1. Duties of Authors

Reporting Standards

Authors must present an accurate, objective, and complete account of the research or community service activity. Methods, procedures, results, limitations, and conclusions must be reported transparently and in sufficient detail to enable readers to understand and evaluate the work.

Data, outcomes, community participation, program benefits, and intervention impacts must not be fabricated, falsified, manipulated, selectively reported, or exaggerated.

Originality and Plagiarism

Submitted manuscripts must be original. The words, ideas, data, figures, tables, photographs, and other materials of others must be properly cited, acknowledged, or reproduced with permission where required.

Plagiarism, inappropriate paraphrasing, undisclosed translation, duplicate publication, and excessive text recycling are unacceptable. All manuscripts undergo similarity screening during the initial editorial assessment. Similarity scores are evaluated contextually and are not used as the sole basis for determining plagiarism.

Multiple and Redundant Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously. Manuscripts must not substantially duplicate work that has already been published or accepted elsewhere.

Previous dissemination as a thesis, dissertation, conference paper, preprint, institutional report, or related publication must be disclosed to the Editorial Team.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be limited to individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions to the work and accept responsibility for its accuracy and integrity.

The corresponding author must ensure that all eligible contributors are listed, no inappropriate authors are included, and all authors have approved the final manuscript and agreed to its submission.

Author contributions must be reported using the CRediT taxonomy or an equivalent contributorship statement. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission.

Any request to add, remove, or reorder authors must be supported by a written explanation and the agreement of all affected authors.

Data and Supporting Documentation

Authors must retain accurate records of the data, instruments, analyses, ethical approvals, consent documentation, and other materials supporting the manuscript.

The Editorial Team may request relevant supporting data or documentation during editorial assessment, peer review, or an investigation of publication-integrity concerns.

Data sharing must comply with confidentiality, ethical approval, legal requirements, institutional policy, and intellectual-property rights.

Ethical Oversight

Research involving humans, animals, identifiable information, or biological materials must comply with applicable ethical and institutional standards.

Where relevant, manuscripts must state:

• The name of the ethics committee
• The approval number
• Informed-consent procedures
• Confidentiality and participant-protection measures 
• Consent for publication of identifiable information or images.

Community Service Articles must explain partner authorization, voluntary participation, participant protection, confidentiality, and permission for photographs or other documentation.

Where formal ethics review was not required, authors must provide an appropriate explanation.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors must disclose all financial and non-financial interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work.

All funding sources and the role of the funder must be stated. The absence of external funding or conflicts of interest must also be declared.

Citation Practices

Authors must cite relevant sources accurately and must not manipulate citations to increase the citation counts of authors, editors, reviewers, institutions, or journals.

Citations must not be included solely because they were requested by an editor or reviewer unless they are academically relevant to the manuscript.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, references, data, analyses, images, interpretations, and conclusions of their manuscripts.

Substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be disclosed in accordance with the journal’s policy. AI tools must not be used to fabricate data, invent references, conceal plagiarism, manipulate findings, or misrepresent authorship.

Errors in Published Work

Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a submitted or published manuscript must promptly notify the Editorial Team and cooperate in issuing a correction, clarification, or retraction where necessary.

2. Duties of Editors

Fairness and Editorial Independence

Editors evaluate manuscripts based on relevance, originality, methodological quality, ethical integrity, and scholarly contribution.

Decisions must not be influenced by authors’ nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political views, institutional affiliation, academic status, financial considerations, or other irrelevant personal characteristics.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final editorial decision, taking into account reviewer reports, the handling editor’s recommendation, journal policies, and independent academic judgment.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff must treat submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, correspondence, data, and unpublished information as confidential.

Information may only be shared with individuals directly involved in the legitimate editorial process.

Confidential manuscripts and unpublished materials must not be uploaded to publicly accessible generative AI platforms or unauthorized external services.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors must disclose and avoid actual or potential conflicts of interest.

An editor must not handle a manuscript when impartiality may be affected by personal, professional, supervisory, financial, institutional, or recent collaborative relationships.

Manuscripts submitted by editors or Editorial Board members must be handled independently. The submitting editor must not participate in reviewer selection, manuscript evaluation, or the final decision.

Peer-Review Integrity

Editors must ensure that peer review is conducted fairly, confidentially, and by reviewers with appropriate expertise.

Editors must avoid reviewers with conflicts of interest, protect reviewer anonymity under the double-blind system, assess the substance of reviewer reports, and investigate suspicious reviewer identities or attempts to manipulate the review process.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not determine decisions through numerical voting alone.

Handling Misconduct

Editors must take reasonable action when concerns arise regarding plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, authorship, citation manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, ethical approval, image manipulation, or peer-review manipulation.

Concerns must be assessed confidentially and fairly. Authors must be given an opportunity to respond. When necessary, the journal may consult the publisher, relevant institutions, ethics committees, research-integrity offices, funders, or other competent authorities.

3. Duties of Reviewers

Contribution and Objectivity

Peer review assists editors in making decisions and helps authors improve their manuscripts.

Reviews must be objective, constructive, evidence-based, and respectful. Personal criticism, discriminatory comments, hostile language, and unsupported allegations are unacceptable.

Expertise and Promptness

Reviewers should only accept manuscripts that fall within their expertise and that they can evaluate within the requested period.

A reviewer who is unable to complete the review promptly or objectively must notify the editor and decline the invitation.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review are confidential and must not be shared, copied, discussed, or delegated without prior editorial approval.

Reviewers must not contact authors directly or upload manuscripts, unpublished data, figures, tables, or supplementary materials to publicly accessible AI tools, external similarity-checking systems, or unauthorized platforms.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any personal, professional, academic, institutional, competitive, collaborative, or financial conflict of interest.

Where impartiality may be compromised, the reviewer must decline the invitation.

Use of Unpublished Information

Information or ideas obtained through peer review must not be used for personal, academic, commercial, financial, or professional advantage.

Reviewers must not delay publication to benefit their own work or the work of others.

Citation and Ethical Concerns

Reviewers may identify important relevant literature omitted from the manuscript, but they must not request unnecessary citations to their own work, the journal, or unrelated publications.

Suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, image manipulation, ethical violations, conflicts of interest, or substantial overlap with other publications should be reported confidentially to the editor.

4. Duties of the Publisher

Yayasan Sumber Daya Manusia Cerdas, as the publisher of GOTAVA, supports editorial independence and ethical scholarly publishing.

The publisher is responsible for:

• Protecting editors from inappropriate commercial or institutional influence
• Supporting investigations of publication-integrity concerns
• Maintaining publication records and digital infrastructure
• Supporting long-term preservation and accessibility
• Facilitating corrections, retractions, and other post-publication notices 
• Protecting confidential editorial information.

The publisher must not interfere with editorial decisions for commercial, personal, institutional, or reputational reasons.

5. Allegations of Misconduct

Concerns regarding submitted or published material may be reported by authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, or other parties.

Reports should identify the manuscript or article concerned and provide sufficient information for an initial assessment.

GOTAVA will assess allegations confidentially and fairly, provide relevant parties with an opportunity to respond, and seek independent or institutional advice when necessary.

The journal is responsible for evaluating the reliability of submitted or published content. Formal investigation of individual researcher conduct may be referred to the relevant institution or competent authority.

6. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

GOTAVA is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.

A correction may be issued when an error affects part of an article but does not invalidate its principal findings.

A retraction may be issued when findings are unreliable because of serious error or misconduct, plagiarism, redundant publication, unethical research, or other substantial integrity concerns.

An expression of concern may be issued when serious concerns exist but an investigation remains incomplete or inconclusive.

All post-publication notices will clearly identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain permanently linked to the original publication, and be freely accessible. Published articles will not be silently deleted or replaced.

7. Complaints and Appeals

Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that an editorial decision resulted from a substantive factual misunderstanding, procedural error, or undisclosed conflict of interest.

Complaints may concern editorial conduct, unreasonable delay, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, discrimination, or administration of the peer-review process.

Whenever practicable, appeals and complaints will be evaluated by an editor or authorized representative who was not directly involved in the original matter. Submission of an appeal does not guarantee reconsideration or acceptance.

Good-faith complaints and appeals will not disadvantage authors in future submissions.