Research Misconduct

Jurnal Syntax investigates every specific, evidenced allegation of research or publication misconduct concerning a manuscript submitted to, or an article published in, this journal — whether the allegation is raised before or after publication, and however long after publication it arises. This page defines what the journal treats as misconduct, how to report it, how a report is investigated, what protections apply to the person reporting and to the person accused, and what sanctions may follow.

1. Scope of This Policy

This policy applies to allegations against authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial staff, in relation to any manuscript or article connected with Jurnal Syntax. The journal has authority over the publication record; it does not have authority over employment, academic discipline, or degree awards, which rest with the institution concerned. Where an allegation is substantiated or requires investigative powers the journal does not possess, the matter is referred formally to the institution of the person concerned, and the journal acts on that institution's findings.

2. What the Journal Treats as Misconduct

Fabrication

Inventing data, results, experimental runs, measurements, survey respondents, test cases, benchmark outcomes, or interviews that were never obtained, and reporting them as genuine.

Falsification

Manipulating research materials, instruments, parameters, or processes, or altering, omitting, or selectively reporting data so that the research is not accurately represented — including the removal of outliers without disclosure.

Plagiarism

Appropriating another person's text, code, architecture, figures, data, or ideas without attribution, in any form — verbatim, mosaic, translated, or paraphrased. The journal screens every submission with Turnitin at a maximum similarity threshold of 25%, as set out in the Plagiarism Policy.

Image and Figure Manipulation

Splicing, cloning, duplicating, erasing, or enhancing parts of screenshots, diagrams, plots, or photographs so as to misrepresent a result, and reusing a figure from another source or another article without disclosure.

Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Submitting a manuscript that is already published or under consideration elsewhere, republishing substantially the same work without disclosure or cross-reference, or dividing a single study into several overlapping articles (salami slicing).

Authorship Abuse

Omitting a person who made a substantial contribution, listing a person who made none (gift or guest authorship), concealing a contributor (ghost authorship), selling or buying authorship, or adding or removing an author without the consent of all parties.

Citation Manipulation

Including citations whose purpose is to inflate the citation count of an author, a colleague, or a journal, rather than to support the argument; and coercive citation imposed by an editor or reviewer.

Peer Review Manipulation

Supplying fabricated reviewer identities or e-mail addresses, arranging for an associate to review one's own work, reviewing one's own manuscript under another name, or colluding to secure a favourable decision.

Paper Mills and Purchased Manuscripts

Submitting a manuscript produced or brokered by a third-party service, in whole or in part, including purchased text, purchased data, and purchased authorship slots.

Ethical and Legal Breach

Research conducted without required ethical clearance or informed consent; processing of personal, institutional, or network data without authorisation; disclosure of identifiable individuals, systems, or security vulnerabilities without permission; or breach of a data-use agreement.

Undisclosed Conflict of Interest

Deliberate concealment by an author, reviewer, or editor of an interest required to be declared under the Conflict of Interest policy.

Undisclosed or Improper Use of Generative AI

Presenting text, code, data, references, or figures generated by an artificial-intelligence tool as original human work without disclosure; listing an AI tool as an author; or fabricating references produced by such a tool.

3. Breach of Reviewer or Editor Duty

  • Breach of confidentiality — disclosing, circulating, or retaining an unpublished manuscript, or uploading any part of it to a public or third-party artificial-intelligence service.
  • Misappropriation of ideas — using data, methods, code, or arguments from a manuscript under review in one's own work before publication.
  • Deliberate delay — protracting a review in order to gain priority for a competing work.
  • Abuse of editorial position — expediting or obstructing a manuscript for reasons unrelated to merit, or concealing a conflict in order to handle a submission.
  • Coercive citation — requiring citations to one's own work, or to this journal, as a condition of a favourable review.

4. How to Report an Allegation

admin_syntax@dharmawangsa.ac.idWrite “Confidential: Research Integrity Concern” in the subject line. Reports are received by the Editor in Chief and are not circulated beyond the persons conducting the assessment.

So that a report can be acted upon, it should contain:

IDENTIFY THE WORK

The article title and DOI, or the manuscript identifier if the work is still under review.

STATE THE CONCERN PRECISELY

Which category in Section 2 applies, and exactly where in the article the problem lies — page, section, table, figure, equation, or line of code.

PROVIDE THE EVIDENCE

Side-by-side comparison with the source text, similarity report, original data or code, screenshots, correspondence, or the record of a failed replication. An assertion without evidence cannot be assessed.

DECLARE YOUR INTEREST

Your name, affiliation, institutional e-mail address, and any competing interest or prior dispute with the persons concerned. This does not weaken your report; it allows the editors to weigh it properly.

Anonymous reports. The journal prefers identified reports, because the person accused must be able to answer the case fairly. An anonymous or pseudonymous report is nonetheless assessed where it contains specific, independently verifiable evidence — for example a documented textual overlap or a reproducible inconsistency in published data. Anonymous reports consisting only of assertion, insinuation, or complaint about a person are closed without action, and the complainant is told so where a contact address is available.

5. Investigation Procedure

1

Receipt and Acknowledgement — 5 working days

The report is entered in the confidential research-integrity register with a reference number and a date. Receipt is acknowledged. The register is kept separately from the ordinary editorial system and is accessible only to those conducting the assessment.
2

Preliminary Assessment — 14 working days

The Editor in Chief, with two editors who have no connection to the work or the parties, decides whether the report is specific and evidenced enough to proceed. The outcome is one of three:
  • Closed — the concern is unfounded, outside the journal's scope, or unsupported by evidence. The complainant is given reasons.
  • Referred — the matter belongs to another journal, another publisher, or an institution, and is forwarded with notice to the complainant.
  • Proceed to inquiry — the concern is substantive.
3

Formal Inquiry and Right to Answer — author response 21 days

The corresponding author receives the substance of the allegation and the evidence relied upon, and is invited to answer in writing and to supply original data, code, approvals, or permissions. No finding is made, and no public notice is issued, before the person accused has had a genuine opportunity to answer. One extension of fourteen days is granted on request. Where the evidence requires technical verification, an independent assessor who took no part in the original review is appointed under a confidentiality undertaking. Where the manuscript is still under review, the editorial process is suspended until the inquiry concludes.
4

Institutional Referral — where required

Where the allegation concerns conduct the journal cannot investigate — access to laboratory records, employment files, or raw institutional data — or where the response is unsatisfactory, the Editor in Chief refers the matter in writing to the research-integrity office, dean, or rector of the institution of the person concerned, and to the funder where relevant. The journal states what it has found, what it is asking for, and the date by which a reply is requested, and keeps the complainant informed of the referral.
5

Decision — within 90 days of acknowledgement

The editorial board decides on the balance of the evidence, with every conflicted member recused, and records the finding, the reasons, and the sanction in writing. Both the complainant and the person accused are notified. Where an institutional inquiry is pending, an Expression of Concern may be published in the meantime and the deadline extended, with the parties informed of the revised timeline.
6

Appeal — 30 days

A person against whom a finding is made may appeal once, in writing, within thirty days, stating the grounds and submitting any new evidence. The appeal is heard by two board members who took no part in the decision; their recommendation to the Editor in Chief is final. If an appeal succeeds, any published notice is itself corrected and the correction is published with the same prominence.

6. Safeguards for All Parties

Presumption of Good Faith

An allegation is not a finding. Until an inquiry concludes, the person accused is treated as having acted in good faith, and the journal makes no public statement identifying them. Honest error is distinguished from misconduct throughout, and where error is established the notice says so explicitly.

Confidentiality

The identity of the complainant is not disclosed to the person accused without the complainant's consent, unless disclosure is required by law or is indispensable to a fair answer — in which case the complainant is consulted first and may withdraw the report. All correspondence is kept confidential and restricted to those with a need to know.

No Retaliation

Reporting a concern in good faith does not affect the treatment of the complainant's own submissions to this journal, now or in future. Any attempt to retaliate against a complainant, whether by an author, a reviewer, or a member of the editorial team, is itself treated as misconduct under this policy.

Vexatious Allegations

A report made knowingly without foundation, or repeated after being closed with reasons and without new evidence, is itself a breach of publication ethics. The journal may decline further correspondence and, where the complainant is an author or reviewer of this journal, may apply the sanctions in Section 8.

7. Allegations Against Editors, Reviewers, or Staff

  • Against an editor or reviewer: the report is received by the Editor in Chief, who appoints an investigating panel of two board members based at institutions other than that of the person concerned. The person concerned is recused immediately from all duties relating to the manuscript or article in question.
  • Against the Editor in Chief: the report is addressed to the Head of the Software Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Universitas Dharmawangsa, at the postal address below. The matter is handled in full by a senior board member at another institution, who holds decision authority, and the Editor in Chief has no access to the case file.
  • Against editorial or technical staff: the report is handled by the Editor in Chief together with the publisher, and is referred to the university where employment consequences may arise.
  • Outcome: substantiated findings may result in removal from the editorial board or reviewer panel, withdrawal of all reviews prepared by the person concerned, re-review of the affected manuscripts by new reviewers, and notification of the person's institution.

8. Sanctions

Sanctions are proportionate to the severity of the conduct, to whether it was deliberate, and to whether the person concerned cooperated with the inquiry. More than one sanction may be applied in a single case.

Detected during initial screening

Where the Turnitin similarity score exceeds 25%, or screening reveals duplicate submission or fabricated content, the manuscript is returned for revision or rejected outright, depending on the nature of the overlap, and the authors are informed of the ground.

Detected during peer review

The review is halted and the manuscript is rejected. The decision letter records the ground of rejection, and the editorial office retains the evidence. The authors' institution may be notified where the conduct is serious.

Established after publication

The article is corrected, placed under an Expression of Concern, or retracted under the Correction and Retraction policy. A retracted article remains online, marked RETRACTED, and the indexing services listed under Indexing are notified.

Submission ban

Authors found to have committed deliberate misconduct may be barred from submitting to Jurnal Syntax for a period of one to five years according to severity. The ban applies to the individuals responsible, not to their co-authors who are found to have acted in good faith.

Notification of third parties

The journal notifies the employing institution, the funder, and, where the same work has been submitted or published elsewhere, the editors of the journals concerned. Notification states the finding and the evidence, and nothing more.

Removal from editorial roles

A reviewer or editor found to have breached the duties in Section 3 is removed from the panel or board, is named in no further issue, and the affected manuscripts are reassessed independently.

Fees

No Article Processing Charge is refunded where an article is retracted for established misconduct. Where an article is retracted because of an error by the journal, any charge paid is refunded in full.

9. Records and Transparency

  • Retention. The complete case file — report, evidence, correspondence, assessments, response, decision, and appeal — is retained by the editorial office for at least ten years.
  • Availability. Records are made available on request to accreditation bodies, indexing services, research-integrity offices, and funders with a legitimate interest, subject to the confidentiality undertakings in Section 6.
  • Annual review. The Editor in Chief reports to the publisher once a year on the number of allegations received, their categories, and their outcomes, without identifying individuals. The report informs revisions to this policy.
  • Cooperation between journals. Where misconduct involves another journal or publisher, Jurnal Syntax shares relevant evidence with that journal's editors in accordance with COPE practice.

Confidential reports under this policy:
The Editor in Chief — Research Integrity, Jurnal Syntax
Software Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science
Universitas Dharmawangsa
Jl. K.L. Yos Sudarso No. 224, Medan 20115, North Sumatra, Indonesia
E-mail: admin_syntax@dharmawangsa.ac.id — subject line: “Confidential: Research Integrity Concern”

Reports concerning the Editor in Chief should be addressed to the Head of the Software Engineering Study Program at the same postal address and will not be seen by the Editor in Chief.

This policy is applied in accordance with the COPE flowcharts on suspected misconduct, including those on plagiarism, fabricated data, redundant publication, authorship disputes, and ethical concerns raised by reviewers. See publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts