Publication ethics and AI policy
The standards we hold authors, reviewers, and editors to, and what we do when something goes wrong.
Standards we follow
JGPCM follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Editorial decisions are based on the scholarly merit of the work, never on the nationality, ethnicity, institution, region, political beliefs, race, religion, or gender of the authors.
Authorship
- Everyone listed as an author must have made a substantial contribution to the work, helped draft or revise it, approved the final version, and agreed to be accountable for it. Others who helped should be acknowledged.
- Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.
- Changes to the author list after submission need the written agreement of every author and an explanation to the editor.
- AI tools cannot be authors.
Originality and redundant publication
Submissions must be original and must not be published or under review elsewhere. Preprints are welcome and should be disclosed. Material previously published in another form, such as a book chapter or conference paper, is considered only when it has been substantially revised, the earlier version is disclosed and cited in the article, and the authors confirm they hold the rights to republish it under CC BY 4.0.
Plagiarism and research integrity
Every submission is screened for similarity with published work before review. Editors also check that references exist and support the claims they are cited for, and look for signs of manufactured manuscripts, such as unusual or garbled phrasing, fabricated or irrelevant citations, duplicated or manipulated figures and data, and unexplained changes of authorship. These checks apply to each manuscript on its own evidence. Where a problem is found, the editors follow the relevant COPE guidance.
Research ethics and consent
Research with human participants must have approval or a documented exemption from an ethics committee or institutional review board, and informed consent from participants. Authors state the approving body and reference number in the title page. Where no such body exists in the author's setting, authors explain how participants were protected. Research using online and social media data must respect platform terms and the privacy of the people whose posts are studied.
Competing interests
Authors, reviewers, and editors must declare any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could be seen to influence their work on a manuscript. Reviewers and editors with a conflict step aside from the manuscript.
Data
Authors are encouraged to make their data, code, and materials available in a public repository, consistent with ethical and legal limits, and to include a data availability statement in every research article.
Artificial intelligence policy
Authors
- Authors must disclose in the title page any use of generative AI tools in the research or in preparing the manuscript: which tool, and what it was used for. Routine spelling and grammar checking does not need to be disclosed.
- AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of everything in the manuscript, including text, references, and analyses produced with AI assistance.
- Undisclosed use of generative AI, or fabricated references, may lead to rejection or, after publication, to correction or retraction.
Reviewers
- Reviewers must not upload any part of a manuscript, or their own report, to a generative AI tool. Reviews must be the reviewer's own work.
The editorial office
JGPCM is run without fees or paid staff, and the editorial office uses a general-purpose AI assistant to make that possible. We describe its use here so that authors and reviewers know where it is involved.
The editorial office uses AI to:
- check submissions against our guidelines (length, structure, anonymisation, and the completeness and formatting of references) and summarise them for the editor;
- identify potential reviewers and board members from public publication records;
- draft correspondence, including invitations, reminders, and decision letters, and keep track of manuscripts and deadlines;
- help with copyediting and formatting after acceptance.
AI does not make decisions. A human editor reads each manuscript, chooses its reviewers, and makes every desk, review, and publication decision. AI summaries are never used in place of reading the manuscript or the reviewers' reports. Every message sent on the journal's behalf is approved by an editor, and every production change is checked by an editor and approved by the authors at proof stage.
Why reviewers are held to a different rule
The editorial office can control the settings of the tools it uses, but not those of every reviewer. The rule that reviewers do not upload manuscripts to AI tools protects authors' unpublished work.
Volume 1
Volume 1 (2025) was produced before this policy was adopted. How AI was used in its production, and how its articles were reviewed, is disclosed on the corrections and notices page.
This section was revised on 3 November 2026 to describe the editorial office's use of AI accurately. See the notice.
Citation practices
Editors and reviewers never ask authors to cite the journal, or their own work, unless the citation is genuinely needed for the scholarship.
Corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern
When an error is found in a published article, we publish a correction linked from the article. When the findings of an article are unreliable because of misconduct or serious error, we retract it following the COPE retraction guidelines; retracted articles stay online, clearly marked. Where an investigation is unresolved, we may publish an expression of concern. All notices are listed on the corrections and notices page.
Complaints and allegations of misconduct
Send complaints about the journal, or concerns about possible misconduct in a submitted or published paper, to editor@jgpcm.org. We acknowledge them within 7 days, handle them following the relevant COPE flowcharts, and keep the complainant informed. Complaints about the Editor-in-Chief are handled by another member of the editorial board. Appeals against editorial decisions follow the appeals procedure.
Advertising and marketing
JGPCM carries no advertising and accepts no sponsorship that could influence editorial decisions. Calls for papers are posted to scholarly mailing lists and sent to researchers working in relevant areas; the journal does not buy email lists.