Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Research involving individuals through surveys, interviews, experiments, psychological assessments, focus groups, observations, behavioral data, clinical or counseling data, identifiable records, online interactions, 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, autonomy, and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when children, adolescents, vulnerable populations, or participants experiencing psychological distress are involved.
• Research involving deception must provide ethical justification and appropriate debriefing where required.

Psychology and social psychology research may involve sensitive psychological assessments, mental-health information, personality measures, behavioral observations, demographic characteristics, interpersonal relationships, social-media data, counseling records, or other confidential personal information.

• Authors must have lawful, ethical, and authorized access to the data used.
• Personally identifiable information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Participants' psychological, medical, behavioral, and social information must be treated as confidential.
• Special care must be taken when reporting information that could expose participants to stigma, discrimination, reputational harm, or psychological distress.
• Researchers must comply with applicable institutional policies, consent agreements, and data-protection requirements.
• Publicly accessible online data should not automatically be assumed to be ethically unrestricted for research use.
• Restrictions affecting data sharing must be stated clearly in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report research methods and analytical procedures with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Population, sample, participants, cases, groups, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling, recruitment, inclusion, exclusion, and selection procedures must be transparent.
• Psychological scales, measurement instruments, questionnaires, interview protocols, and operational definitions must be adequately described.
• Validity, reliability, adaptation, translation, or cultural validation of instruments should be reported where relevant.
• Statistical, psychometric, qualitative, experimental, or computational procedures must be described.
• Assumptions, exclusions, transformations, missing-data handling, robustness tests, and analytical decisions should be reported where relevant.
• Systematic reviews should follow an appropriate reporting framework such as PRISMA where applicable.
• Qualitative studies should follow suitable transparent reporting standards where applicable.

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

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, 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 academic, methodological, and disciplinary 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, data, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, unethical research practice, 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 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 methods, analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting data and documentation where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, informed consent, permissions, and data-use authorization.
• Protect participant privacy, confidentiality, and welfare.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• 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 or ethical problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. Authors should meet recognized authorship principles and take responsibility for the integrity of the work.

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or 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.
• Non-author contributors should be acknowledged 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, and the role of the funder in study design, participant recruitment, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Data repositories, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or restrictions should be reported.
• De-identified data, analytical code, instruments, questionnaires, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically and legally possible.
• Restrictions arising from participant privacy, informed consent, confidentiality, ethics approval, contracts, or proprietary data must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, or misleading presentation of data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data or research documentation when necessary to evaluate research 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 or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, data, analyses, interpretations, or psychological assessments must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, participant information, or unpublished data into public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, bias, discriminatory content, and misleading interpretations.

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

• Reviewer selection is based on subject, methodological, and disciplinary 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 rather than financial or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, participant protection, 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, ethics documentation, consent records, research instruments, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek subject, methodological, statistical, psychological, ethical, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, 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, participant-protection concerns, or research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, participant protection, 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 where required.
• Psychological scales, inventories, tests, images, questionnaires, or instruments subject to copyright or licensing restrictions must be used lawfully.
• 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, personal data, allegations, data files, 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.