Conflict of Interest

Jurnal Syntax requires every author, reviewer, and editor to disclose any interest that could reasonably be perceived to influence the design, conduct, reporting, review, or editorial handling of a manuscript. Disclosure does not disqualify a manuscript or a reviewer; non-disclosure does. This policy follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) on competing interests.

1. What Counts as a Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest (competing interest) exists when professional judgement concerning the validity or importance of research may be influenced by a secondary interest. The journal recognises four categories:

Financial

Employment, consultancy, honoraria, paid expert testimony, research funding, equipment or software provided free of charge, patents and patent applications, stock ownership, travel grants, or any payment related to the subject of the manuscript.

Institutional

Affiliation with an organisation that stands to gain or lose from the publication; evaluation of a system, product, curriculum, or policy owned by the author's own institution or faculty; shared affiliation between author and handling editor or reviewer.

Personal and Professional

Close personal relationships, family ties, academic supervision within the last three years, co-authorship within the last three years, membership of the same research group or project, or an ongoing academic rivalry or dispute.

Intellectual and Ideological

Strong public commitment to a position, method, or product that the manuscript supports or challenges; role as developer or vendor of a tool, framework, or dataset being evaluated in the manuscript.

2. Obligations of Authors

1

Mandatory Written Declaration

Every manuscript must contain a section headed Conflict of Interest placed after the Conclusion and before the References. The declaration is mandatory even when there is nothing to declare.

If there is no conflict, use this wording: “The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.”

If a conflict exists, state it specifically: name the interest, the party involved, and the author concerned — for example: “Author B serves as a paid consultant to PT X, which develops the platform evaluated in Section 4. PT X had no role in the study design, data analysis, or decision to publish.”

2

Funding Disclosure

Separate from the COI statement, all sources of financial and material support must be named in a Funding or Acknowledgement section, including grant numbers where available. Research conducted without external funding must say so explicitly.

Sponsor role: authors must state whether the funder participated in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit.

3

Scope and Time Window

All authors, not only the corresponding author, are responsible for disclosure. The corresponding author collects and confirms the declarations of every co-author before submission.

Look back 36 months from the date of submission, and forward to any known pending arrangement such as a patent under examination or a grant under negotiation.

4

Continuing Duty

Disclosure is not a one-off act. If a new interest arises while the manuscript is under review, in production, or after publication, the corresponding author must notify the editorial office in writing without delay.

Suggested reviewers: authors may propose reviewers but must not propose anyone with whom they have a relationship falling under Section 1, and must declare any such relationship if asked.

5

Use of Generative AI Tools

Transparency requirement: any use of generative artificial intelligence in drafting, translating, coding, or analysing must be disclosed in the Acknowledgement, naming the tool and its role. AI tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot hold or disclose interests; responsibility rests entirely with the human authors.

3. Obligations of Reviewers

  • Self-assessment before accepting. On receiving an invitation, a reviewer must examine the title, abstract, and author list where disclosed, and decline if any circumstance in Section 1 applies.
  • Mandatory grounds for declining include: employment at the same institution or faculty as any author; supervision of, or by, any author within the last three years; co-authorship with any author within the last three years; participation in the project being reported; a competing manuscript under preparation on the same question; or any financial interest in the product, tool, or organisation under study.
  • Declaration within the review. Where a reviewer judges that a minor interest exists but does not prevent an objective assessment, it must be stated in the confidential comments to the editor, who then decides whether to use the review.
  • Confidentiality. A reviewer may not use knowledge gained from an unpublished manuscript for personal or institutional advantage, discuss it with third parties, involve a student or colleague in the review without the editor's written consent, or upload any part of the manuscript to a public or third-party artificial-intelligence service.
  • Double-blind safeguard. Jurnal Syntax operates double-blind review. If a reviewer identifies an author during review and a conflict becomes apparent, the review must be halted and the editor informed at once.

4. Obligations of Editors and the Editorial Board

A

Editor with an Interest in a Manuscript

An editor who has any interest in a submission under Section 1 must declare it to the Editor in Chief and be fully recused: excluded from reviewer selection, from access to reviewer identities and reports, and from the decision. The Editor in Chief reassigns the manuscript to an independent handling editor.
B

Manuscripts Authored by Editors or Board Members

Members of the editorial team may submit to the journal, but their manuscripts receive no preferential treatment whatsoever. Such submissions are handled entirely by an editor who is not a co-author and is based at a different institution, are reviewed by at least two external reviewers with no shared affiliation, and the author-editor has no access to the editorial record at any point. Where the Editor in Chief is an author, the manuscript is delegated in full to a senior member of the editorial board at another institution, who holds final decision authority.
C

Editorial Independence from Owner and Publisher

Acceptance decisions rest solely on scientific merit, originality, methodological soundness, and relevance to the scope of the journal. Neither Universitas Dharmawangsa as owner, nor the Software Engineering Study Program as publisher, nor any funder, advertiser, or external party may influence a decision on an individual manuscript. Payment of the Article Processing Charge is never a factor in the review outcome, and the charge is invoiced only after an independent acceptance decision has been reached.

5. How the Journal Handles a Disclosed or Discovered Conflict

STEP 1 — ASSESSMENT

The handling editor assesses whether the disclosed interest could reasonably affect the interpretation of the findings. Most disclosures require no action beyond publication of the statement.

STEP 2 — MITIGATION

Where the interest is material, the editor may require additional methodological detail, independent verification of data or code, an expanded limitations section, an additional reviewer without the relevant interest, or reassignment of the handling editor.

STEP 3 — PUBLICATION

The final Conflict of Interest statement is published in full in the article, so that readers can judge the work with the same information available to the editors.

STEP 4 — WITHDRAWAL

If the interest is so substantial that no mitigation can secure a defensible publication record, the editor declines the manuscript and explains the reason to the authors in writing.

6. Consequences of Non-Disclosure

Discovered before publication

Review is suspended. The authors are asked to explain in writing within fourteen days. Depending on the explanation, the manuscript is either corrected and returned to review or rejected.

Discovered after publication

An undisclosed interest that materially affects the interpretation of the article is handled as a post-publication matter: the journal issues a Correction adding the missing declaration, or, where the omission undermines the reliability or integrity of the findings, an Expression of Concern or a Retraction.

Deliberate concealment

Intentional concealment is treated as research misconduct. It may result in rejection of the manuscript, retraction of the published article, a submission ban of up to three years for the authors concerned, and formal notification to the authors' institutions and funders.

7. Declaration Form and Where to Send It

The declaration is submitted in two ways: (a) as the Conflict of Interest section inside the manuscript, and (b) as a confirmation in the submission metadata — the corresponding author ticks the relevant item in the Submission Preparation Checklist, which binds all co-authors. A separate signed form may be requested by the handling editor in cases requiring documentation.

Confidential disclosures and queries about this policy:
Editorial Office, Jurnal Syntax
Software Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Universitas Dharmawangsa
Jl. K.L. Yos Sudarso No. 224, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia
E-mail: admin_syntax@dharmawangsa.ac.id

Disclosures concerning a member of the editorial team are received directly by the Editor in Chief and are not circulated to the person concerned until an independent handling editor has been appointed.

This policy follows the COPE guidance on competing interests and the ICMJE recommendations. See publicationethics.org/competinginterests