Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Research involving individuals, patients, caregivers, healthcare workers, communities, vulnerable populations, or other human participants through interviews, focus groups, observations, surveys, participatory research, qualitative inquiry, health-promotion interventions, behavioral studies, or other participant-based methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, professional, and health-research 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, autonomy, and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when vulnerable populations are involved.
• Qualitative data collection must be conducted in a manner that minimizes psychological, social, cultural, legal, and reputational risks to participants.

Qualitative and health-promotion research may involve confidential interview transcripts, focus-group discussions, patient experiences, community narratives, field notes, photographs, recordings, healthcare records, sensitive behavioral information, cultural information, or proprietary institutional datasets.

• Authors must have lawful and authorized access to all data used in the research.
• Participant, patient, community, and institutional information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Names, direct identifiers, indirect identifiers, quotations, contextual details, photographs, audio, and video must be handled carefully to prevent unintended identification.
• Institutional, contractual, ethical, legal, and third-party restrictions on health or qualitative data must be followed.
• Authors must not disclose identifiable sensitive information without appropriate authorization and consent.
• Direct quotations must be presented in a manner that respects participant confidentiality while preserving analytical meaning.
• Restrictions affecting data sharing must be clearly stated in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report research methods and analytical procedures with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication or methodological understanding.

• The qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, participatory, health-promotion, or other research design must be clearly identified.
• Population, participants, informants, communities, settings, cases, organizations, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling, recruitment, inclusion, exclusion, and participant-selection procedures must be transparent.
• Interview guides, observation procedures, questionnaires, health-promotion instruments, and other research tools should be described where relevant.
• Data-collection procedures, researcher roles, reflexivity, fieldwork processes, and analytical procedures must be explained appropriately.
• Qualitative coding, thematic analysis, content analysis, phenomenological analysis, grounded-theory procedures, or other analytical approaches must be described sufficiently.
• Trustworthiness strategies such as triangulation, member checking, audit trails, peer debriefing, or reflexivity should be reported where relevant.
• Systematic reviews should follow an appropriate reporting framework such as PRISMA where applicable.
• Qualitative studies should follow suitable reporting standards such as COREQ or other appropriate guidelines where applicable.

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

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, health-promotion significance, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, participant information, 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 qualitative, public-health, health-promotion, behavioral, community-health, and methodological expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, 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, transcripts, participant information, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, methodological, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, unethical data collection, duplicate publication, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished information for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts, interview transcripts, participant information, or unpublished health data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report methods, analyses, findings, interpretations, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting data and documentation where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, informed consent, permissions, and data-use authorization.
• Protect participant, patient, community, and institutional confidentiality.
• Represent participant voices and qualitative findings fairly and without misleading selective quotation.
• 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. Authors should satisfy recognized scholarly authorship principles, including substantial contribution to the research, participation in manuscript preparation or critical revision, approval of the final version, and accountability for the integrity of the work.

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of 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.
• Non-author contributors should be acknowledged 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, participant recruitment, community engagement, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Data repositories, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or restrictions should be reported where applicable.
• De-identified quantitative data, analytical code, instruments, questionnaires, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically and legally possible.
• Qualitative data such as interview transcripts, field notes, recordings, and identifiable narratives should only be shared when consistent with participant consent, ethics approval, privacy, and confidentiality obligations.
• Restrictions arising from participant privacy, cultural sensitivity, confidentiality, contracts, or ethics requirements must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, or misleading presentation of qualitative or health data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data, coded material, audit trails, research instruments, or supporting records 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, qualitative interpretation, public-health judgment, or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, analysis, participant representation, interpretation, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, qualitative interpretations, coding suggestions, health information, analyses, or conclusions must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, interview transcripts, participant information, or unpublished health data into public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, bias, misrepresentation of participant voices, and misleading health information.

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

• Reviewer selection is based on qualitative-research, health-promotion, public-health, community-health, behavioral-science, and 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, methodological quality, health relevance, and ethical compliance rather than financial or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, or integrity of scholarly 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, transcripts, field notes, coded material, original data, consent documents, ethics records, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek qualitative-research, public-health, methodological, statistical, ethical, community, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, healthcare organizations, community partners, 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, participant-protection concerns, data manipulation, or research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, participant protection, qualitative research ethics, health-promotion 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, photographs, instruments, questionnaires, interview guides, educational materials, figures, or other protected content where required.
• 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 transcripts, qualitative data, health information, 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.