Ethics Statement

The Journal of Universal Multidisciplinary Intersections (JUMI) is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. Our rigorous ethical guidelines are designed to ensure the integrity, transparency, and scholarly rigor of all published research. We adhere to the principles outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and expect all parties involved—authors, editors, and peer reviewers—to comply with these standards.

1. Authors' Responsibilities

• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their submitted work is entirely original. Any ideas or words taken from other sources must be appropriately cited. Plagiarism, in any form, including self-plagiarism (re-using substantial parts of one's own published work without proper citation), is strictly prohibited and will lead to rejection or retraction. All submissions are routinely screened for originality using plagiarism detection software.

• Accuracy and Data Integrity: Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their submitted data. Any fabrication, falsification, or manipulation of data is unethical and unacceptable. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable.

• Authorship: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author must ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

• Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: All authors must disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

• Duplicate and Concurrent Submission: Manuscripts submitted to JUMI must not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals concurrently is unethical and unacceptable.

• Citation Practices: Authors should provide accurate and comprehensive citations to relevant prior work. Excessive self-citation or gratuitous citation to boost citation metrics is discouraged.

• Human and Animal Rights: If the work involves the use of human participants, animals, or biological material, authors must confirm that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional review board(s) or ethics committee(s) has approved the study. Statements confirming ethical approval and informed consent (where applicable) should be included in the manuscript.

2. Peer Reviewers' Responsibilities

• Confidentiality: Reviewers must treat all manuscripts received for review as confidential documents. They must not show them to or discuss them with others except as authorized by the Editor-in-Chief.

• Objectivity and Impartiality: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

• Timeliness: Reviewers should respond within the requested timeframe or notify the editors immediately if they are unable to complete the review.

• Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the paper.

• Identification of Plagiarism/Prior Publication: Reviewers should be alert to potential ethical issues, such as plagiarism, data fabrication, or duplicate publication, and bring these to the editor's attention.

3. Editors' Responsibilities

• Fair Play: Editors evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

• Confidentiality: Editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

• Decision Making: Editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published, based on the validity of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers' comments, and the journal's scope and ethical policies.

• Conflicts of Interest: Editors should not be involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest.

• Investigations: Editors will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred. In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief, in conjunction with the publisher, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification, or a retraction of the affected work.

4. Appeals and Complaints

Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions. Appeals should be submitted in writing to the Editor-in-Chief, clearly stating the reasons for the appeal and providing any supporting documentation. All appeals will be handled in accordance with COPE guidelines.

JUMI is dedicated to fostering a transparent, fair, and ethical publishing environment for the global multidisciplinary research community.