Ethics & Malpractice Statement

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neural Network (JAIMLNN), published by HM Publishers, is committed to publishing research that is honest, transparent and reliable. The responsibilities below apply to everyone involved in publishing with JAIMLNN: authors, reviewers, editors and the publisher. The journal follows the core practices and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when handling ethical questions and suspected misconduct.

Responsibilities of Authors

Originality. Submitted work must be the authors’ own and must not have been published, in whole or substantial part, anywhere else. Text, data, figures or ideas from other sources, including the authors’ own earlier publications, must be properly cited. Every submission is screened with similarity-checking software Turnitin before review.

One journal at a time. A manuscript may be under consideration by only one journal at a time. A preprint posted on a recognised preprint server does not count as prior publication, but authors should mention it in their cover letter.

Data and reproducibility. Authors should describe their methods, datasets, model settings and evaluation procedures clearly enough for others to reproduce the results. The editor may ask for underlying data or code during review. Authors should keep research data for a reasonable period after publication.

Ethical approval and consent. Research involving human participants, personal data or identifiable records must have approval from a suitable ethics committee and, where needed, informed consent. Authors must state this in the manuscript. Datasets must be used in line with their licences and terms of use.

Third-party material. Authors must obtain permission to reuse any copyrighted figure, table or text and acknowledge the source.

Errors in published work. Authors who find a significant error in their published article must tell the editor promptly and cooperate in issuing a correction or, if needed, a retraction.

Authorship and Contributions

Who qualifies as an author. Authorship should be limited to people who made a substantial contribution to the work, helped draft or critically revise it, approved the final version, and accept responsibility for its content. Others who helped should be named in the Acknowledgements.

Contribution statement. The corresponding author should describe each author’s contribution using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) roles in a short Author Contributions section.

Changes to the author list. The full author list and order should be settled before submission. Any later addition, removal or reordering requires a written explanation from the corresponding author and written agreement from every author affected, including anyone being added or removed. After acceptance, such changes are made only in exceptional cases, at the Editor-in-Chief’s discretion. Approved changes to a published article are made through a published correction.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding

All authors must declare any financial or personal interest that could appear to influence their work. Examples include employment, consultancy, paid advisory roles, shareholdings, patents, or grants from organisations with an interest in the results. If there are none, authors should say so explicitly.

Authors must name every funding source for the research and explain the funder’s role, if any, in study design, analysis, writing or the decision to publish. If there was no specific funding, the manuscript should say so.

Use of Generative AI Tools

Authors may use generative AI tools for limited tasks such as improving grammar and readability, provided they check and take full responsibility for the result.

  • AI tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work or approve it.
  • Any use of generative AI in preparing the manuscript, beyond basic spelling and grammar checks, must be disclosed in a short statement before the References, naming the tool and describing what it was used for.
  • AI tools must not be used to generate, alter or fabricate data, results, images or references.
  • Where AI or machine-learning methods are part of the research itself, they should be described in the Methods section like any other technique.

Responsible and Inclusive Writing

Manuscripts should be written respectfully and should not stereotype or discriminate on the basis of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, age or any other personal characteristic. Personal characteristics should be mentioned only when they are relevant to the research. In technical writing, authors are encouraged to prefer neutral, descriptive terms for system components and access-control lists.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

  • Confidentiality. Manuscripts under review are confidential. Reviewers must not share, discuss or use any part of them, and must not upload them to generative AI tools.
  • Objectivity. Reviews should be fair, evidence-based and constructive, and should judge the work rather than the authors.
  • Competence and timeliness. Reviewers should decline if they lack the right expertise or cannot meet the deadline, and should tell the editor promptly.
  • Conflicts of interest. Reviewers must decline, or tell the editor, if they have a personal, professional or financial connection to the authors or the work.
  • Raising concerns. Reviewers should alert the editor to substantial overlap with other publications, missing citations or any suspected misconduct.

Responsibilities of Editors

  • Editors judge manuscripts only on their scholarly merit, relevance to the journal’s scope, and clarity, without regard to the authors’ nationality, gender, religion, institution or other personal characteristics.
  • Editors keep all information about submitted manuscripts confidential.
  • Editors who have a conflict of interest with a submission, including their own papers, step aside, and another editor or board member handles the review independently.
  • The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for final publication decisions and may reject a manuscript without external review if it falls outside the journal’s scope or does not meet basic quality standards.
  • Editors investigate any credible report of misconduct and act on it, as described below.

Transfer Between HM Publishers Journals

If an editor believes a manuscript would suit another HM Publishers journal better, the authors may be offered a transfer. A transfer happens only with the authors’ consent, and the manuscript is then assessed independently by the receiving journal. Declining a transfer does not affect the outcome at JAIMLNN.

Handling Misconduct

Suspected misconduct, such as plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, duplicate publication, image manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, manipulated peer review or authorship disputes, is investigated following COPE flowcharts. Authors are given the chance to respond before any decision. Depending on the findings, outcomes may include rejection, a published correction, an expression of concern or a retraction. Details are in our Retraction, Correction & Expression of Concern Policy.

Publisher’s Role

HM Publishers supports editorial independence and does not influence editorial decisions. The publisher works with editors to maintain the published record, issue corrections and retractions where needed, and ensure long-term access to published content.

Contact

Ethical concerns can be raised in confidence with the editorial office at jaimlnn@hmjournals.com.