Ethical Principles

Smartification in Accounting, Economics, and Financial Management is committed to maintaining high standards of integrity, transparency, fairness, and accountability in scholarly publishing. The journal expects editors, reviewers, authors, and all parties involved in the publication process to follow recognized principles of responsible research and publication practice.

The journal seeks to ensure that all published articles are original, ethically conducted, appropriately reported, and free from serious forms of research or publication misconduct. Editorial decisions are based on academic merit, methodological quality, originality, relevance to the journal’s scope, and compliance with ethical requirements.

Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the work they submit. A manuscript should represent the authors’ own scholarly work and should not contain fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or improperly attributed material.

Authors must ensure that all sources used in the manuscript are properly acknowledged and cited. Text, ideas, data, tables, figures, methods, or other materials taken from previously published or unpublished sources must be appropriately referenced. Plagiarism, including direct copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, and unattributed use of another person’s work, is unacceptable.

Authors should submit only manuscripts that have not been published previously and are not simultaneously under consideration by another journal. Duplicate submission, redundant publication, and inappropriate fragmentation of a single study into multiple publications should be avoided.

All individuals listed as authors must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution to the work and should accept responsibility for the content of the manuscript. Individuals who have not made a substantial contribution should not be listed as authors. Likewise, contributors who meet accepted authorship criteria should not be omitted.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should reflect actual intellectual and scholarly contribution. Honorary authorship, guest authorship, gift authorship, and ghost authorship are considered unethical practices.

Changes to the authorship list after submission should be made only when there is a valid reason and with the agreement of all affected authors. The journal may request a written explanation or confirmation from the authors before approving changes in authorship.

Where appropriate, authors should clearly describe individual contributions to the research, including contributions to study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, drafting, revision, or supervision.

Originality and Plagiarism

The journal requires submitted manuscripts to be original and properly referenced. Manuscripts may be screened using iThenticate to identify textual similarity with published or publicly available sources.

Similarity reports are reviewed contextually rather than being judged solely on the basis of a numerical similarity percentage. Legitimate similarities may occur in technical terms, standard methodological descriptions, references, institutional names, or commonly used academic expressions.

Where substantial or inappropriate textual overlap is identified, the journal may request clarification, require revision, reject the manuscript, or take other appropriate action depending on the seriousness of the case.

Self-plagiarism and excessive reuse of previously published material without proper disclosure or citation are also discouraged.

Data Integrity and Research Misconduct

Authors must present research data accurately and honestly. Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation of data, misleading presentation of results, or deliberate omission of important information is unacceptable.

Authors should retain relevant research records and data for an appropriate period and should be prepared to provide supporting documentation when reasonably requested by the journal, subject to ethical, legal, confidentiality, and data-protection limitations.

If the journal receives credible concerns regarding the reliability of data or findings, the editors may request explanations, raw data, supporting documents, or further evidence from the authors.

Human Participants and Ethical Approval

Research involving human participants must be conducted in accordance with applicable ethical standards, institutional requirements, and relevant laws and regulations.

Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate ethics committee, institutional review board, or equivalent authority before conducting the research. Information about ethical approval should be included in the manuscript where relevant.

Informed consent should be obtained from participants when required. Authors must protect participant privacy, confidentiality, and personal information.

Personally identifiable information should not be published unless it is necessary for scientific purposes and the appropriate consent has been obtained.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other relationships that could reasonably influence, or appear to influence, the research, review process, or editorial decision.

A conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication, but it must be disclosed transparently so that the journal can manage it appropriately.

Authors should disclose relevant financial support, sponsorship, employment relationships, consultancy arrangements, financial interests, or other competing interests connected with the submitted work.

Funding Disclosure

Authors should identify all sources of financial or institutional support associated with the research.

Where a funding body has influenced the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit the work for publication, this role should be clearly disclosed.

Where no external funding was received, authors may indicate this when required by the journal.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining the integrity and fairness of the editorial process. Decisions should be based on the academic quality, originality, methodological rigor, relevance, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by the authors’ nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, personal relationships, or other irrelevant characteristics.

Editors must preserve the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and should not disclose information about a submission except to individuals directly involved in the editorial and peer-review process.

Editors should avoid handling manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest. In such cases, responsibility should be transferred to another qualified editor.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers play an essential role in maintaining the scientific quality of the journal. Reviews should be objective, constructive, respectful, evidence-based, and focused on the scholarly content of the manuscript.

Reviewers should assess manuscripts within their areas of expertise and should decline invitations when they do not have sufficient expertise or cannot complete the review appropriately.

Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential documents. They must not share, reproduce, distribute, or use unpublished information from a manuscript for personal, professional, or competitive advantage.

Reviewers should declare any conflict of interest that could affect their impartiality and should not review manuscripts when such conflicts may compromise objective evaluation.

Personal criticism of authors, discriminatory remarks, hostile language, or unsupported accusations are not acceptable in peer-review reports.

Confidentiality

All manuscripts submitted to the journal are treated as confidential throughout the editorial and peer-review process.

Editors, reviewers, and journal staff should not disclose unpublished manuscript content to unauthorized individuals. Information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal advantage or incorporated into another person’s work without permission.

The journal uses a double-blind peer-review process, and efforts are made to protect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers throughout the review process.

Multiple and Duplicate Submission

Authors must not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal.

Submission of substantially identical research to multiple publications without appropriate disclosure is considered unethical.

If duplicate submission is identified during review, the manuscript may be rejected. If duplicate publication is discovered after publication, the journal may issue a correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other appropriate notice depending on the circumstances.

Citation Ethics

References should be selected because they are genuinely relevant to the research and should not be included solely to increase citation counts or satisfy inappropriate citation requests.

Authors should avoid excessive self-citation and unnecessary citation of particular authors, journals, institutions, or research groups.

Editors and reviewers should not pressure authors to add citations that are not academically justified.

Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Authors remain fully responsible for all content submitted to the journal, including material produced or assisted by artificial intelligence tools.

AI tools must not be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, or accountability of scholarly work.

Where AI-based tools have been used in a manner that materially affects the preparation, analysis, interpretation, or presentation of a manuscript, authors should disclose such use transparently when appropriate.

Authors must verify the accuracy of AI-assisted content and remain responsible for references, data, interpretations, and conclusions.

Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

If a significant error is identified after publication, the journal may publish a correction. If serious concerns arise regarding the reliability, validity, originality, or ethical basis of a published article, the journal may issue an expression of concern while an investigation is underway.

Retraction may be considered in cases involving major errors, fabricated or falsified data, plagiarism, duplicate publication, serious ethical violations, or other circumstances that substantially undermine the reliability or integrity of the published work.

Post-publication notices should clearly identify the affected article and explain the nature of the correction or concern as transparently as possible.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may raise concerns regarding editorial decisions, peer review, ethical procedures, or the handling of their manuscripts.

Appeals should be based on substantive academic or procedural grounds rather than disagreement with a decision alone.

Complaints and appeals should be reviewed fairly and, where appropriate, by an editor or responsible individual who was not directly involved in the original decision.

Ethical Investigations

When credible allegations of research or publication misconduct are received, the journal may conduct a preliminary assessment and request clarification or supporting documentation from the parties involved.

Depending on the nature of the concern, the journal may contact authors, reviewers, editors, institutions, or other relevant bodies.

Investigations should be handled confidentially, objectively, and proportionately. The journal should avoid making premature conclusions before sufficient information has been reviewed.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently on the basis of scholarly and ethical considerations.

Commercial interests, publication charges, institutional relationships, sponsorship, or other non-academic considerations must not influence decisions on whether a manuscript is accepted or rejected.

Payment of an Article Processing Charge does not guarantee acceptance and has no role in peer-review decisions.

Commitment to Publication Integrity

Smartification in Accounting, Economics, and Financial Management seeks to protect the reliability of the academic record and promote responsible scholarly communication.

All participants in the publication process are expected to act in good faith, respect confidentiality, disclose relevant conflicts of interest, and cooperate with legitimate ethical inquiries.

Where ethical concerns arise, the journal will seek to address them in a fair, transparent, and proportionate manner while protecting the integrity of the publication process and the scholarly record.