Duties of Authors

Authors submitting to Q Bulletin are expected to adhere to the following ethical responsibilities to ensure the integrity, transparency, and quality of scholarly publication.

The authorship should be granted to those who have made significant and meaningful contributions to the research, according to the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requirement as follows:

•  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
•    Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
•    Final approval of the version to be published; AND
•   Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who are not fulfilling the above requirements should not be identified as authors but should be listed in the acknowledgement section instead. Funding acquisition, general supervision, administrative, written and technical support, as well as language editing and proofreading alone does not guarantee of an authorship.

Authors must provide an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance following the Q Bulletin format. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. The paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or intentionally inaccurate statements are considered unethical and are unacceptable.

Authors may be required to provide the raw data of their study for editorial review and should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should, in any event, be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

All submissions must be the authors' own original work. Use of ideas, processes, writing work, information, or words of other researchers without permission or proper citation and acknowledgement of the real owner is prohibited. This includes copying one or entire sentences from other's or own past publications without proper citation.
Manuscripts may be checked for similarity against existing literature. If plagiarism is detected (whether in a manuscript or a published article), the submission will be rejected, or the published article will be retracted, and appropriate institutional or regulatory authorities may be informed. Authors are expected to properly acknowledge all sources and prior related work.

The author should explicitly describe the research methods used to allow replication by other researchers. The results of the study must be reported in a way that the data obtained from the study are free from fabrication or not obtained by a dubious method. Outlier data cannot be omitted just to get the desired result.

Manuscripts cannot be submitted to more than one journal at the same time. By doing this is not only a waste of time for editors and peer-reviewers, it may even harm the credibility of both authors and the journal if it gets published at the same time as the last publication would have to be withdrawn. However, if the manuscript has been rejected, corrections can be made and subsequently sent for other journal considerations.

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others is required including AI-related source. Authors must cite influential publications that have shaped their research. Information obtained privately, such as in conversations, must not be used without explicit permission from the source. Similarly, confidential information obtained through peer review or grant applications must not be used without the author's permission.

Editors, reviewers, or publishers should not upload submitted manuscript into AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured without authors’ explicit permission. Authors must fully disclose any use of generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Claude, or image generators) in the preparation of their manuscripts. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. If AI-generated text or visual content is directly used, quoted, or adapted within the manuscript, authors must provide an appropriate in-text citation and reference list entry. For tools that do not generate shareable links, the full prompt and output must be included as an appendix.

Complete research should be published in one paper only. The author should not divide a study into several publications to increase the number of publications. The possibility of the said manuscripts being rejected is higher if the research data are divided into a few small units because there is not enough information to support a conclusion. It is advisable for research that has been completed to be published in full as one publication, as this will give a complete picture and a higher impact.

All authors must disclose any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that could affect the results or interpretation of their work. All sources of financial support for the research must also be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, and grants or other funding.

When an author identifies a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they are obligated to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate to correct or retract the paper. If a third party notifies the editor or publisher of an error, the author must take appropriate steps to correct or retract the work or provide evidence of its accuracy.

11.1   Authorship and Accountability

11.2   AI Usage Disclosure Requirements

• The name of the tool used (e.g., "ChatGPT-4").
• The version or date of access or use.
• The specific purpose for which it was used (e.g., "to improve the grammar and flow of the initial draft" or "to assist in generating initial code for data visualisation").

11.3   AI Permitted vs. Prohibited Usage

11.4   Ethical Considerations in AI usage

By submitting a manuscript to Q Bulletin, authors are responsible for ensuring the originality, accuracy, transparency, and ethical integrity of their work and for complying with the journal's publication ethics requirements throughout the submission, review, and publication process.