Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Community Services and Social Work Bulletin (CSWB) is dedicated to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and academic integrity. The ethical guidelines and malpractice policies outlined below are based on the Core Practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All parties involved in the publication process—authors, editors, peer reviewers, and the publisher—must agree upon these responsibilities.

1. Duties and Responsibilities

Duties of Editors:

Fair Decisions: Manuscripts are evaluated exclusively on their academic merit, original contribution, and relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, institutional affiliation, or political beliefs.
Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff must not disclose any information regarding submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and publisher.
Conflict of Interest: Editors must recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have competing interests resulting from collaborative, financial, or personal connections.

Duties of Reviewers:

Contribution to Decisions: Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and helps authors improve their manuscripts through constructive critique.
Promptness: Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified or unable to provide a timely review must notify the editor immediately.
Objectivity & Anonymity: Reviews must be conducted objectively without personal criticism. Under the double-blind policy, reviewers must preserve mutual anonymity and maintain absolute confidentiality.

Duties of Authors:

Originality & Plagiarism: Authors must guarantee that their work is entirely original. Plagiarism in any form—including self-plagiarism or improper citation—is strictly unacceptable and will result in immediate rejection.
Multiple or Concurrent Submissions: Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously constitutes unethical publishing behavior.
Authorship Credit: Authorship must be limited to individuals who made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study.

AI Policy & Generative AI Guidelines

CSWB acknowledges the growing use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies in academic writing. To maintain transparency, accountability, and scientific integrity, authors must adhere to the following COPE-aligned rules regarding AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot):

🚫 AI Cannot Be Listed as an Author:

Generative AI tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) do not meet authorship criteria. They cannot take legal or ethical responsibility for the content, accuracy, integrity, or conflict of interest declarations of a paper.

📝 Permissible Uses of AI:

Authors may use AI technologies strictly for improving readability, language polishing, grammar checking, or assisting in code/data organization. Human oversight is mandatory to ensure that the scientific reasoning and original insights remain entirely the authors' own.

📢 Mandatory Disclosure:

If AI tools were used in drafting, editing, or data collection, authors must explicitly state this in the Acknowledgments or a dedicated Declaration of Generative AI Use section prior to the References, specifying the tool used and its specific purpose.

Handling Misconduct & Malpractice

In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct—including data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or undeclared conflicts of interest—the Editorial Board will follow COPE Flowcharts. Depending on the severity of the violation, consequences may range from formal correction requests, rejection during review, manuscript retraction post-publication, to reporting the infraction to the authors’ home institution.