Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

1. General Statement

Artificial Intelligence and Language Models (AILM) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, academic integrity, transparency, and responsible scholarly communication. The journal publishes original research in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, language models, retrieval-augmented generation, multilingual and low-resource NLP, LLM evaluation, responsible AI, and related fields.

AILM follows internationally recognized principles of publication ethics and scholarly publishing best practices. The journal expects all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher, to uphold ethical standards and to avoid any form of academic misconduct.

Academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, undeclared conflicts of interest, peer-review manipulation, and irresponsible use of artificial intelligence tools.

2. Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

2.1 Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts are original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere. Any text, data, figures, tables, algorithms, software, or other materials taken from previous works must be properly cited and acknowledged.

Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable. This includes direct copying, paraphrasing without proper attribution, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, and the use of unattributed AI-generated text, images, code, or data.

AILM may use plagiarism detection tools and editorial screening to identify possible overlap with published or unpublished materials. Manuscripts with substantial plagiarism or unethical similarity may be rejected before peer review or retracted after publication.

2.2 Data Accuracy, Integrity, and Reproducibility

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of all data, methods, experiments, results, and conclusions presented in their manuscripts.

For empirical studies, authors should clearly describe the datasets, models, experimental settings, evaluation metrics, prompts, hyperparameters, baselines, and statistical procedures used in the study. When possible, authors are encouraged to provide access to datasets, code, prompts, trained models, evaluation scripts, or supplementary materials to support reproducibility.

Authors must not fabricate, falsify, selectively omit, or manipulate data, images, experimental results, evaluation scores, or qualitative findings.

2.3 Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the conception, design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, writing, or revision of the work.

All authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission. All authors are jointly responsible for the integrity of the work.

AILM does not allow guest authorship, gift authorship, honorary authorship, or ghost authorship. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section with their permission.

2.4 Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools by Authors

AILM allows the responsible use of AI-assisted tools, including language models, grammar checkers, translation tools, coding assistants, and image or figure-generation tools, provided that such use is transparent, ethical, and does not replace the authors’ intellectual contribution.

Authors must not list AI tools, chatbots, or language models as authors or co-authors because such tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work.

When AI tools are used in manuscript preparation, data analysis, coding, translation, figure generation, literature screening, or other research-related processes, authors must disclose their use in the manuscript. The disclosure should include the name of the tool, version if available, purpose of use, and the sections or tasks where the tool was used.

Example AI-use disclosure:

The authors used [tool name] to assist with language editing and grammar improvement. The authors reviewed, verified, and take full responsibility for the final content of the manuscript.

For studies where AI tools are part of the research object or methodology, authors must provide sufficient detail about prompts, model versions, parameters, datasets, evaluation settings, and limitations to support transparency and reproducibility.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, validity, and ethical compliance of all content, including any content generated or assisted by AI tools.

2.5 Multiple, Duplicate, and Redundant Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Manuscripts that substantially overlap with previously published work by the same authors or others must clearly acknowledge and cite the earlier work.

If the manuscript is an extended version of a conference paper, preprint, thesis, dataset paper, or technical report, authors must disclose this information during submission and clearly explain the new contribution of the submitted manuscript.

2.6 Citation Ethics

Authors must cite relevant and reliable sources that directly support the manuscript. Citations should be used to acknowledge previous work, situate the contribution, and support scholarly claims.

Authors must avoid excessive self-citation, irrelevant citation, coercive citation, citation manipulation, or citation practices intended primarily to increase citation metrics.

2.7 Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, professional, personal, or other relationships that could influence the research, interpretation, or publication of the manuscript.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest include funding relationships, employment, consultancy, patents, commercial interests, institutional affiliations, close personal relationships, or academic competition.

Example statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

2.8 Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support, grants, institutional funding, sponsorship, or other support related to the research.

Example statement:

This research received no external funding.

2.9 Human Participants, Personal Data, and Privacy

Research involving human participants, surveys, interviews, user data, social media data, educational data, medical data, or other personal information must comply with applicable ethical standards, institutional requirements, and data protection regulations.

Authors must obtain appropriate consent, anonymize personal data where necessary, and avoid publishing personally identifiable information unless explicit permission has been obtained.

For AI and NLP research, authors should be careful when using datasets that may contain personal information, sensitive attributes, copyrighted content, private communications, or harmful material.

2.10 Dataset, Software, and Model Ethics

Authors submitting research involving datasets, software, pretrained models, language models, or AI systems must ensure that the materials are used lawfully and ethically.

Authors should clearly describe the source of datasets, licensing conditions, preprocessing steps, annotation procedures, known biases, and limitations. If a dataset or model contains sensitive, harmful, biased, or restricted content, authors should explain how risks were identified and mitigated.

For research involving generative AI, LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation systems, or LLM-as-a-judge methods, authors should report limitations, possible hallucination risks, bias, evaluation uncertainty, and responsible-use considerations.

3. Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

3.1 Editorial Independence

Editors are responsible for making publication decisions based on the scholarly quality, originality, methodological soundness, relevance, clarity, and ethical integrity of the manuscript.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by the authors’ nationality, gender, race, religion, political views, institutional affiliation, seniority, or personal relationships.

3.2 Fair Peer Review

Editors must ensure that all manuscripts are handled fairly, confidentially, and objectively. Manuscripts that pass the initial editorial screening will be sent for peer review by qualified reviewers with relevant expertise.

3.3 Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must keep all submitted manuscripts, reviewer comments, author responses, and editorial communications confidential.

Manuscript materials must not be shared or used for personal advantage by editors, reviewers, or editorial staff.

3.4 Conflicts of Interest

Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest. This includes manuscripts submitted by close collaborators, colleagues from the same institution, students, supervisors, family members, or individuals with whom the editor has a financial or personal relationship.

When a conflict of interest exists, the manuscript should be assigned to another editor.

3.5 Handling Misconduct

Editors are responsible for investigating suspected publication misconduct, including plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, duplicate submission, authorship disputes, peer-review manipulation, citation manipulation, undeclared conflicts of interest, and unethical use of AI tools.

If misconduct is confirmed, the journal may reject the manuscript, request corrections, publish an expression of concern, retract the article, notify the authors’ institution, or take other appropriate actions.

4. Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

4.1 Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Reviewers assist editors in evaluating the quality, originality, validity, clarity, and relevance of submitted manuscripts. Reviewer comments should help editors make informed decisions and help authors improve their work.

4.2 Objectivity and Constructive Feedback

Reviews should be conducted objectively, respectfully, and constructively. Reviewers should provide clear reasons for their recommendations and avoid personal criticism of authors.

Reviewers should comment on the manuscript’s contribution, methodology, literature coverage, clarity, reproducibility, ethical issues, and suitability for AILM.

4.3 Confidentiality

Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential documents. They must not share, discuss, copy, cite, or use unpublished manuscript content without permission from the editor.

4.4 Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must decline the review invitation if they have a conflict of interest with the authors, institutions, funders, research topic, or competing work.

4.5 Identification of Ethical Concerns

Reviewers should inform the editor if they suspect plagiarism, duplicate publication, data manipulation, image manipulation, inappropriate use of AI tools, unethical research practices, or other forms of misconduct.

4.6 Use of AI Tools by Reviewers

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, figures, datasets, tables, or confidential review materials to external AI tools, chatbots, or platforms unless explicitly permitted by the journal and unless confidentiality can be guaranteed.

If reviewers use AI tools to assist with language checking or review organization, they remain fully responsible for the content, accuracy, confidentiality, and integrity of their review.

5. Peer Review Process

AILM applies a rigorous peer-review process to ensure the quality and integrity of published articles.

The standard editorial process includes:

1. Initial editorial screening: The editor checks whether the manuscript fits the journal scope, follows the author guidelines, and meets basic academic and ethical standards.
2. Plagiarism and ethics screening: The manuscript may be checked for similarity, plagiarism, duplicate publication, ethical issues, AI disclosure, and completeness of required statements.
3. Peer review: Manuscripts that pass initial screening are sent to qualified reviewers. AILM normally uses at least two reviewers for research articles.
4. Editorial decision: Based on reviewer comments and editorial evaluation, the decision may be accept, minor revision, major revision, resubmit for review, or reject.
5. Revision and author response: Authors must respond to reviewer comments carefully and revise the manuscript accordingly. A response letter may be required.
6. Final decision: The editor makes the final publication decision based on the revised manuscript, reviewer recommendations, and compliance with ethical standards.

6. Research Misconduct

AILM defines research and publication misconduct as any action that compromises the integrity of scholarly publication. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Data fabrication
• Data falsification
• Image or figure manipulation
• Duplicate submission
• Redundant publication
• Undeclared conflicts of interest
• Gift, guest, or ghost authorship
• Citation manipulation
• Peer-review manipulation
• Misuse of confidential information
• Undisclosed or irresponsible use of AI tools
• Submission of manuscripts generated substantially by AI without human scholarly contribution
• Use of fake identities, fake reviewers, or fraudulent peer-review suggestions

When misconduct is suspected, AILM will investigate the case fairly and confidentially. Authors may be asked to provide explanations, raw data, documentation, ethics approval, or other supporting materials.

7. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

AILM is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

7.1 Corrections

A correction may be published when an article contains an honest error that does not invalidate the overall findings, conclusions, or contribution of the work.

7.2 Retractions

An article may be retracted if there is clear evidence of unreliable findings, plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, unethical research, duplicate publication, serious error, or other major misconduct.

7.3 Expressions of Concern

An expression of concern may be published when serious concerns have been raised but the investigation is not yet complete or the evidence is inconclusive.

All corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern will be clearly linked to the original article and made available to readers.

8. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, or other parties may submit complaints or appeals regarding editorial decisions, publication ethics, peer-review process, conflicts of interest, corrections, or suspected misconduct.

Complaints and appeals should be submitted to the editorial office at: ailm@acspub.id.

The editorial team will review the complaint fairly, confidentially, and in accordance with the journal’s ethical standards. If necessary, the case may be referred to the Editor-in-Chief, publisher, editorial board, or an independent expert.

Appeals against rejection decisions must provide clear scholarly reasons and should not be based solely on disagreement with reviewer comments.

9. Post-Publication Discussion

AILM welcomes responsible post-publication discussion. Readers who identify possible errors, ethical issues, or concerns in a published article may contact the editorial office.

The journal may issue a correction, clarification, expression of concern, or retraction when necessary.

10. Open Access, Copyright, and Licensing

AILM is an open-access journal. All published articles are freely available to readers without subscription barriers.

Authors retain copyright of their articles and grant the journal the right of first publication.

Unless otherwise stated, articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This license allows others to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, share, and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given to the original authors and source.

11. Publisher Responsibilities

The publisher, Akira Cipta Solusi, supports the editorial independence of AILM and is committed to ensuring that editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit and ethical standards.

The publisher is responsible for supporting journal infrastructure, archiving, metadata quality, accessibility, long-term availability of published content, and ethical publication practices.

The publisher will not interfere with editorial decisions and will cooperate with editors in cases involving suspected misconduct, corrections, retractions, complaints, or appeals.

12. Archiving and Long-Term Access

AILM is committed to maintaining long-term access to published articles. The journal will make reasonable efforts to preserve article metadata, PDF files, issue archives, and related publication records.

The journal may use institutional repositories, indexing services, digital archives, or other preservation systems to support long-term accessibility.

13. Ethical Oversight for AI and Language Model Research

Because AILM publishes research related to artificial intelligence and language models, authors should carefully consider the ethical implications of their work.

Authors are encouraged to discuss relevant risks and limitations, including:

• Bias and fairness
• Hallucination and factuality
• Privacy and personal data protection
• Dataset licensing and copyright
• Toxic, harmful, or unsafe content
• Misuse potential
• Evaluation limitations
• Environmental or computational costs, where relevant
• Human impact and social consequences

Manuscripts that present systems, datasets, prompts, models, or methods with potential misuse risks should include appropriate safeguards, limitations, or responsible-use statements.

14. Contact for Publication Ethics

Questions, complaints, appeals, or reports of suspected publication misconduct should be sent to:

Editorial Office
Artificial Intelligence and Language Models
Akira Cipta Solusi
Email: ailm@acspub.id
Website: https://acspub.id/index.php/ailm