PUBLICATION ETHICS

A. Introduction

The publication ethics statement of Reswara Jurnal Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat outlines the ethical standards and behavior expected of all parties involved in publishing articles in this community service journal, namely: Authors, the Editor-in-Chief & Editorial Board, Peer Reviewers, and the Publisher. This policy is prepared in accordance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing established by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and the regulations of the Directorate General of Science and Technology, Kemdiktisaintek.

B. Specific Ethics in Community Engagement (Engagement Ethics)

As a community service journal, we enforce the following additional socio-humanitarian ethical standards :
  1. Informed Consent: Authors must ensure that all community members, MSME partners, students, or other target groups have voluntarily consented to participate in the program, be interviewed, and be documented in photos/videos [hlm. 45-46].
  2. Beneficence and Non-Exploitation: Community engagement programs must be designed to generate tangible positive impacts for the target partners. Exploiting partners' vulnerabilities solely to fulfill publication requirements is strictly prohibited.
  3. Anonymity and Privacy: Authors must protect the privacy of community partners by keeping sensitive personal identity data anonymous unless partners explicitly request to be named (e.g., MSME brand names for promotional purposes).

C. Duties of Authors

  1. Reporting Standards: Authors must present an honest, accurate, and objective report of their community service activities. Authors are strictly prohibited from engaging in Fabrication (inventing faked activity data or documentation photos) and Falsification (manipulating program outcomes, participant counts, or success rates).
  2. Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their submitted work is entirely original. All references to other works must be appropriately cited using the APA 7th Edition style. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable.
  3. Multiple Submissions: Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is strictly prohibited.
  4. Authorship Criteria: Authorship should be limited to those who made a significant contribution to the conception, execution, or writing of the study . Author names in the OJS metadata must consist of at least two words and omit academic titles. Placing non-contributors as authors (guest/gift authorship) or omitting actual contributors (ghost writing) is a serious ethical violation.
  5. Transparency in AI Tools: Authors must honestly disclose the use of generative AI tools in the manuscript preparation at the end of the article. AI cannot be listed as an author or co-author.
  6. Disclosure of Conflict of Interest and Funding: Authors must disclose all funding sources (grant numbers) and any potential financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could bias the manuscript's findings.

D. Duties of Editors

  1. Fair Play: Editors evaluate manuscripts solely for their intellectual and scientific content, without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.
  2. Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, and publisher.
  3. Conflicts of Interest: Editors must not use unpublished materials for their own research without the author's written consent. Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest.
  4. Scholarly Decisions: Editorial decisions to accept, revise, or reject manuscripts must be based on objective academic evaluations, the substance of reviewer comments, and remain free from commercial interference by publishers or sponsors.
  5. Misconduct Investigation: Editors must investigate any suspected or alleged academic misconduct transparently, seek clarification from the authors, and take corrective actions (corrections or retractions) as necessary.

E. Duties of Reviewers

  1. Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and helps authors improve the scientific quality of their manuscripts.
  2. Promptness: Any reviewer who feels unqualified to review a manuscript or cannot complete it within the specified timeframe (maximum 21 working days) must notify the editor immediately.
  3. Strict Confidentiality: All manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents [hlm. 20]. Reviewers are strictly forbidden from uploading manuscripts into third-party Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.
  4. Prohibition of AI in Peer Review: Reviewers must not use generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) to analyze manuscripts, assess substance quality, or draft evaluation comments.
  5. Standards of Objectivity: Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers must provide constructive, clear, and substantively justified ulasan (not merely addressing grammar or formatting errors).
  6. Conflict of Interest: Reviewers must decline to evaluate manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors or institutions.