Research Misconduct

Research Misconduct

DINASIF is committed to upholding the integrity of research and scholarly publication. All allegations of research misconduct are handled in accordance with the guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Types of Misconduct

Research misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Fabrication: making up data or results that were never obtained.
  2. Falsification: manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, data, or images such that the research is not accurately represented.
  3. Plagiarism: using another person’s ideas, data, text, or work, including one’s own previously published work (self-plagiarism), without proper attribution. Details are provided on the Plagiarism Policy page.
  4. Duplicate publication: submitting or publishing the same or substantially similar manuscript in more than one journal or issue.
  5. Authorship misconduct: listing individuals who do not meet the authorship criteria, or omitting those who do, as described on the Authorship Criteria page.
  6. Citation manipulation: adding irrelevant citations to inflate the citation counts of particular authors, editors, or journals.
  7. Peer review manipulation: suggesting fictitious reviewers, reviewing one’s own manuscript, or otherwise improperly influencing the review process.
  8. Research ethics violations: conducting research involving human participants, such as surveys, interviews, or user testing, without informed consent, or disclosing participants’ personal data without permission.
  9. Undisclosed conflicts of interest, as described on the Conflicts of Interest page.

Handling Procedure

  1. Allegations may be reported by anyone, including readers, reviewers, and editors, via the editorial email with adequate supporting evidence.
  2. The Editor-in-Chief conducts a confidential preliminary assessment to determine whether the allegation warrants further action.
  3. The authors are given an opportunity to respond to the allegation within a specified period.
  4. If the response is inadequate or no response is received, the editors may refer the matter to the authors’ institution for further investigation.
  5. A decision is made based on the available evidence and communicated to the authors.

Outcomes

Actions are proportionate to the severity of the misconduct and may include:

  • requesting corrections or clarification from the authors;
  • rejecting a manuscript under review;
  • publishing a correction or retraction of a published article, as described on the Corrections & Retractions page;
  • notifying the authors’ institution;
  • barring the authors from submitting to DINASIF for a specified period.

The entire process is conducted confidentially to protect both the person reporting and the authors concerned until a final decision is reached.