ALLEGATIONS OF MISCONDUCT

Jurnal Pengabdian Masyarakat Bidang Sains dan Teknologi, abbreviated as ABDIKAN, receives and assesses concerns about research integrity and publication ethics. A concern can be raised before or after an article is published, and it can be about authors, reviewers, editors, or the staff of the journal.

Submitting a report starts an assessment. It does not by itself establish that misconduct has occurred.

Step 1Report

Step 2Assess

Step 3Respond

Step 4Investigate

Step 5Decide

1Concerns That Can Be Reported

The table shows the kinds of concern that the journal handles and the policy that governs each of them. It is not a complete list.

Concern	Governing policy
Plagiarism, text recycling, fabricated or falsified data, manipulated images, fabricated references, duplicate publication, or an activity that was reported falsely	Plagiarism and Research Integrity Policy
Gift, guest, or ghost authorship, and authorship disputes	Authorship and Contributorship
Competing interests that were not declared	Conflicts of Interest
Generative AI that was used without disclosure or in a prohibited way	Generative AI Policies
An activity carried out without the required permission or consent, or a breach of the privacy of partners, community members, or minors	Publication Ethics
Manipulation of peer review, or a breach of confidentiality by an editor or a reviewer	Publication Ethics and Peer Review Process

2How to Submit a Report

Please write to the editorial office at jurnal.abdikan@gmail.com with the subject line Integrity Concern: [Article or Submission Identifier]. The report should contain the following.

No.	Information to include
1	The identifier of the manuscript or the article, for example its title and its submission ID or DOI.
2	A specific description of the concern, saying what is wrong and where in the manuscript or the article.
3	The evidence that supports the concern, such as the matching sources, the data, or the documents.
4	Any conflict of interest of the person who reports, and any need for confidentiality.

Please do not send sensitive personal data through an unsecured channel. If such data are needed to understand the concern, say so in the report instead of attaching them.

3Initial Assessment

The editorial office records every report and confirms receipt when the contact details of the sender are known.
An editor who has no conflict of interest in the matter decides whether the concern is within the remit of the journal, whether it has enough detail, and whether the person who reports needs to clarify anything.
Reports are judged on their substance and not on who sends them. An anonymous report can be assessed if it is specific and can be verified.
A report that is not supported by evidence may be closed. It can be reconsidered if new evidence appears.

4Fairness, Preliminary Steps, and Referral

Topic	What the journal does
Opportunity to respond	The people who are the subject of a specific concern are normally given an opportunity to respond, within the safeguards that the case needs.
Preliminary checks	Limited checks may be made before the parties are contacted, for example to preserve evidence or to protect participants of the activity.
Pausing the processing	The editorial processing of the manuscript or of the article may be paused while a credible concern is assessed. This is a precaution and is not a finding of misconduct.
Referral	A matter that is beyond the authority of the journal may be referred to the institution of the authors, to the funder, or to another competent body.

5Investigation and Possible Outcomes

An editor who has no conflict of interest leads any closer examination. The editor may consult members of the Editorial Board or independent experts. The authors and the other people who are concerned are asked to explain their actions and, where relevant, to provide data, documents, or permissions. Decisions are based on evidence and are proportionate to the seriousness of the matter, and the journal keeps a confidential record.

Before publication	After publication
Requesting clarification, corrected citations or attribution, a revision, supporting data, or permissions.	Publishing a correction or a corrigendum.
Pausing the editorial evaluation.	Publishing an expression of concern while an investigation is not yet finished.
Rejecting the manuscript when serious misconduct is established.	Retracting the article when the record is substantially unreliable or when serious misconduct is proven.
Informing the institution of the authors or another competent body, where appropriate.	Informing institutions or authorities, or taking other proportionate steps.

Actions on a published article follow the Correction and Retraction policy. Scholarly comments on an article that do not allege misconduct can be made through the Post Publication Discussion page.

6Confidentiality and Protection

Reports are handled confidentially and are shared only with the people who need them in order to assess the concern. The identity of a person who reports in good faith is kept confidential as far as possible, and retaliation against such a person is not accepted.

A report that the sender knows to be false, or that is made with malicious intent, is itself a breach of publication ethics.