Journal policies

Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement

ARJST follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Last reviewed: November 2026 · ARJST · ISSN 3048-9644 (Online)

Duties of editors

Evaluate manuscripts solely on intellectual merit, without regard to authors’ race, gender, religion, nationality, institution or political views.
Keep all information about submissions confidential.
Declare conflicts of interest and withdraw from handling affected manuscripts.
Ensure every research article receives independent peer review by at least two reviewers.
Act promptly on complaints and allegations of misconduct, following COPE guidance.

Duties of reviewers

Review objectively, constructively and within the agreed time.
Treat manuscripts as confidential and never use unpublished material for their own research.
Declare any conflict of interest and decline if necessary.
Point out relevant uncited work and alert the editor to suspected misconduct.
Not upload manuscripts to generative AI tools or use them to write reports.

Duties of authors

Submit only original work that has not been published or submitted elsewhere.
Cite all sources properly and obtain permission for third-party material.
Report data accurately and keep the underlying data available for scrutiny.
Include as authors only those who meet authorship criteria, and acknowledge other contributors.
Disclose funding, conflicts of interest and any use of generative AI.
Notify the editor promptly of any significant error discovered after submission or publication.

Authorship and contributorship

Authors are expected to have made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, data, analysis or interpretation of the work; to have drafted or critically revised it; and to approve the final version. Contributions should be described using the CRediT taxonomy. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of all authors.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers and editors must disclose any financial or personal relationship that could be seen to influence their work. Authors include a competing-interests statement on the title page; “none” must be stated explicitly.

Research ethics and consent

Research involving human participants – including surveys, interviews, experiments, user studies and the analysis of personal data – must be approved by an Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) or equivalent body before it begins wherever the law or the authors’ institution requires it. Health research follows the Declaration of Helsinki and, for studies in India, the ICMR National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants. The methods section names the committee and the approval number, or explains why no approval was needed.

Participants give informed consent; for children, a parent or guardian gives consent and the child gives assent appropriate to their age. Personal data are anonymised and handled in line with the applicable data-protection law (in India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023). Research involving animals must comply with national guidelines (in India, those of CCSEA) and be reported following ARRIVE.

Clinical trials

Prospective studies that assign people to a health intervention are clinical trials. They must be registered before the first participant is enrolled – in India with the Clinical Trials Registry – India (CTRI), or in another registry of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform – and the registration number is given at the end of the abstract. Randomised trials are reported following CONSORT.

Case studies and confidentiality

Case studies of organisations, systems or communities protect the people and organisations involved. Identifying details are removed unless the organisation has agreed in writing to be named and the people concerned have given their consent. Internal documents and data are used only with permission.

Case studies that describe individual patients are published only with the written informed consent of each patient (or of a parent or legal guardian) to publication in an open access journal, and follow the CARE guidelines.

Responsible reporting

Articles state the limitations of their evidence and do not present a product, algorithm, model or intervention as more effective than the evidence shows. Studies with security implications – for example new vulnerabilities or attack methods – follow responsible disclosure and leave out details that would mainly help an attacker. Articles in ARJST report research: they are not professional, medical or financial advice.

Data, code and reproducibility

Authors include a data and code availability statement and are encouraged to deposit data, code and models in a public repository with a persistent identifier (for example Zenodo or an institutional repository). Datasets and software that are used are cited like other sources. Editors may request raw data or code during review.

Allegations of misconduct

Plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation, duplicate submission, citation manipulation and authorship disputes are investigated following the COPE flowcharts. Authors are given the opportunity to respond. Where necessary the journal may contact the authors’ institution.

Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern

Errors that affect the record are corrected by a published, linked correction notice. Articles with seriously unreliable findings or misconduct are retracted in line with the COPE Retraction Guidelines; the original article remains online, clearly watermarked as retracted. An expression of concern may be issued while an investigation is ongoing.

Authors who need to correct or withdraw their own work use the correction or withdrawal request form.

Complaints and appeals

Complaints about the journal’s processes, editors or published content are made through the complaints and appeals form or by e-mail to librarian@ngmc.org. They are acknowledged within five working days and handled by an editor not involved in the matter; complaints about the Editor-in-Chief are referred to the publisher. Appeals against editorial decisions follow the peer review policy.

Post-publication discussion

Readers may raise comments or concerns about a published article with the editorial office. Substantive comments may be published as a letter, with a reply from the authors.

Intellectual property

Copyright and licensing are described in the copyright & licensing policy. Suspected infringement of intellectual property should be reported to the editorial office.

Publish with ARJST – free of charge

Double-blind peer review, Crossref DOIs and permanent open access. No submission or publication fees.