Publication Ethics
PIETAS: Jurnal Studi Agama dan Lintas Budaya (Journal of Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and academic integrity. The journal follows internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and adheres to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
This Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement outlines the ethical responsibilities of authors, editors, reviewers, editorial board members, and the publisher to ensure transparent, fair, accountable, and responsible scholarly communication.
Duties and Responsibilities of Editors
Publication Decisions
The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts submitted to PIETAS.
Editorial decisions are based on manuscript originality, scholarly significance, methodological or conceptual quality, relevance to the journal's aims and scope, ethical compliance, contribution to religious and cross-cultural studies, and recommendations obtained through the peer-review process.
Editorial Accountability
Editors are accountable for maintaining the integrity of the academic record. They are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are handled objectively, transparently, and according to established editorial policies.
Editors should continuously improve journal quality, ensure fair peer-review procedures, and respond appropriately to ethical concerns, complaints, corrections, and allegations of misconduct.
Fair and Impartial Evaluation
Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts solely based on academic quality, originality, relevance, and scholarly contribution without discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, institutional affiliation, religious identity, political views, cultural background, or other personal characteristics unrelated to scholarly quality.
PIETAS welcomes critical, comparative, and interdisciplinary scholarship representing diverse academic perspectives that meet appropriate scholarly and ethical standards.
Confidentiality
Editors and editorial staff must treat submitted manuscripts and all related editorial materials as confidential documents.
Unpublished information, arguments, interpretations, research data, interview materials, or other content obtained through manuscript handling must not be used for personal, academic, professional, financial, or commercial advantage.
Conflicts of Interest
Editors must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could affect editorial impartiality.
Editors with significant personal, professional, financial, institutional, collaborative, ideological, religious, or other relationships with authors or manuscript subjects must withdraw from handling the submission.
Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are made independently and must not be influenced by sponsorship, advertising, publication fees, institutional pressure, religious organizations, political interests, or other external considerations.
Payment of publication fees does not influence editorial decisions and does not guarantee acceptance or publication.
Duties and Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers
Contribution to Editorial Decisions
Peer reviewers assist editors in evaluating manuscript originality, scholarly significance, methodological or conceptual quality, relevance, clarity, and ethical integrity.
Reviewers should provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and detailed comments to assist editors and authors in improving manuscript quality.
Expertise and Timeliness
Reviewers should accept review assignments only when they possess appropriate expertise related to the manuscript topic and are able to complete reviews within the requested timeframe.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share, copy, distribute, disclose, or use unpublished manuscript content for unauthorized purposes.
Objectivity and Respect for Scholarly Diversity
Reviews must be conducted objectively, fairly, respectfully, and professionally.
Reviewers should evaluate scholarly quality rather than whether manuscript conclusions conform to personal religious, theological, ideological, cultural, or political views.
Discriminatory statements, sectarian judgment, hostile language, or personal criticism unrelated to scholarly merit are unacceptable.
Conflicts of Interest
Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that may compromise objectivity.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
Reviewers must comply with PIETAS Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy.
Confidential manuscripts, research data, interview transcripts, supplementary materials, or unpublished information must not be uploaded to external generative AI systems where confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property protection, or data security cannot be guaranteed.
Reviewers remain fully responsible for scholarly judgments, analysis, comments, and recommendations contained in review reports.
Duties and Responsibilities of Authors
Reporting Standards
Authors must present accurate, honest, transparent, and objective accounts of their research or scholarly work.
Research methods, theoretical approaches, data sources, analytical procedures, findings, and interpretations must be described clearly to enable scholarly evaluation.
Originality and Plagiarism
Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts represent original scholarly work.
Ideas, words, arguments, interpretations, data, images, tables, figures, translations, archival materials, or other content from external sources must be appropriately cited and acknowledged.
All submitted manuscripts are subject to similarity screening according to PIETAS Plagiarism Policy.
Multiple and Duplicate Publication
Authors must not submit the same manuscript or substantially similar work simultaneously to more than one journal.
Duplicate publication, redundant publication, and concurrent submission are considered unethical publication practices.
Data Integrity and Availability
Authors are responsible for the accuracy, authenticity, and integrity of evidence supporting their research.
Research data, interview transcripts, field notes, survey responses, archival records, textual sources, images, and other evidence must not be fabricated, falsified, or deliberately misrepresented.
Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors are encouraged to provide a Data Availability Statement or make supporting research data available through an appropriate repository.
Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to conception, design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or manuscript preparation.
Guest authorship, honorary authorship, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.
Ethical Oversight of Research
Research involving human participants must comply with applicable ethical principles, institutional requirements, and relevant regulations.
Where required, authors must obtain approval from an authorized research ethics committee and provide information regarding ethical approval.
Research Involving Religious and Cultural Communities
PIETAS recognizes that research involving religious communities, indigenous peoples, minority groups, local communities, religious leaders, and culturally sensitive populations requires appropriate ethical consideration.
Authors must respect dignity, beliefs, traditions, cultural values, privacy, autonomy, and community contexts.
Authors should avoid stereotyping, stigmatization, discriminatory representation, or decontextualized interpretation of religious and cultural groups.
Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure
Authors must disclose financial, institutional, professional, personal, religious, organizational, or other relationships that could influence research interpretation or presentation.
All sources of funding, grants, sponsorship, or institutional support must be transparently acknowledged.
Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies
Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, interpretation, ethical appropriateness, and integrity of submitted manuscripts.
Significant use of AI tools during manuscript preparation must be disclosed according to PIETAS AI Policy.
Research and Publication Misconduct
PIETAS takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously.
Misconduct includes, but is not limited to:
- Plagiarism or inappropriate text recycling
- Fabrication or falsification of data or evidence
- Manipulation or misrepresentation of research findings
- Duplicate or redundant publication
- Inappropriate authorship
- Citation manipulation
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest
- Peer-review manipulation
- Misuse of confidential information
- Unethical treatment of research participants
- Misrepresentation of religious or cultural data
Handling Allegations of Misconduct
PIETAS investigates allegations of misconduct through fair, confidential, and transparent procedures.
The Editorial Board may conduct an initial assessment, request clarification from authors, consult relevant experts, and review supporting evidence before reaching an editorial decision.
Corrective actions may include manuscript rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other actions necessary to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern
PIETAS maintains an accurate and trustworthy scholarly record through transparent correction, retraction, and expression of concern procedures.
A correction may be issued when errors affect part of a published article but do not invalidate its overall findings.
A retraction may be issued when evidence indicates serious problems involving fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, or other major violations of publication ethics.
Post-publication notices will remain permanently connected with the original publication record.
Complaints and Appeals
Authors, reviewers, readers, research participants, communities, and other relevant parties may submit complaints regarding editorial procedures, peer review, publication ethics, or other journal-related matters.
Appeals must provide clear reasons and supporting information addressing editorial or reviewer comments.
Complaints and appeals are handled objectively, confidentially, and independently.
Responsibilities of Publisher
Lembaga Penelitian dan Publikasi Ilmiah (LPPI), Yayasan Yuta Pendidikan Cerdas, in collaboration with the Indonesian Association for Religious Studies (ASAI), supports editorial independence and the integrity, accessibility, continuity, and preservation of PIETAS publications.
The publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions for commercial, institutional, religious, ideological, political, or other inappropriate purposes.
Commitment to Publication Integrity
PIETAS is committed to maintaining a trustworthy scholarly publishing process through transparent editorial policies, independent peer review, responsible authorship, ethical research practices, protection of research participants, respect for religious and cultural diversity, and mechanisms for correcting the scholarly record.
The journal's publication ethics policies are guided by the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and internationally recognized principles of transparency and responsible scholarly publishing.
