Research Integrity Policy

Principles

The journal expects research to be conducted and reported honestly, rigorously and transparently. In practice that reduces to four commitments an author makes about their manuscript.

• It describes what was actually done — not a tidier study designed after the results were known.
• It reports what was actually found — including results that do not support the argument.
• It claims no more than the evidence carries — the conclusions match the design, sample and analysis.
• It gives another researcher enough to check it — method, instruments, and data or a stated reason why data cannot be shared.

Reporting the method

A method section is adequate when a competent researcher in the field could repeat the study from it. For empirical social science that normally requires:

• Design and rationale — what approach was taken, and why it suits the question;
• Sampling — the population, how participants were recruited and selected, sample size and how it was determined, refusals and attrition;
• Instruments — questionnaires, scales, interview guides or coding frames, with sources for adapted instruments and reliability where applicable;
• Procedure — when and where data were collected, by whom, in what language, and how translation was handled;
• Analysis — the techniques used, the software and version, how missing data were treated, and any transformations or exclusions;
• Limitations — what the design cannot establish, stated by the authors rather than left for the reader to notice.

Qualitative work is held to the same standard in its own terms: sampling logic, the analytic approach, how themes were derived, and how the researcher’s position bears on the interpretation.

Analysis and inference

Several common practices distort the record without amounting to fabrication. The journal treats them as integrity failures and asks for correction at review.

Exploratory analysis is legitimate and valuable. What the journal requires is that it be labelled as exploratory rather than presented as confirmatory. A study reported honestly as exploratory is publishable; a study reported as though it had tested a hypothesis it did not is not.

A well-conducted study that found nothing is a contribution. Manuscripts are not declined for reporting a null result.

Data and image integrity

Figures must represent the underlying data faithfully. Adjustments to brightness, contrast or colour balance are acceptable only where applied to the whole image and where they do not obscure or emphasise any feature. Splicing, selective erasure, and duplication of a panel across figures are not acceptable.

Charts must not mislead through presentation: truncated axes, uneven scales and inconsistent baselines are corrected at review.

Editors may ask for the underlying data, analysis scripts, or original instrument responses at any point during review or after publication. Authors should therefore retain them — the journal expects retention for at least five years after publication. Where data cannot be shared for ethical or legal reasons, that reason belongs in the manuscript under the data availability policy, and the material should still be retained.

Reuse of one’s own work

Reusing material from one’s own earlier publication without disclosure misleads readers about how much evidence exists. Authors must:

• Cite their own prior work where the manuscript draws on it, including theses, working papers and conference proceedings;
• Declare at submission where the dataset has been used in another publication, and state what is new here;
• Avoid dividing a single study across several papers where the parts share a question, dataset and method and would be better read together.

A paper developing a genuinely distinct question from a shared dataset is acceptable when the relationship is declared. The problem is the concealment, not the reuse. Verbatim reuse of one’s own prose is addressed in the plagiarism policy.

What the journal screens for

Every submission passes through similarity screening at desk check. Beyond that, integrity checks happen through peer review rather than by automated means: reviewers are asked specifically whether the method supports the conclusions, and whether anything in the reporting appears incomplete.

The journal does not currently run automated image-forensics or statistical-consistency tools. Where a reviewer or reader raises a specific concern, the editor obtains the underlying material and, where needed, independent expert advice.

Correcting the record

An author who discovers an error in their published work should contact the editorial office at ceoborjss@gmail.com promptly, whatever its source and however long ago the article appeared.

The journal publishes corrections for errors that affect the reader’s understanding, and retracts where the findings are no longer reliable. The distinction, and the procedure, are set out in the retraction and correction policy. Reporting an error in good faith is treated as the responsible act it is, not as an admission of misconduct.

Who is responsible

All listed authors are jointly accountable for the integrity of the published work. An author who contributed only one part remains responsible for satisfying themselves that the whole is sound before agreeing to be listed — see the authorship policy.

The corresponding author additionally undertakes to respond to queries about the work after publication, to hold or be able to obtain the underlying data, and to act on any concern raised.