Ethical Framework

DEMETER seeks to maintain policies and editorial procedures consistent with internationally recognized principles of publication ethics and research integrity.

Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the integrity, accuracy, originality, and transparency of the work submitted to DEMETER.

• Authors must submit original work and appropriately acknowledge and cite the ideas, data, text, methods, figures, and other materials derived from other sources.
• Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, citation manipulation, deceptive reporting, inappropriate image manipulation, and other forms of research or publication misconduct are unacceptable.
• A manuscript must not be simultaneously submitted to another journal while it is under consideration by DEMETER.
• Authors must report methods and findings accurately and must not intentionally omit, manipulate, or misrepresent information in a manner that could materially distort the scholarly record.
• Authors must maintain appropriate research records and, where justified and legally or ethically permissible, cooperate with reasonable editorial requests for supporting data, documentation, approvals, or other evidence necessary to evaluate the integrity of the work.
• Authors must disclose relevant funding sources, competing interests, ethical approvals, data availability, and other declarations required by the journal.
• Authors must promptly inform the journal if they identify a significant error, omission, or integrity concern in a submitted or published article and must cooperate with appropriate corrective action.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work and who accept responsibility for the content of the manuscript.

• All listed authors must have made a meaningful contribution to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the work.
• All authors must approve the submitted version and accept accountability for their respective contributions.
• Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be appropriately acknowledged where relevant.
• Gift, honorary, guest, purchased, and ghost authorship are inconsistent with the journal's standards.
• Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified and agreed to by all affected authors. The editorial office may request documentary confirmation before approving an authorship change.
• Authorship disputes that cannot be resolved through editorial clarification may be referred to the relevant institution(s), because the journal is not normally positioned to adjudicate competing claims concerning contribution.

Conflicts of Interest and Competing Interests

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose financial, professional, institutional, personal, academic, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.

Disclosure of a competing interest does not automatically prevent publication or participation in the editorial process. Relevant interests will be evaluated and managed to protect the independence and credibility of editorial decisions.

Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where they have a relevant competing interest. Editorial responsibility will be transferred to another qualified editor.

Ethical Oversight

Research must comply with applicable ethical, institutional, national, and disciplinary requirements.

• Research involving human participants must have appropriate ethical approval or documented exemption where required.
• Appropriate informed consent must be obtained where required, including consent for publication of identifiable personal information, images, or case details.
• The privacy, dignity, confidentiality, and rights of research participants must be protected.
• Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional and national animal welfare and research requirements.
• Authors may be asked to provide evidence of ethical approval, informed consent, permissions, or exemption when necessary.

Data Integrity, Availability and Reproducibility

Authors are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the data underlying their research and for reporting methods and results with sufficient transparency to permit scholarly evaluation.

Where appropriate and subject to ethical, legal, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, or contractual restrictions, authors are encouraged to make supporting data and research materials available through appropriate repositories or reasonable scholarly access mechanisms.

Authors must not fabricate, falsify, selectively manipulate, or deceptively present research data or results.

Responsibilities of Editors

• Editorial decisions must be based on scholarly merit, relevance, validity, originality, and compliance with journal policies.
• Decisions must not be influenced by an author's nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, political beliefs, institutional affiliation, or other characteristics unrelated to scholarly merit.
• Editors must preserve the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and information obtained through the editorial process.
• Editors must identify and appropriately manage actual, potential, or perceived competing interests.
• Editors must not use unpublished information obtained through manuscript handling for personal research or advantage without appropriate authorization.
• Editors must not require unnecessary citations for the purpose of artificially increasing journal, editor, reviewer, or publisher citation metrics.
• Editors should take reasonable steps to investigate credible ethical concerns concerning submitted or published work and should not ignore substantiated concerns solely because an article has already been published.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are expected to contribute independent, objective, constructive, confidential, and timely scholarly assessments.

• Reviewers should accept assignments only when they have appropriate expertise and sufficient capacity to complete the review responsibly.
• Manuscripts and associated review materials must be treated as confidential.
• Reviews should evaluate scholarly content objectively and should avoid personal criticism, discriminatory comments, hostile language, or unsupported allegations.
• Reviewers must disclose relevant competing interests and decline or seek editorial guidance when impartial evaluation may be compromised.
• Citation suggestions must be based on genuine scholarly relevance and must not be used to manipulate citation counts.
• Suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, unethical research, or other integrity concerns should be reported confidentially to the editor.
• Reviewers must not independently contact authors regarding allegations or conduct their own investigation outside the journal's editorial process.

The mechanics of reviewer selection, anonymity, review rounds, and editorial decisions are described separately in the journal's Peer Review Process.

Allegations of Research and Publication Misconduct

DEMETER takes credible allegations concerning submitted or published work seriously, regardless of who raises the concern or whether the matter arises before or after publication.

Potential misconduct may include, but is not limited to, plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, inappropriate image manipulation, duplicate or redundant publication, citation manipulation, authorship manipulation, undisclosed competing interests, peer-review manipulation, or other deceptive practices.

Allegations will be assessed confidentially and fairly. Relevant parties may be given an opportunity to respond and provide supporting documentation. Where appropriate, the journal may request clarification or investigation by an author's institution, employer, research integrity office, funding organization, ethics committee, or other competent authority.

The journal does not normally act as the primary adjudicating body for institutional research misconduct. Its responsibility is to evaluate the implications for the submitted manuscript or published scholarly record and to take appropriate editorial action.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors and other stakeholders may submit a reasoned complaint concerning editorial procedures, publication ethics, journal conduct, or other matters within the journal's responsibility.

Authors may also appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a material error occurred in the evaluation or decision-making process. An appeal should provide a clear explanation and relevant supporting evidence rather than merely expressing disagreement with the outcome.

Complaints and appeals should, where practicable, be considered by an editor or responsible person who was not directly involved in the matter being challenged. The outcome of the journal's formal appeal process constitutes the journal's final editorial decision.

Post-Publication Discussion and Integrity of the Record

DEMETER recognizes that scholarly evaluation may continue after publication. Readers, authors, and other researchers may bring substantive concerns regarding published work to the attention of the editorial office.

When a published article requires amendment or when serious concerns arise regarding its reliability or integrity, the journal may issue an appropriate correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other editorial notice.

Detailed criteria and procedures are provided separately in the journal's Correction & Retraction Policies.

Intellectual Property and Responsible Use

Authors must respect intellectual property rights and obtain permission where required for copyrighted third-party material. Sources must be appropriately acknowledged and cited.

Copyright ownership, the journal's CC BY-SA 4.0 licensing framework, attribution, reuse, self-archiving, and treatment of third-party materials are described separately in the Copyright Notice & Licensing Policy.

Artificial Intelligence and Research Integrity

Authors, reviewers, and editors remain personally accountable for their respective scholarly and editorial responsibilities when using artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technologies. Artificial intelligence systems cannot satisfy the responsibilities required for authorship and must not be listed as authors.

Requirements concerning disclosure, permitted uses, confidentiality, accountability, and inappropriate uses of generative AI are provided separately in the journal's AI Ethics and Procedure policy.

Responsibilities of the Publisher

CV. Media Digital Publikasi Indonesia supports the editorial independence of DEMETER and the maintenance of appropriate scholarly publishing infrastructure.

• The publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions concerning individual manuscripts for commercial or other inappropriate reasons.
• The publisher supports the journal in maintaining the integrity, accessibility, and reliability of the scholarly record.
• The publisher supports appropriate investigation and editorial action when credible concerns regarding publication integrity arise.
• Commercial considerations, publication fees, advertising, sponsorship, or other revenue sources must not determine editorial decisions.
• The publisher supports appropriate preservation and availability of published journal content in accordance with the journal's preservation arrangements.