Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Community service and community-engagement activities involving individuals through surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, training, mentoring, education, participatory activities, health or social interventions, behavioral data, identifiable records, or other human-participant methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy, dignity, safety, and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified through names, photographs, video, quotations, or other information.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when children, elderly people, persons with disabilities, economically vulnerable groups, or other vulnerable communities are involved.

Community-engagement publications may involve participant information, village or community records, institutional documents, beneficiary data, health or social information, educational records, local organizational data, photographs, audiovisual materials, field documentation, or other sensitive information.

• Authors must have lawful and ethically appropriate access to the information used.
• Confidential or sensitive information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Community members, beneficiaries, partner institutions, local organizations, and other stakeholders must be protected from unnecessary identification or harm.
• Permission must be obtained for the use of identifiable photographs, videos, recordings, testimonials, or personal stories where required.
• Local cultural norms, community expectations, and institutional agreements must be respected.
• Restrictions affecting data or documentation sharing must be stated transparently in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report community-service programs, interventions, implementation methods, evaluation procedures, and outcomes with sufficient clarity to permit scholarly assessment and practical understanding.

• The community problem, need, or local context must be clearly identified.
• The target community, beneficiaries, participants, partners, or institutions must be described.
• The basis for selecting the location, participants, or target group must be transparent.
• Program design, intervention methods, training materials, educational approaches, technologies, or instruments must be explained.
• Stages of preparation, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and follow-up should be reported where relevant.
• Indicators used to assess outputs, outcomes, participant responses, behavioral changes, or community impact must be explained.
• Quantitative, qualitative, participatory, observational, or mixed evaluation methods should be described clearly.
• Limitations, implementation challenges, contextual constraints, and lessons learned should be reported where relevant.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodological appropriateness, relevance, community significance, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate disciplinary, methodological, and community-engagement expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, participant data, community information, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, community, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, ethical violations, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished information or community data for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report community problems, program design, implementation, evaluation, outcomes, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting field documentation, evaluation data, consent records, and relevant program materials where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, informed consent, community permissions, institutional approvals, and data-use authorization.
• Disclose funding sources, sponsorship, institutional support, and the role of funders or partner organizations.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error, ethical issue, participant concern, or community-related problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. The journal applies the four authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design, community-program development, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Community partners, facilitators, field staff, students, local leaders, or other contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately and with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, partner institutions, sponsors, and the role of funders or partners in program design, implementation, data collection, evaluation, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included where the manuscript reports research or evaluation data.
• Data repositories, access conditions, community restrictions, or confidentiality limitations should be reported.
• De-identified evaluation data, questionnaires, training modules, instruments, implementation materials, or supplementary documentation should be shared where ethically and legally possible.
• Restrictions arising from participant privacy, community agreements, confidentiality, institutional requirements, or third-party ownership must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, or misleading presentation of community or evaluation data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data, consent documentation, program records, or supporting evidence when necessary to evaluate research or publication integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published material are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment, community responsibility, or authorship accountability.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, interpretation, and ethical appropriateness.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, data, evaluation results, analyses, translations, or interpretations must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, participant information, photographs, or unpublished community data to public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, bias, misleading claims, privacy violations, and inappropriate representation of communities or participants.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on disciplinary, methodological, and community-engagement expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit, ethical quality, community relevance, and publication standards rather than financial or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, ethical treatment of communities, or integrity of scholarly publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original data, community records, consent documentation, program reports, photographs, evaluation files, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek disciplinary, methodological, ethical, community-engagement, statistical, legal, or safeguarding expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, partner organizations, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, fabricated community activities, falsified evaluation data, or other research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors, participants, community partners, institutions, and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, participant treatment, community representation, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material, including photographs, illustrations, training materials, modules, screenshots, videos, maps, posters, graphics, or other reproduced content where required.
• Authors must obtain appropriate permission before publishing identifiable photographs, recordings, or materials belonging to community partners or participants.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, participant information, community data, photographs, consent records, allegations, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.