Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy

New Language Dimensions (NLD) is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in scholarly publishing. The journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, ensuring integrity, transparency, and accountability throughout the publication process. This statement outlines the ethical responsibilities of all parties involved, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher.

Duties of Authors

  1. Reporting Standards
    Authors must present an accurate, objective, and comprehensive account of their research. The manuscript should provide sufficient details and references to enable replication. Fraudulent, misleading, or knowingly inaccurate statements are considered unethical and unacceptable.

  2. Originality and Plagiarism
    Authors must ensure their submission is original and free from plagiarism, self-plagiarism, or data fabrication. Proper citation and acknowledgment of sources are required. Submissions with plagiarism exceeding 20% or AI-generated content above 20% will be rejected or sent for revision.

  3. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication
    Manuscripts submitted to New Language Dimensions must not be under consideration or published elsewhere. Submitting the same research to multiple journals is unethical and unacceptable.

  4. Data Access and Retention
    Authors may be required to provide raw data for editorial review and should retain such data for a reasonable period after publication.

  5. Authorship and Acknowledgment
    Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made significant contributions to the research. All co-authors must approve the final manuscript before submission. Contributors who provided support but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

  6. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
    Authors must disclose any financial or personal conflicts of interest that could influence their work. Sources of research funding should be clearly stated.

  7. Ethical Considerations for Human and Animal Research
    Research involving human participants or animals must comply with institutional and national ethical guidelines. Authors must state in their manuscript that ethical approval was obtained and that informed consent was secured from human participants.

  8. Corrections and Retractions
    If an author discovers a significant error in their published work, they must notify the editor promptly to retract or correct the article. If errors are identified by a third party, authors must cooperate with the editorial team to resolve the issue.

  9. Confidentiality and Anonymity of Institutional/Personal Names in Research Reports

    Authors are advised to anonymize the names of institutions involved in their research, especially if the data presented is sensitive or has the potential to affect the institution's reputation. The following guidelines apply:

    1. Institutional Anonymity Requirement: Authors should use general terms (e.g., "a university in Surabaya" or "a secondary school in East Java") instead of directly mentioning the name of the institution involved in the study.

    2. Exception with Institutional Consent: The institution’s name may only be disclosed if the authors have obtained explicit written permission from the institution and if the disclosure does not violate ethical principles of confidentiality and integrity.

    3. Sensitive Data Considerations: Authors must ensure that sensitive data or information that may harm the institution or its members is either anonymized or excluded from the manuscript.

    4. Editorial Review: The editorial team reserves the right to request authors to anonymize institution names or modify the presentation of data to maintain ethical standards.

    5. Ethical Responsibility: Authors are responsible for ensuring that their research respects the privacy and confidentiality of institutions and adheres to ethical guidelines for academic publications.

Duties of Editors

  1. Publication Decisions
    The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board are responsible for deciding whether a submitted manuscript meets the journal’s academic and ethical standards. Decisions are based on merit, originality, and relevance, free from commercial or personal bias.

  2. Fair Play and Confidentiality
    Editors evaluate manuscripts based solely on scholarly merit without regard to race, gender, religious beliefs, nationality, or political views. All submission details remain confidential and are shared only with relevant parties (authors, reviewers, and editorial advisors).

  3. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
    Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest. Unpublished materials from submitted manuscripts must not be used in an editor’s research without explicit permission.

  4. Plagiarism and Ethical Violations
    Editors will investigate ethical breaches and take necessary action, including article retraction, notification of institutional authorities, or banning authors from future submissions.

Duties of Reviewers

  1. Confidentiality and Objectivity
    Peer reviewers must maintain confidentiality and assess manuscripts objectively based on academic merit. Personal criticism of the author is not acceptable.

  2. Acknowledgment of Sources
    Reviewers should identify missing citations or potential plagiarism and alert the editor to any overlap with previously published work.

  3. Timeliness and Conflicts of Interest
    Reviewers should complete their evaluation within the agreed timeframe. If they have a conflict of interest with the manuscript, they must decline the review request.

Duties of the Publisher

The Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, as the publisher of New Language Dimensions, is committed to ensuring editorial independence and maintaining high ethical standards in publishing. The publisher ensures that advertising, sponsorship, or commercial influences do not compromise editorial decisions. In cases of misconduct, the publisher works closely with the Editorial Board to resolve ethical violations in line with COPE guidelines. By adhering to these ethical standards, New Language Dimensions aims to uphold research integrity, academic excellence, and scholarly credibility.

 

AI Tools and Generative AI Use

Policy on the Use of AI Tools and Generative AI Based on COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)

New Language Dimensions (NLD) acknowledges that large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT, DeepL, Grammarly, and other generative AI systems, can support authors during the writing process. Such tools may be useful for generating preliminary ideas, improving structure, summarizing content, paraphrasing, or refining language. Nevertheless, LLMs have inherent limitations and cannot replace human intellectual judgment, analytical reasoning, or scholarly creativity. Authors must therefore remain vigilant and exercise critical oversight to ensure that all content submitted for publication is accurate, original, and appropriate. In using LLMs, authors should consider the following:

  1. Objectivity: AI-generated text may inadvertently reflect biased viewpoints or reinforce harmful stereotypes, including those related to race, gender, culture, or social groups. Because LLMs produce decontextualized output drawn from broad datasets, they may obscure minority perspectives or amplify mainstream biases.
  2. Accuracy: Generative AI tools may generate statements that appear linguistically sound but are factually incorrect, incomplete, or misleading. They may also fabricate citations, misinterpret specialized concepts, or fail to incorporate the most recent developments in the field. Authors must independently verify the accuracy of all information produced by AI tools.
  3. Contextual Understanding: LLMs often struggle with contextual nuance, particularly when encountering idiomatic language, humor, figurative expressions, culturally embedded references, or subtle academic distinctions. These limitations can lead to misinterpretation or imprecise phrasing in the manuscript.
  4. Training Data: The performance of any LLM depends on the quality and scope of its training data. In fields, regions, or languages where high-quality datasets are limited, AI-generated output may be less reliable or less representative of scholarly discourse.

Guidance for Authors

Authors may use AI tools to assist with manuscript preparation; however, such tools must not replace the author’s expertise, analytical work, or scholarly interpretation. Human oversight is mandatory at every stage of the writing process. Authors bear full responsibility for the content of their submissions, including:

  1. Verifying the accuracy, completeness, and fairness of all AI-assisted output, including checking references, factual claims, and conceptual explanations. Authors must ensure that no fabricated or unverified citations are included.
  2. Substantively revising and editing any AI-assisted material so that the manuscript clearly reflects the author’s own intellectual contribution, argumentation, interpretation, and writing style.
  3. Providing transparent disclosure of AI use upon submission. NLD requires authors to state the type of AI tool used, its purpose, and the extent of its contribution in a dedicated section.
  4. Ensuring compliance with privacy, intellectual property, and ethical standards by reviewing the terms of service of all AI tools used and avoiding the upload of confidential or sensitive information to external systems.

AI tools such as ChatGPT or other generative systems cannot be listed as authors, as they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work. NLD permits no more than 30% of the manuscript to consist of AI-assisted text, and AI-generated images, figures, or illustrations are not allowed in any submitted article.

Editors and Reviewers

Editorial and peer review processes require strict confidentiality, impartiality, and independent scholarly evaluation. With the growing availability of generative AI tools, it is essential to clearly define permissible and impermissible uses.

  1. For reviewers: Manuscripts under review are confidential documents and must not be uploaded to any AI platform or processing system. Sharing or analyzing these materials through generative AI tools may violate confidentiality, copyright protections, and data privacy regulations. Peer review depends on expert human judgment; therefore, reviewers must not use AI to draft, structure, or edit review reports. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the assessments and conclusions they provide.
  2. For editors: Editors must also preserve confidentiality and refrain from uploading manuscripts, communications, or editorial decisions to generative AI tools. Decisions about acceptance, revision, or rejection must be grounded in the editor’s own professional assessment rather than AI-generated suggestions.

AI may be used only for restricted technical purposes, such as plagiarism checks or formatting assessments, and only within secure systems approved by the journal. These tools must not access or analyze the substantive scientific content of manuscripts.

If there is credible evidence that an author or reviewer has used AI tools inappropriately or without proper disclosure, the editor must refer the concern to the Editor-in-Chief or governing body for investigation following COPE procedures.

NLD supports the careful and ethical use of emerging technologies, but affirms that scholarly evaluation and editorial decisions must remain fundamentally human-driven.

Further Information

For additional guidance, please consult:

This policy will be updated periodically as AI technologies evolve and as best practices continue to develop within the scholarly publishing community. Authors, reviewers, and editors are encouraged to revisit this policy regularly.