authority through infrastructure, policy, and administration but does not direct manuscript decisions.

Fair and independent decisions

Editors must evaluate submissions on scholarly quality, methodological and ethical soundness, relevance to the journal, and contribution within its aims and scope. Decisions must not be influenced by an author's nationality, institutional affiliation, seniority, status, or ability to pay.

Payment, waiver, and funding information must remain separate from editorial assessment. Editors are not informed of an author's payment, waiver, or funding status while assessing a manuscript. A charge, where a journal has one, becomes relevant only after acceptance under the journal's published terms.

Editorial decisions must also remain free from advertising, sponsorship, or paid-placement influence. ICPK carries no advertising, sponsored content, or paid placement. The principles protecting decision-making are explained further in the Editorial Independence Policy.

Confidentiality and appropriate handling

Editors must protect submitted material and related correspondence. Information obtained through editorial work must be used only for legitimate assessment, review, integrity, and publication purposes. Unpublished material must not be appropriated for personal, scholarly, or commercial use.

Editors should select reviewers on the basis of relevant expertise and the ability to provide a fair assessment. They should consider disclosed conflicts, protect review confidentiality, evaluate reports critically, and avoid treating a reviewer's recommendation as a substitute for editorial judgment.

Recusal and accountability

An editor who has a financial, professional, or personal conflict must disclose it and recuse themselves when impartial handling cannot reasonably be assured. The manuscript should then be assigned to another suitable editorial decision-maker.

Editors must respond consistently to credible ethical concerns, whether raised before or after publication. They should preserve relevant records, seek information from the appropriate parties, avoid premature conclusions, and give affected persons a fair opportunity to respond. Allegations of misconduct must follow the Research Integrity & Misconduct Policy; changes to published content must follow the Corrections & Retractions Policy.

5. Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest is any financial, professional, or personal relationship or circumstance that could influence — or could reasonably be perceived to influence — a person's judgment in the submission, review, editorial, or publication process.

Conflicts may include financial interests or funding relationships; employment, supervisory, competitive, collaborative, or institutional relationships; or close personal relationships, disputes, and other circumstances affecting impartiality. The existence of a relationship does not necessarily mean that a person has acted improperly.

Disclosure does not automatically disqualify an author, reviewer, or editor. Concealment is the central problem because it prevents informed assessment and appropriate management. Disclosures should be made early, clearly, and completely, and updated if circumstances change.

Editors determine how a disclosed conflict should be managed in the context of a manuscript. Appropriate action may include recording the disclosure, publishing a relevant statement, selecting a different reviewer, transferring editorial responsibility, or requiring recusal. When an editor is conflicted, that editor must not decide how their own conflict is managed.

Authors must disclose relevant interests in the manner required by the journal. Reviewers must disclose conflicts when invited and whenever a new issue becomes apparent. Editors and editorial board members must disclose conflicts connected to manuscripts they handle and must not use their position to obtain preferential treatment.

6. Raising an ethical concern

Anyone may raise a good-faith concern about a submission, review, editorial action, or published article. The report should identify the journal and work involved, explain the concern clearly, and include any relevant supporting information that can lawfully and appropriately be shared.

Concerns may be sent to the dedicated complaints and appeals address: complaints@theicpk.org. General enquiries may be sent to info@theicpk.org; enquiries concerning the International Journal of Social Policy and Education may be sent to editor@ijspe.com.

The concern will be acknowledged and directed to the appropriate journal or publisher process. Its classification determines what happens next: integrity allegations follow the Research Integrity & Misconduct Policy, requests to amend the published record follow the Corrections & Retractions Policy, and procedural complaints or appeals follow the Complaints & Appeals Policy. Those policies describe the applicable assessment, response, and outcome process without duplicating it here.

ICPK and its journals will consider concerns on their substance. A good-faith report does not establish wrongdoing, and no conclusion should be drawn before the relevant information has been assessed and affected parties have had an appropriate opportunity to respond.