Editorial and ethics policies
The Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences & Public Health is committed to research integrity and transparent publishing. The policies below apply to authors, reviewers and editors.
Publication ethics
The journal follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Editors handle suspected misconduct using the COPE flowcharts.
Ethics approval and consent
Studies involving human participants, surveys, interviews or personal data must name the approving ethics committee and give the approval number in the Methods section, and state how informed consent was obtained.
Authorship and contributions
Every listed author must meet the four ICMJE authorship criteria. Each article carries a CRediT statement describing the role of every author. Changes to the author list after submission need the written agreement of all authors.
Competing interests
Authors, reviewers and editors declare any financial, professional or personal interests that could influence the work. An editor with a conflict steps aside and the paper is handled by another editor.
Plagiarism and similarity checking
Every submission is checked for similarity to published work. Manuscripts with an uncited similarity index above about 15 percent, or any copied block of text, are returned or rejected.
Data availability
Every research article includes a data availability statement. Authors are encouraged to deposit anonymised data in a public repository such as Zenodo, Figshare or Harvard Dataverse and cite it.
Preprints
Posting a preprint (for example on medRxiv, SSRN or Research Square) does not prevent submission. Please give the preprint link when submitting.
Generative AI
AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Any use of AI tools for writing, translation, analysis or image generation must be described in the Methods or Acknowledgements. Authors remain fully responsible for the content.
Corrections and retractions
Errors found after publication are corrected through a linked correction notice. Articles with serious problems are retracted following COPE guidance; the retraction notice stays linked to the original article, which remains visible and marked.
Appeals and complaints
Authors may make one written appeal against a decision, within 30 days, explaining why they believe it was wrong. An editor not previously involved reviews the appeal. Complaints about the journal go to the Managing Editor at office@nsphrs.org.
Editorial independence
Editorial decisions are made by the editors alone, on scholarly merit. The publisher does not influence acceptance or rejection. Submissions connected to any business relationship with the publisher are handled by an editor with no such link, and the relationship is declared.
Open access and copyright
All articles are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Authors keep the copyright and grant the journal the right to publish. Anyone may read, download, share and reuse the work with proper attribution.
Fees
The journal is diamond open access: free to read and free to publish. There are no article processing charges, no submission fees and no page or colour charges.
Advertising and solicitation
The journal carries no advertising and does not send mass email invitations to submit. Editors never ask authors to cite the journal.
Privacy
Names and email addresses entered in the submission system are used only for the stated purposes of the journal and are not shared for any other purpose.