Ethical Standards Expected of Authors (Researchers)

  1. Commitment to Originality and Intellectual Property
  2. Originality and Plagiarism Prevention
  • Standard 1-1: Authors are committed to submitting original intellectual work that reflects their own genuine scholarly effort. They bear full legal and ethical responsibility should any form of plagiarism, intellectual theft, or unauthorized appropriation of ideas and data be detected.
  • Standard 1-2: Authors pledge to provide accurate and explicit attribution for all sources, perspectives, and datasets utilized in their study, adhering strictly to the approved citation style (APA, 7th Edition). Deceptive citation practices or obfuscated paraphrasing designed to bypass plagiarism detection systems are strictly prohibited.
  • Standard 1-3: Authors must maintain rigorous personal intellectual integrity; they shall not resubmit substantial portions of their own previously published research (self-plagiarism / text recycling) without explicit citation of the prior work and a clear delineation of the new study’s distinct scholarly value and incremental contribution.
  1. Procedural Integrity and Data Handling
  • Standard 2-1: Authors pledge absolute honesty in data collection, processing, and presentation. It is strictly forbidden to fabricate fictional samples, falsify respondent answers, or manipulate the outcomes of media content analysis to artificially validate preconceived hypotheses.
  • Standard 2-2: Authors bear the professional responsibility of retaining raw datasets, fieldwork records, and analytical documentation. They commit to providing these materials to the editorial board or peer reviewers upon formal request for scientific verification and statistical auditing purposes.
  1. Standards of Professional Responsibility and Academic Collegiality
  2. Authorship Ethics
  • Standard 1-1: Attribution of authorship must be strictly limited to individuals who have made a direct, substantial scientific contribution to the conceptualization, design, execution, or empirical analysis of the study. Participating in "courtesy", "honorary", or "gift" authorship is entirely prohibited.
  • Standard 1-2: The Corresponding Author formally guarantees that they represent all co-authors. They assume full responsibility for obtaining written approval from all participants for the final manuscript version, ensuring the accuracy of their personal data, academic ranks, institutional affiliations, and the mutually agreed-upon author order.
  1. Exclusive Submission and Editorial Engagement
  • Standard 2-1: Authors pledge to refrain entirely from simultaneous submissions to multiple journals. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one publisher concurrently constitutes a severe violation of international academic publishing ethics.
  • Standard 2-2: Authors are expected to engage constructively and professionally with peer reviewers' critiques and editorial feedback. They must either revise the manuscript in accordance with the prescribed scholarly recommendations or provide robust, well-founded written scientific justifications if they respectfully contest a specific evaluation point.

III. Ethical Conduct of Media Researchers Toward the Research Field

Given the specialized nature of media and communication studies, researchers must adhere to the highest standards of protection, privacy, and social responsibility regarding human participants and digital environments:

  1. Ethical Conduct Toward Human Participants
  • Standard 1-1 (Voluntary Participation): Researchers must not exert any pressure, manipulation, or coercion on target groups (e.g., audiences, media practitioners, journalists, content creators) to participate in fieldwork, interviews, or surveys. Obtaining informed, conscious consent is a mandatory prerequisite.
  • Standard 1-2 (Respect for Privacy): Identifiers must be rigorously protected. Researchers pledge to maintain the absolute anonymity of participants, ensuring that personal data extracted from interviews or questionnaires is utilized solely within a strictly statistical, aggregate, and scholarly context.
  • Standard 1-3 (Psychological and Professional Safety): Researchers are obligated to ensure that no psychological, moral, or professional harm is inflicted upon participants. This includes safeguarding anonymous media sources or corporate practitioners when evaluating sensitive media working environments.
  1. Ethical Conduct in Digital Environments and Social Media Platforms
  • Standard 2-1: When monitoring and analyzing digital content across platforms (such as TikTok, X, Meta, etc.), researchers must respect the legal and ethical terms of service of those platforms. They must strictly avoid exposing or defaming individual personal accounts, focusing instead on the objective analysis of broader communication phenomena and public trends.
  1. Personal Governance in Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Utilization
  • Standard 3-1: Authors are required to provide a voluntary and transparent disclosure regarding any generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools utilized during the research phases (such as data analysis assistance or drafting). The author assumes sole intellectual and ethical accountability for the accuracy and authenticity of any outputs generated by these tools.
    1. Standards of Transparency and Personal Accountability
    2. Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest and Funding
    • Standard 1-1: Researchers must publicly disclose any personal, financial, or institutional relationships that could compromise their objectivity or be interpreted as academic bias toward a specific media outlet, political entity, or communication policy.
    • Standard 1-2: Authors must clearly credit funding bodies, grants, or logistical support entities that facilitated the execution of the study, ensuring the highest standards of academic transparency.
    1. Post-Publication Self-Correction of Errors
    • Standard 2-1: Should an author discover a significant scientific error, statistical flaw, or inadvertent discrepancy in their results post-publication, they are ethically obligated to notify the Editor-in-Chief immediately. The author must cooperate fully with the journal to issue an erratum, corrigendum, or retraction notice to safeguard the integrity of the scholarly record.