Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Islamic studies research involving individuals or communities through interviews, surveys, focus groups, participant observation, ethnography, oral histories, religious-community studies, educational research, behavioral data, identifiable records, or other human-participant methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy, dignity, religious identity, cultural values, and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified through quotations, narratives, photographs, recordings, or contextual details.
• Additional safeguards must be reported where vulnerable individuals, minority communities, or sensitive religious contexts are involved.

Islamic studies research may involve religious communities, personal beliefs, religious practices, manuscripts, archival documents, oral traditions, sacred texts, community records, institutional documents, personal narratives, or other culturally and religiously sensitive materials.

• Authors must have lawful, ethical, and culturally appropriate access to the materials and data used.
• Confidential, sensitive, or personally identifiable information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Religious communities, scholars, participants, institutions, and minority groups must be represented respectfully and accurately.
• Access restrictions governing manuscripts, archives, religious institutions, libraries, or community records must be respected.
• Authors should avoid unnecessary disclosure of information that may expose participants or communities to social, religious, political, or personal harm.
• Restrictions affecting data or source sharing must be stated transparently in the Data Availability Statement where applicable.

Authors must report research methods, source-selection procedures, interpretive frameworks, analytical approaches, and scholarly reasoning with sufficient clarity to permit rigorous academic evaluation.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Primary texts, archival materials, participants, communities, institutions, cases, historical periods, or other data sources must be explained.
• Selection criteria for texts, participants, documents, cases, or sources must be transparent.
• Textual, historical, comparative, legal, theological, qualitative, quantitative, or interdisciplinary analytical approaches must be described appropriately.
• Translations, transliterations, editions, manuscript sources, and interpretive conventions should be identified where relevant.
• Authors should distinguish clearly between primary evidence, scholarly interpretation, theological argument, historical inference, and personal or normative judgment.
• Assumptions, limitations, interpretive choices, source constraints, and competing scholarly perspectives should be acknowledged where relevant.
• Qualitative, systematic-review, or empirical studies should follow appropriate reporting frameworks where applicable.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, ethical compliance, and intellectual contribution.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination based on religion, denomination, sect, ethnicity, nationality, gender, institutional affiliation, or ideological position.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate expertise in Islamic studies, religious studies, humanities, social sciences, law, history, education, or relevant methodologies.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, ideological pressure, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, source materials, participant data, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, religious, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, source misrepresentation, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, sectarian language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished arguments, translations, source discoveries, data, or interpretations for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report methods, source use, interpretations, analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting source documentation, field records, interview materials, translations, archival notes, and relevant research records where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Represent religious texts, communities, traditions, historical sources, and scholarly positions fairly and accurately.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, permissions, consent, archive access, and data-use authorization.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error or ethical problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. The journal applies the four authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, interpretation, translation, or examination of sources and data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Translators, research assistants, archivists, field facilitators, religious scholars, community partners, or other contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately and with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the role of the funder in study design, source selection, fieldwork, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included where manuscripts rely on empirical or research data.
• Repositories, archival locations, manuscript identifiers, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or source restrictions should be reported where appropriate.
• De-identified data, coding frameworks, interview guides, translations, analytical notes, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically and legally possible.
• Restrictions arising from participant confidentiality, religious sensitivity, archive rules, manuscript ownership, copyright, institutional agreements, or community expectations must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective omission, invented quotations, mistranslation, or misleading presentation of evidence is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying source materials, interview records, translations, field notes, archival evidence, or other supporting documentation when necessary to evaluate research integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published material are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment, religious-text interpretation, or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, translations, interpretations, quotations, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, translations, summaries, analyses, historical claims, theological interpretations, or source identifications must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, participant information, unpublished translations, or restricted source material to public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, invented quotations, inaccurate Arabic or other-language translations, historical errors, doctrinal misrepresentation, bias, and misleading interpretations.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on Islamic studies, religious studies, history, law, education, humanities, social sciences, or relevant methodological expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit rather than financial, institutional, political, sectarian, ideological, or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, respectful scholarly discourse, or integrity of academic publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original source materials, manuscripts, translations, archival records, field notes, interview records, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek Islamic-studies, historical, legal, theological, methodological, ethical, linguistic, or other specialist expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, archives, libraries, religious institutions, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, fabricated sources, falsified translations, invented quotations, or other research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors, participants, religious communities, scholars, institutions, archives, and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, religious or cultural representation, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material, including manuscript images, archival materials, photographs, maps, illustrations, translations, tables, figures, or reproduced texts where required.
• Authors must respect copyright and ownership rights associated with religious manuscripts, archival collections, translations, editions, and digital resources.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, participant information, interview materials, archival records, restricted source materials, allegations, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.