JAFSA and its publisher are committed to supporting the journal's editorial independence and maintaining a publication environment that promotes integrity, transparency, and responsible scholarly communication.

• The publisher shall not interfere improperly with editorial decisions based on commercial, political, personal, or other inappropriate interests.
• The publisher shall support the Editor-in-Chief and editorial team in investigating credible allegations of research or publication misconduct.
• Where a significant error, ethical violation, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, or other serious misconduct is established, appropriate corrective action shall be taken.
• Corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, or other notices shall be published where necessary to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.
• The publisher shall maintain appropriate records relating to published articles, editorial decisions, and post-publication corrections.

Fair and Unbiased Editorial Assessment

The Editor-in-Chief and editors shall evaluate manuscripts according to their scholarly quality, originality, relevance to JAFSA's scope, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, and contribution to agricultural and food science knowledge.

Editorial decisions shall not be influenced by an author's age, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, institutional affiliation, religious background, political ideology, disability, or other characteristics unrelated to the scholarly merits of the work.

Confidentiality

Editors shall protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Information concerning a manuscript shall only be shared with individuals who require access for legitimate editorial, peer-review, publishing, or ethical-investigation purposes.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions shall remain independent of advertising, sponsorship, commercial relationships, personal relationships, institutional pressure, or other inappropriate external influence.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors shall disclose and appropriately manage any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest. An editor with a conflict involving a manuscript shall not participate in its evaluation or decision-making process and should, where appropriate, arrange for an independent editor to manage the manuscript.

Publication Decisions

The Editor-in-Chief has responsibility for final editorial decisions. Such decisions shall consider the findings of peer review, editorial policies, scholarly merit, ethical requirements, legal considerations, and the overall integrity of the scientific record.

Investigating Ethical Concerns

When credible concerns are raised about a submitted or published manuscript, the editorial team shall assess the matter fairly and confidentially. Authors, reviewers, institutions, and other relevant parties may be contacted where additional information is required.

Accuracy and Integrity of Research

Authors are responsible for presenting their research accurately and transparently. Data, methods, results, interpretations, tables, figures, references, and other research information must not be knowingly fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or misleadingly presented.

Originality

Authors must submit original work and must appropriately acknowledge the ideas, words, data, methods, images, and other intellectual contributions of others.

Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication

Plagiarism, substantial unattributed text reuse, duplicate publication, redundant publication, inappropriate text recycling, and simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to multiple journals are unacceptable.

Authors must disclose any closely related manuscripts, publications, preprints, conference papers, datasets, or other outputs that could create substantial overlap with the submitted manuscript.

Authorship

Authorship shall be limited to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or development of the reported work and who have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for appropriate portions of its content.

All listed authors should approve the final manuscript and agree to its submission and publication. Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be appropriately acknowledged where their permission is obtained.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission or acceptance must be justified and approved by all affected authors. JAFSA may request written confirmation from all authors before considering such a request.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose financial, professional, institutional, personal, commercial, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation.

Funding Disclosure

Authors must accurately disclose sources of financial or material support for the research and, where appropriate, describe the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

Data and Materials

Authors should retain appropriate research data and supporting materials for a reasonable period and make them available where ethically, legally, and practically appropriate. Data sharing must respect confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, and applicable legal requirements.

Post-Publication Errors

Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article should promptly notify the JAFSA editorial office and cooperate with the journal in issuing a correction, clarification, expression of concern, or retraction where appropriate.

Research involving human participants, animals, personal data, hazardous materials, genetically modified organisms, or other potentially sensitive research activities must comply with relevant ethical, institutional, professional, and legal requirements.

Human Participants

Where research involves human participants, authors should provide appropriate information concerning ethical approval, informed consent, participant protection, privacy, and confidentiality.

Animal Research

Research involving animals should comply with applicable institutional, national, and international standards for animal welfare. Authors should provide relevant ethical approval information where applicable and demonstrate that unnecessary pain, distress, or harm was avoided.

Hazardous Materials and Procedures

Research involving chemicals, biological materials, equipment, agricultural inputs, field procedures, or other potentially hazardous activities should clearly identify relevant hazards and appropriate safety measures.

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists JAFSA editors in evaluating the scholarly quality, validity, originality, relevance, clarity, and methodological soundness of submitted manuscripts.

Confidentiality

Reviewers must treat manuscripts and all associated information as confidential. They must not share, reproduce, distribute, use, or discuss manuscript content with unauthorized individuals.

Objectivity

Reviews must be objective, constructive, evidence-based, and professionally expressed. Personal criticism, discriminatory comments, insulting language, or attacks on authors are unacceptable.

Competence and Promptness

Reviewers should accept assignments only when they possess sufficient subject expertise and can complete the review within the requested timeframe. A reviewer who cannot provide a timely and competent assessment should promptly decline the invitation.

Conflict of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest. This includes relationships with authors, institutions, competing researchers, commercial interests, or other circumstances that could compromise—or appear to compromise—the objectivity of the review.

Use of Manuscript Information

Reviewers must not use unpublished information, ideas, data, methods, or findings obtained through peer review for personal research, commercial purposes, competitive advantage, or any other purpose without appropriate authorization.

Reviewer Misconduct

Manipulating reviews, disclosing confidential manuscript information, appropriating authors' ideas, deliberately delaying peer review, submitting fraudulent review reports, or misrepresenting expertise may constitute reviewer misconduct and may result in removal from the reviewer database and further action where appropriate.

JAFSA takes allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously. Potential misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

• Plagiarism and substantial unattributed text reuse.
• Fabrication of data, results, references, images, or other research information.
• Falsification or manipulation of research materials, data, images, or results.
• Duplicate or redundant publication.
• Simultaneous submission to multiple journals.
• Improper authorship, ghost authorship, guest authorship, or undisclosed authorship manipulation.
• Manipulation or fabrication of peer review.
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
• Misrepresentation of research methods, approvals, funding, or affiliations.
• Unethical research involving human participants or animals.
• Unauthorized use of confidential information.
• Manipulation of citations or inappropriate citation practices intended to distort scholarly metrics.
• Image manipulation that materially misrepresents research findings.

Authors may use appropriate artificial intelligence or machine learning tools for legitimate research-support activities, provided that such use does not compromise research integrity, originality, confidentiality, authorship, or accountability.

• AI systems and generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, originality, or ethical conduct of the research.
• Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of all submitted content, including content produced or modified with AI assistance.
• Authors should disclose substantive use of generative AI or other AI tools in manuscript preparation where such disclosure is relevant to transparency.
• Authors must verify AI-generated references, facts, quotations, calculations, interpretations, and other outputs because AI systems may produce inaccurate or fabricated information.
• Confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, personal information, reviewer reports, and other protected material must not be entered into AI systems where doing so would breach confidentiality or intellectual-property obligations.

Corrections

JAFSA may publish a correction when an error affects the accuracy or clarity of the published record but does not invalidate the principal findings or conclusions of the article.

Retractions

An article may be retracted where there is reliable evidence that its findings are substantially unreliable, the publication resulted from serious misconduct, the article constitutes duplicate publication, ethical approval requirements were seriously violated, or another significant problem materially compromises the integrity of the scholarly record.

Expressions of Concern

Where a serious concern exists but an investigation has not yet reached a sufficiently clear conclusion, JAFSA may publish an expression of concern to alert readers while the matter is examined.

Editorial Appeals

Authors who believe that an editorial decision was based on a significant factual misunderstanding, procedural irregularity, or demonstrable error may submit a reasoned appeal to the editorial office. Appeals should provide specific evidence and should not simply repeat arguments already considered during peer review.

Complaints

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, publication procedures, authorship, conflicts of interest, or ethical matters may be submitted to the JAFSA editorial office. Complaints will be assessed as fairly and confidentially as reasonably possible.

Protection Against Retaliation

Individuals who raise legitimate concerns about research or publication integrity should not be subjected to retaliation by the journal, authors, reviewers, or other participants in the publication process.

A conflict of interest may arise where personal, financial, professional, academic, institutional, commercial, or other relationships could influence—or reasonably appear to influence— judgment concerning a manuscript or publication.

Authors must accurately acknowledge scholarly contributions that informed their research. References should be relevant and should not be manipulated to artificially increase citation counts.

• Authors should not knowingly cite nonexistent or fabricated sources.
• Authors should not misrepresent the findings or conclusions of cited sources.
• Editors and reviewers should not require authors to add citations solely to increase personal, journal, or institutional citation metrics.
• Authors should avoid unnecessary citation of their own work or the work of colleagues where such citations do not have legitimate scholarly relevance.
• All cited sources should be sufficiently identifiable and accurately represented.

Research data, figures, photographs, microscopy images, graphs, tables, and supplementary materials must represent the underlying research accurately.

• Data must not be fabricated, selectively manipulated, or deliberately omitted to produce a misleading result.
• Image adjustments may be acceptable when they do not obscure, remove, introduce, or misrepresent meaningful research information.
• Where images or other copyrighted materials belonging to third parties are used, authors are responsible for securing appropriate permissions and providing appropriate attribution where required.
• Authors should retain original research records sufficient to support the published findings.

When an allegation of misconduct is received, JAFSA may undertake the following general process, subject to the nature and seriousness of the concern:

1. Receive and document the allegation or concern.
2. Conduct an initial assessment of the available information.
3. Determine whether the concern falls within the journal's ethical and editorial responsibilities.
4. Request clarification or supporting information from relevant parties where appropriate.
5. Review available evidence objectively and confidentially.
6. Consult independent editors, reviewers, institutions, or other appropriate experts where necessary.
7. Provide affected authors with an opportunity to respond to substantive allegations where appropriate.
8. Determine appropriate action based on the evidence available.
9. Correct, retract, or issue an expression of concern regarding the publication where necessary.
10. Maintain appropriate records of the investigation and resulting action.

Publication does not end the ethical responsibility of JAFSA, authors, reviewers, and editors. The journal remains committed to protecting the integrity of the scholarly record after publication.

• Authors should promptly report material errors discovered after publication.
• Readers and researchers may notify the journal of credible concerns regarding published material.
• The editorial team may investigate credible post-publication concerns and seek expert or institutional input where necessary.
• Corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern may be issued when warranted by the evidence.
• Published articles should not be silently altered in a way that obscures the historical scholarly record.

Members of the JAFSA Editorial Board are expected to uphold the journal's ethical standards, maintain confidentiality, disclose conflicts of interest, support fair peer review, and contribute constructively to the quality and integrity of the journal.

Editorial Board members must not use confidential information obtained through their editorial role for personal, academic, competitive, or commercial advantage.

JAFSA is committed to continuously improving its editorial and publication practices. The journal expects every participant in the publication process to act honestly, transparently, respectfully, and responsibly.

The journal may update this policy when necessary to reflect developments in research integrity, scholarly communication, publishing technology, research ethics, artificial intelligence, data management, and international publishing practice.

Where an ethical issue is not specifically addressed in this policy, JAFSA will consider the circumstances carefully and apply principles of research integrity, fairness, transparency, confidentiality, accountability, and protection of the scholarly record.