Publication Ethics

Computing and Information Sciences is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics and academic integrity. This publication ethics statement applies to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher. The journal follows ethical principles in scholarly publishing to ensure transparency, fairness, originality, accountability, and the quality of published scientific work.

1. Duties of Editors

Editors are responsible for deciding which submitted manuscripts are suitable for publication in Computing and Information Sciences. Editorial decisions are based on the relevance, originality, scientific quality, methodological rigor, clarity of presentation, and contribution of the manuscript to the fields of computing, information systems, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, software engineering, cybersecurity, and related areas.

Editors must evaluate manuscripts objectively and fairly without discrimination based on the authors’ nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, religion, political views, or other personal characteristics. Editors must maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and must not disclose information about a manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board members, or publisher when necessary.

2. Duties of Reviewers

Reviewers assist editors in making editorial decisions and help authors improve the quality of their manuscripts. Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, clear, and academically responsible comments. Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate and unacceptable.

Reviewers must treat all manuscripts received for review as confidential documents. Manuscripts must not be shared, discussed, or used for personal advantage. Reviewers should decline the review invitation if they feel unqualified to assess the manuscript, cannot complete the review on time, or have a conflict of interest with the authors, institutions, or research topic.

3. Duties of Authors

Authors must ensure that their submitted manuscripts are original, accurate, and have not been published or submitted elsewhere. Authors are responsible for presenting their research honestly, including data, methods, analysis, results, and conclusions. Fabrication, falsification, manipulation of data, plagiarism, and unethical research practices are strictly prohibited.

Authors must properly acknowledge the work of others by providing accurate citations and references. All sources, theories, data, software, algorithms, datasets, images, tables, or other materials used in the manuscript must be appropriately credited. Authors must also ensure that the manuscript does not infringe upon copyright or intellectual property rights.

4. Originality and Plagiarism

Manuscripts submitted to Computing and Information Sciences must be original works. Plagiarism in any form, including copying text, ideas, data, figures, tables, code, or research results without proper attribution, is considered unethical and unacceptable. The journal may use plagiarism detection software to check the similarity of submitted manuscripts.

Manuscripts found to contain plagiarism, duplicate publication, or excessive similarity may be rejected before review, returned for correction, or retracted if the issue is discovered after publication.

5. Authorship and Contribution

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made significant contributions to the conception, design, implementation, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript. All listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission for publication.

Individuals who contributed to the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the acknowledgment section. Guest authorship, honorary authorship, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.

6. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Submitting the same or substantially similar work to multiple journals is considered unethical publishing behavior. Manuscripts that have been previously published or are under consideration elsewhere will not be accepted.

7. Data Accuracy and Research Integrity

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the data presented in their manuscripts. Research data, algorithms, software, experimental results, or computational models must be reported honestly and transparently. Data fabrication, manipulation, selective reporting, and misleading interpretation are serious ethical violations.

When necessary, authors may be asked to provide raw data, source code, datasets, or additional information to support the validity of their research findings.

8. Conflict of Interest

Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may influence the publication process. Conflicts of interest may include financial relationships, institutional affiliations, personal relationships, academic competition, funding sources, or other conditions that could affect objectivity.

9. Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Authors who use artificial intelligence tools, language models, software assistance, or automated systems in preparing manuscripts must ensure that the final work remains accurate, original, and ethically responsible. AI tools must not be listed as authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the content, validity, citations, data, and conclusions presented in the manuscript.

10. Corrections, Retractions, and Withdrawal

The journal will consider corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions when ethical problems, serious errors, plagiarism, data manipulation, duplicate publication, or other forms of misconduct are identified. Authors who discover significant errors in their published work must immediately notify the editorial office and cooperate in correcting or retracting the article when necessary.

11. Complaints and Appeals

Authors may submit complaints or appeals regarding editorial decisions, review processes, or ethical issues. All complaints will be handled objectively, confidentially, and fairly by the editorial team. The journal is committed to resolving ethical disputes in accordance with scholarly publishing standards.

12. Publisher’s Responsibilities

The publisher of Computing and Information Sciences supports the editorial team in maintaining publication ethics, preventing publication malpractice, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. The publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions and is committed to promoting transparent and responsible academic publishing.

13. Ethical Oversight

All parties involved in the publication process are expected to follow ethical standards in academic publishing. Any suspected misconduct, including plagiarism, falsification, authorship disputes, peer-review manipulation, citation manipulation, or unethical research practice, will be investigated carefully by the editorial team.