The Journal of Soft Computing and Artificial Intelligence (JSCAI) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, editorial independence, peer review transparency, and academic quality.

JSCAI follows internationally recognized principles of scholarly publishing and expects authors, editors, reviewers, editorial board members, and editorial staff to act in accordance with ethical standards throughout the submission, review, publication, and post-publication processes.

All manuscripts submitted to JSCAI must be original, scientifically sound, ethically compliant, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

• General Publication Ethics

JSCAI is committed to publishing scholarly work that meets the principles of originality, transparency, accuracy, accountability, and academic integrity.

The journal does not tolerate:

Plagiarism
Duplicate publication
Data fabrication
Data falsification
Image manipulation
Citation manipulation
Authorship manipulation
Undisclosed conflicts of interest
Peer review manipulation
Unethical use of artificial intelligence tools
Misleading or incomplete reporting of research findings

If ethical concerns are identified before, during, or after publication, the editorial office may request clarification, supporting documents, raw data, ethics committee approval, informed consent documents, or other relevant evidence from the authors.

Manuscripts involving serious ethical misconduct may be rejected. Published articles may be corrected, retracted, or withdrawn in accordance with the journal’s correction, retraction, and withdrawal procedures.

• Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining the scientific quality, editorial integrity, and ethical standards of the journal.

Editors evaluate manuscripts based on:

Scientific merit
Originality
Methodological rigor
Relevance to the journal’s Aim & Scope
Ethical compliance
Clarity of presentation
Contribution to the field

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by the authors’ nationality, gender, institutional affiliation, political views, religious beliefs, ethnicity, personal relationships, or commercial interests.

Editors are responsible for ensuring a fair, confidential, objective, independent, and timely editorial process.

Editors must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and must not use unpublished information from a manuscript for personal, academic, commercial, or competitive advantage.

Editors must avoid conflicts of interest. If an editor has a conflict of interest with a submitted manuscript, the manuscript must be assigned to another qualified editor with no conflict of interest.

• Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers play an essential role in ensuring the scientific quality and integrity of published articles.

Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts objectively, constructively, confidentially, and within the agreed time frame.

Reviewers should assess:

Originality and contribution
Relevance to the journal’s Aim & Scope
Methodological appropriateness
Validity of results
Adequacy of discussion
Quality of references
Ethical compliance
Clarity of language and presentation

Reviewers must not share, copy, distribute, discuss, or use any part of the manuscript before publication.

Reviewers must decline the review invitation if they have a conflict of interest with the authors, institutions, funding bodies, research topic, or manuscript content.

Reviewer comments should be respectful, evidence-based, and focused on improving the scientific quality of the manuscript. Personal criticism is not acceptable.

• Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the originality, accuracy, ethical compliance, and scientific integrity of their manuscripts.

Authors must ensure that:

The manuscript is original and unpublished
The manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere
All sources are properly cited
All authors have contributed significantly to the work
All authors have approved the final version
Conflicts of interest are disclosed
Funding sources are declared
Data availability is clearly stated
Ethics approval and informed consent are provided where applicable
AI use is transparently declared in all manuscripts

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time.

Authors must not manipulate data, images, citations, authorship, or the peer review process.

If authors discover a significant error in their submitted or published work, they must promptly inform the editorial office.

• Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made a significant scholarly contribution to the study.

Authorship contributions may include:

Conceptualization
Methodology
Software
Validation
Formal analysis
Investigation
Data curation
Writing-original draft
Writing-review and editing
Visualization
Supervision
Project administration
Funding acquisition

All listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission to JSCAI.

Individuals who contributed to the study but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section.

The journal does not accept ghost authorship, guest authorship, gift authorship, or honorary authorship.

Any change in authorship after submission must be clearly justified and approved by all authors. The editorial office may request written confirmation from all authors.

• Conflict of Interest

Authors, editors, reviewers, editorial board members, and editorial staff must disclose any financial, personal, academic, institutional, or commercial conflicts of interest that could influence the manuscript or editorial process.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest include:

Financial relationships
Employment relationships
Consultancies
Research funding
Personal relationships
Academic competition
Institutional affiliations
Recent collaboration

Authors must include a conflict of interest statement in the manuscript.

If there is no conflict of interest, authors should write:

The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Editors or reviewers who have a conflict of interest must not participate in the evaluation or decision-making process for the manuscript.

• Research Ethics

Authors must comply with ethical standards applicable to their research field.

For studies involving human participants, animals, clinical data, personal data, surveys, interviews, images, or sensitive information, authors must provide ethics committee approval information where applicable.

For studies involving human participants, informed consent must be obtained where applicable.

Ethics approval information should include:

Name of the ethics committee
Approval date
Approval number or code

For studies that do not require ethics approval, authors should include the following statement:

Not applicable. This study did not involve human participants, animals, or sensitive personal data.

The editorial office may request ethics approval documents, consent forms, anonymization details, or additional explanations when necessary.

• Use of AI and AI-assisted Technologies

Authors must declare whether artificial intelligence or AI-assisted tools were used in the preparation of the manuscript.

The Declaration of AI and AI-assisted Technologies must be included in all manuscripts, whether AI-assisted tools were used or not.

AI tools may be used for limited purposes such as language editing, grammar correction, formatting support, or technical improvement of readability. However, authors are fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.

AI tools must not be listed as authors. Authorship requires human responsibility and accountability.

If no AI tools were used, authors should write:

The author(s) declare that no AI-based or AI-assisted tools were used in the preparation of this manuscript.

If AI tools were used, authors should clearly describe how they were used. For example:

AI-assisted tools were used only for language editing and grammar improvement. The author(s) reviewed and approved the final content and take full responsibility for the manuscript.

The use of AI tools to fabricate data, generate false references, manipulate images, create misleading results, conceal plagiarism, or replace author responsibility is not acceptable.

• Plagiarism and Similarity

All manuscripts submitted to JSCAI are checked for plagiarism and similarity during the editorial process.

Similarity reports are evaluated by the editorial office. The overall similarity percentage is not the only criterion; the nature, source, and distribution of similarity are also considered.

The journal does not accept:

Plagiarism
Self-plagiarism
Inappropriate text recycling
Duplicate publication
Uncited use of previously published material
Misleading paraphrasing
Fabricated references

Manuscripts with serious plagiarism or unethical similarity may be rejected at any stage of the editorial process.

If plagiarism is detected after publication, the article may be corrected or retracted depending on the severity of the case.

• Data Fabrication, Falsification and Image Manipulation

Authors must present research data, results, tables, figures, and images accurately and honestly.

The journal does not accept fabricated data, falsified results, manipulated images, selective reporting, or misleading presentation of findings.

Image adjustments are acceptable only when they do not alter or misrepresent the scientific meaning of the image.

The editorial office may request raw data, original images, analysis files, or additional documentation when necessary.

• Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals

JSCAI is committed to correcting the scholarly record when necessary.

A correction may be published when an article contains an error that does not invalidate the main findings but requires clarification or correction.

A retraction may be issued when an article contains serious errors, plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, unethical research, duplicate publication, peer review manipulation, or other forms of serious misconduct.

A withdrawal may be considered for articles in press or manuscripts under editorial processing when serious problems are identified before final publication.

Correction, retraction, and withdrawal decisions are made by the editorial office after careful evaluation of the case.

Published corrections and retractions remain linked to the original article whenever possible.

• Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, or other stakeholders may submit complaints or appeals regarding editorial decisions, publication ethics, peer review process, or published content.

Complaints and appeals must be submitted with a clear explanation and supporting evidence.

The editorial office evaluates complaints and appeals objectively, confidentially, and in a timely manner.

If necessary, the Editor-in-Chief may consult associate editors, editorial board members, reviewers, or external experts.

Submitting an appeal does not guarantee that the editorial decision will be changed.

• Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently and are based only on scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, peer review outcomes, and relevance to the journal’s Aim & Scope.

Editorial decisions are not influenced by the journal owner, publisher, institutions, sponsors, advertisers, political factors, financial considerations, personal relationships, or commercial interests.

The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for editorial decisions.

• Post-publication Discussions and Ethical Concerns

Readers may contact the editorial office if they identify a potential error, ethical concern, conflict of interest, plagiarism issue, data problem, authorship issue, or citation problem in a published article.

All post-publication concerns are evaluated carefully.

The editorial office may contact the authors for clarification and may request supporting documents or data.

If a correction, expression of concern, or retraction is necessary, the journal will take appropriate action to maintain the integrity of the scholarly record.

• Final Statement

JSCAI expects all authors, editors, reviewers, editorial board members, and editorial staff to act in accordance with principles of honesty, transparency, confidentiality, accountability, and academic integrity.

The journal reserves the right to reject submissions or take post-publication action when ethical misconduct, policy violation, or serious scientific error is identified.