IJAERD is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics. The journal aligns its practices with the Core Practices and Best Practice Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), applied as principled guidance for engineering and technology research. This page sets out the journal's expectations of authors, reviewers, and editors, and the procedures followed when ethical concerns arise.
IJAERD applies ICMJE authorship criteria. To qualify as an author, an individual must have: (i) made a substantial contribution to the conception or design, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; (ii) drafted the article or critically revised it for important intellectual content; (iii) approved the final version for submission; and (iv) agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
All authors, reviewers, and editors must declare any personal, financial, institutional, or intellectual interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence their conduct in relation to a manuscript. Full details are on the Conflicts of Interest page. Every manuscript must include a Conflicts of Interest section, published with the article.
Every submission is reviewed for originality as part of IJAERD's editorial screening process. Submissions with substantial unattributed similarity to previously published work are returned to the authors or rejected. The journal applies a 15% plagiarism threshold — manuscripts must pass plagiarism screening before entering peer review.
IJAERD does not publish manuscripts that have been previously published elsewhere or that are currently under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose any prior or concurrent submission of related work. Conference papers may be developed into journal submissions only if the journal version includes substantial new content, which must be declared at submission with the conference paper cited in the manuscript.
The fabrication or falsification of data, results, or images is research misconduct and grounds for immediate rejection. Where misconduct is discovered after publication, the journal proceeds to retraction in accordance with COPE guidelines.
Authors must declare any use of generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini) in the preparation of a manuscript — including in text generation, data analysis, figure creation, or literature summarisation. The declaration must appear in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. AI tools cannot be listed as authors under any circumstances and cannot fulfil any ICMJE authorship criterion.
Reviewers must not enter any part of a manuscript — text, abstract, figures, data — into any generative AI service or external system that retains or uses the content for any purpose beyond the immediate review task. Doing so constitutes a breach of confidentiality.
Authors are expected to include a Data Availability Statement in every manuscript, stating where the data underlying the results can be accessed, or providing a clear justification for any restrictions. Where applicable, analysis code should be made available alongside the data. Authors are encouraged to deposit data in publicly accessible, FAIR-aligned repositories with a persistent identifier.
Research involving human participants must have been reviewed and approved by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board, and the approval reference and date must be stated in the manuscript. Research involving animals must comply with relevant national regulations. Where research involves identifiable individuals, informed consent for publication must have been obtained and described in the manuscript.
Allegations of misconduct concerning a submitted or published manuscript may be raised in confidence with the Editor-in-Chief at editor.ijaerd@gmail.com. The journal takes all allegations seriously, applies the relevant COPE flowcharts, and will not name a complainant without their consent except where required by law. Allegations are investigated regardless of the seniority of the parties involved or the time elapsed since publication.
Complaints about editorial process may be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief at editor.ijaerd@gmail.com. Authors who believe their manuscript was declined in error may appeal as described on the Peer Review Policy page. Appeals are considered only on grounds of demonstrable process error or factual misunderstanding by reviewers and must address each reviewer's substantive concerns directly.
Individuals who raise concerns about ethics or misconduct in good faith are protected from retaliation. The journal will treat their identity as confidential to the extent permitted by law and will not communicate with their institution, employer, or other parties about the concern without their consent.
Editors and reviewers do not disclose information about a submission to anyone outside the editorial process. Material under review must not be shared, cited as a personal communication, or used for any purpose other than evaluation of the submission. Reviewers must not enter manuscript content into any external AI system or service.
Editorial decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team on the basis of scholarly merit, methodological soundness, and scope-fit, as assessed through external peer review. The publisher, KG Publication, has no role in editorial decisions on individual manuscripts. The full statement is on the Editorial Independence page.
