Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

1. Introduction and Scope

At Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP, our commitment to the integrity of our academic content and publishing processes is guaranteed. Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP is registered as a limited liability partnership with the Corporate Affairs Commission, Nigeria (Registration No. 9817916) under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020.

This policy document establishes the unified ethical framework and operational standards governing all academic journals, serials, and scholarly monographs operating under the Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP imprint. All participating editors, editorial board members, reviewers, and submitting authors are required to adhere to these standards, which are anchored in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices and international conventions on research ethics.

2. Research Integrity and Core Principles

We uphold the highest standards of scientific rigour, intellectual accountability, and scholarly transparency. Contributors across all our imprints are required to abide by the following foundational principles:

Honesty: Complete truthfulness in the planning, execution, data collection, analytical formulation, and reporting of scholarly research.
Rigour and Accuracy: Thorough and meticulous verification of methodologies, analytical outputs, empirical data, and scholarly citations.
Transparency: Unambiguous and comprehensive disclosures concerning empirical data collection protocols, experimental tools, financial sponsorship, and commercial ties.
Subject Protection: Ensuring that the dignity, safety, autonomy, and well-being of human participants and animal subjects are scrupulously protected.
Algorithmic and Cultural Equity: Addressing algorithmic transparency, mitigating historical data biases, preventing discriminatory outcomes, and fostering respectful representation across gender identities, indigenous communities, and marginalised cultural demographics.

3. Ethical Conduct for Research with Humans and Animals

Institutional Ethics Review (IRB): All research projects involving human populations, personal or demographic data, clinical evaluations, or animal subjects must have secured formal documented approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB), Research Ethics Committee (REC), or competent statutory authority prior to fieldwork. The official protocol number, reviewing entity, and clearance date must be stated in the manuscript.
Informed Consent: Authors must confirm that voluntary, informed, and written consent was secured from every individual participant. In online or non-invasive survey designs where written consent is impractical, formal electronic acknowledgment prior to survey initiation is mandatory.
Minimal-Risk Research Exemptions: Where an institutional ethics committee formally exempts an investigation because of minimal risk, complete respondent anonymity, and voluntary engagement, the authors must explicitly declare this statutory exemption and cite compliance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Vulnerable Demographics: Research involving minors (individuals under 18 years of age), displaced persons, incarcerated individuals, or other vulnerable cohorts requires signed parental or legal guardian consent, alongside assent from the participant where cognitively feasible.
Data Anonymisation: Authors must systematically strip and protect all direct and indirect identifiers, including medical record numbers, financial account details, personal mobile contacts, and biometric records.

4. Editorial Independence and Editorial Review Process

All publications under Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP maintain strict separation between commercial operations and editorial evaluation. Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit, originality, methodologies, and alignment with the journal's scope.

4a. Initial Submission Check

Upon submission via the Open Journal Systems (OJS) gateway, the Editorial Office subjects the manuscript to an initial desk check. Submissions will proceed to external peer review only when they satisfy the following criteria:

The manuscript falls squarely within the aims and scope of the journal.
Authorship information is comprehensive, including full affiliations, ORCID identifiers, and active institutional or corporate email addresses.
Formatting and presentation adhere fully to the journal's guidelines and style conventions.
All mandatory ethical approvals, informed consent statements, data availability disclosures, and conflict-of-interest declarations are fully provided.
The manuscript passes automated similarity screening using Turnitin, maintaining a similarity index of 20% or below, with no single-source overlap exceeding allowable editorial limits.

4b. Double-Blind Peer Review

All original research papers, systematic reviews, and policy analyses published by Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP undergo rigorous double-blind peer review:

The identities of authors and reviewers remain concealed from one another throughout the evaluation cycle.
Reviewers are appointed based on their verified expertise, publication records, and objective independence from the submitting authors and their home institutions.
Editors evaluate the independent reports submitted by at least two external reviewers before deciding to accept, request revisions (minor or major), or reject a submission.

4c. Final Editorial Determination and Production

Revised manuscripts may be subjected to subsequent rounds of review or evaluated directly by the Section Editor or Editor-in-Chief. The journal's internal editorial leadership retains sole authority for the final acceptance or rejection of any submission. Upon acceptance, manuscripts pass through professional layout editing, reference hyperlinking, author proofreading, DOI assignment, and format conversions prior to publication.

5. Peer Reviewer Responsibilities and Ethics

Peer reviewers represent the primary gatekeepers of the scholarly record. Reviewers accepting an assignment must observe the following ethical standards:

Subject Competence and Timeliness: Accept review invitations only when the work falls within their direct area of subject expertise. Reviews must be completed within the specified turnaround period or declined promptly to avoid administrative backlogs.
Strict Confidentiality: The manuscript is a privileged document. Reviewers must not discuss, distribute, cite, or retain copies of unpublished manuscripts, nor share any part of the materials with third parties.
Impartiality and Constructive Reviewing: Reviews must be balanced, respectful, and academically thorough, avoiding personal critiques or derogatory remarks. Review evaluations must not be influenced by author origin, nationality, institutional prestige, religious affiliation, political viewpoints, or gender.
Conflict of Interest: Reviewers must recuse themselves immediately if they share recent institutional affiliations, research collaborations, grant partnerships, or personal connections with any contributing author.
Misconduct Detection: Reviewers should alert the editorial desk if they identify indicators of plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, or unauthorized image alterations.
Identity Integrity: Impersonating another academic or commissioning unapproved delegates to complete an evaluation constitutes a severe breach of publication ethics.

6. Managing Editorial Board and Internal Submissions

To preserve institutional credibility and eliminate conflicts of interest, all manuscripts submitted by an Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, Guest Editor, or member of an Editorial Board are governed by strict isolation protocols:

The contributing editor or board member is completely barred from accessing the administrative submission record, referee reports, and internal editorial correspondence within the OJS editorial workflow.
The peer-review trajectory is assigned to an independent Associate Editor or guest handling editor who coordinates the double-blind review process.
The final decision is determined solely by the independent handling editor or by a senior editorial committee that excludes the authoring editor.
Published papers authored by board members must carry a transparent editorial note stating the handling editor's name and affirming the independence of the review process.

7. Special Issue and Thematic Collection Policies

Special issues and themed editions are governed by the same editorial standards as regular issues:

Guest Editor Appointments: Guest Editors are appointed following formal editorial board approval of a structured thematic proposal, based on verifiable subject-matter expertise.
Editorial Authority: While Guest Editors coordinate initial scoping and referee recruitment, the Editor-in-Chief retains final authority over the acceptance or rejection of every article.
Institutional Firewalls: When a Guest Editor authors a paper or shares an institutional affiliation with a contributing author within the special issue, the handling of that specific paper is reassigned to the Editor-in-Chief or an independent internal editor.
Institutional Diversity: The publisher requires geographic and institutional diversity within all themed collections. Compilations dominated by contributors from a single department or institution are not permitted.

8. Authorship, Accountability, and Affiliation Policies

8a. Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit must reflect substantial intellectual contributions. In alignment with international standards, every listed author must satisfy four cumulative conditions:

Substantial contributions to the conception, design, empirical data collection, or statistical analysis and interpretation.
Drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for significant intellectual content.
Final approval of the galley proofs prior to publication.
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring inquiries into the accuracy or integrity of any part are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Individuals who provided general supervisory support, language editing, formatting assistance, or survey distribution without intellectual involvement must not be listed as authors; they should be acknowledged in the separate Acknowledgments section.

8b. Policy on Authorship Changes

During Peer Review: Any requested alteration to the author list (additions, deletions, or rank reordering) requires formal submission by the corresponding author of a written justification, accompanied by a signed Authorship Modification Form signed by all listed authors, including those being added or removed.
Post-Acceptance Prohibition: Authorship modifications are strictly prohibited once a manuscript has been formally accepted for publication. The author roster confirmed at acceptance represents the certified intellectual record.

8c. Affiliation Stability and Integrity

The published institutional affiliation must solely represent the institution where the primary research was executed and completed.
Post-submission modifications to primary affiliations are prohibited, except for the correction of demonstrable clerical typos.
Where an author has transitioned to a new organization after the completion of the study, the current institution must be accommodated exclusively via a Present Address or Current Affiliation footnote.

9. Mandatory Author Declarations Policy

Effective from October 2026 (beginning with Volume 2, Issue 1 of the Verlumun Journal of AI, Gender and Cultural Studies and concurrent volumes across all imprints), all articles published by Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP must carry an explicit, unedited Declarations section situated immediately before the Reference list. Submissions lacking these standardised declarations will be declined during initial screening.

Authors must provide certified statements across each of the following six components:

Ethical Approval Statement: Details the reviewing ethics committee, protocol approval number, and clearance date, or provides formal justification for statutory minimal-risk exemption in alignment with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Statement: Explicitly identifies any generative AI software or machine-learning tools employed for editing, coding, or data synthesis, outlining the scope of use and confirming human intellectual ownership. If no AI was deployed, authors must declare: The authors confirm that no Artificial Intelligence tools were used in the writing or production of this manuscript.
Data Availability Statement: Declares the repository location, permanent accession DOI, or access parameters for the empirical data supporting the findings. Standard statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [INITIALS], upon reasonable request.
Funding Statement: Identifies the precise funding agencies, foundation grants, commercial sponsorships, or institutional awards supporting the work, citing grant identification codes. If unassisted, declare: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of Interest Statement: Transparently details any commercial, personal, or professional affiliations that could be construed as biasing the research. If none exist, declare: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Authors’ Contributions Statement: Itemises the specific analytical, empirical, and writing tasks completed by each author using their initials. For single-authored works, an Author’s Contribution statement must affirm sole intellectual responsibility for all stages of research design, analysis, and execution.

10. Research Misconduct, Paper Mills, and Remediation

10a. Research Misconduct

Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP enforces zero tolerance toward scientific fraud and publication misconduct:

Plagiarism: Copying verbatim, paraphrasing, or adapting scholarly prose, ideas, empirical models, or structures without direct citation. The publisher treats self-plagiarism (text-recycling or republishing previously printed work without disclosure) as an ethical breach.
Fabrication and Falsification: Generating fictional datasets or dishonestly manipulating analytical outcomes, instrument calibrations, or empirical sequences.
Image and Graphic Manipulation: Unauthorised alteration of visual data, micrographs, spectra, or statistical graphs. Image adjustments (e.g. brightness or contrast) are permissible only if applied across the whole image and provided they do not obscure, misstate, or eliminate data features.
Paper Mills and Systematic Manipulation: Deploying commercial manuscript brokerages, fabricating authorship for commercial gain, purchasing citations, or generating fraudulent referee rings.

10b. Investigation and Sanction Protocols

When an allegation of misconduct or questionable research practices surfaces via reviewers, readers, or whistleblowers, the Editorial Office will initiate an inquiry following COPE flowcharts:

The Editorial Office reserves the right to request raw datasets, unedited image files, and institutional clearance letters.
If credible evidence demonstrates misconduct, the publisher reserves the right to notify the authors' home institutions, funding bodies, and relevant professional councils.
Sanctions: Confirmed infractions will trigger the immediate desk rejection of active submissions, formal retraction of published articles, and a minimum five-year or permanent publication ban across all journals under Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP.

11. Post-Publication Corrections, Retractions, and Integrity Notices

Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP maintains permanent, transparent records of all post-publication interventions, rejecting silent alterations to published content:

Corrections (Erratum / Corrigendum): Published to rectify minor errors, omissions, or inadvertent layout blunders that do not undermine the statistical validity, intellectual conclusions, or scientific integrity of the work. The correction notice is assigned an independent DOI and bidirectionally linked to the original paper.
Expressions of Concern: Issued by the Editor-in-Chief when substantiated allegations of misconduct, unresolved authorship contests, or questionable methodologies arise, alerting readers while an investigation is conducted.
Retractions: Executed in line with the COPE Retraction Guidelines when findings are proven ungrounded because of intentional fraud, honest fundamental error, severe duplicate publication, or unlicensed data usage. Retracted papers remain publicly accessible in the journal repository to preserve historical transparency, watermarked as RETRACTED across every page, with an accompanying formal Retraction Statement.

12. Generative AI and Algorithmic Author Policies

Prohibition on Non-Human Authorship: Generative AI models, LLMs, conversational chatbots, and automated synthesis tools cannot be designated as an author or co-author. Authorship requires intellectual accountability, and automated platforms cannot assume legal liability, resolve conflicts of interest, or grant licences.
Acceptable AI Deployment: Authors may utilise AI tools strictly to improve grammatical readability, syntax flow, and editorial clarity. The deployment of AI tools for literature synthesis, algorithmic data coding, or generative visualisation must be comprehensively documented in the Methods section, noting the model name, build version, parameter weights, and access date.
Artwork and Media Generation: AI-generated artwork, photographic illustrations, and figures are prohibited across all scientific and social science papers, except when generative imagery forms the subject of an empirical investigation into AI behaviour.
Reviewer and Editorial Prohibition: Reviewers and editors are strictly forbidden from uploading manuscripts, datasets, or peer-review notes into external generative AI platforms. Doing so violates confidentiality, compromises intellectual property rights, and infringes on privacy safeguards.

13. Copyright, Licensing, and Open Access

Open Access Licensing: All articles published under the Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP imprint are published in immediate Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for other lawful non-commercial purposes, provided appropriate attribution is accorded to the author(s) and publisher.
Copyright Retention: Authors retain full copyright ownership of their articles. By submitting their work, authors grant Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP an exclusive first-publication licence, alongside the right to distribute, archive, index, and represent the work globally.
Self-Archiving and Institutional Repositories:
- Submitted Version (Pre-print): Authors are discouraged from uploading manuscripts to open external servers during the double-blind review process to prevent compromising reviewer anonymity.
- Accepted Version (Author Accepted Manuscript): Authors may deposit the post-peer-review accepted manuscript in private institutional intranets or repositories following acceptance.
- Published Version (Version of Record): Authors are permitted and encouraged to deposit the final published PDF immediately upon release into personal websites, institutional digital repositories, and open non-commercial databases without an embargo period, provided complete bibliographic credit and the permanent DOI link are included.

14. Digital Preservation and Archival Guarantees

To guarantee permanent access to the scholarly record, Gever Verlumun Publishers LLP maintains digital preservation networks:

All published issues and metadata are permanently deposited across the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN).
The publisher integrates with the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) archiving frameworks, ensuring perpetual decentralised preservation in the event of platform interruption.
Direct persistent linking is maintained through the registration of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) via accredited Registration Agencies (e.g. Zenodo / Crossref).

15. Appeals and Complaints Procedure

Appeals on Editorial Decisions: Authors who believe an editorial rejection resulted from demonstrable factual error or identifiable reviewer bias may file an appeal. The corresponding author must submit a written appeal to the Editor-in-Chief within 14 calendar days of the decision, providing a point-by-point, evidence-based rebuttal. Rebuttals grounded solely on disagreements over novelty or priority will be dismissed. The Editor-in-Chief's determination following secondary evaluation is final.
Formal Complaints and Governance Inquiries: Complaints regarding editorial delays, reviewer misconduct, or breaches of administrative policy must be submitted in writing to the Publisher's Governance Office (ethics@verpenda.com or directly to the Editor-in-Chief). All inquiries are investigated with confidentiality and addressed in writing within 28 business days.

LAST UPDATED: 21 September 2026