Publication Ethics

1. Ethical Framework

The Canadian Transactions of Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, fairness, and accountability in scholarly publishing. The journal’s editorial policies are guided by the COPE Core Practices, the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and, where applicable, the ICMJE Recommendations. Reference to these standards does not imply formal membership in these organizations unless such membership is explicitly stated.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher share responsibility for protecting the accuracy, credibility, and integrity of the scholarly record.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

By submitting a manuscript, the authors confirm that:

• The work is original, accurate, and has not been fabricated, falsified, or inappropriately manipulated.

• The manuscript has not been published previously and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

• All sources, ideas, data, software, figures, and text obtained from other works have been properly acknowledged and cited.

• Every individual listed as an author has made a substantial scholarly contribution to the work and has approved the submitted version.

• All relevant funding sources and financial or non-financial competing interests have been disclosed.

• Necessary ethical approvals, permissions, and informed consent have been obtained, where applicable.

• The data, code, analyses, and conclusions are reported honestly and without misleading omission or selective presentation.

• Any use of artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technology has been disclosed in accordance with the journal’s AI policy.

Authors must cooperate with the editorial office during the review and investigation of ethical concerns. If an author discovers a significant error in a submitted or published article, the author must promptly notify the journal and cooperate in correcting or retracting the work when necessary.

3. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the study; participated in drafting or critically reviewing the manuscript; approved the final version; and agreed to be accountable for the work.

Individuals who provided technical assistance, language editing, administrative support, data collection, funding acquisition, or other contributions that do not satisfy the requirements for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately, with their permission.

Guest, honorary, purchased, and ghost authorship are prohibited. Requests to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be supported by a written explanation and the documented agreement of all authors. The journal may reject a requested change when the reasons are insufficient or when an authorship dispute cannot be resolved.

The journal does not adjudicate complex authorship disputes. When necessary, such disputes may be referred to the authors’ institutions for investigation.

4. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication

All manuscripts must represent original scholarly work. Plagiarism, including the unattributed use of another person’s text, ideas, results, images, code, or data, is unacceptable. Excessive reuse of an author’s own previously published material without appropriate citation, commonly described as text recycling or self-plagiarism, is also prohibited.

Manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software before or during peer review. A similarity score alone does not establish misconduct; all concerns will be evaluated in their scholarly context.

Submitting substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time is prohibited. Redundant publication, inappropriate fragmentation of a study, and undisclosed reuse of previously published data are also unacceptable. The existence of a preprint will not ordinarily be regarded as prior publication, provided that the preprint is disclosed at submission and cited appropriately.

5. Research Misconduct

Research misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

• Fabrication or falsification of data or results;

• Plagiarism or misappropriation of intellectual property;

• Manipulation of images, figures, datasets, citations, or statistical analyses;

• Deliberate omission or misrepresentation of relevant findings;

• Citation manipulation or the inclusion of irrelevant references solely to increase citation counts;

• Undisclosed duplicate or redundant publication;

• False statements concerning authorship, affiliation, ethical approval, funding, or conflicts of interest;

• Manipulation of the submission or peer-review process;

• Impersonation of authors, reviewers, or editors; and

• Use of fraudulent reviewer identities or fabricated reviewer reports.

Suspected misconduct will be investigated fairly and confidentially. When appropriate, the journal may request original data or documentation, contact the authors’ institutions or funding organizations, reject or retract the article, and restrict future submissions from individuals found to have engaged in serious misconduct.

6. Data, Code, and Reproducibility

Authors must retain the data, code, models, experimental records, and other materials supporting their conclusions for a reasonable period following publication. The editors may request access to these materials during peer review or when concerns arise after publication.

Authors are encouraged to deposit non-sensitive datasets, source code, trained models, protocols, and supplementary materials in recognized repositories whenever legally and ethically possible. Any restrictions on access arising from privacy, security, commercial confidentiality, intellectual property, or third-party agreements must be disclosed clearly.

Fabricated datasets, undocumented manipulation, selective reporting, and misleading visualizations are prohibited. Authors remain responsible for verifying the reliability, legality, and ethical provenance of all datasets used in their research, including publicly available and AI-generated datasets.

7. Human Participants, Animals, and Sensitive Data

Research involving human participants, personal information, medical records, or identifiable data must comply with applicable legal and institutional requirements. Authors must provide the name of the approving ethics committee or institutional review board and the approval or exemption reference, where applicable. Informed consent must be obtained when required.

Identifiable information, images, recordings, or case details must not be published without appropriate consent. Authors must take reasonable measures to protect confidentiality, privacy, and data security.

Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional and national standards for animal welfare. Details of ethical approval and measures taken to minimize harm must be included in the manuscript.

8. Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, intellectual, or other relationship that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.

Authors must identify all sources of financial support and describe the funders’ roles, if any, in the design, execution, analysis, preparation, or publication of the research. The absence of competing interests should also be stated.

A declared conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication. However, failure to disclose a significant conflict may result in editorial action, including correction, expression of concern, or retraction.

9. Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Artificial intelligence systems, large language models, chatbots, and other automated tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot accept responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, or ethical conduct of a scholarly work.

Authors must disclose the use of AI-assisted technologies in preparing text, code, images, analyses, datasets, or other manuscript content. The disclosure should identify the tool and explain how it was used. Routine spelling, grammar, formatting, or reference-management assistance generally does not require detailed disclosure unless it materially affects the content.

When AI forms part of the research method, authors must provide sufficient methodological information to permit evaluation and, where reasonably possible, reproduction. This may include the system name, provider, model or version, date of access, relevant settings, and the nature of the prompts or inputs.

Human authors remain fully responsible for:

• Verifying the accuracy and originality of AI-assisted content;

• Identifying and correcting errors, bias, fabricated information, and unsupported citations;

• Protecting confidential, personal, copyrighted, and proprietary information;

• Obtaining necessary permissions; and

• Ensuring compliance with all authorship, attribution, and research-integrity requirements.

Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, figures, data, or review materials to external AI systems unless confidentiality can be assured and the journal has expressly authorized such use. Any authorized use of AI in editorial evaluation must be disclosed.

10. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must:

• Evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly, and constructively;

• Maintain the confidentiality of submitted materials;

• Refrain from using unpublished information for personal or professional advantage;

• Disclose conflicts of interest and decline the review when impartiality may be compromised;

• Notify the editor of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data irregularities, or other ethical concerns;

• Provide reports within the agreed period or promptly inform the editor if additional time is required; and

• Avoid hostile, discriminatory, defamatory, or personally directed comments.

Reviewers must not contact authors directly concerning a manuscript without editorial permission. They must not delegate a review to another person without the editor’s prior approval and must identify anyone who assisted with the review.

11. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors must make decisions based on the manuscript’s scholarly quality, originality, methodological soundness, clarity, and relevance to the journal’s scope. Decisions must not be influenced by an author’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, institutional affiliation, political views, commercial status, or ability to pay publication charges.

Editors must preserve confidentiality, select qualified and independent reviewers, manage conflicts of interest, and provide authors with a fair opportunity to respond to substantial concerns. Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts when they have a personal, professional, financial, or collaborative conflict.

Submissions from editorial board members, guest editors, or individuals affiliated with the publisher must follow the same peer-review standards as other submissions and must be handled independently by an editor without a relevant conflict.

The final responsibility for accepting or rejecting a manuscript rests with the journal’s authorized editorial leadership. Editorial decisions must remain independent of advertising, sponsorship, publication fees, or other commercial considerations.

12. Peer-Review Integrity

All research articles accepted by the journal must undergo independent scholarly peer review, except for clearly identified editorial content that does not present original research.

The journal prohibits fabricated reviews, coercive citation requests, reviewer impersonation, undisclosed review by third parties, and any attempt to interfere improperly with editorial decisions. Reviewer recommendations are advisory, and editors remain responsible for the final decision.

Authors may recommend or oppose potential reviewers, but the journal is not obliged to follow these requests. Recommended reviewers must not have relationships that could compromise their independence.

13. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

The journal is committed to correcting the scholarly record promptly and transparently. Depending on the nature and severity of a problem, the journal may publish:

• A correction when an error affects part of an article but does not invalidate its principal conclusions;

• An expression of concern when serious questions remain unresolved during an investigation; or

• A retraction when the findings are unreliable, the article involves serious misconduct, or publication is otherwise ethically invalid.

Retraction notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for retraction, and remain permanently accessible. Retracted articles will not be removed from the scholarly record except in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, serious privacy violations, or risks of significant harm. These procedures are guided by the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

14. Complaints and Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual, procedural, or ethical error affected the outcome. Appeals must provide a clear and evidence-based explanation and should not merely repeat arguments made during the original review.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, publication ethics, or journal procedures may be submitted through the journal’s official contact address. Complaints and appeals will be handled confidentially by an editor or publisher representative who was not directly involved in the matter whenever reasonably possible.

Editorial disagreement alone does not establish misconduct. The outcome of a properly considered appeal will be regarded as final.

15. Reporting Ethical Concerns

Readers, reviewers, authors, and other parties are encouraged to report credible concerns about submitted or published work. Allegations should be supported by relevant evidence and made in good faith.

The journal will protect the confidentiality of individuals raising concerns to the extent reasonably possible. Retaliation, knowingly false allegations, harassment, or malicious complaints will not be tolerated.

16. Publisher’s Responsibilities

The publisher supports editorial independence and is responsible for ensuring that commercial interests do not influence scholarly decisions. Publication fees, sponsorship, advertising, institutional relationships, or potential financial benefit will not determine whether a manuscript is accepted.

The publisher will support investigations of alleged misconduct, preserve the scholarly record, and cooperate with editors, authors, reviewers, institutions, and relevant organizations in resolving ethical concerns.