The Journal of Soft Computing and Artificial Intelligence (JSCAI) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, editorial independence, and responsible scholarly communication.

All parties involved in the publication process, including authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and publisher representatives, are expected to act in accordance with ethical principles and internationally recognized standards of scholarly publishing.

JSCAI follows ethical publishing practices that are consistent with the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and other internationally recognized principles of responsible academic publishing.

The journal does not tolerate plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, unethical use of artificial intelligence tools, or any other form of research or publication misconduct.

All manuscripts submitted to JSCAI must be original, scientifically sound, ethically conducted, and not under consideration by another journal, book, conference proceeding, or publishing platform.

General Ethical Principles

All manuscripts submitted to JSCAI must comply with the principles of honesty, accuracy, transparency, accountability, confidentiality, fairness, and respect for research subjects, data sources, intellectual property, and the scholarly record.

Authors must ensure that their work accurately represents the research process, data, methods, results, interpretations, and conclusions. Editors and reviewers must ensure that manuscripts are evaluated fairly, confidentially, and objectively.

Responsibilities of Authors

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

Authors must:

• Submit only original and unpublished work
• Ensure that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere
• Properly cite all sources, data, methods, software, and previous studies
• Avoid plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, and redundant publication
• Present data, results, figures, tables, images, and code accurately and honestly
• Avoid fabrication, falsification, manipulation, or misleading presentation of data
• List only individuals who meet authorship criteria
• Obtain permission for copyrighted third-party materials where required
• Disclose conflicts of interest
• Disclose all funding sources and financial support
• Provide ethics committee approval and informed consent information where applicable
• Provide data availability, author contribution, and AI use statements where applicable
• Cooperate with the editorial office in case of ethical inquiries or post-publication concerns

All authors must approve the submitted version and the final version of the manuscript and accept responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the work.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers play a critical role in maintaining the quality and integrity of scholarly publishing. Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts objectively, constructively, confidentially, and in a timely manner.

Reviewers must:

• Assess the originality, methodology, clarity, validity, and contribution of the manuscript
• Provide constructive comments that help improve the manuscript
• Maintain confidentiality of the manuscript and review process
• Declare any conflicts of interest
• Decline review invitations when impartiality may be compromised
• Notify the editor of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, ethical concerns, data problems, citation manipulation, or peer review manipulation
• Avoid using unpublished manuscript content for personal, academic, financial, or professional advantage

Reviewers must not share, copy, distribute, disclose, or upload any part of the manuscript or review materials to external platforms or artificial intelligence tools unless explicitly permitted by the journal and confidentiality is fully protected.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring a fair, unbiased, confidential, transparent, and academically rigorous editorial process.

Editors must:

• Evaluate manuscripts based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope
• Ensure that eligible manuscripts are handled through an appropriate peer review process
• Protect the confidentiality of submissions, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial correspondence
• Avoid conflicts of interest
• Assign manuscripts to independent editors when necessary
• Make editorial decisions free from personal, institutional, political, commercial, or non-academic influence
• Respond appropriately to ethical concerns, complaints, appeals, corrections, and retraction requests
• Preserve the integrity of the scholarly record

Editors must not use unpublished information from submitted manuscripts for personal, academic, professional, or financial advantage.

Editorial Independence

The editorial process of JSCAI is conducted independently. Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reviewer evaluations, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.

Editorial decisions are not influenced by ownership, publisher interests, institutional interests, advertising, sponsorship, financial considerations, political factors, personal relationships, or other non-academic pressures.

Research Misconduct

Research and publication misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

• Plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Duplicate or redundant publication
• Data fabrication
• Data falsification
• Image, figure, table, or result manipulation
• Misleading statistical analysis
• Inappropriate authorship
• Guest, gift, honorary, coercive, or ghost authorship
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest
• Citation manipulation
• Peer review manipulation
• Fake reviewer identities
• Unauthorized use of copyrighted material
• Ethical approval or informed consent violations
• Misuse of artificial intelligence tools

If allegations of misconduct are raised before or after publication, JSCAI evaluates the claim carefully, fairly, and confidentially. The journal may request explanations, original data, code, ethics approval documents, informed consent information, permission documents, authorship confirmations, or institutional investigation where necessary.

Depending on the nature and severity of the issue, JSCAI may reject the manuscript, request corrections, publish a correction notice, issue an expression of concern, retract the article, notify the relevant institution, or take other appropriate editorial action.

Plagiarism and Similarity

All manuscripts submitted to JSCAI are screened for similarity using plagiarism detection software. Similarity reports are evaluated by the editorial team in context.

A similarity percentage alone does not automatically determine whether a manuscript is acceptable or unacceptable. The editorial team considers the nature of the overlap, proper citation, quotation, standard methodological expressions, references, and the overall originality of the manuscript.

Manuscripts containing plagiarism, excessive similarity, improper paraphrasing, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, or unattributed use of text, data, figures, tables, images, code, software, algorithms, models, or ideas may be rejected or investigated further.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who made a substantial scholarly contribution to the study. All listed authors must approve the submitted and final versions of the manuscript and accept responsibility for the integrity of the work.

JSCAI does not accept guest authorship, gift authorship, honorary authorship, coercive authorship, ghost authorship, or any other form of inappropriate authorship.

Any request to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be submitted in writing to the editorial office, clearly justified, and approved by all authors.

Artificial intelligence tools, chatbots, large language models, or automated systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors because they cannot take responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, originality, and ethical accountability of the work.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial board members must disclose any financial, personal, academic, institutional, professional, or other conflicts of interest that may influence, or may be perceived to influence, the research, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication process.

Disclosure of a conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication or participation in the editorial process. However, transparency is required to protect the integrity and credibility of scholarly publishing.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest may lead to editorial action, including correction, expression of concern, rejection, reassignment of the manuscript, retraction, or notification of the relevant institution depending on the timing and severity of the issue.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants, personal data, surveys, interviews, observations, experiments, images, audio or video recordings, clinical information, educational records, biometric data, or animal subjects must comply with applicable ethical standards, institutional regulations, legal requirements, and disciplinary norms.

Where required, authors must provide ethics committee approval information, including the name of the ethics committee, approval number, and approval date. Informed consent must be obtained where applicable.

Studies using publicly available datasets, repositories, software, source code, models, online content, social media data, or web-based materials must cite the original source and comply with the terms of use, license conditions, privacy requirements, and ethical restrictions of the data provider.

The fact that data are publicly accessible does not automatically mean that they may be used without ethical consideration. Authors should consider privacy expectations, consent, potential harm, data sensitivity, and platform terms when using publicly available data.

Data, Code and Reproducibility

JSCAI supports transparency, reproducibility, and responsible research practices.

Authors are encouraged to make the data, code, software, models, materials, protocols, and other supporting files related to their study available whenever legally, ethically, and practically possible.

All manuscripts should include a Data Availability Statement explaining whether the data, code, software, models, supplementary materials, or other supporting files are publicly available, available upon reasonable request, included within the article, or not available due to ethical, legal, privacy, confidentiality, or commercial restrictions.

For studies involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, soft computing, data mining, computer vision, natural language processing, optimization, or simulation-based research, authors should provide sufficient methodological detail to support transparency and reproducibility.

Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Authors must disclose the use of AI-assisted tools in manuscript preparation, language editing, data analysis, coding assistance, image processing, table or figure preparation, literature organization, or any other part of the research and writing process.

AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, data, code, analysis, results, interpretations, conclusions, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.

Unethical use of AI tools, including fabrication of data, false citations, image manipulation, concealment of plagiarism, or manipulation of the peer review process, is not acceptable.

Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, supplementary files, or editorial correspondence to AI tools or external platforms unless explicitly permitted by the journal and confidentiality, privacy, and data protection requirements are fully protected.

Peer Review Integrity

JSCAI applies a double-blind peer review process. Authors, reviewers, and editors must respect the confidentiality and integrity of the peer review process.

Peer review manipulation, fake reviewer identities, fabricated reviewer reports, inappropriate influence on reviewers or editors, and attempts to compromise the double-blind review process are not acceptable.

If peer review manipulation is suspected, the editorial office may suspend the review process and initiate an investigation.

Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern

JSCAI is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

When necessary, the journal may publish corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, or article removal notices in accordance with the journal’s Retraction, Correction and Withdrawal Policy.

A correction may be issued when an error affects the article but does not invalidate its findings. A retraction may be issued when there is clear evidence of unreliable findings, serious ethical violations, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, or other major misconduct.

Retraction and correction notices are made clearly identifiable and linked to the related article wherever possible.

Complaints and Appeals

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

Complaints and appeals are evaluated fairly, confidentially, and in accordance with the journal’s Complaints and Appeals Policy. Appeals must include a clear explanation and supporting evidence.

Disagreement with reviewer comments alone is not sufficient grounds for appeal.

Post-Publication Responsibilities

JSCAI takes post-publication concerns seriously. Readers, authors, reviewers, institutions, and other stakeholders may notify the journal of potential errors, ethical concerns, or misconduct in published articles.

The journal evaluates all post-publication concerns carefully and may take corrective action where necessary to maintain the integrity of the scholarly record.

Authors are expected to cooperate with the editorial office in post-publication investigations and provide requested information, data, documents, or explanations in a timely and transparent manner.

Relationship with Other Journal Policies

This statement should be read together with the journal’s related policies, including:

• Peer Review Policy
• Plagiarism Policy
• Conflict of Interest Policy
• Authorship and Contributorship Policy
• Research Ethics Policy
• Data Availability and Sharing Policy
• AI Use Policy
• Retraction, Correction and Withdrawal Policy
• Complaints and Appeals Policy
• Copyright and Licensing Policy
• Open Access Policy

JSCAI is committed to preserving the integrity, reliability, transparency, and trustworthiness of the scholarly record.