Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Media Scholar — Journal of Media Studies and Humanities follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This statement applies to authors, reviewers, editors and the editorial office. Every decision on a manuscript is based on its quality, originality and relevance to the journal, not on the identity, nationality, gender, institution or beliefs of the authors.

Only people who made a substantial contribution to the research or the manuscript should be listed as authors, and every author must have approved the final version and agreed to its submission. The corresponding author is responsible for informing all co-authors.

Changes to the author list after submission must be requested in writing by the corresponding author, with the agreement of every author, and approved by the Editor. Gift or ghost authorship is not acceptable.

Manuscripts must be original, must properly cite the work of others, and must not be under consideration or published elsewhere. All submissions are screened with Turnitin; papers above 20% similarity are rejected without review.

Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are treated as serious misconduct. The manuscript is rejected and the author's institution may be informed. A manuscript found to be under simultaneous consideration at another journal is rejected, and the author may be barred from submitting for two years.

Authors of studies involving human participants (for example interviews, surveys, focus groups or audience studies) must state that participants gave informed consent and that their identities are protected. Authors must not publish personal or identifying material without permission. The Editor may ask for evidence of consent or institutional approval.

Authors must disclose financial or personal relationships that could be seen as influencing their work, including funding sources. Reviewers and editors must decline to handle a manuscript if they have a conflict of interest, for example a close relationship or a shared institution with the author, or recent collaboration.

Editors and editorial board members who submit their own work are not involved in its handling. Another editor manages it, and the paper goes through the same double-blind review.

Every manuscript that passes the initial screening is sent to at least two independent reviewers under double-blind review. Reviewers must keep manuscripts confidential, review objectively and constructively, tell the Editor about any conflict of interest, and report suspected misconduct they notice in the manuscript.

Reviewers must not use or share any part of a manuscript for their own benefit. They must not upload manuscripts or review reports to generative AI tools.

Editors decide on manuscripts independently, treat all authors fairly, keep manuscript and reviewer information confidential, and do not use unpublished material in their own research without the author's written consent. The Editor has final responsibility for what is published.

AI tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work. Authors who used generative AI tools to help prepare a manuscript must say so in the methods or acknowledgements, naming the tool and how it was used, and remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of the text, data, images and references. Text, images or references generated by AI and not checked by the author are not acceptable.

If an error is found in a published article, a correction notice is published and linked to the original article. If a published article is found to contain serious errors, plagiarism, fabricated or falsified data, or ethical violations, it is retracted. A retraction notice states the reason and is linked to the article. The retracted article stays online, marked as retracted, so the record remains clear.

Concerns can be sent to the editorial office at any time. The Editor reviews the concern, asks the authors to respond, and may consult reviewers or the authors' institution before deciding.

Authors who disagree with an editorial decision may send a written appeal explaining their reasons to the editorial office. Appeals are considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision, and the outcome is communicated in writing. Complaints about the conduct of editors, reviewers or staff, or about suspected misconduct by authors, are handled in the same way and kept confidential as far as possible.