Asian Journal of University Education (henceforth AJUE) is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards for all parties involved in the act of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal- the author, the editor of the journal, the peer reviewer and the publisher. AJUE publishing ethics are based on Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Conduct for Journal Publishers practised by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This covers all parties working with us in the publication process, from the contact point until the completion of the specified task. Authors are advised to go through the guidelines to be aware of the consequences prior to submission. In a case of ethics misconduct or if violation is detected, the article will be withdrawn from the website and a written explanation will be sought from the corresponding author (or authors) within 5 working days. The editorial board of AJUE will evaluate the author's response before a final decision is given. Authors will bear additional costs up to USD50 should there be corrections, additions, or retractions made after publication is done, and this will be published on the webpage of the relevant issue. 

Associate editors and review editors can refer to our Research ethics checks: guidelines for editors and reviewers for more information on how to assess manuscripts in review with respect to bioethics.

Studies/Manuscripts involving human subjects:

As AJUE focuses on issues related to higher education, authors/ researchers must give due consideration about the people from whom data is collected and processed. For medical related research where human subjects are involved, authors/researchers can refer to the Declaration of Helsinki adopted by the World Medical Association. Authors are expected to obtain informed written consent from all human subjects involved in their study, and where necessary, the parents or guardians of minors. The written consent forms must be documented and kept as part of the researcher database. The consent forms should be made available upon request from the editorial board during the review process or post-publication. This information should include disclosure of the researchers’ intention to publish the results. To ensure anonymity, care must be taken to exclude information that can identify their subjects. The ethics adopted by authors must be stated in the methodology section of the article. An example of statement is as follows: "The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by xx. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this research". In cases involving animals, the editorial board reserves the right to reject a manuscript if research protocols adopted in the research disregard animal welfare in any way.

Open access and copyright

All AJUE articles from our website (https://ajue.uitm.edu.my) are published with open access under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license (the current version is CC-BY-NC-ND, version 4.0). This means that the author(s) retains copyright, but the content is free to download, distribute, and adapt for commercial or non-commercial purposes. However, appropriate attribution must be made to the original article.

Upon submission, the author(s) automatically grants AJUE a license to publish, including to display, store, copy, and reuse the content. The license will cease if the author chooses to withdraw the paper by writing to the chief editor within a month of submission. The paper cannot be withdrawn after it is published. The CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons attribution license enables anyone to use the publication freely, given appropriate attribution to the author(s) and citing AJUE as the original publisher. The CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons attribution license does not apply to third-party materials that display a copyright notice to prohibit copying. Unless the third-party content is also subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons attribution license, or an equally permissive license, the author(s) must comply with any third-party copyright notices

We maintain high ethical standards in compliance with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines as we value how stakeholders see us as their reliable partners. We adopt COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Conduct for Journal Publishers as our standard practices to maintain accountability.

Accountability: AJUE Chief Editor, editor(s) and editorial board bear the responsibility of selecting the manuscripts to be published. They are guided by the journal’s policies, and legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. When needed, they may confer with other editorial board members. The chief editor and editors are also responsible for selecting the reviewers for the reviewing process, and therein make the final decision to accept or reject manuscripts through the designated channels. The chief editors, editors or reviewers also need to ensure that authors protect the anonymity of their human subjects, where deemed necessary, and appropriate permission is obtained when dealing with minors.

Fair play: AJUE Chief Editor and editor(s) are also responsible for evaluating the intellectual content of the manuscripts in a fair manner, without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or ideologies of the authors. Moreover, they must ensure that authors acknowledge their co-author's contribution to the manuscript, clearly stating the roles and contribution during the construction process. Authors are also expected to acknowledge their sponsors or other individuals or agencies responsible for the successful completion of the manuscript.

Confidentiality: AJUE Chief Editor and editorial staff are strictly prohibited from disclosing information about a submitted manuscript to others other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as deemed appropriate. Except for the editor(s), members of the board or reviewers are strictly prohibited from communicating with the authors. A double-blind peer-review process must be adhered to at all times.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: AJUE Chief Editor and editorial members with access to privileged information must keep information confidential and not use them for their personal gains. Reviewers are selected based on their expertise in their areas. AJUE Chief Editor and editorial members must not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other connections with the authors. They are prohibited from using any unpublished materials from the manuscripts submitted to the journal in any form.

• Reviewers must adhere to the timeframe given by the editor(s) for completing the reviews. Requests for extension to review the manuscripts are at the discretion of the editor(s).
• Reviewers must notify AJUE of any conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
• Reviewers must keep information pertaining to the manuscript confidential and not used for personal advantage.
• Reviewers must not discuss their views with others unless authorized by the editor(s).
• Reviewers must bring to the editor's/editors' attention any information that may be reason to reject publication of a manuscript.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. This includes any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
• Reviewers should alert the editor(s) of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
• Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.
• Reviewers assists the editor(s) in the editorial decisions and through editorial communications with the author(s), may assist in the improvement of the paper.
• Reviewers should be objective in their reviews and express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Personal criticisms should be avoided.

Reporting standards: Researchers/ authors should describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed or replicated by others. They should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. Results of research should be maintained for a reasonable period should request for queries arise. However, due consideration must be given to privacy, patent protection, or other special circumstances.

Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgement of sources: Authors should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere. Authors are only allowed to publish their manuscript elsewhere after receiving a formal rejection from the editor(s) or if their request to withdraw their work is accepted by AJUE in written reply. Any fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. If an author has used the work and/or words of others, that this original is been appropriately cited or quoted and accurately reflects individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting. Appropriate software may be used to check for similarities with existing literature and must be reported as it is when submitting the manuscript.

Data Access and Retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Ethics: Authors should submit papers only on work that has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and that complies with all relevant legislation.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Authors are those who must have made substantial contribution in the following:

• engage in the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work
• draft the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• provide approval for publication of the content
• agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work
• list all those who have made significant contributions as co-authors. Current institutional affiliations and email of all authors must be stated in the manuscript. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
• state briefly each author’s contribution in the Co-author Contribution section at the end of the manuscript. For example:
  "The first author contributed to the conception of the study and wrote the introduction and methods. The second author organized the database and wrote the conclusion. The third performed the statistical analysis. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.”
• ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

AJUE will reject manuscripts found to have been produced by commercial entities (e.g., fake-paper factories, "paper mills") or artificial intelligence (AI) content generators for authors stated on the manuscript and will bar the authors from future submissions.

Corresponding authors: The corresponding author is the sole person who assumes the main responsibility of communicating with AJUE during the submission process, throughout peer review, and during publication. He/ she must be clearly identified in the author information section (*) of the manuscript. The corresponding author is also responsible for ensuring that the submission adheres to all journal requirements including, but not exclusive to, details of authorship, study ethics and ethics approval, clinical trial registration documents, and conflict of interest declaration. The corresponding author should also be available post-publication to respond to any arising queries or critiques.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication: An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects: If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Plagiarism: AJUE considers reproducing text from other papers without properly crediting the source (plagiarism), producing many papers with almost the same content by the same authors (self-plagiarism) and submitting the same results to more than one journal concurrently (duplicate) as unethical. However, AJUE will consider publication if the manuscript has been rejected by the other publisher(s) at the point of submission to AJUE. All manuscripts submitted to AJUE will be screened using Ouriginals plagiarism detection tools. Papers leading to plagiarism will be immediately rejected if found to have a similarity index of 20% or more.

Corrections and retractions: All authors have an obligation to inform and corporate with journal editors to provide prompt retractions or correction of errors in published works.

• The journal will issue retractions if:
  • There are clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error);
  • The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication);
  • It constitutes plagiarism;
  • It reports unethical research.
• The journal will issue errata if:
• • A small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error);
  • The author list is incorrect (i.e., a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).

Other forms of misconduct include failure to meet clear ethical and legal requirements such as misrepresentation of interests, breach of confidentiality, lack of informed consent and abuse of research subjects or materials. Misconduct also includes improper dealing with infringements, such as attempts to cover up misconduct and reprisals on whistle-blowers.
The primary responsibility for handling research misconduct is in the hands of those who employ the researchers. If a possible misconduct is brought to our attention, we will seek advice from the referees and the Editorial Board. If there is the evidence, we will resolve the matter by appropriate corrections in the printed and online journal; by refusing to consider an author's future work, and by contacting affected authors and editors of other journals.