Publication Ethics

1. General Principles

The journal follows COPE Core Practices, and COPE membership is a priority during the launch period. Fabrication and falsification, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, salami slicing, gift authorship and ghostwriting are prohibited. All submissions are screened for text similarity, with indicative thresholds of 20% overall and 5% from any single source, subject to editorial discretion in individual cases.

2. Authorship

Authorship requires substantial contribution to design or analysis, participation in drafting or critical revision, approval of the version to be published, and acceptance of accountability. Funding, data provision or administrative support alone does not confer authorship. Author order is agreed by all authors; any change after submission requires a stated reason and written consent from all authors. Use of ORCID and the CRediT taxonomy is encouraged.

3. Research Involving Human Participants

Ethics committee approval must be obtained and the approval number stated. Where vulnerable groups such as students are involved, arrangements for voluntary participation, informed consent and data de-identification must be described. Research using learning-platform logs, behavioural data or digital traces must state the lawful basis for data collection, the minimisation principle and possible surveillance effects. Cross-border data must comply with applicable laws, including personal data protection and cross-border transfer requirements.

4. Policy on the Use of AI

Generative AI tools, including large language models, do not meet authorship criteria and must not be listed as authors.
Use of AI in writing, coding or analysis must be disclosed in the Methods section (or a suitable alternative section), stating the tool name, version, purpose and date of use.
Where large language models are used for coding, annotation or measurement, the full prompts and parameters, the proportion of human verification and agreement statistics, failure modes and bias audit results must be reported.
AI-assisted copy editing limited to grammar, spelling, punctuation and readability need not be disclosed, though authors remain accountable for the final text.
AI-generated references, data or citations are strictly prohibited; fabricated entries or widespread citation errors lead to immediate rejection or retraction.