Publication Ethics

Authorship and Editorial Ethics Policy.

This policy sets the minimum authorship, research integrity, peer review, and editorial ethics standards for OAPA-supported journals and publications.

Policy position

Editorial decisions must be impartial, accountable, and based on scholarly contribution.

This policy supplements the OAPA Publishing Policy, which all journals partnered with OAPA must subscribe to.

OAPA-owned journals are governed by this policy. Non-OAPA-owned journals may subscribe to this policy by agreement with OAPA and the journal owner.

1. Editorial Impartiality

1.1 Editorial decisions must be made on the merit of the contribution against the journal’s aims, scope, standards, and review criteria.
1.2 Editorial decisions must not be influenced by OAPA, journal owners, societies, sponsors, funders, advertisers, indexing ambitions, commercial interests, personal relationships, or any matter unrelated to the manuscript’s scholarly contribution.
1.3 Editors must recuse themselves where impartiality may reasonably be questioned.

2. Authorship

2.1 All listed authors must meet all three authorship requirements: they must have made a Significant Intellectual or Scholarly Contribution as defined by the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research and supporting authorship guidance, excluding writing and drafting alone; they must have made a written contribution to the manuscript; and they must have reviewed, approved, and agreed to be accountable for the manuscript.
2.2 The corresponding author is responsible for confirming that all authors meet these criteria.
2.3 Authorship revisions after submission require a clear explanation, written agreement from all affected authors, and review by the Editor-in-Chief or their delegate.
2.4 Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission.
2.5 Manuscripts must include an accurate contributor statement using the CRediT contributor role taxonomy where supported by the journal.
2.6 Contributor statements must accurately describe each author’s contribution.
2.7 Contributor roles do not replace the authorship criteria in this policy.

3. Generative AI and Automated Tools

3.1 Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors.
3.2 Authors must disclose substantive use of generative AI or automated tools in the creation, analysis, editing, translation, coding, visualisation, or presentation of submitted work.
3.3 AI disclosure should identify the tool, provider or model where known, and explain how it was used.
3.4 Generative AI must not generate the manuscript’s substantive scholarly contribution.
3.5 Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, confidentiality, copyright compliance, and accountability of all submitted material.

Further guidance

Crawford, J., Purvis, A., Grieve, A., & Taylor, L. (2026). Authorship Statement for Generative Artificial Intelligence: Assuring Trust and Accountability. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.53761/v16abt43

4. Conflicts of Interest

4.1 Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial board members must disclose actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest.
4.2 Conflicts include financial, personal, professional, institutional, supervisory, or collaborative relationships that may reasonably affect impartial judgement.
4.3 Reviewers must decline review invitations where they cannot provide an impartial assessment.
4.4 Editors must not handle manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest.

5. Research Ethics and Consent

5.1 Research involving human participants, student data, institutional data, surveys, interviews, identifiable media, or sensitive information must comply with relevant ethical standards.
5.2 Authors must state whether ethics approval was obtained, waived, or not required.
5.3 OAPA has a preference for research involving human participants to have appropriate Institutional Review Board, Human Research Ethics Committee, or equivalent ethics approval where relevant.
5.4 Authors are responsible for informed consent, participant privacy, confidentiality, and ethical use of data.
5.5 Research involving students, employees, vulnerable groups, power relationships, Indigenous data, classroom settings, or identifiable communities requires particular care.

Further guidance

Purvis, A. J., & Crawford, J. (2024). Ethical Standards in Social Science Publications. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 21(09). https://doi.org/10.53761/hqnqr710

6. Privacy and Data Protection

6.1 Journals must collect only the personal information required for editorial, publishing, and journal management purposes.
6.2 Personal information must not be sold or used for unrelated purposes.
6.3 Authors are responsible for ensuring that research data, quotations, images, audio, video, and case material are used lawfully and ethically.
6.4 Published material must not identify individuals or organisations without appropriate consent, legal basis, or scholarly justification.
6.5 After acceptance, editors may use third-party services or tools, including copyeditors, production tools, automated tools, and AI-assisted tools, to support copyediting and production.
6.6 Third-party services may process manuscript content under their own terms, including possible use for service improvement or training where applicable.

7. Data Sharing and Reproducibility

7.1 Authors should make data, materials, instruments, code, or analytic details available where this is ethical, lawful, and practical.
7.2 Where data cannot be shared, authors should explain the reason, including privacy, consent, ethics approval, cultural authority, commercial sensitivity, or institutional confidentiality.
7.3 Editors may request data or other evidence supporting claims made in a manuscript, and may decline to publish or send to review manuscripts where data, evidence, or research integrity cannot be assured.

8. Intellectual Property and Permissions

8.1 Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted work is original and does not infringe copyright, moral rights, privacy rights, or other intellectual property rights.
8.2 Permission must be obtained for third-party material where required, including images, figures, tables, instruments, datasets, multimedia, and substantial adapted material.
8.3 Authors are responsible for ensuring sources are accurately cited.

9. Originality and Redundant Publication

9.1 Submitted manuscripts must not be under consideration elsewhere unless this has been disclosed and approved.
9.2 Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, inappropriate text recycling, duplicate publication, and redundant publication are not permitted.
9.3 Journals may use similarity checking tools. Similarity reports must be interpreted by editors and do not automatically determine editorial decisions.

10. Research and Publication Misconduct

10.1 Misconduct includes plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, unethical research, fraudulent authorship, image manipulation, data manipulation, and deliberate misrepresentation.
10.2 OAPA-supported journals follow COPE guidance when handling suspected misconduct.

11. Peer Review Ethics

11.1 Peer review must be confidential, constructive, respectful, and based on the manuscript.
11.2 Reviewers must not use unpublished material for personal advantage.
11.3 Reviewers must declare conflicts of interest and must not share manuscripts or reviews without permission.
11.4 Reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviews, or editorial correspondence to external AI tools unless authorised by the journal.
11.5 Reviewers who use AI-assisted tools in preparing a review remain responsible for the content, accuracy, confidentiality, and integrity of the review.
11.6 Generative AI must not be used to generate, replace, or make peer review or editorial decisions.
11.7 Each journal must publicly state its peer review model, including whether review is anonymous, open, group-based, editorial, external, or otherwise.

Further guidance

12. Editorial Conduct

12.1 Editors must act fairly, transparently, and consistently.
12.2 Editors must protect the confidentiality of submissions, reviews, and editorial correspondence.
12.3 Editors must not use unpublished material for personal advantage.
12.4 Editors must correct the scholarly record where necessary.

13. Special Issues, Invited Content and Non-Peer-Reviewed Content

13.1 Journal standards apply to all published content, including special issues, invited articles, editorials, commentaries, reviews, and conference-related content.
13.2 Content that does not undergo the journal’s standard peer review process must be clearly identified.
13.3 Guest editors and invited editors must follow this policy.
13.4 Guest editors are not permitted to submit article manuscripts for inclusion in special issues they lead.
13.5 For non-article contributions, including editorials, editor notes, book reviews, and commentaries, a minimum of two internal reviewers are expected.

14. Fees, Revenue and Editorial Decisions

14.1. OAPA does not support or allow the charging of Article Processing Charges

15. Advertising

15.1 OAPA’s advertising position is set out in the OAPA Advertising Policy.
15.2 Advertising must remain separate from editorial decision-making, peer review, acceptance decisions, publication timing, and journal governance.

16. Policy Breaches

16.1 Potential breaches of this policy may be investigated by the journal, OAPA, the journal owner, or an appropriate independent person or body.
16.2 Actions may include advice, manuscript rejection, correction, retraction, reviewer removal, editorial recusal, notification of institutions, or termination of journal publishing arrangements.

17. Version History

17.1 Version 1.0 — Draft policy prepared for OAPA-supported journals and publications.

This policy supplements the OAPA Publishing Policy and applies to OAPA-supported journals and publications according to the journal’s ownership and publishing agreement.

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