Publication Ethic

1. Ethical Principles and Commitment

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, accountability, fairness, and ethical conduct throughout the scholarly publishing process.

The journal recognizes that responsible publication requires the active participation of authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher. Each party has a responsibility to protect the credibility of the scholarly record and to ensure that published work is accurate, original, ethically conducted, and appropriately documented.

The journal maintains policies and procedures for addressing matters related to:

  • Authorship and contributorship;

  • Research and publication misconduct;

  • Plagiarism and improper attribution;

  • Duplicate and redundant publication;

  • Data integrity and reproducibility;

  • Conflicts of interest;

  • Ethical oversight;

  • Intellectual property;

  • Confidentiality;

  • Peer-review integrity;

  • Complaints and appeals;

  • Corrections and retractions; and

  • Post-publication concerns and discussions.

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, relevance to the journal's focus and scope, methodological quality, originality, clarity, ethical compliance, and contribution to knowledge and practice.

No manuscript receives favorable or unfavorable treatment because of an author's institutional affiliation, geographic location, nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political views, professional status, or other characteristics unrelated to the scholarly quality of the work.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the integrity, accuracy, originality, and ethical conduct of the work they submit to Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun.

By submitting a manuscript, authors affirm that:

  • The manuscript represents original scholarly work.

  • The work has not been fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or intentionally misrepresented.

  • The manuscript has not been published previously in substantially the same form.

  • The manuscript is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

  • All sources and intellectual contributions from others have been appropriately acknowledged and cited.

  • All individuals listed as authors meet legitimate authorship criteria.

  • Individuals who contributed substantially but do not qualify for authorship are appropriately acknowledged when applicable.

  • Relevant conflicts of interest have been disclosed.

  • Research involving ethical considerations has been conducted in accordance with applicable ethical and institutional requirements.

  • Data, results, figures, tables, references, and other information presented in the manuscript are accurate to the best of the authors' knowledge.

  • Necessary permissions have been obtained for copyrighted or third-party material included in the manuscript.

  • Authors will cooperate with the editors in addressing legitimate questions concerning the integrity of the submitted or published work.

Authors must promptly notify the journal if they discover a significant error, inaccuracy, ethical concern, or other problem in their manuscript after submission or publication.

3. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should accurately reflect substantial intellectual contributions to the work.

Individuals should be listed as authors only when they have made meaningful contributions to the conception, design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, preparation, or substantive revision of the scholarly work and are prepared to take appropriate responsibility for their contributions.

All listed authors should:

  • Approve the manuscript before submission;

  • Agree to its submission to Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun;

  • Approve the final version intended for publication; and

  • Accept responsibility for the integrity of their contribution to the work.

Individuals who provide administrative assistance, general supervision, technical assistance, funding acquisition without substantive scholarly involvement, language editing, or other support that does not justify authorship should not automatically be listed as authors. Their contributions may instead be acknowledged where appropriate.

The journal does not accept unethical authorship practices, including:

  • Guest authorship, where an individual is named despite having made no substantial contribution;

  • Gift or honorary authorship, where authorship is granted because of status, authority, personal relationship, or expected benefit;

  • Ghost authorship, where an individual who made a substantial contribution is intentionally omitted from the author list.

Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be supported by a legitimate explanation and agreement from the relevant authors. The editorial team may request additional clarification before approving an authorship change.

4. Originality and Plagiarism

All manuscripts must represent original work and must appropriately acknowledge the ideas, language, data, methods, figures, tables, and other intellectual contributions of others.

Plagiarism is unacceptable.

Forms of plagiarism may include:

  • Copying text without appropriate attribution;

  • Presenting another person's ideas or findings as one's own;

  • Inappropriate paraphrasing without proper citation;

  • Reproducing figures, tables, images, or other material without appropriate acknowledgment or permission;

  • Submitting material derived substantially from another work without transparent attribution; and

  • Misrepresenting previously published material as new and original work.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that quotations, paraphrases, citations, and references are presented accurately and transparently.

The journal may evaluate submitted manuscripts for textual similarity and other indications of inappropriate duplication. A similarity report, when used, is interpreted editorially and is not treated as an automatic determination of plagiarism.

Where plagiarism or substantial unattributed duplication is identified, the journal may reject the manuscript or take appropriate action if the work has already been published.

5. Duplicate, Redundant, and Concurrent Publication

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously.

A manuscript should not substantially duplicate work that has already been formally published unless the relationship between the works is legitimate, transparent, appropriately cited, and consistent with accepted scholarly publishing practices.

Authors must disclose relevant previous publications or closely related manuscripts when they may affect the editorial assessment of originality.

Artificially dividing one coherent study into multiple publications solely to increase publication output is discouraged when such fragmentation reduces scholarly clarity or results in substantial duplication.

If the editorial team identifies possible duplicate or redundant publication, the authors may be asked to provide an explanation and relevant documentation before an editorial decision is made.

6. Research Integrity and Data Accuracy

Authors must present research findings honestly, accurately, completely, and transparently.

The journal does not tolerate:

  • Data fabrication;

  • Data falsification;

  • Deliberate manipulation of research results;

  • Selective alteration of evidence intended to create a misleading conclusion;

  • Misrepresentation of research procedures;

  • Manipulation of figures or images that changes their scholarly meaning; or

  • Other practices that compromise the reliability of the research record.

Research methods should be described with sufficient clarity to allow readers to understand how the study was conducted and, where appropriate, to evaluate or reproduce its procedures.

Authors should maintain relevant research records and supporting materials in accordance with appropriate institutional, disciplinary, legal, or ethical requirements.

If questions arise concerning the reliability of reported findings, the journal may request reasonable clarification or supporting documentation from the authors.

7. Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun supports transparency in research reporting and encourages practices that strengthen the reliability and reproducibility of scholarly work.

Authors should describe data collection, analysis, and interpretation sufficiently clearly to allow readers to understand how conclusions were reached.

Where appropriate and ethically permissible, authors are encouraged to make supporting data, instruments, protocols, or other relevant research materials available through appropriate repositories or other legitimate mechanisms.

Data sharing must respect:

  • Participant confidentiality;

  • Privacy requirements;

  • Ethical approvals;

  • Intellectual property rights;

  • Institutional policies;

  • Legal restrictions; and

  • Legitimate agreements governing access to research data.

Authors must not claim that data are publicly available when access is materially restricted without appropriate disclosure.

8. Ethical Oversight

Research must be conducted responsibly and in accordance with applicable ethical principles, institutional requirements, professional standards, and relevant laws or regulations.

Where research involves human participants, personal information, vulnerable populations, animals, or other activities requiring formal ethical oversight, authors should obtain the appropriate approval before conducting the research when such approval is required.

When applicable, manuscripts should clearly report relevant information concerning:

  • Ethical approval;

  • The approving institution or committee;

  • Informed consent;

  • Protection of privacy and confidentiality; and

  • Other safeguards relevant to the research.

Authors should avoid publishing information that could unnecessarily identify research participants or compromise their privacy.

The journal may request clarification or documentation concerning ethical approval when necessary.

9. Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably influence, or appear to influence, their professional judgment.

Conflicts of interest may be:

  • Financial;

  • Personal;

  • Professional;

  • Institutional;

  • Academic; or

  • Other relationships relevant to the submitted work.

Authors should disclose relevant conflicts when submitting a manuscript.

Reviewers should decline a review assignment when a conflict prevents an impartial evaluation.

Editors should not make editorial decisions on manuscripts where a significant conflict of interest could compromise independent judgment. Where necessary, editorial responsibility should be transferred to another qualified editor.

Disclosure of a conflict of interest does not automatically prevent publication. Its purpose is to ensure transparency and allow appropriate management of potential influences on scholarly judgment.

10. Citation Practices

Citations should serve legitimate scholarly purposes.

Authors must cite sources that are relevant to the development, interpretation, methodology, contextualization, or discussion of the work.

The journal considers inappropriate practices to include:

  • Deliberately adding irrelevant references;

  • Excessive citation of an author's own work without scholarly justification;

  • Citation arrangements intended primarily to manipulate citation metrics;

  • Pressure to cite particular publications without legitimate academic relevance; and

  • Systematic citation practices designed to artificially increase the citation performance of an author, reviewer, editor, journal, or institution.

Editors and reviewers should not require authors to add citations solely for personal, institutional, or journal-level advantage.

11. Intellectual Property and Copyright

Authors retain copyright ownership of articles published in Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun.

Published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Under this license, users may share and adapt published material, including for permitted reuse and redistribution, provided that appropriate attribution is given and adapted material is distributed under the same or a compatible ShareAlike license as required by the license terms.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that material incorporated from third-party sources can legally be published under the conditions applicable to the article.

The journal respects the intellectual property rights of authors and third parties and will investigate legitimate claims concerning copyright infringement or unauthorized use of protected material.

12. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining the integrity, fairness, independence, and academic quality of the editorial process.

Editors should:

  • Evaluate manuscripts according to scholarly merit;

  • Ensure that manuscripts are assessed consistently with the journal's focus and scope;

  • Protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts;

  • Select appropriate and qualified reviewers;

  • Avoid inappropriate conflicts of interest;

  • Safeguard the independence of editorial decisions;

  • Consider reviewer recommendations critically rather than treating them as automatic decisions;

  • Address ethical concerns fairly and consistently;

  • Avoid discrimination unrelated to scholarly merit;

  • Protect the integrity of the scholarly record; and

  • Take appropriate action when credible concerns arise regarding submitted or published work.

Editorial decisions must not be determined by financial considerations, personal relationships, institutional pressure, or other inappropriate interests.

Editors must not misuse unpublished material obtained through the editorial process for personal research, professional advantage, or other unauthorized purposes.

13. Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

Peer reviewers contribute to editorial decision-making and assist authors in improving the quality of their manuscripts.

Reviewers are expected to:

  • Provide objective, constructive, and academically reasoned assessments;

  • Evaluate manuscripts within their areas of competence;

  • Maintain confidentiality;

  • Disclose conflicts of interest;

  • Avoid personal or discriminatory criticism;

  • Identify significant scholarly weaknesses or ethical concerns;

  • Draw attention to potentially relevant uncited work when appropriate;

  • Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, or other misconduct to the editor; and

  • Complete reviews within an appropriate period or promptly decline when unable to do so.

Manuscripts received for review are confidential documents. Reviewers must not share, reproduce, distribute, or use unpublished material without appropriate authorization.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. Final publication decisions remain the responsibility of the journal's editorial authority.

14. Integrity of the Double-Blind Peer-Review Process

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun applies a double-blind peer-review process.

The journal seeks to protect the anonymity of authors and reviewers throughout the review process.

Authors should avoid deliberately including information in anonymized manuscript files that unnecessarily reveals their identities. Reviewers must not attempt to contact authors directly or circumvent the journal's editorial procedures.

Any attempt to manipulate the peer-review process is considered a serious ethical concern.

Peer-review manipulation may include:

  • Providing false reviewer identities;

  • Fabricating reviewer accounts;

  • Attempting to control reviewer selection through deceptive information;

  • Submitting reviews under another person's identity;

  • Coordinating fraudulent reviews; or

  • Attempting to improperly influence an editorial decision.

Credible evidence of peer-review manipulation may result in rejection, withdrawal of consideration, retraction, or other appropriate editorial action.

15. Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and associated correspondence.

Information obtained during manuscript evaluation should be used only for legitimate editorial and peer-review purposes.

Unpublished manuscripts, data, arguments, interpretations, or other materials obtained through the review process must not be exploited for personal, academic, professional, institutional, or commercial advantage.

Confidentiality obligations continue after the review process has concluded.

16. Research and Publication Misconduct

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously.

Potential misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

  • Plagiarism;

  • Fabrication;

  • Falsification;

  • Duplicate or redundant publication;

  • Citation manipulation;

  • Peer-review manipulation;

  • Inappropriate authorship;

  • Undisclosed conflicts of interest;

  • Misrepresentation of ethical approval;

  • Unauthorized use of copyrighted material; and

  • Deliberate misrepresentation of research findings.

The existence of an allegation does not automatically establish misconduct.

When a credible concern is raised, the journal will seek to evaluate the matter fairly, objectively, and confidentially. Authors or other relevant parties may be asked to provide explanations, supporting documents, original data, ethical approvals, or other information necessary to clarify the issue.

The journal will avoid knowingly permitting misconduct to remain unaddressed in the scholarly record.

17. Handling Allegations of Misconduct

When an allegation concerns a submitted or published article, the editorial team will evaluate the nature and credibility of the concern.

Depending on the circumstances, the journal may:

  1. Conduct an initial assessment;

  2. Request clarification from the author or other relevant parties;

  3. Examine supporting evidence;

  4. Seek appropriate expert or editorial advice;

  5. Suspend editorial processing while a serious concern is investigated;

  6. Correct the scholarly record when an error is established;

  7. Reject a manuscript when serious misconduct is confirmed before publication; or

  8. Consider correction, retraction, or other appropriate post-publication action where the issue concerns a published article.

Investigations should distinguish genuine mistakes from deliberate misconduct whenever sufficient evidence permits that distinction.

The journal seeks to handle allegations consistently with recognized principles of publication ethics and due process.

18. Corrections

The journal recognizes its responsibility to maintain an accurate scholarly record.

A correction may be issued when a published article contains an error that materially affects clarity, interpretation, attribution, or accuracy but does not invalidate the article as a whole.

Corrections should clearly identify:

  • The article concerned;

  • The nature of the error;

  • The corrected information; and

  • The relationship between the correction notice and the original article.

Minor typographical errors that do not affect interpretation or scholarly meaning may not require a formal correction notice.

19. Retractions

Retraction may be considered when there is reliable evidence that a published article contains serious problems that invalidate its findings or substantially compromise the integrity of the publication.

Potential reasons may include:

  • Fabricated or falsified data;

  • Serious plagiarism;

  • Unacceptable duplicate publication;

  • Fundamental ethical violations;

  • Fraudulent authorship or peer-review practices; or

  • Other serious circumstances that render the scholarly record unreliable.

A retraction is intended to correct the scholarly record, not merely to punish authors.

Where an article is retracted, the journal should maintain a transparent record of the action and clearly link the retraction notice to the affected article.

20. Post-Publication Discussion and Concerns

The journal recognizes that scholarly evaluation may continue after publication.

Readers, authors, reviewers, researchers, or other interested parties may bring legitimate concerns about published work to the attention of the editorial office.

Concerns should be supported by sufficient information to allow meaningful editorial evaluation.

The journal will consider credible post-publication concerns and may seek clarification from authors or other relevant parties where appropriate.

Where a post-publication issue materially affects the reliability or integrity of the scholarly record, the journal may issue a correction, retraction, or other appropriate editorial notice.

21. Complaints and Appeals

Authors and other stakeholders may submit legitimate complaints concerning editorial procedures, ethical matters, peer-review conduct, or other journal practices.

Authors may also appeal an editorial decision when they believe a significant factual, methodological, procedural, or interpretive issue has been overlooked or misunderstood.

Complaints and appeals should:

  • Clearly identify the manuscript or issue concerned;

  • Explain the basis of the concern;

  • Provide relevant evidence where available; and

  • Be expressed professionally and in good faith.

An appeal does not guarantee that an editorial decision will be reversed.

The journal will seek to evaluate complaints and appeals fairly and independently. Individuals who raise legitimate concerns in good faith should not be disadvantaged for doing so.

22. Editorial Independence

Editorial authority must remain independent from inappropriate financial, institutional, personal, political, or commercial influence.

Publication decisions are based on academic and editorial considerations rather than the author's status, institutional affiliation, financial circumstances, or personal relationship with members of the journal.

Editors are expected to preserve this independence throughout manuscript evaluation, peer review, revision, and final decision-making.

23. Open Access, Copyright, and Responsible Dissemination

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun operates as an open-access journal, allowing readers to access published scholarly content without subscription barriers.

Authors retain copyright in their published articles, and articles are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The journal regards open access not only as a mechanism for distributing research but also as part of its commitment to broad, responsible, and equitable scholarly communication.

Open availability does not remove the obligation to respect attribution, copyright, authorship, research integrity, and the terms of the applicable Creative Commons license.

24. Commitment to the Integrity of the Scholarly Record

Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun recognizes that safeguarding the scholarly record is an ongoing responsibility.

The journal will not knowingly encourage, facilitate, or tolerate plagiarism, citation manipulation, fabrication, falsification, deceptive authorship, peer-review manipulation, or other practices that undermine research and publication integrity.

When credible ethical concerns arise, editors will seek to respond consistently, proportionately, transparently, and fairly.

Through responsible authorship, independent editorial oversight, rigorous double-blind peer review, appropriate ethical safeguards, transparent correction mechanisms, and continued attention to publication integrity, Buletin Ilmiah Nagari Membangun seeks to maintain a trustworthy scholarly platform for research and practice in community empowerment and community-engaged scholarship.