Publication Ethics and Policy

Partnership, Practice & Change is committed to the integrity of the scholarly record. This policy follows the DOAJ Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices. It applies before and after publication to authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, editorial-board members, and the publisher.

Reporting concerns and the OJS case record

Questions, complaints, appeals, and allegations should be sent to editor.ppc@zatara.id. Reports should identify the manuscript or article, explain the concern, and provide supporting evidence where available. Anonymous or confidential reports will be considered when they contain sufficient information; the journal will protect a reporter's identity as far as law, due process, and a fair investigation permit. Retaliation against a good-faith reporter is not tolerated.

The Managing Editor acknowledges a report within 5 working days and creates a confidential case record. For an active submission, correspondence, evidence, declarations, decisions, and dates are recorded in a private Editorial Discussion and the submission's editorial history in OJS. For a published article, the journal creates a restricted post-publication case record linked internally to the article. Access is limited to authorised editors and publisher personnel. Sensitive personal data are shared only when necessary.

Roles and decision-making authority

Managing Editor: receives and logs cases, checks completeness, preserves records, coordinates communication, and monitors deadlines; does not decide a case in which they are conflicted.
Handling Editor: makes the preliminary assessment, gathers relevant material, seeks responses, and recommends an outcome.
Editor-in-Chief: decides whether to continue or stop review, reject a submission, publish a correction or expression of concern, retract an article, or close an investigation.
Independent Senior Editor: decides appeals and cases involving the Editor-in-Chief or another conflicted decision-maker. This editor must not have participated in the original decision.
Publisher: ensures procedural independence, record preservation, legal and technical support, and implementation of a final editorial decision. The publisher does not overturn scholarly decisions for commercial reasons.
Research institutions or competent authorities: investigate conduct that requires access to employment, laboratory, participant, or original research records beyond the journal's authority. The journal may share relevant evidence and will consider their findings while retaining responsibility for the published record.

Anyone with an actual, potential, or perceived conflict must disclose it and recuse themselves. A non-conflicted replacement is appointed and the recusal is documented.

Allegations of research and publication misconduct

Potential misconduct includes plagiarism; fabrication or falsification of data; inappropriate image manipulation; duplicate, redundant, or undisclosed translated publication; unethical research; authorship manipulation; undisclosed competing interests; peer-review manipulation; citation manipulation; paper-mill activity; breach of confidentiality; and material misrepresentation.

The Handling Editor conducts an initial assessment without presuming misconduct and separates honest error or disagreement from possible misconduct.
If the concern is credible and material, the affected editorial process is paused where appropriate. The corresponding author is informed of the specific concern and normally receives 14 calendar days to respond and supply original data or other evidence. Relevant co-authors may be contacted separately.
The editor evaluates the response and may seek confidential advice from an independent expert. The journal will not attempt to determine employer-level guilt where an institution or authority is better placed to investigate.
If further investigation is warranted, the Editor-in-Chief may contact the relevant institution, ethics committee, funder, or authority with supporting evidence. The OJS case record documents all material steps.
The Editor-in-Chief determines the journal action: no further action; clarification or revision; rejection; correction; expression of concern; retraction; or another proportionate measure. Parties are informed of the outcome and reasons, subject to confidentiality and legal constraints.

Pre-publication and post-publication allegations are taken equally seriously. Lack of author cooperation does not prevent the journal from protecting the scholarly record. COPE guidance and flowcharts are used where relevant.

Authorship and contributorship

Authorship requires a substantial contribution, participation in drafting or critical revision, approval of the final version, and accountability for the work. Contributions must be reported using the CRediT taxonomy. Contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged with permission. AI tools cannot be authors.

All authors must approve the submission and its author order. Any addition, removal, or reorder requested after submission requires a written explanation and explicit written agreement from all listed and affected authors. The Handling Editor assesses requests before acceptance; changes after acceptance are exceptional and may require a correction. The journal does not adjudicate unresolved authorship disputes and may suspend processing while the authors' institution determines responsibility.

Conflicts of interest

Authors must disclose financial and non-financial interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work, including funding, employment, consultancy, ownership, personal or family relationships, institutional interests, advocacy roles, and relevant intellectual commitments. Reviewers must decline assignments where impartiality could reasonably be questioned. Editors and guest editors must recuse themselves from manuscripts involving their own work, close collaborators, recent supervisors or students, their institution, direct competitors, or other relevant interests.

Undisclosed interests discovered before publication may lead to reassignment, additional review, revision, or rejection. If discovered after publication, the Editor-in-Chief determines whether disclosure, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or no action is appropriate. Every disclosure and recusal is recorded confidentially in OJS.

Editorial endogeny and internal submissions

The journal monitors editorial endogeny in accordance with DOAJ requirements. Across the two most recently published issues, no more than 25% of peer-reviewed scholarly articles may have at least one author who is a current editor, editorial-board member, or reviewer who has served the journal during the relevant monitoring period. If the journal adopts continuous publication, the same maximum applies to the most recent calendar year, subject to DOAJ's minimum article requirements. Editorials, corrections, retractions, and other non-research notices are excluded from the denominator.

The Managing Editor maintains a confidential Endogeny and Conflict Register recording the manuscript ID, relevant internal role or relationship, declaration date, recusals, independent handling editor, reviewer-independence checks, decision, and scheduled issue. Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose relevant relationships at submission or assignment. Before each issue is released, the Managing Editor calculates both the issue-level proportion and the rolling proportion across the two latest issues; the Editor-in-Chief verifies and signs the check. Aggregate compliance may be reported publicly, but reviewer identities remain confidential.

An internal manuscript receives no preferential treatment. Every conflicted editor is excluded from the submission's OJS access, discussion, reviewer selection, decision, and production scheduling. The Editor-in-Chief assigns an Independent Senior Editor with no relevant institutional, supervisory, collaborative, personal, or financial conflict. If the Editor-in-Chief is an author or is otherwise conflicted, the publisher appoints a qualified independent senior editor solely to administer the case, without influencing the scholarly decision. The manuscript undergoes the journal's normal double-blind process with at least two independent external reviewers who are not from the authors' institutions and have no relevant close relationship.

Editorial merit decisions are made independently of the numerical cap. However, an accepted internal article will not be scheduled or published in an issue if doing so would cause the rolling proportion to exceed 25%; publication is deferred until compliance can be maintained. The journal will not manipulate article classification, reviewer records, issue composition, or publication dates to conceal endogeny. Any breach is documented, corrected transparently where possible, and considered in editorial-board and reviewer appointments.

Editorial-board verification, consent, and terms

No person is listed as a current editor or editorial-board member without documented, active consent. Before appointment and at every renewal, the journal verifies the member's preferred name, current institutional affiliation and country, subject and methodological expertise, private contact email, ORCID or other persistent identifier where available, declared conflicts of interest, agreed role, and term start and end dates. The public masthead displays the member's name, editorial role, current affiliation, and country; private email addresses and consent evidence are not published.

The Managing Editor maintains a confidential Editorial Board Verification Register and retains the written acceptance or reconfirmation in the authorised editorial archive. Details are reviewed at least annually and whenever the journal is notified of a change. A member who does not respond to a verification request, withdraws consent, has materially outdated information, or can no longer perform the role is marked inactive and removed from the current public masthead until verification is complete. Renewals require fresh written agreement and a new term record.

The Editor-in-Chief and publisher review whether the board has enough active members, appropriate scholarly or professional qualifications, expertise aligned with the journal's full scope, and reasonable institutional and geographic diversity. The public list must match the active OJS role records and the private verification register. Historical service is retained separately in Editorial History and is never presented as a current appointment.

Research data, reporting, and reproducibility

Authors must provide an accurate Data Availability Statement and preserve the data, code, instruments, protocols, and records necessary to support the work for the period required by their discipline, institution, funder, law, and ethics approval. Data should be deposited in a trustworthy repository when ethically and legally possible. Restrictions involving privacy, consent, Indigenous or community governance, commercial confidentiality, security, or law must be explained rather than bypassed.

Editors may request underlying data and documentation during review or when a concern arises. Access is limited to what is necessary and may be subject to confidentiality arrangements. Failure to provide evidence without a justified restriction may result in suspended review, rejection, a post-publication notice, or referral to an institution. Fabrication, falsification, selective reporting, and misleading manipulation are handled under the misconduct procedure.

Ethical oversight

Research involving humans, animals, biological materials, vulnerable populations, sensitive or identifiable data, or community-held knowledge must comply with applicable ethical and legal requirements. Authors must report the reviewing body, approval or exemption reference, informed-consent arrangements, and permissions for identifiable publication. Editors may request documentation and may reject or correct work that does not meet ethical requirements. Confidentiality, dignity, cultural authority, and participant welfare take priority over publication.

Corrections

A correction is issued when an error or omission affects interpretation, attribution, metadata, or part of an otherwise reliable article but does not invalidate its main findings. The Editor-in-Chief determines whether a publisher correction, author correction, or corrected version is appropriate. A correction notice is freely accessible, identifies and links to the original article, states what changed and why, and is linked back from the article. The original scholarly record is retained; material changes are not made silently. Metadata and DOI records are updated where applicable.

Retractions and removal

Retraction is considered when findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct; the article constitutes plagiarism or redundant publication; research was unethical; peer review was compromised; or another serious breach makes the article unreliable. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final retraction decision after appropriate assessment and may act without unanimous author agreement.

The retraction notice is prompt, permanent, freely accessible, clearly labelled, identifies and links to the article, states who is retracting it and the reason as specifically as fairness and law permit, and distinguishes honest error from misconduct where established. The article remains accessible with a clear retracted label and reciprocal link; metadata and DOI records are updated. Full-text removal is reserved for exceptional legal, privacy, court-order, or serious public-harm circumstances. Even then, bibliographic metadata and an explanatory notice remain available.

Expressions of concern

The Editor-in-Chief may publish an expression of concern when evidence about a potentially unreliable article is inconclusive, an investigation is delayed or not demonstrably fair, the relevant institution will not investigate, or a conclusion will take substantial time. The notice is freely accessible and linked bidirectionally to the article. It is replaced or supplemented promptly by a correction, retraction, or notice that the concern has been resolved when reliable evidence becomes available.

Post-publication discussion

Readers may submit evidence-based comments or concerns to the journal email. The journal may invite an author response and may publish a letter, response, correction, expression of concern, or retraction as appropriate. Criticism is assessed on evidence and relevance, not the status or identity of the person raising it.

Complaints

A complaint concerns journal service, staff conduct, delay, policy implementation, confidentiality, or procedural fairness. It should be submitted with relevant details and the requested remedy. The Managing Editor acknowledges it within 5 working days. A person not directly involved in the complained-of conduct investigates it. The journal aims to provide a reasoned response within 30 working days; if more time is required, the complainant is informed. A complaint about the Editor-in-Chief is referred to an Independent Senior Editor appointed by the publisher. A complaint about publisher conduct is referred to an independent person who was not involved in that conduct.

Editorial appeals

An appeal challenges an editorial decision and must be submitted within 30 calendar days of that decision. It must identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, unmanaged conflict, or relevant evidence that was overlooked; disagreement with reviewer judgement alone is insufficient. The Managing Editor logs the appeal in OJS and sends the complete record to an Independent Senior Editor who did not participate in the original decision. That editor may review the file, seek independent advice or further review, and will recommend that the decision be upheld, modified, or reopened. The appeal decision and reasons are recorded and communicated, normally within 30 working days, and are final. One appeal is considered per manuscript unless significant new evidence emerges.

Use of artificial intelligence and automated tools

Authors must disclose generative-AI use beyond routine spelling, grammar, and formatting assistance, including the tool and purpose. Authors remain responsible for all content, sources, analysis, and originality; AI cannot be credited as an author or cited as an authoritative source. Editors and reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts to generative-AI services or use them to generate assessments. Any journal-operated automated integrity tool, including iThenticate, is subject to human editorial verification and does not make decisions autonomously.

Policy implementation and transparency

Notices affecting the publication record are published through OJS as clearly labelled, freely accessible items and linked to the Version of Record. The Production Editor implements article labels, links, galley notices, and metadata or DOI updates after the authorised editorial decision. The journal retains a confidential audit trail of the evidence, correspondence, recusals, recommendations, decisions, dates, and implementation steps. Aggregate lessons may be used to improve editorial training without disclosing confidential personal information.