Ethics and Malpractice

E-BPJ's ethics policies follow the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Originality and plagiarism

Authors must submit original work. Every manuscript is checked for similarity with Turnitin during initial screening. Manuscripts showing plagiarism, inappropriate text recycling or unattributed material may be rejected or returned to the authors.

Duplicate publication and extended papers

Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time, or publishing essentially the same research in more than one place, is not allowed. A substantially extended version of an E-BPJ paper may be published elsewhere only if it contains significant new material, cites the E-BPJ paper, and the other journal is told at submission. The same rule applies to extended versions of earlier conference papers submitted to E-BPJ.

Research ethics and consent

Research involving people, personal data, interventions or sensitive behavioural observation must meet applicable ethical requirements. Authors must name the ethics committee and approval reference, or explain why approval was not needed, and report how informed consent was obtained where applicable.

Conflicts of interest

Authors must declare any financial, personal or professional relationships that could be seen to influence their work. If there are none, they must state: "The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper." Reviewers and editors must declare conflicts and step aside where necessary.

Data integrity and availability

Fabricating or falsifying data or results is serious misconduct. From Volume 12, Issue 39 (January 2027), each article must include a Data Availability Statement saying whether the supporting data, code or materials are publicly available and, if not, why not and whether access can be requested.

Authors and affiliations

All authors must meet recognised authorship criteria and approve the submitted manuscript. Guest, gift, honorary or token authorship is not allowed. Affiliations must be accurate and must not be added to influence geographic or institutional statistics. Where concerns arise, the journal may ask for documents and investigate under its ethics procedures; confirmed cases may lead to rejection, correction or retraction.

ORCID

The corresponding author must provide an ORCID iD at submission; ORCID iDs for all co-authors are strongly encouraged. Where provided, ORCID iDs are included in the article metadata deposited with Crossref and shown on the article page.

Citation ethics

Authors should cite only relevant sources. Citation manipulation, coerced citation, excessive self-citation and coordinated citation between authors or volumes are not allowed, and manuscripts showing them are rejected at screening.

Generative AI

AI tools cannot be authors. Authors who use generative AI for analysis, images or drafting must state which tool they used and for what. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of all content, including anything produced with AI. Authors, reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviews or personal data to AI tools without authorisation. Undisclosed AI use may result in rejection or, after publication, correction or retraction, depending on its seriousness.