Publication Ethics

• Alzaytoonah University of Jordan (ZUJ) follows clear ethical standards for publication to ensure high-quality scholarly work and strengthen public trust in published research. Accordingly, the university applies this policy to all its journals in alignment with the best-practice guidelines outlined in the core principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This policy should be read alongside the authors’ and reviewers’ guidelines. ZUJ adheres to a rigorous process to detect and prevent unethical conduct. Recognized experts are selected to manage this process, ensuring the production of reliable and accurate manuscripts that present valuable findings and practical contributions. The university strictly enforces compliance with these professional guidelines (see Section 3). All submitted manuscripts must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere (such as in other journals or conference proceedings).
• Each ZUJ journal adopts specific, clear authorship criteria as outlined in the “For Authors” section. Authors and co-authors must adhere to these criteria and confirm that all those who meet authorship requirements are listed accordingly.
• Authorship: Published work must be attributed to one or more authors who are complied with authorship standards. A description of each author contribution should be summarized in a statement titled "Authors Contributions.
• Authorship Problems: To handle authorship problems; editors refer to COPE
• Fund and Support: Authors are requested to disclose any received fund or support from individual or organization in the "Acknowledgment" section
• Peer-review Process: To ensure robust, objective, confidential, transparent and free of conflicts of interest peer-review process, ZUJ adopts the international policies of peer-review process (i.e. single-blind or double-blind, reviewers selection, conflict of interest, response time).
• Reviewers Selection: Authors have to provide the list of the potential reviewers in their cover letter and the uploading system. ZUJ has the right to adopt the same list of provided reviewers or switch to another.
• Peer-review Conflict of Interest: Any conflict of interest should be reported directly to the editors as soon as receiving the invitation to review manuscripts.
• Confidentiality during Manuscript Handling: To ensure utmost confidentiality; ZUJ’s editors don’t share Manuscripts with any third party except the peer reviewers.
• Manuscript Handling Time: Strictly rules are adopted by ZUJ’s editors to ensure timely process and update authors of any possible delays
• Publication Ethics: Research integrity is at the top of ZUJ’s priorities; so they make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any breach of the ethical code.
• Misconduct: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any practices of data fabrication, authorship abuse, falsification, image manipulation, unethical research, plagiarism, biased reporting, duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest.
• Fabrication, Falsification and Image Manipulation: All ZUJ journals make every effort to identify, detect and prevent data fabrication, falsification and image manipulation by implementing advances image processing system. Except for some cases where it is necessary to manipulate image, and in this case adores have to explain where manipulation has been done.
• Plagiarism: Editors take all steps to ensure submitted manuscripts are original. The similarity rate must not exceed 20%. If the percentage exceeds this threshold, the Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the submission.
• Duplicate Submission: Editors work diligently to ensure that manuscripts have not been published elsewhere by detecting and preventing simultaneous or duplicate submissions. If such misconduct is identified, ZUJ applies strict measures, including withdrawing the article from the journal website and banning the researcher from future submissions.
• Sanctions: If any violation of publication ethics or professional codes is detected, strict measures are taken according to ZUJ procedures, including: • Issuing a warning letter clarifying the nature of the violation.  Immediate rejection of the manuscript.  Imposing a submission ban on all responsible authors.  Banning responsible authors from serving as reviewers.  Publishing an official notice detailing the violation.  Sending a formal letter to the authors’ department head or funding agency.  Withdrawing or officially retracting the publication..
• Editors and Board Members as Authors: ZUJ’s journals adopt well defined procedures and police to exclude editors from publication decisions when they are authors.
• Conflicts of Interest: To ensure objectivity in the review procedure, editors and peer reviewers are requested to disclose that there is no any conflict of interest.
• Libel and Defamation: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect and prevent any certain language or expression either in the manuscripts or peer reviewer reports that would lead to legal action for defamation and negligent misstatement.
• Editorial Independence and Commercial Issues: To ensure a formal relationship between the editors and the publisher (ZUJ), each ZUJ’s journal adopted polices and established mechanism to avoid biased decisions that financially influenced by authors.
• Academic Debate: Comments or constructive criticism of any published work are allowed by all ZUJ’s journals. If such practice occurred, authors are informed to respond before the comments are published.
• Appeals: To appeal against editorial decisions, authors refer to the international based mechanism that is adopted by ZUJ.
• Corrections: ZUJ welcomes authors or readers to notify the journal editorial office if any errors discovered in the published work. If such occurred, editors and authors are notified to correct theses errors, then an erratum will be published in an issue in the same journal.
• Research Ethics in Scientific Articles Human Rights, Privacy, and Confidentiality: Clinical study results must be officially registered with the relevant national health authority. If registration is not possible, authors must provide an explanatory letter. Culture and Heritage: Editors make every effort to detect and prevent publication of images or texts related to religious or historical events that may be offensive to certain social groups. Reporting Guidelines: Editors and peer reviewers ensure that submitted manuscripts provide all necessary information to allow readers to evaluate the work effectively.
• Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
• Introduction: The ZUJ Journal of Legal Studies is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity, rigorous research, and originality. In light of the widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), the journal adopts the following policy to ensure responsible use of these tools in research
• General Principles: AI tools may not be listed as authors because they cannot bear scientific or legal responsibility. The author is solely responsible for the accuracy of results, data integrity, validity of conclusions, and originality of content — regardless of AI use. Permitted Uses of AI Tools
• AI may be used only for:  Language editing and proofreading  Correcting grammatical or spelling errors  Rephrasing text without altering meaning  Summarizing texts written by the researcher
• Prohibited Uses AI must not be used for:  Generating scientific content in whole or in part  Creating or manipulating data or figures  Inventing references  Writing conclusions or conducting analysis  Submitting AI-generated content without scientific verification
• AI Content Score and Similarity Limits:  AI-generated content must not exceed 35%.  Similarity Index must not exceed 30%.  Editors may reject any manuscript suspected of containing AI-generated material.
• Authors’ Responsibilities
• Authors must:  Confirm originality of ideas and results.  Review AI-edited content.  Disclose AI usage.  Assume responsibility for plagiarism or AI errors.
• Verification Tools
• The journal uses AI-detection and plagiarism tools, including: Turnitin AI Detector
• Violation Penalty
• Possible sanctions include:  Rejection without review  Author ban  Notifying the author’s institution  Retraction of published papers