Publication Ethics

MUKADIMAH  is committed to maintaining integrity, fairness, transparency, and accountability in scholarly publishing. This statement sets out the ethical responsibilities of authors, editors, reviewers, editorial staff, and the publisher, Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara.

The journal draws on the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when developing its editorial policies and addressing research and publication ethics concerns. This statement should be read together with the journal’s policies on authorship and contributorship, conflicts of interest, peer review, allegations of misconduct, complaints and appeals, post-publication discussions, corrections, and the use of generative AI.

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1. Duties of Editors and Editorial Staff

Publication Decisions

The Editor-in-Chief or a designated handling editor is responsible for decisions concerning manuscript acceptance, revision, or rejection. Decisions must consider the manuscript’s originality, scholarly contribution, methodological quality, clarity, relevance to the journal’s scope, ethical compliance, and the findings of editorial assessment and peer review.

Editors may consult other editors, reviewers, or appropriately qualified advisers. They must also consider applicable requirements concerning copyright, privacy, and other relevant rights.

Fairness and Editorial Independence

Editors must assess manuscripts on their scholarly merit without discrimination based on authors’ race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, institutional affiliation, seniority, or political beliefs.

Editorial decisions must remain independent of commercial interests, publication fees, funding relationships, or inappropriate institutional influence. Payment of any applicable publication charge does not guarantee acceptance.

Management of Peer Review

Editors are responsible for selecting qualified reviewers, assessing potential conflicts of interest, maintaining the journal’s double-blind review procedures, and ensuring that reviews support a fair and informed editorial decision.

MUKADIMAH does not accept author nominations or requests to select particular reviewers. Reviewer selection and appointment are exclusively the responsibility of the editorial team. Authors may confidentially report substantiated concerns about potential conflicts of interest, which the editor will assess independently.

Editors must not manipulate the review process or require unnecessary citations to increase the citation counts of particular authors, journals, or institutions.

Confidentiality

Submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, and related correspondence must be treated as confidential. Information may be shared only with individuals who need it to perform authorized editorial duties, subject to the journal’s review model and confidentiality requirements.

Where an ethical investigation requires consultation with institutions, publishers, or other responsible bodies, disclosure must be limited to information necessary for that purpose.

Unpublished material or ideas obtained through editorial work must not be used for personal advantage or in an editor’s research without the authors’ express permission.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors and editorial staff must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests and withdraw from handling manuscripts where those interests could compromise impartiality.

Manuscripts submitted by editors, editorial board members, journal staff, or their close collaborators must be handled independently by an editor without a relevant conflict. The individuals concerned must not participate in reviewer selection or editorial decisions on their own submissions.

Addressing Ethical Concerns

Editors must respond appropriately to credible concerns about submitted or published work. Authors and other affected parties must have a reasonable opportunity to provide explanations and supporting information.

Editors are responsible for protecting the scholarly record. Where necessary, they may seek institutional investigation and issue corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions under the journal’s relevant policies.

2. Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Reviewers provide expert assessments that help editors evaluate manuscripts and help authors improve their work. Reviews should address the quality of the evidence, appropriateness of the methods, strength of the argument, originality, clarity, and relevance of the contribution.

Reviewers make recommendations; the final publication decision rests with the responsible editor.

Expertise and Timeliness

Reviewers should accept invitations only when they have suitable expertise and can complete the review within the proposed or mutually agreed timeframe. They must promptly inform the editor if they cannot complete the review or if circumstances change.

Objectivity and Constructive Feedback

Reviews must be impartial, respectful, and supported by clear reasoning. Comments should identify specific strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. Personal attacks and discriminatory or derogatory remarks are unacceptable.

Confidentiality and Appropriate Use of Materials

Reviewers must keep manuscripts and review materials confidential. They must not share them, contact authors directly about the review, or involve another person without prior authorization from the editor.

Information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal or third-party advantage.

Reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, or review correspondence to public generative AI services or other external tools that could compromise confidentiality. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the assessment submitted to the journal.

Recognition of Sources and Reporting Concerns

Reviewers should identify relevant missing references and notify the editor of suspected plagiarism, substantial overlap, fabricated or falsified evidence, inappropriate citation practices, or other ethical concerns.

Recommendations to cite additional work must be based on scholarly relevance. Reviewers must not request citations primarily to increase their own citation counts or those of associated authors or journals.

Concerns should be reported confidentially to the editor rather than pursued through direct accusations against the authors.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose relationships or interests that could affect their impartiality, including close collaboration, institutional connections, personal relationships, professional rivalry, or financial interests.

If a conflict becomes apparent during review, the reviewer must notify the editor promptly and await instructions before continuing. Recognizing an author in a double-blind review must be disclosed when that knowledge creates a potential conflict.

3. Duties of Authors

Accurate and Transparent Reporting

Authors must present an accurate account of their research and a balanced interpretation of its significance. Data, quotations, historical sources, images, and other evidence must be represented faithfully.

Methods and analytical procedures should be described sufficiently for readers to understand how the findings and arguments were developed. Authors must acknowledge material limitations and distinguish documented evidence from interpretation or speculation.

Fabrication, falsification, deliberate misrepresentation, and knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism

Authors must submit original work and appropriately acknowledge the ideas, words, findings, images, and materials of others. Direct quotations must be clearly identified and accurately referenced.

Plagiarism, misleading reuse of previously published material, and unauthorized reproduction are prohibited. Authors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions.

Similarity screening may support editorial assessment, but a similarity score alone does not determine whether plagiarism has occurred.

Multiple, Redundant, and Concurrent Submission

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time or present substantially duplicated work as a new publication.

Related publications, overlapping manuscripts, and previous dissemination—including preprints, theses, or conference materials—must be disclosed where relevant. Authors should explain the relationship between those materials and the submitted manuscript so that the editor can assess its originality and eligibility.

Authorship and Contributorship

All listed authors must satisfy the journal’s authorship criteria. These include a substantial contribution to the work, participation in drafting or substantive intellectual revision, approval of the final version, and acceptance of accountability.

All individuals who meet the criteria must be appropriately included. Gift, guest, honorary, and ghost authorship are prohibited.

Author order must be agreed upon before submission. Contribution statements must accurately describe each author’s role, using the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy where requested.

Individuals who contributed but do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission. Changes to authorship must follow the journal’s Authorship and Contributorship policy.

Responsibilities of the Corresponding Author

The corresponding author must ensure that all authors approve the submission, author list, order of authorship, and final version for publication.

They are responsible for maintaining accurate author details, coordinating communication with the journal, sharing editorial decisions with co-authors, and ensuring that required declarations are complete and consistent.

Ethical Approval, Consent, and Confidentiality

Authors must follow ethical requirements applicable to their research design, participants, institutions, and source materials.

For research involving human participants, authors must explain relevant ethical approval or exemption and informed-consent procedures where applicable. Consent to participate must be distinguished from consent to publish identifiable information.

Research involving interviews, oral histories, communities, or sensitive historical and social materials must respect privacy, confidentiality, agreed conditions of participation, and relevant access restrictions. Public availability of a source does not automatically remove ethical concerns about its reproduction or use.

Where ethical approval or informed consent is not required, authors should explain the basis for that determination rather than provide an unsupported statement of “not applicable.”

Data and Source Availability

Research articles must include a Data and Source Availability Statement explaining where supporting data or source materials can be accessed, or why access is restricted or not applicable.

For historical research, this may include archival repositories, collection names, catalogue references, published source collections, or digital repositories. Authors should provide sufficient source information to support verification while respecting copyright, privacy, consent, and repository conditions.

Authors should retain supporting materials in accordance with applicable institutional and research requirements and cooperate with reasonable editorial requests for clarification or verification. Restricted or confidential material need not be made publicly available in breach of those obligations.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests that could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, the research or its interpretation. A declaration must also be provided when no conflicts exist.

All research funding must be identified, together with the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to submit. If the funder had no involvement in these activities, this should be stated.

Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies

Authors must disclose relevant use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in accordance with the journal’s dedicated policy, identifying the tools used and their purposes.

Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and proper attribution of all submitted content. AI-generated text, references, translations, or analyses must be checked carefully. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or assume responsibility for the manuscript.

Errors and Post-Publication Cooperation

Authors who discover a significant error or ethical concern in their published work must promptly notify the journal and cooperate in determining an appropriate response.

Authors must also respond to reasonable post-publication requests for clarification, evidence, or correction. Disagreement with a proposed correction or retraction does not prevent the journal from acting where the evidence warrants it.

4. Duties of the Publisher

Support for Editorial Independence

Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, as the publisher, supports the editorial team in maintaining scholarly standards and implementing the journal’s ethical policies.

The publisher must not improperly influence decisions on individual manuscripts for commercial, institutional, or personal reasons.

Publishing Infrastructure and Transparency

The publisher and journal management are responsible for maintaining appropriate publishing infrastructure, clear policies, reliable publication records, and accessible communication channels.

Information concerning ownership, editorial management, copyright, licensing, applicable charges, and archiving arrangements must be presented accurately and updated when confirmed changes occur.

Protection of the Scholarly Record

The publisher must support the journal in addressing ethical concerns and implementing justified corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions. It must also support the preservation and accessibility of published content in accordance with the journal’s archiving arrangements.

5. Allegations of Misconduct

MUKADIMAH considers credible allegations concerning both submitted and published work, regardless of whether they originate from authors, reviewers, editors, readers, or other parties. Anonymous reports may be considered when they contain sufficient verifiable information.

Reports should be submitted through the journal’s official contact channel and identify the manuscript or article, the concern, and any supporting evidence.

The journal will assess concerns impartially, maintain confidentiality as far as practicable, and give affected parties an opportunity to respond. Where appropriate, the journal may request an investigation by the relevant institution or other responsible body.

Actions will depend on the evidence and its implications for the work. They may include requests for clarification, suspension of manuscript processing, rejection, correction, an expression of concern, or retraction. Detailed procedures are provided in the Allegations of Misconduct policy.

6. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, and readers may raise concerns about editorial procedures, ethical conduct, or the handling of a manuscript through the journal’s official contact channel.

Appeals should identify the decision being challenged, explain the grounds, and provide relevant evidence. Disagreement with an editorial judgment alone does not establish procedural error.

Complaints involving an editor must be assessed by an appropriate person who is not involved in the matter. Complaints concerning the Editor-in-Chief should be referred to the publisher or another designated independent person.

Complaints and appeals are handled under the journal’s dedicated policy.

7. Post-Publication Discussion and Correction

MUKADIMAH welcomes constructive, evidence-based discussion of published articles. Readers may submit questions, comments, or substantive criticisms through the journal’s established communication channels.

Confirmed errors will be addressed according to their nature and effect on the reliability of the work. Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and other formal notices will explain the reasons for the action and be linked to the relevant article.

Retraction serves to protect the scholarly record and may be necessary because of serious honest error as well as misconduct. Retracted articles ordinarily remain accessible and clearly marked as retracted.

Further procedures are set out in the Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections policies.

8. Related Policies and Review

This statement provides the journal’s overarching ethical framework. The following policies set out the requirements and procedures for specific matters:

  • Authorship and Contributorship.
  • Conflicts of Interest.
  • Peer-Review Processes.
  • Allegations of Misconduct.
  • Complaints and Appeals.
  • Post-Publication Discussions.
  • Corrections.
  • The Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in Writing.
  • Copyright and Licensing.
  • Open Access and Electronic Archiving.

MUKADIMAH will review this statement periodically and update it when changes to the journal’s procedures or relevant publication ethics guidance require clarification.