Policies

Affiliations

Authors should list all institutional affiliations relevant to where the study was conducted, sanctioned, or supported. For non-research pieces, list the author’s current institution. If an author changes institutions before publication, the original host institution remains the primary affiliation; the new affiliation and contact details can be noted in the acknowledgments. An affiliation change alone is not grounds to remove an author, provided the person still meets the journal’s authorship criteria.

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Appeals and Complaints

Direct any complaints, concerns, or appeals about authorship or peer review, including post-publication issues to the Editors-in-Chief. They will open an inquiry by gathering information from all relevant parties and then decide on appropriate actions in line with COPE guidelines; the review or publication process may be put on hold until resolution. If the Editors-in-Chief are implicated, the matter is referred to the Editorial Board, led by its most senior member, to evaluate the case and recommend suitable measures.

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Acknowledgment

Individuals who contributed through general oversight, funding, study design, data collection or analysis, technical support, formatting or writing help, or substantive scholarly discussions but who do not meet authorship criteria, should be named in the Acknowledgments with their institutional affiliations. Authors must notify these contributors, obtain their permission to be cited, and share the manuscript so their contributions are accurately represented.

Groups or teams whose input was substantial yet short of authorship may be credited under headings such as “clinical investigators” or “participating investigators,” with a brief description of their role (e.g., “provided scientific input,” “reviewed the study design,” “collected clinical data,” or “managed patient care”). Because such credit can imply endorsement, written consent from each named individual is required.

Any use of AI-based content generation (e.g., large language models) must be transparently disclosed. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of the work and must ensure any such tools are used in accordance with the journal’s authorship policies and ethical publishing standards.

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Authorship

Authorship Criteria

Authorship is limited to individuals who have made substantial, intellectual contributions to the manuscript, beyond routine or administrative tasks. To be named as an author, a contributor must meet all of the following: (1) made a significant contribution to the study’s conception or design, or to data collection, analysis, or interpretation; (2) took an active role in drafting the manuscript, providing substantive revisions, or critically reviewing it for important intellectual content; (3) approved the final version for submission and publication; and (4) agreed to be accountable for the work’s integrity, including addressing questions about accuracy or ethical conduct.

The corresponding author must ensure every listed co-author satisfies these criteria and that no inappropriate contributors are included. All co-authors must review and approve the final manuscript and consent to its submission. Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission are discouraged and will be considered only in exceptional cases; the corresponding author must supply a detailed rationale and written consent from all affected authors. Once accepted, any authorship changes require editorial approval and may be declined if documentation is insufficient. If a change is needed after publication, it will be handled via a formal correction notice.

Contribution Details

Journal of Environment and Sustainability Education asks authors to state each co-author’s specific contributions using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) terms e.g., conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing–original draft, writing–review & editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. List each author’s name followed by their roles; this statement will be published with the article. At least one author must act as guarantor, taking full responsibility for the work’s integrity from start to finish.

Contributors who are not authors such as those providing technical support, funding, general oversight, or substantive discussion should be named in an Acknowledgments section with their affiliation, after being informed and granting permission. When groups or institutions contribute collectively (e.g., clinical investigators or supporting institutions), briefly describe their role.

Any use of AI-based tools (including large language models for drafting or editing) must be disclosed. These tools may assist, but human authors remain fully responsible for the work’s originality, accuracy, and ethical compliance.

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Citations

References in both research and non-research articles must be relevant, current, and credible preferably drawn from peer-reviewed sources to support the manuscript’s claims. Authors should avoid excessive or inappropriate self-citation and refrain from citation arrangements that inflate counts; such practices constitute citation manipulation and violate publication ethics. Consult the COPE guidance on citation manipulation for further detail.

For reviews, perspectives, or other non-research pieces, citations should be directly pertinent and present a comprehensive, balanced view of the field. Do not disproportionately cite a single research group, institution, or journal, as this can introduce bias and compromise objectivity.

If you are unsure whether a source is appropriate to cite, please seek advice from the editorial office before submitting.

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Conflict of Interest/ Competing Interest

A conflict of interest (COI) also called a competing interest exists when factors outside the research could reasonably be seen as influencing the study’s neutrality or its evaluation. Authors must disclose any potential COIs, whether or not they actually affected the work, to ensure transparency and informed editorial decisions. In most cases, a declared COI does not preclude review or publication, but full disclosure is essential.

When in doubt, authors should disclose the potential conflict or seek guidance from the editorial office. Failure to report relevant COIs may lead to editorial sanctions; manuscripts with undisclosed conflicts may be rejected, and published articles may require reassessment, a correction notice, or, in serious cases, retraction.

Examples of conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Financial interests: any funding, payments, services, or goods received or anticipated from entities with a vested interest in the research outcomes;
  • Institutional affiliations: employment, advisory roles, or membership in organizations that may benefit from the findings
  • Intellectual property rights: ownership of patents, trademarks, or similar proprietary interests
  • Personal relationships: familial, romantic, or close personal ties that may compromise objectivity
  • Academic competition: professional rivalry or involvement with individuals whose work is being critically evaluated in the manuscript.

All authors must ensure full and honest disclosure of any potential conflicts to uphold the integrity of the research and the publication process.

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Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

Occasionally, changes to a published article are necessary. Such updates are made only after careful review by the Editor, in consultation with the editorial team, and in line with COPE ethics standards. Any post-publication change is documented by a permanent public notice that links directly to the original article to ensure transparency and preserve the scholarly record.

Formal post-publication notices include Corrections (Corrigendum or Erratum) when an error or omission affects clarity or interpretation but not the study’s validity. A Corrigendum addresses author errors; an Erratum covers publisher/production errors (e.g., mislabeled figures, incorrect affiliations, or missing funding/COI statements).

A Retraction is issued when serious problems undermine the article’s credibility such as flawed methods, data fabrication, image manipulation, plagiarism, duplicate publication, or absent ethical approval. Retractions follow COPE guidance and may be requested by authors or their institutions when justified. Retraction notices will always:

  • Be linked to and from the original article;
  • Clearly mark the article as retracted in both HTML and PDF formats using a watermark;
  • Provide a detailed explanation for the retraction;
  • Identify the party requesting the retraction (e.g., the authors or editor).

Retractions are issued to correct the scholarly record, not to punish authors. The journal typically does not use retractions to settle authorship disputes; when appropriate and supported by all authors and their institutions, such matters may be addressed via a Corrigendum.

To limit the impact of potentially misleading material, the journal seeks to act promptly. When serious concerns arise but an investigation is pending or inconclusive, an Expression of Concern may be published to alert readers neutrally; a retraction or correction may follow once the inquiry concludes. All related notices remain permanently available as part of the record.

In rare, exceptional circumstances e.g., defamatory content, infringement of legal rights, or compliance with a legal order a Removal Notice may be issued. In these cases, the article is taken down, and a formal notice explaining the action replaces the original content.

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For manuscripts containing identifiable images or information about an individual, authors must secure written informed consent from the person depicted. For participants under 18, consent must come from a parent or legal guardian. The consent must explicitly permit publication under the Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

If the person has died, consent must be obtained from the next of kin. The manuscript must clearly state that written consent for publication was obtained.

Authors should submit an institutional/local consent form or an equivalent document that includes a statement acknowledging that the information or images will be published online and publicly accessible. Editors may request the signed forms for verification; any such documents will be treated confidentially.

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Confidentiality

All submissions are handled in strict confidence and are shared only with individuals directly involved in the editorial and publishing workflow, editorial staff, the corresponding author, assigned or prospective reviewers, and handling editors. If an ethical concern or suspected misconduct arises, the manuscript may be disclosed to appropriate parties (e.g., the journal’s ethics committee or relevant institutional authorities) solely for investigation and resolution. The journal follows the procedures outlined in the COPE flowcharts when addressing such cases.

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Author Right

The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright, and to retain publishing rights without any restrictions.

User Right

Journal of Environment and Sustainability Education is an open-access journal. Its articles’ full texts may be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched, linked to, and otherwise used for any lawful purpose under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

License details: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

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Data Falsification/ Fabrication

Data fabrication or manipulation is a grave violation of research ethics that misleads the scholarly community and undermines the reliability of the record, with potentially lasting consequences.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all reported data are accurate and faithfully reflect the work performed. They must retain the original (raw) data associated with their submissions and be prepared to provide them to the journal upon request to support evaluation.

Failure to supply original data when requested may result in rejection of the manuscript; if the work has already been published, the article may be corrected or retracted.

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Desk Rejection Policy

  • The subject matter or scope of the manuscript falls outside the journal's area of focus or disciplinary relevance.
  • The manuscript contains ethical issues, fails to adhere to established international publishing standards, or exhibits a high level of plagiarism (with a similarity index exceeding 30%).
  • The study lacks sufficient novelty or significance and does not offer meaningful contributions to the existing body of knowledge.
  • The research design contains methodological weaknesses or inconsistencies.
  • The study lacks a clearly defined research objective or purpose.
  • The manuscript demonstrates structural deficiencies, and/or key components of the study are incomplete or missing.
  • There are significant issues with language use, including grammatical errors or inappropriate writing style.
  • The manuscript does not comply with the journal’s formatting and submission guidelines.

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Duplicate Submission/ Publication

Authors must confirm on submission that the manuscript is not under review elsewhere. Submitting or publishing the same work in multiple venues including in another language constitutes intentional misconduct.

If a secondary publication (e.g., a translation) is proposed, authors must obtain prior permission from the original publisher/copyright holder and inform the target journal’s Editor of the work’s publication history. The article must clearly state that it is a translated version, and it must include an appropriate citation to the original publication.

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Funding

Authors must disclose all funding and financial support within the manuscript and clearly describe any role the funder(s) played from study design to manuscript preparation and submission. If the funder(s) had no involvement, state this explicitly. All funding statements must be accurate and comply with the requirements of the relevant funding bodies.

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Images and Figures

Images or recordings that could identify patients or participants may be included only with explicit written Consent to Publish. Consent must come from the individual, a legal representative (e.g., parent/guardian for minors or vulnerable persons), or next of kin if the participant is deceased.

Authors must obscure facial features or other identifiers (e.g., via blurring/masking) unless written consent for full facial disclosure has been granted. Respect cultural sensitivities, especially for images of human remains or deceased individuals and follow the values and approval processes of the communities involved.

Scientific/experimental images must accurately reflect the original data. Any processing or adjustments must be fully described in the manuscript and figure legends, and authors must be able to provide the original, unedited, uncropped, unannotated files upon request.

Only minor, uniformly applied enhancements are acceptable. Authors must describe image acquisition and specify all modifications, including software name and version. Edits that could change the scientific meaning are strictly prohibited.

Figures reused from prior publications require written permission from the rights holder, and the original source must be clearly cited even when reuse is allowed under an open license.

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Misconduct

The journal takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all necessary action, in accordance with COPE guidelines, to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Examples of misconduct include (but are not limited to):

  • Affiliation misrepresentation
  • Breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions
  • Citation manipulation
  • Duplicate submission/publication
  • “Ethics dumping”
  • Image or data manipulation/fabrication
  • Peer review manipulation
  • Plagiarism
  • Text-recycling/self-plagiarism
  • Undisclosed competing interests
  • Unethical research

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts already published or simultaneously under review elsewhere violate journal policy and may incur sanctions. If building on the authors’ prior or concurrent work, the submission must clearly cite the earlier material and explicitly describe the novel, original contribution beyond it.

Citation Manipulation

Submissions whose references appear chosen primarily to inflate the citations of a particular author or journal may be sanctioned for citation manipulation.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Fabricated or falsified data including altered or manipulated images constitute serious misconduct and may lead to sanctions.

Improper Author Contribution or Attribution

Every listed author must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution and approved all statements and findings. Substantial contributors who do not meet authorship criteria (e.g., students, lab technicians) must be properly acknowledged.

Redundant Publications

Fragmenting the results of a single study into multiple papers without valid justification is unethical.

Image Manipulation

All images must faithfully represent original data and be free of inappropriate alteration. Elements must not be selectively enhanced, concealed, moved, deleted, or inserted unless the nature of the modification is transparently described. Minor, uniform adjustments (e.g., brightness, contrast, color balance) are acceptable only if they do not distort or obscure original information. Composites (e.g., gels, Western blots, multiple microscopy fields) must be clearly indicated in the figure layout or legend. Authors must retain and, upon request, provide original, unedited image files; inability to do so may result in rejection or retraction.

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Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to all its content. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles freely, without prior permission from the publisher or author, fully in line with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).

The BOAI promotes the free availability of peer-reviewed journals online, enabling access without financial, legal, or technical barriers. It encourages two main strategies to achieve open access:

  • Self-Archiving – authors deposit their articles in open repositories.
  • Open-Access Journals – journals provide unrestricted access to content and adopt alternative funding models.

Open access increases visibility, accelerates research, and ensures equitable access to knowledge for all.

For more information, visit: https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org

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Peer Review Process

All submissions undergo double-blind peer review: authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other. Manuscripts are first screened by the editorial team for fit with the journal’s aims and scope. Those passing this check are sent to at least two independent experts for evaluation.

The journal upholds high standards of rigor and ethics. The Editorial Board makes the final acceptance or rejection decision, considering reviewers’ recommendations, scholarly merit, relevance, and the work’s contribution to the field.

When a manuscript presents notable ethical, social, or contextual issues particularly involving vulnerable groups, cultural sensitivities, or structural inequities the journal may seek additional input beyond routine review (e.g., consultation with subject specialists, further editorial assessment, or recruiting reviewers with specialized expertise). In certain cases, the journal may decline to proceed with review to uphold ethical and social responsibility in scholarly publishing.

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Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism and Originality

The journal maintains a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism the use of another’s ideas, words, or work without proper acknowledgment. Submissions containing plagiarism in whole or in part, duplicate or redundant publication, or self-plagiarism (in the same or a different language) will be rejected. Preprint postings are not considered duplicate publication.

The corresponding author is responsible for the manuscript throughout peer review and after publication, and is authorized to act on behalf of all co-authors.

All manuscripts are screened with professional plagiarism-detection software. Any submission with an unacceptable similarity index attributable to plagiarism will be rejected immediately.

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Preprints Policy

Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time. If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc, etc. with their accepted manuscript.

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Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy

Identifying information must not be published in text or in visual materials (e.g., photographs, sonograms, CT scans, pedigrees) unless it is essential for scientific purposes and written informed consent for publication has been obtained from the patient (or the parent/guardian, where applicable). Authors must remove patient names and other direct identifiers from figures unless consent explicitly permits their inclusion.

This journal follows the ICMJE recommendations on patient privacy and informed consent; authors should ensure compliance and state within the manuscript that appropriate consent has been secured.

  • Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived. The consent forms are not to be uploaded with the cover letter or sent through email to editorial or publisher offices.
  • If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity or a description that has an obvious indication of the identity of the patient, a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.

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Research Ethics and Consent

Studies in Humans and Animals

Research involving humans must comply with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki and align with the ICMJE Recommendations for conduct, reporting, editing, and publication. Authors should strive for representative participant inclusion (sex, age, ethnicity) and use the terms sex and gender correctly. Manuscripts must include a statement confirming informed consent was obtained, and participant privacy rights must always be protected.

Animal studies must follow the ARRIVE guidelines and be conducted in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (and related guidance), EU Directive 2010/63/EU, or the National Research Council’s Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Authors must state adherence to these standards in the manuscript, indicate the sex of animals, and, where relevant, report the influence or association of sex on study outcomes.

Informed consent

Patients’ privacy must not be breached without informed consent. Identifying information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, photographs, pedigrees, or other details must not be published unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or a parent/guardian for minors) has provided written informed consent for publication. For consent to be valid in this context, the identifiable patient must be shown the manuscript slated for publication, and authors must inform the patient that potentially identifiable material may be accessible online as well as in print.

Consent should be documented in writing and archived by the journal, the authors, or both, in accordance with local laws and regulations. Nonessential identifiers must be omitted, and if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained, informed consent must be obtained. Note that masking the eye region in patient photos is not sufficient to ensure anonymity. When identifying characteristics are modified to protect identity (e.g., in genetic pedigrees), authors must confirm and editors should acknowledge that such changes do not alter the scientific meaning.

When informed consent has been obtained, this must be clearly stated in the published article.

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Standards of Reporting

Research should be communicated in a way that supports verification and reproducibility, and as such, we encourage authors to provide comprehensive descriptions of their research rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis.

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Use of Third-party Material

You are responsible for securing permission to reuse third-party content in your article. This includes, but is not limited to, text, illustrations, photographs, tables, datasets, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, and musical notation.

Limited use of short text extracts and certain other materials for purposes such as criticism or review is often permitted without formal permission. However, if you plan to include any content for which you do not own the copyright and which is not covered by such limited-use allowances, you must obtain written permission from the rights holder before submission.

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Use of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Writing

This policy applies only to the writing process. It does not govern the use of AI tools for data analysis or deriving research insights.

Authors may use AI or AI-assisted tools to improve readability and language, but not to replace core scholarly tasks (e.g., generating scientific/pedagogic/medical insights, drawing conclusions, or offering clinical recommendations). All AI use must remain under human oversight, with careful human review and editing. Because AI can produce authoritative-sounding yet incorrect, incomplete, or biased content, authors retain full responsibility and accountability for the manuscript.

Authors must openly disclose any AI/AI-assisted tools used in the writing process; a disclosure statement will appear in the published article. This transparency builds trust among readers and stakeholders and ensures compliance with the tools’ terms of use.

AI systems must not be credited as authors. Authorship requires human responsibilities that include addressing questions about accuracy or integrity, approving the final version, consenting to submission, ensuring originality, confirming that listed authors meet authorship criteria, and safeguarding third-party rights.

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