Publication Ethics

Learning Communities — International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts is committed to maintaining high standards of academic integrity, scholarly quality, transparency, fairness, accountability, and responsible research publication. Authors, editors, reviewers, and all other individuals involved in the publication process are expected to follow recognized principles of ethical scholarly publishing.

The journal seeks to ensure that all published material represents responsible scholarship and that the integrity of the academic record is protected before, during, and after publication. Allegations of research or publication misconduct are treated seriously and may be investigated whenever sufficient grounds exist.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently on the basis of the academic quality, relevance, originality, methodological soundness, clarity, ethical acceptability, and contribution of the submitted manuscript.

Decisions regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection must not be influenced by commercial interests, personal relationships, institutional pressure, nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political opinion, disability, geographic location, institutional affiliation, or any other characteristic unrelated to the scholarly merit of the submission.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are handled fairly, confidentially, objectively, and efficiently. Editors should evaluate submissions according to their academic merit and suitability for the journal.

Editors should avoid handling manuscripts in cases where they have a significant personal, professional, academic, institutional, or financial conflict of interest. Where such a conflict exists, responsibility for the manuscript should be assigned to another suitably qualified editor.

Editors must not use unpublished information contained in a submitted manuscript for personal research, professional advantage, commercial benefit, or any other unauthorized purpose.

Initial Editorial Screening

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial assessment before being considered for external peer review. During this stage, the editorial team may evaluate the manuscript's relevance to the aims and scope of the journal, originality, overall academic quality, ethical compliance, presentation, methodological suitability, reference quality, and compliance with submission requirements.

Manuscripts that fall outside the journal's scope, fail to meet minimum scholarly standards, contain serious ethical concerns, or do not comply with essential submission requirements may be returned to the authors or rejected without external peer review.

Peer Review Process

Learning Communities — International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts follows a single-blind peer review process.

Under the single-blind review model, the identities of the reviewers are not disclosed to the authors. Reviewers may, however, have access to the names, affiliations, and other identifying information of the authors as presented in the submitted manuscript.

Manuscripts that successfully pass the initial editorial screening are normally forwarded to appropriately qualified reviewers with relevant subject expertise. Reviewers assess the scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigor, theoretical contribution, clarity, relevance, interpretation of findings, ethical considerations, and overall suitability of the manuscript for publication.

Editorial decisions may include acceptance, minor revision, major revision, resubmission for further review, or rejection. The final decision regarding publication rests with the journal's editorial team.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, respectful, timely, and evidence-based evaluations. Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate and should not form part of a scholarly review.

Reviewers should identify significant weaknesses, unsupported conclusions, methodological concerns, ethical issues, missing literature, or other problems that may affect the reliability or scholarly contribution of the manuscript.

Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and must not share, reproduce, distribute, discuss, or use unpublished material without authorization.

A reviewer should decline a review where there is insufficient subject expertise, inability to complete the review within a reasonable period, or a conflict of interest that could affect impartial evaluation.

Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, supplementary files, research data supplied for assessment, and other materials associated with the review process must be treated as confidential.

Editors and reviewers must not disclose confidential information obtained through the editorial process except where disclosure is required for an appropriate ethical investigation or where authorization has been provided.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must submit original work and must appropriately acknowledge all sources used in preparing the manuscript. Text, ideas, theories, data, figures, tables, images, methods, and other material derived from previously published or unpublished sources must be appropriately cited or acknowledged.

Plagiarism, including direct copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, unattributed use of ideas, excessive reproduction of previously published material, and misleading presentation of another person's work as one's own, is unacceptable.

Manuscripts may be assessed using similarity-detection or plagiarism-screening systems where appropriate. Similarity alone does not automatically establish plagiarism; editorial judgment may be used to determine whether overlapping material represents legitimate quotation, standard terminology, methodological description, properly cited reuse, or inappropriate duplication.

Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Authors should not submit substantially the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal. A manuscript under active consideration by another publication should not normally be submitted to this journal.

Authors must disclose related publications, preprints, conference papers, dissertations, reports, datasets, or other materials where substantial overlap may exist. Legitimate secondary publication or reuse may be considered only where appropriate disclosure, citation, permission, and editorial approval are provided.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, deliberate omission, inappropriate alteration, or misleading representation of research data is considered serious research misconduct.

Authors must ensure that data, results, statistical analyses, figures, tables, images, quotations, and other evidence are represented accurately and honestly. Authors may be asked to provide underlying data, documentation, analysis files, ethical approvals, or supporting materials where verification is reasonably necessary.

Image and Figure Integrity

Images, figures, photographs, graphs, and other visual materials must not be manipulated in a manner that misrepresents the underlying evidence. Adjustments for clarity should not obscure, remove, add, or selectively alter information in a way that could mislead readers.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted images, figures, tables, photographs, or other third-party materials where permission is legally required.

Authorship Policy

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, drafting, or critical revision of the work and who are able to take appropriate responsibility for their contributions.

All listed authors should review and approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission and publication.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, purchased authorship, ghost authorship, and the inclusion of individuals who did not make a meaningful scholarly contribution are not acceptable.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission should be supported by a clear explanation and agreement from all affected authors.

Requests for authorship changes after acceptance or publication may require additional documentation and will be considered only where a legitimate reason exists.

Contributor Acknowledgements

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately, provided that their permission has been obtained where necessary.

Contributions such as technical support, language editing, statistical assistance, data collection, administrative support, or other relevant assistance may be acknowledged transparently.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors should disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their work, judgment, interpretation, review, or editorial decision.

Potential conflicts may include financial relationships, employment, consultancy, institutional relationships, personal relationships, research competition, intellectual commitments, funding arrangements, patents, commercial interests, or other relevant associations.

The existence of a conflict of interest does not automatically prevent publication, but relevant interests should be disclosed transparently so that appropriate editorial decisions can be made.

Funding Disclosure

Authors should identify financial support, grants, sponsorship, institutional funding, or other material support received for the research or preparation of the manuscript.

Where applicable, authors should also describe the role of the funding body in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants should comply with applicable ethical, institutional, and legal requirements.

Where required, authors should state that appropriate approval was obtained from a recognized institutional review board, research ethics committee, or equivalent authority and should provide relevant approval information within the manuscript.

Authors should protect participants' privacy, dignity, safety, confidentiality, and rights throughout the research and publication process.

Informed Consent

Where research requires informed consent, authors should obtain appropriate consent from participants or their legally authorized representatives before participation.

Separate consent may be required where identifiable personal information, photographs, case descriptions, recordings, quotations, or other materials could allow an individual to be recognized.

Research Involving Vulnerable Participants

Studies involving children, individuals with impaired decision-making capacity, marginalized communities, dependent populations, or other vulnerable groups should demonstrate appropriate ethical safeguards.

Authors should ensure that participation is voluntary, risks are minimized, confidentiality is protected, and appropriate consent or assent procedures are followed.

Research Data and Data Availability

Authors should retain sufficient research records to support the accuracy and integrity of their findings. Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors are encouraged to make research data available through suitable repositories or provide a data availability statement explaining how supporting data may be accessed.

Data sharing must respect participant confidentiality, informed consent, intellectual property rights, contractual obligations, legal requirements, and other legitimate restrictions.

Use of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI

Authors must use artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence technologies responsibly, transparently, and in a manner consistent with academic integrity.

Artificial intelligence tools, including generative AI systems, large language models, automated writing systems, image-generation tools, coding assistants, translation tools, data-analysis systems, and similar technologies, must not be listed as authors or co-authors.

Authorship carries responsibility and accountability for the accuracy, originality, integrity, interpretation, and ethical compliance of a scholarly work. Because AI systems cannot independently assume such responsibility, approve the final manuscript, disclose conflicts of interest, or respond to ethical concerns, they do not qualify for authorship.

Authors remain fully responsible for all content submitted to the journal, regardless of whether an AI tool was used during drafting, editing, translation, coding, data analysis, literature organization, image preparation, or another stage of manuscript development.

AI-generated content must not be presented as verified scholarly evidence without appropriate human evaluation. Authors should independently verify factual claims, calculations, references, quotations, statistical results, citations, and other information produced or assisted by AI tools.

Authors must not use AI-generated references or citations without confirming that the cited sources genuinely exist and accurately support the claims for which they are cited.

Where generative AI has been used in a manner that materially contributed to the preparation of the manuscript, authors should disclose the use appropriately. The disclosure should normally identify the tool and explain the purpose for which it was used.

Routine spelling correction, grammar checking, reference formatting, or other minor language-support functions that do not materially generate scholarly content may not require detailed disclosure unless otherwise requested by the editors.

AI tools must not be used to fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or invent research data, participants, interviews, quotations, images, results, references, ethical approvals, statistical outputs, or other scholarly evidence.

Where AI-generated or AI-modified images, graphics, audio, video, or other media form part of the research methodology or scholarly subject of the manuscript, their use should be clearly explained and methodologically justified.

Use of AI by Reviewers

Reviewers must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Manuscript content, unpublished data, confidential figures, or other materials should not be entered into external generative AI systems where doing so could compromise confidentiality, privacy, copyright, intellectual property, or data protection obligations.

Reviewers remain personally responsible for the content and quality of their review reports. AI-generated reviewer reports should not replace independent scholarly evaluation and professional judgment.

Use of AI by Editors

Editors must also protect the confidentiality of submitted materials when using digital or AI-assisted systems. Editorial decisions must remain subject to appropriate human judgment and accountability.

Artificial intelligence should not independently make final decisions regarding manuscript acceptance or rejection.

Reference and Citation Style

The journal uses APA style for the formatting of reference details. Authors should provide complete and accurate bibliographic information for all sources cited in the manuscript.

References are numbered sequentially according to the order in which they first appear in the text. The first source cited should be numbered 1, the second new source cited should be numbered 2, and numbering should continue consecutively throughout the manuscript.

When a previously cited source is cited again, authors should use the same reference number originally assigned to that source rather than creating a new number.

The reference list should therefore appear in numerical order corresponding to first citation in the manuscript rather than alphabetical order.

Although references are numbered in citation order, the bibliographic information for each reference should follow the journal's adopted APA conventions for author names, publication year, article or chapter title, journal or book title, volume, issue, page range, publisher information, and DOI or URL where applicable.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that every reference cited in the text appears in the reference list and that every item included in the reference list is cited within the manuscript.

Authors should verify the accuracy, existence, relevance, and bibliographic details of all references before submission. Fabricated, unverifiable, misleading, or AI-invented references are not acceptable.

Copyright and Permissions

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submissions do not unlawfully infringe the copyright, privacy, confidentiality, trademark, intellectual property, or other rights of third parties.

Permission must be obtained for copyrighted material where permission is required. Evidence of permission may be requested by the editorial office before publication.

Diamond Open Access Publication Model

Learning Communities — International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts operates under a Diamond Open Access publication model.

All published articles are made freely and openly available to readers without subscription charges, paywalls, or other access fees.

Under the Diamond Open Access model, authors are not required to pay article processing charges for standard publication in the journal.

The purpose of this model is to remove financial barriers for both readers and authors and to support equitable dissemination of scholarly knowledge across institutions, regions, and communities.

Corrections

Where an error is identified after publication and the error does not invalidate the central findings of the article, the journal may publish an appropriate correction, clarification, or amendment.

Corrections should preserve the transparency and integrity of the scholarly record and should clearly identify the article to which they relate.

Retractions

An article may be considered for retraction where there is reliable evidence of serious misconduct, unreliable findings, fabrication, falsification, substantial plagiarism, unethical research, unauthorized publication, major copyright infringement, duplicate publication, or another serious problem that substantially undermines the validity or integrity of the published work.

Retraction is intended to correct the scholarly record rather than to punish authors. Retraction notices should clearly identify the affected article and, where appropriate, explain the reason for the retraction.

Expressions of Concern

Where serious concerns have been raised but an investigation cannot immediately establish whether a correction or retraction is warranted, the journal may publish an expression of concern while the matter is being investigated.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other interested parties may raise legitimate concerns regarding editorial decisions, ethical matters, peer review, publication procedures, or published content.

Appeals against editorial decisions should provide a clear academic justification and should address the reasons originally provided by the editors or reviewers. Submission of an appeal does not guarantee that the original decision will be changed.

Complaints and appeals should be handled objectively, respectfully, confidentially, and independently wherever possible.

Post-Publication Concerns

The journal welcomes responsible notification of significant errors, ethical concerns, undisclosed conflicts, potential misconduct, or other issues affecting published articles.

Where a credible concern is raised, the journal may request clarification, documentation, data, ethical approvals, or other relevant information from the authors or responsible institutions.

Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Allegations of research or publication misconduct will not be dismissed solely because an article has already been published or because an author is no longer affiliated with the institution at which the work was conducted.

Where appropriate, the journal may communicate with authors, reviewers, institutions, research ethics bodies, funding organizations, publishers, or other relevant authorities as part of an investigation.

Appropriate editorial action may include requesting an explanation, seeking supporting documentation, rejecting a manuscript, issuing a correction, publishing an expression of concern, retracting an article, or taking other reasonable measures necessary to protect the scholarly record.

Reviewer and Editorial Misconduct

Ethical standards apply not only to authors but also to reviewers and editors. Breaches may include inappropriate disclosure of confidential information, undisclosed conflicts of interest, misuse of unpublished research, deliberately biased reviewing, coercive citation practices, inappropriate manipulation of editorial decisions, or other conduct inconsistent with scholarly integrity.

Credible concerns regarding reviewer or editorial conduct may be investigated and appropriate action may be taken.

Citation Manipulation

Authors should cite sources because they are relevant and academically necessary. Authors must not add irrelevant citations solely for the purpose of increasing citation counts of particular authors, journals, institutions, editors, or other publications.

Reviewers and editors should not pressure authors to add unnecessary citations to their own work or to particular journals where those citations are not academically justified.

Peer Review Manipulation

Any attempt to manipulate the peer-review process is prohibited. This includes providing false reviewer identities, creating fabricated reviewer accounts, impersonating researchers, supplying misleading contact details, interfering with independent reviewer selection, or otherwise attempting to influence the review process improperly.

Ethical Responsibility of Authors

By submitting a manuscript, authors confirm that they accept responsibility for the integrity, originality, accuracy, ethical compliance, and scholarly content of their work.

Authors are expected to cooperate with reasonable editorial requests before and after publication and to notify the journal promptly if they discover a significant error or ethical problem in their published work.

Commitment to Scholarly Integrity

Learning Communities — International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts is committed to preserving the reliability, transparency, accessibility, and integrity of the scholarly record.

The journal may revise or expand its publication ethics policies when necessary to reflect developments in scholarly communication, research integrity, artificial intelligence, open access publishing, data governance, and responsible editorial practice.