Journal Self-Citation & Editorial Integrity Policy

The Journal of Learning and Educational Policy (JLEP) is committed to maintaining editorial integrity and the authentic representation of our citation metrics. This policy ensures that neither authors nor editors manipulate citation practices to artificially inflate the journal's impact factor or citation indices.

Journal Self-Citation

JLEP monitors its self-citation rate through regular analysis of published articles. A journal self-citation occurs when an article published in JLEP cites a previously published article in JLEP.

A moderate level of self-citation is normal and acceptable when such citations are genuinely relevant to the work. However, artificially inflated self-citations are considered a form of manipulation and are explicitly prohibited.

Prohibited Practices

The following practices are strictly prohibited:

  • Editors or reviewers requesting that authors add citations to the journal without scientific justification
  • Authors adding citations to JLEP articles solely to inflate the journal's metrics
  • Any systematic campaign to inflate the journal's impact factor or CiteScore

Author Responsibility

Authors should only cite JLEP articles when those articles are directly relevant to their submitted work. Authors are not required to cite JLEP articles and will not be penalised for the absence of such citations.

Editor and Reviewer Responsibility

Editors and reviewers must never:

  • Request or suggest additional citations to JLEP articles as a condition of acceptance
  • Reject or downgrade manuscripts based on failure to cite the journal

Monitoring

The editorial team monitors the journal's self-citation rate annually. If the self-citation rate exceeds 20% of total citations across the journal's published articles in any given year, the editorial board will conduct a review of citation practices.

Reporting

Authors, reviewers, or readers who become aware of coercive citation practices are encouraged to report them to the Editor-in-Chief at editorinchief.jlep@gmail.com or to COPE at https://publicationethics.org.

Compliance with Indexers

JLEP acknowledges that Web of Science (Clarivate) and Scopus (Elsevier) monitor self-citation rates as part of their quality evaluation processes. Journals with anomalously high self-citation rates may be suppressed from these indices.