Authorship, Contributorship and Originality

Authorship requires substantial intellectual contribution to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, interpretation, or synthesis of evidence; participation in drafting or critical revision; approval of the final version; and acceptance of accountability for the accuracy and integrity of the work. All four requirements should be satisfied.

Ghost, guest, and gift authorship are prohibited. Institutional position, funding, administrative involvement, or participation in a community program alone does not establish authorship. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately, subject to applicable consent and confidentiality requirements.

Every submission must accurately report contributions using the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy. A corresponding author must be identified and provide a valid ORCID iD; other authors should provide ORCID identifiers where available. Author details, contributions, approvals, and applicable declarations belong in the separate Title Page & Author Information Form.

Authors must confirm originality, proper attribution, approval by all listed authors in the agreed order, and absence of simultaneous submission elsewhere. Disclose overlapping work, publicly available earlier versions, and relevant prior dissemination for editorial assessment. A separate mandatory originality letter is not required when the Title Page contains the necessary declarations, unless specifically requested.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission require justification and written agreement from all affected authors. The responsible academic editor considers the evidence, manuscript stage, accountability, and integrity implications. Justified changes after publication must be documented through an appropriate linked correction or notice rather than silent alteration.

Plagiarism, Similarity Screening and Reference Integrity

ACSR prohibits plagiarism, unattributed copying, inappropriate text recycling, undisclosed redundant publication, duplicate submission, citation manipulation, and misrepresentation of earlier work. Ideas, text, data, photographs, figures, tables, methods, instruments, and community-program documentation derived from external sources must be properly attributed. Identify direct quotations clearly and cite paraphrased material accurately.

Similarity policy: ACSR applies a maximum overall similarity threshold of 25% as an editorial-screening requirement. Similarity-detection software, including Turnitin where available, may be used to identify material requiring closer examination.

A similarity percentage is not proof of plagiarism or a substitute for editorial judgment. Editors examine the source, extent, location, context, quotation, and attribution of matching material. A score at or below 25% does not excuse plagiarism. Material concerns may result in clarification, correction, rejection, or appropriate post-publication action.

In-text citations, references, quotations, bibliographic metadata, URLs, and DOI details must be accurate and verifiable, following APA 7th edition. Every cited work must appear in the reference list, and every listed reference must be cited appropriately. Fabricated, fictitious, hallucinated, materially inaccurate, or unverifiable references are prohibited. Sources must support the claims for which they are cited.

Editorial Sections, Peer Review and Independence

ACSR maintains exactly two OJS editorial sections, both accepting manuscripts in English:

• Article: Research Paper and Literature Review Paper manuscripts use the Advances in Research Master Manuscript Template and the standard scholarly review form.
• Community Partnerships and Impacts: Community Service Article manuscripts use the New ACSR Template Submission and the dedicated Community Partnerships and Impacts Review Form containing 11 assessment components.

Manuscripts passing initial screening normally undergo double-anonymous assessment by at least two independent reviewers. Authors submit a Blinded Manuscript separately from the Title Page. Author identities are concealed from reviewers, and reviewer identities are concealed from authors. Manuscripts failing essential scope, originality, integrity, methodological, implementation, or submission requirements may be declined during screening.

Standard pathway: Submission → Editorial Screening → Independent Peer Review → Revision → Post-Revision Verification → Final Editorial Decision.

Reviewer recommendations may be Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, or Reject. They are advisory. The responsible academic editor evaluates the complete manuscript, reports, responses, revisions, and integrity evidence before reaching or recommending a decision under applicable governance. Decisions are not determined by simple voting; substantial disagreement may prompt clarification or additional independent review.

All fields expressly recognized in the current Aims & Scope have equal standing. Assessment addresses the actual research, review, or community-service purpose and evidence using the appropriate section-specific criteria. Specialized review procedures and causal, experimental, long-term, or large-scale impact claims must be supported by the methods and documentation actually available.

Reviewers must preserve confidentiality, disclose conflicts, provide constructive assessments, avoid unauthorized author contact, refrain from attempting to identify anonymized authors, and obtain editorial authorization before involving another person in an assignment.

Complete Peer Review Process and Reviewer Responsibilities →

Conflicts of Interest and Editor-Authored Manuscripts

Material financial, professional, institutional, academic, collaborative, competitive, supervisory, community-partnership, and personal relationships must be disclosed where they could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, independent judgment.

Authors: Disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests and funding in the separate Title Page. Provide an explicit no-conflict declaration where no relevant conflict exists. Identifying declarations must not compromise anonymous review.

Reviewers: Disclose actual or potential conflicts promptly and decline, withdraw, or consult the editor when an impartial assessment cannot be assured.

Editors: Recuse themselves from manuscripts involving their own work or a material conflict. An appropriately qualified independent editor must handle the submission. Authoring or coauthoring editors must not participate in screening, reviewer selection, review assessment, revision evaluation, or decisions on their manuscript. Editorial membership provides no preferential evaluation, guaranteed acceptance, accelerated scientific treatment, or unauthorized APC advantage.

Research Ethics, Consent and Community Permissions

Research and community-service activities involving human participants, identifiable information, sensitive data, confidential organizational records, vulnerable populations, or other matters requiring ethical oversight must comply with applicable institutional, disciplinary, and governing requirements.

Where required, authors must obtain and accurately report ethics approval, the approving committee or equivalent authority, informed consent, organizational authorization, community-partner permissions, data-use permissions, and relevant confidentiality safeguards. Required human or animal research approvals, trial registration, and other applicable authorizations must be satisfied and reported accurately.

Consent for publication is required where publication could disclose identifiable personal information, photographs, or protected participant records. Activities involving vulnerable participants require particular attention to welfare, voluntariness, risk, confidentiality, and appropriate consent safeguards.

Provide identifying documentation through the separate Title Page or authorized editorial channels. The Blinded Manuscript should retain sufficient non-identifying information about ethical procedures, permissions, and participant protection for assessment.

Approvals, consent statements, permissions, and authorization records must never be fabricated or misrepresented. Where formal approval is not required, explain the basis accurately when requested. The journal may request reasonable supporting documentation for integrity checks.

Data, Transparency and Community-Service Evidence

Authors must report actual research, review, and implementation procedures transparently. Fabrication or falsification of data, activities, analyses, evaluation findings, participant records, or outcomes is prohibited. Photographs, figures, tables, and program documentation must not be manipulated in ways that misrepresent evidence.

Community Service Articles must distinguish planned and completed activities, observed outcomes, participant feedback, anticipated benefits, and demonstrated longer-term impacts. Planned interventions must not be presented as completed activities, and unmeasured benefits must not be reported as established findings. Claims of effectiveness, sustainability, or community transformation must remain proportionate to the documented evidence.

Retain appropriate datasets, analytical materials, instruments, review records, implementation documentation, evaluation materials, and other supporting evidence. Authors should be prepared to provide information reasonably necessary to address accuracy, reliability, validity, or integrity concerns.

A data availability statement must accurately indicate whether supporting materials are openly accessible, available on reasonable request, included in the article or supplementary files, legitimately restricted, unavailable for a stated reason, or not applicable. Where permitted, authors are encouraged to share suitable data, code, instruments, and review or evaluation materials through appropriate repositories.

Participant privacy, community confidentiality, organizational restrictions, ethical obligations, intellectual property, and third-party rights must be respected. Transparency requirements do not authorize disclosure of protected information.

Funding, Acknowledgements and Third-Party Materials

Disclose actual funding, grants, institutional assistance, community-program sponsorship, and other support in the separate Title Page. Do not invent sponsors, grant numbers, or endorsements. Acknowledge individuals, community organizations, partners, and technical contributors accurately where they do not meet authorship criteria.

Authors are responsible for permissions and licensing requirements covering third-party instruments, questionnaires, scales, photographs, figures, tables, datasets, excerpts, training materials, and other protected resources. Obtain necessary authorization before reproduction, adaptation, or publication and supply supporting documentation when reasonably requested.

Identifying funding and acknowledgement information must remain outside the Blinded Manuscript during anonymous review. Approved declarations may be incorporated into the final publication through authorized editorial and production procedures. The journal's Open Access license does not remove rights attached to third-party material excluded from that license.

Policy on Generative AI and Automated Tools

Permitted assistance and accountability: AI tools may assist language, grammar, readability, and appropriately controlled technical tasks under human supervision. AI systems cannot be authors or co-authors. Human authors remain responsible for originality, accuracy, evidence, implementation claims, analysis, interpretation, references, and conclusions.

Disclosure: Substantive assistance beyond routine spelling, grammar, formatting, or straightforward language correction must be disclosed in the separate Title Page. Identify the tool or service, purpose, affected parts of the work, and nature or extent of assistance; include a version or access date where relevant to reproducibility.

Methods: Where AI or automated systems materially contribute to research methods, literature review, data collection, coding, analysis, community-service implementation, or evaluation, report sufficient reproducible and non-identifying methodological information in the Blinded Manuscript.

Evidence and images: Verify factual claims, calculations, quotations, references, DOI details, and interpretations independently. Appropriately disclosed and verified explanatory graphics may be used, but AI-generated or substantially altered material must not be represented as authentic empirical, photographic, experimental, clinical, or community-service evidence.

Confidentiality and judgment: Authors, reviewers, and editors must not upload protected data, confidential manuscripts, participant information, review reports, or correspondence to unauthorized or insecure external systems. External assistance involving confidential content requires appropriate authorization and safeguards. Automated tools must not replace independent academic editorial or reviewer judgment.

Open Access, Copyright and License

ACSR provides immediate Open Access to published articles without subscription charges, mandatory reader registration, or an embargo on access to the published Version of Record. Authors retain copyright; publication does not transfer copyright ownership to the journal or publisher. Applicable non-exclusive publishing rights are governed by the journal's Copyright Notice and publishing agreement.

Published articles use the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Licensed material may be shared and adapted, including for commercial purposes, with appropriate attribution, license identification, and indication of changes. Third-party materials excluded from the license remain subject to their own rights and permissions.

Authors may share the published Version of Record under its license, with appropriate credit, bibliographic details, DOI or official article URL, and license information. Submitted and accepted versions must be accurately identified and must not be represented as the published Version of Record. Consult the authoritative Copyright Notice for the applicable version-specific sharing and deposit terms.

Copyright and Licensing Terms →

Complaints, Appeals and Allegations of Misconduct

ACSR considers evidence-based concerns about editorial decisions, procedural fairness, reviewer conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, plagiarism, authorship, citation manipulation, fabricated reviewer identities, peer-review manipulation, false ethics declarations, community-service evidence, and other integrity matters.

A complaint or appeal should identify the manuscript or publication, explain the concern, and provide available supporting evidence. Appeals against editorial decisions must identify substantive factual, procedural, ethical, or evidentiary grounds. Disagreement with a reviewer or decision alone does not automatically justify reversal.

The Editorial Office records and preliminarily assesses concerns, identifies relevant conflicts, and refers matters requiring academic judgment to an appropriately independent authorized editor. Individuals with material conflicts must not independently direct the assessment or determine its outcome.

Authors or other affected parties may be asked for explanations, original data, implementation records, permissions, approvals, or other evidence and should have a reasonable opportunity to respond. Where appropriate, the journal may consult independent experts, institutions, research-integrity offices, ethics committees, funders, publishers, or other relevant bodies with appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

An allegation does not establish misconduct. Responses depend on reliable evidence, seriousness, publication stage, and procedural fairness. Outcomes may include clarification, revision, rejection, correction, an Expression of Concern, retraction, or another proportionate action protecting the scholarly record.

Post-Publication Discussion, Corrections and Retractions

Readers, researchers, authors, reviewers, and community partners may submit professional, evidence-based comments or concerns about published work. The journal may request an author response, examine supporting documentation, consult independent specialists, or issue an appropriate notice.

• Correction: Appropriate where an otherwise reliable article contains a material error, omission, or inaccuracy that requires clarification without invalidating its principal findings.
• Expression of Concern: May be appropriate where serious concerns remain unresolved, evidence is inconclusive, or an investigation is ongoing. The notice must distinguish unresolved concerns from established findings.
• Retraction: May be appropriate where findings or reported outcomes are seriously unreliable, serious plagiarism or misconduct is established, research or community-service activities were unethical, substantial undisclosed duplication occurred, or another major integrity problem compromises the record.

Notices must be transparent, identifiable, and traceably linked to the original publication. Substantive changes must not be concealed through undocumented replacement or silent alteration of the Version of Record. Decisions consider the evidence, procedural fairness, preservation of the scholarly record, and relevant publication-ethics guidance.

Withdrawal of an unpublished manuscript is distinct from retraction of a published article. Withdrawal administration and applicable refund provisions are stated in the APC Policy.

APC, Advertising and Post-Acceptance Governance

Academic decisions must not be influenced by nationality, institutional affiliation, personal characteristics, publisher relationships, advertising, sponsorship, commercial interests, ability to pay, waiver eligibility, or reviewer recognition. Relevant scholarly and methodological context may be assessed on its merits without preferential treatment.

APC administration begins only after final scientific-editorial acceptance. Charges, affiliation-based waivers, the reviewer-recognition discount, official invoices, payments, withdrawal administration, and refunds are governed by the authoritative ACSR APC Policy. These arrangements apply across both editorial sections and do not purchase acceptance or guarantee publication.

Post-acceptance preparation includes administrative verification, copyediting, proofreading, production, metadata checks, and preparation of the Version of Record. It is not a continuation of ordinary peer review. Closed scientific matters should be reopened only where a material scientific, integrity, ethical, legal, authorship, metadata, or other genuine publication blocker requires academic editorial attention.

Any advertising must be appropriate and clearly distinguishable from scholarly and editorial content. Advertising does not imply endorsement of a product, service, institution, conference, or other activity. Advertising, sponsorship, publisher support, and other revenue arrangements must remain separate from manuscript selection, reviewer assignment, evaluation, interpretation, and publication decisions.

Policy Application, Scholarly Record and Contact

Current policies are applied according to their requirements, the manuscript stage, legitimate commitments, and the integrity of the scholarly record. Policy updates do not automatically invalidate or retrospectively rewrite valid historical editorial decisions, reviewer records, financial arrangements, authorship information, volumes, issues, publication dates, DOI records, or other established bibliographic information. Genuine errors and integrity concerns are addressed transparently.

Both editorial sections operate under the same journal publication schedule. The distinction between sections does not create additional volumes or numbered issues. The authoritative schedule appears on the Publication Frequency page.

Publication ethics, complaints and administrative coordination: Muslim Muslim, Managing Editor, at advancesresearch@gmail.com. Matters requiring independent academic judgment are referred to an appropriately authorized, unconflicted academic editor.

Principal academic editorial contact: Muhammad Ridwan Manulusi, Editor-in-Chief, through the official Editorial Office, subject to conflict-of-interest safeguards.

Administrative WhatsApp: +62 821 9454 8786. Administrative messages do not replace formal submissions, confidential OJS review records, official decisions, or documented ethics procedures.

Aims & Scope → · For Authors → · For Reviewers → · APC Policy → · Privacy Statement → · Official Contact →