Ethical Guidelines for Authors
Last updated: 2026-01-04
By submitting to INFEDU, authors agree to uphold high standards of research integrity, transparency, and responsible authorship.
1) Originality and prior publication
- Submissions must be original and not under review elsewhere.
- Any overlap with prior publications (including conference papers, theses, preprints, datasets, protocols, or reports) must be transparently disclosed and appropriately cited.
- Redundant publication (“salami slicing”) and duplicate submission are not acceptable.
2) Authorship and contributorship
- All listed authors must have made a real scholarly contribution and must approve the submitted version.
- Authorship must not include “guest/gift” authors and must not exclude contributors who meet authorship criteria (“ghost authorship”).
- We encourage an Author Contributions statement (e.g., using CRediT roles) to improve transparency.
3) Accuracy, data integrity, and reproducibility
- Manuscripts must present an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance.
- Authors should retain underlying data/materials and be prepared to provide them to the editors (confidentially) if concerns arise.
- Where feasible, authors are encouraged to share data/materials/code or provide an accessible route for verification (subject to privacy, consent, and legal restrictions).
4) Plagiarism, citation integrity, and text recycling
- Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable.
- Appropriate citation is required for ideas, methods, text, figures, datasets, and software created by others.
- Self-plagiarism/inappropriate text recycling and citation manipulation are unacceptable.
- INFEDU may screen submissions using similarity-checking software.
5) Research involving humans, minors, and school data
If the study involves human participants (including minors or school-based data), the manuscript (or Title Page at submission) must include:
- Ethics approval information (committee name, institution, approval number/date), when applicable;
- How informed consent/assent was obtained and documented, as appropriate;
- How privacy, confidentiality, and data protection were ensured (e.g., anonymization/pseudonymization);
- If formal approval was not required, a clear explanation and description of safeguards.
6) Conflicts of interest and funding
- All authors must disclose financial and non-financial conflicts of interest that could be perceived to influence the research or interpretation.
- All sources of funding and the role of funders (if any) must be disclosed.
- If there are no competing interests, authors should state: “The authors declare no competing interests.”
7) Use of generative AI / AI-assisted tools (mandatory disclosure)
- If generative AI or AI-assisted tools were used in writing, editing, translation, coding, data analysis, or figure generation, authors must disclose this use clearly.
- Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citation integrity, and compliance of the manuscript.
- AI tools cannot be listed as authors.
8) Permissions and intellectual property
- Authors must obtain permission for any copyrighted material reproduced or adapted (figures, tables, instruments, images) unless permitted by license or law.
- All reused content must be correctly credited.
9) Post-publication responsibilities
- If authors discover a significant error after publication, they must notify the Editorial Office promptly.
- Authors are expected to cooperate with investigations and post-publication updates (Correction, Retraction, etc.), when warranted.
10) Submission declarations
INFEDU uses a blind review process and a two-step submission workflow. At submission, authors are expected to provide declarations (conflicts of interest, ethics statement, AI disclosure when applicable) in the non-anonymised Title Page or cover letter.
Questions? Contact: editorial@infedu.lt