Publication Ethics

This policy sets the ethical framework for all content submitted to or published by Jurnal Proteksi Tanaman (Journal of Plant Protection), hereafter referred to as JPT.

Purpose, Scope, and Standards

JPT is committed to integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, and high ethical standards in scholarly publishing. This policy applies to manuscripts, reviews, short communications, editorials, supplementary materials, corrections, and other journal content. It applies to authors, editors, editorial board members, peer reviewers, guest editors, journal staff, and the publisher.

JPT is guided by:

1. COPE Core Practices and relevant COPE flowcharts,

2. Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

3. Generally accepted standards of research integrity.

Editorial Independence and Publisher Responsibilities

Editorial decisions are based on scientific quality, originality, validity, methodological soundness, ethical acceptability, clarity, relevance, and suitability for the scope of JPT. Decisions will not be influenced by nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political opinion, institutional affiliation, academic seniority, personal background, advertising, sponsorship, commercial interests, personal relationships, or the payment or waiver of a publication fee.

The publisher supports the editorial independence of the Editor-in-Chief and does not interfere with individual editorial decisions. The publisher is responsible for providing appropriate editorial and technical support, displaying journal policies clearly, protecting confidential information, preserving the scholarly record, supporting ethical investigations, and enabling corrections or other post-publication notices when required.

Peer-Review Process

JPT applies double-anonymous peer review, under which the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other. Research and review articles that pass the initial editorial assessment are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise.

An additional reviewer or specialist may be appointed when reviews differ substantially or when a manuscript requires expertise in statistics, taxonomy, molecular methods, research ethics, or another technical area. Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The responsible editor makes the final decision after considering the manuscript, the reviews, the authors’ responses, ethical requirements, and JPT editorial standards.

The journal does not guarantee the appointment of reviewers suggested by authors and may avoid suggested reviewers when their independence cannot be assured.

Duties of Editors

Assess manuscripts fairly, consistently, and within the scope of JPT.
Ensure appropriate editorial screening and independent peer review.
Select reviewers on the basis of expertise, independence, and ability to provide a constructive assessment.
Protect manuscript, author, reviewer, and editorial confidentiality.
Declare and manage competing interests and recuse themselves when impartiality may be affected.
Avoid using unpublished information, methods, data, or ideas for personal benefit.
Provide clear decisions and, where appropriate, reasons for rejection.
Take reasonable and proportionate action when ethical concerns arise before or after publication.
Maintain the integrity of the scholarly record through appropriate corrections or notices.

Editors may reject a manuscript without external review when it is outside the journal’s scope, lacks sufficient scientific quality or originality, contains serious methodological or ethical deficiencies, or fails to meet essential submission requirements.

Duties of Peer Reviewers

Accept assignments only when they have appropriate expertise and sufficient time.
Declare any actual, potential, or perceived competing interest before accepting a review.
Decline assignments when personal, professional, financial, supervisory, institutional, or collaborative relationships may affect impartiality.
Treat manuscripts and related materials as confidential.
Evaluate manuscripts objectively, respectfully, and constructively and support criticism with scientific reasoning.
Alert the editor to suspected ethical breaches, unattributed overlap, data or image manipulation, or peer-review concerns.
Recommend citations only when they are genuinely relevant and avoid coercive, excessive, or self-serving citation requests.
Refrain from using unpublished information or ideas for personal research or advantage.
Submit the review within the agreed period and do not delegate the review without prior editorial permission.

The use of artificial intelligence by reviewers and editors is governed by the separate AI Usage Policy, especially its requirements concerning manuscript confidentiality.

Manuscripts Submitted by Editors

Editors, editorial board members, journal staff, and guest editors may submit manuscripts to JPT, but their position will provide no advantage. A manuscript authored by such a person, or by someone with whom an editor has a relevant conflict, will be assigned to an independent editor. The author-editor will not select reviewers, access reviewer identities, assess reports, or participate in the decision.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship is limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions. Each author must have contributed substantially to the conception or design of the study, acquisition or interpretation of data, development of methods or software, or another intellectual component; participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript; approved the submitted and final versions; and agreed to be accountable for their contribution.

Contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission. JPT does not permit guest, honorary, gift, purchased, or ghost authorship; omission of a person who qualifies as an author; or inclusion of a person who did not approve the manuscript. Non-human tools do not qualify for authorship; detailed provisions concerning artificial intelligence appear in the AI Usage Policy.

Responsibilities of the Corresponding Author

Ensure that all authors meet the authorship criteria and approve the author list, order, affiliations, manuscript content, submission, and final version.
Manage communication with JPT before and after publication and communicate decisions and revisions to all coauthors.
Ensure that declarations concerning funding, competing interests, ethics, data availability, permissions, and AI use are complete.
Cooperate with the journal if questions concerning the work arise after publication.

Changes in Authorship

Authors should finalize the complete author list and order before submission. A request to add, remove, or rearrange authors must be submitted by the corresponding author, explain the reason, describe the contribution of each affected person, and include written agreement from all listed authors and from any person being added or removed. Changes after acceptance are allowed only in exceptional circumstancess, and changes after publication require a formal correction.

JPT does not adjudicate authorship disputes. When the authors cannot resolve a dispute, the journal may suspend processing and refer the matter to the relevant institution or another competent authority.

Originality and Submission Declaration

By submitting a manuscript, the authors confirm that the work is original, has not been published previously in substantially the same form, is not under consideration by another journal, has been approved by all authors, accurately represents the research conducted, and has all required institutional, ethical, regulatory, legal, and copyright permissions.

Material previously presented as a conference abstract, academic thesis, institutional report, or preprint is not automatically considered prior publication, but it must be disclosed and appropriately cited or linked. Secondary or translated publication may be considered only when scientifically justified, approved by the relevant editors and rights holders, and transparently identified. Detailed rules on unattributed overlap and text recycling appear in the Plagiarism Policy.

Data, Analysis, and Image Integrity

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, completeness, and integrity of all data, analyses, and visual evidence. JPT does not tolerate fabrication, falsification, unauthorized alteration, selective suppression intended to mislead, misrepresentation of sample size or experimental design, duplication of data or images as different experiments, manipulation of research records, or conclusions unsupported by the reported evidence.

Methods and analyses must be described in sufficient detail for knowledgeable readers to evaluate the work and, where reasonably possible, reproduce it. Authors should retain raw data, laboratory records, field notes, original images, statistical files, permits, and other relevant documentation in accordance with institutional and funder requirements and normally for at least five years after publication. JPT can request supporting records during review or after publication.

Images must accurately represent the original observations. Global adjustments are acceptable only when they do not obscure information. Adding, removing, moving, duplicating, or selectively enhancing features in a misleading manner is prohibited. Image splicing must be scientifically justified and clearly indicated, and original files must be supplied when requested.

Research Ethics and Legal Compliance

Authors are responsible for complying with all applicable institutional, national, and international requirements concerning research ethics, biosafety, biosecurity, quarantine, biological materials, environmental protection, access to genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and benefit sharing. The manuscript must report relevant approvals, permits, issuing authorities, and identification numbers when applicable.

Animals and Invertebrates

Research involving vertebrate animals must follow applicable animal-welfare standards and obtain ethical approval when required. The manuscript must report the approving committee, approval number, relevant care procedures, steps to minimize pain or distress, and applicable permits.

Research involving insects, mites, nematodes, mollusks, and other invertebrates must be conducted responsibly and in compliance with applicable collection, transport, quarantine, biosafety, conservation, and institutional requirements, especially for protected species, invasive organisms, regulated pests, and organisms collected from protected areas.

Field Research and Biological Materials

Authors must obtain all permissions needed to access private or protected land, collect or transport biological material, conduct pesticide trials, release biological-control agents, or work with quarantine-regulated organisms. Research must not cause unjustified damage to populations, habitats, agricultural systems, or the environment. Material-transfer agreements and access or benefit-sharing requirements must be disclosed when applicable.

Taxonomic, Culture, and Molecular Documentation

When organism identification is central to a study, authors must provide sufficient information for verification. Appropriate documentation may include accepted taxonomic methods, current scientific names and authorities, diagnostic characters or molecular methods, the identity of the confirming specialist, and deposition of representative voucher specimens in a recognized and accessible collection with voucher or accession numbers.

Microbial isolates, fungal cultures, bacterial strains, entomopathogens, parasitoids, predators, and other biological-control agents should be identified by source, locality, strain or isolate code, and culture-collection accession number where available.

New DNA, RNA, genome, transcriptome, barcode, or other biological sequence data must be deposited in an appropriate recognized public repository before publication whenever feasible. Accession numbers must normally be available before final publication. Manuscripts must report sample origin, extraction and amplification methods, primer sequences, quality-control procedures, editing and alignment, databases and software, reference sequences, and analytical parameters as relevant.

Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Crop-Protection Research

Research involving plant pathogens, invasive pests, toxins, genetically modified organisms, pesticide-resistant populations, hazardous chemicals, or other potentially harmful materials must comply with institutional biosafety procedures and applicable laws. Authors must describe appropriate containment, transport, storage, disposal, and environmental safeguards. JPT may seek specialist advice, request risk-reducing revisions, limit unnecessary operational detail, delay publication while risks are assessed, or decline work whose risks cannot be responsibly managed.

Studies of pesticides, biopesticides, botanical products, microbial pesticides, semiochemicals, biological-control agents, and other crop-protection products must report, as applicable, the active ingredient or agent, formulation, concentration, source, application rate and method, controls, replication, environmental conditions, safety measures, registration status, effects on target and nontarget organisms, and environmental implications. Unsupported promotional claims are not acceptable.

Competing Interests

A competing interest exists when a financial, professional, institutional, academic, intellectual, personal, or other relationship could reasonably be perceived to influence the work or its evaluation. Authors must disclose relevant funding, the funder’s role, employment or consultancy, honoraria or travel support, patents, commercial interests, provision of products or materials, advisory roles, close relationships, academic competition, institutional roles, and involvement in JPT.

When no competing interests exist, the manuscript must state: “The authors declare that they have no competing interests.” Editors and reviewers must declare competing interests before participating. A person whose conflict may affect impartiality shall not handle or review the manuscript.

Confidentiality and Privacy

Submitted manuscripts are confidential. Editors and reviewers may disclose manuscript information only to persons authorized to participate in the editorial process. Reviewer identities are protected under double-anonymous review, except when disclosure is legally required or explicitly authorized.

Personal data collected through submission and publication shall be used only for legitimate editorial and publishing purposes and managed in accordance with applicable data-protection requirements. The identity of a person reporting a concern shall be protected as far as reasonably possible, subject to legal requirements and the needs of a fair investigation or prevention of serious harm.

Data-Availability Statement

All original research articles must include a Data-Availability Statement explaining where supporting data can be accessed; whether the data are included in the article or supplementary materials; whether they are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request; or why public sharing is restricted. Repository names and persistent identifiers should be provided when applicable. Restrictions based on privacy, biosecurity, law, intellectual property, or confidential agreements must be explained.

Complaints, Appeals, and Post-Publication Discussion

Authors, reviewers, and readers may submit complaints concerning editorial procedures, ethical conduct, conflicts of interest, peer review, published content, or journal personnel. An appeal against an editorial decision must be submitted by the corresponding author, normally within 30 calendar days; identify a significant factual, methodological, ethical, or procedural error; and provide a clear, evidence-based explanation. Disagreement with a reviewer’s opinion or disappointment with a decision is not sufficient by itself.

Where practicable, an appeal shall be considered by an editor who was not solely responsible for the original decision. Normally, only one appeal will be considered for a manuscript. Complaints about the Editor-in-Chief shall be referred to the publisher or an independent person designated by the publisher.

JPT welcomes responsible post-publication discussion concerning methods, data, interpretation, ethics, or conclusions. Comments must be evidence-based, relevant, respectful, and non-defamatory. The editors may seek an author response or independent advice, publish a commentary or formal notice, refer an ethical concern to an institution, or take no further action when a concern is unsupported.

Implementation and Contact

All authors, reviewers, editors, and journal personnel are expected to comply with this policy. Submission of a manuscript constitutes acknowledgment of JPT’s ethical requirements. The journal may revise its policies in response to developments in publication ethics, law, technology, research practices, or COPE guidance.

Questions concerning publication ethics may be sent to the Editorial Office of Jurnal Proteksi Tanaman, Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Andalas, Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia; email: jpt@agr.unand.ac.id.