SJS expects authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher to uphold research integrity, transparency, confidentiality, and fair editorial practice. The following requirements apply to submitted work and to concerns raised after publication, and they apply independently of author identity, institutional affiliation, or payment.
Duties of the publisher
- To guarantee the continuity of the journal and the permanence of its published record; see Preservation and Self-Archiving.
- To maintain and resource a documented procedure for handling allegations, and not to intervene in its findings.
- Not to intervene in editorial decisions. Acceptance and rejection rest on academic merit alone and are free from interference by the publisher, sponsors, funders, suppliers, or any commercial interest; see Publisher and Editorial Governance and Ownership and Management Information.
Duties of editors
- Keep submissions confidential and handle them fairly and without unnecessary delay.
- Decide on scholarly quality, methodological validity, ethical compliance, and relevance to the scope — never on the identity, institution, nationality, gender, beliefs, or seniority of the authors, and never on payment.
- Select qualified, independent reviewers and manage competing interests, recusing themselves where their own independence could reasonably be questioned.
- Document material editorial actions in the submission record, and preserve the record of review.
- Investigate credible concerns, before and after publication, and issue corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions when warranted.
- Not use unpublished material from a submission in their own work without written consent.
Duties of reviewers
- Assess the manuscript on its substance — design, methods, evidence, interpretation, ethical safeguards, and reporting — and give reasoned, constructive comments rather than a verdict.
- Treat the manuscript as a confidential document: not to share it, not to use it, and not to upload it to an external service; see Use of AI Tools.
- Declare competing interests and decline where impartiality would be compromised; see Conflict of Interest.
- Report suspected misconduct to the editor rather than to the authors, and not investigate it through unauthorised disclosure.
- For case reports and material containing potentially identifiable information, assess whether consent for publication and protection of identity are documented.
Duties of authors
- Submit original work that has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere, and disclose related publications, preprints, and material overlap.
- Report methods and results fully and fairly, including limitations, complications, and negative findings.
- Retain the underlying records and supply them for editorial verification when asked, within what consent and law permit; see Data Availability and Reproducibility.
- Include the ethics, consent, funding, competing-interest, contribution, and data-availability statements that apply.
- Cooperate promptly with any question raised about the work, before or after publication.
Ethics approval and consent
Research involving humans, human samples, identifiable records, or animals must state the reviewing ethics committee, approval identifier where issued, and relevant consent or lawful waiver. Any exemption must identify its basis and the body responsible. Authors must not imply that approval or consent was obtained when it was not.
Secondary research that analyses only published or aggregate sources, and therefore involves no human participants, states that ethics-committee review was not applicable and why. A clear statement of non-applicability is itself the required disclosure; silence is not.
Patient privacy and consent for publication
Case reports, photographs, clinical records, and other potentially identifiable material require appropriate written consent for publication from the individual or an authorized representative, unless a lawful and ethically justified exception applies and is explained to the editor. Identifiers must be removed where not essential. De-identification alone does not replace consent where the person could still be recognized.
Consent documentation should be retained securely and provided for editorial verification when requested; it should not be published as a patient-identifying attachment. In surgical reporting this applies with particular force to operative photographs, intra-operative video, radiographs bearing patient data, rare presentations, and any detail — occupation, locality, date of operation — that could identify a patient in a small community.
Originality and responsible reporting
Submissions must not be under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose related publications, preprints, and material overlap. Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate image manipulation, duplicate publication, and citation manipulation are unacceptable. Reports must fairly represent limitations and negative findings.
Authors must include ethics, consent, funding, competing-interest, contribution, and data-availability statements as applicable. See Data Availability and Reproducibility and Use of AI Tools.
Authorship
Authors must have made a substantial scholarly contribution, participated in drafting or critical revision, approved the submitted version, and accepted accountability for the work. Contributors who do not meet the criteria are acknowledged with their permission, and authorship changes require the agreement of all affected authors. The four qualifying conditions, the treatment of gift, guest, and ghost authorship, the duties of the corresponding author, and the procedure for changes and disputes are set out in full in Authorship.
Competing interests and funding
All authors must disclose financial and non-financial competing interests and all funding sources, including the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and publication decisions. If none exist, this must be stated. Editors and reviewers must also disclose relevant interests and recuse themselves when required. What must be declared, the period it covers, the obligations of each role, and the consequences of an undeclared interest are set out in Conflict of Interest.
Research and publication misconduct
SJS treats fabrication and falsification, plagiarism and undisclosed text reuse, duplicate and redundant publication, image manipulation, authorship violations, undisclosed competing interests, citation and peer-review manipulation, breaches of research ethics, and brokered manuscripts as misconduct. Every credible concern is assessed fairly, confidentially, and without prejudgement, following the applicable COPE flowchart, and the authors are given the opportunity to respond before any finding is recorded. What each category covers, who may raise a concern, how it is investigated, the protections that apply, the possible outcomes, and the route of appeal are set out in Research Misconduct.
Standards followed
This policy follows the COPE Core Practices and flowcharts, the ICMJE Recommendations, and the requirements of Indonesian national journal accreditation.
Read together with Authorship, Conflict of Interest, Similarity and Plagiarism Policy, Peer Review Policy and Corrections, Retractions and Article Updates. This policy is reviewed at least once a year.