Editorial Notice
The Editorial Office of the Journal of Service, Innovation and Sustainable Development (JSISD) is committed to maintaining high standards of editorial quality, publication ethics, and scholarly transparency.
Following external feedback received during a recent evaluation process, the journal has undertaken a review of several aspects of its editorial policies, peer review procedures, and selected previously published articles. This review has led to a series of policy updates and corrective actions intended to further strengthen the integrity, clarity, and consistency of the journal’s publishing practices.
1. Ethics Statements and Research Involving Human Participants
The journal has revised and expanded its Publication Ethics and Author Guidelines pages to provide clearer requirements regarding research involving human participants, including:
- ethics approval, where applicable;
- informed consent, where applicable;
- statements explaining when formal ethics approval is not required;
- statements clarifying when informed consent is not applicable.
In addition, the journal has initiated a case-by-case review of selected previously published articles in which ethics and/or consent statements were not fully presented in the published text. Where appropriate, the journal will publish addenda, corrigenda, or editorial clarifications in order to improve the transparency and completeness of the scholarly record.
2. Conflicts of Interest in Peer Review and Editorial Handling
The journal has revised its Review Process and Publication Ethics policies to provide a clearer definition of conflicts of interest during peer review and editorial decision-making.
The revised policy now explicitly states that conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to:
- same-institution affiliations between authors and editors/reviewers;
- recent or ongoing collaborations;
- supervisory or mentoring relationships;
- personal, family, or close professional relationships;
- financial or competing professional interests.
The journal has also clarified its procedures for handling submissions involving potential same-affiliation or related-party situations. Such procedures include assignment to a conflict-free editor, exclusion of conflicted reviewers, and, where necessary, invitation of additional independent reviewers.
3. Methodological Reporting and Article-Level Clarifications
The journal recognizes the importance of internal consistency and transparency in methodological reporting. In response to concerns raised regarding discrepancies in the description of methods in selected articles, the journal has begun a targeted review of such cases.
Where inconsistencies are found to be clarifiable without affecting the underlying findings, the journal will publish methodological clarifications, corrigenda, or editorial notes as appropriate. The journal has also strengthened its editorial screening and final pre-publication checks to ensure better alignment between the abstract, methods, results, and conclusions of accepted manuscripts.
4. Citations, References, and Scholarly Integration
The journal has also reviewed concerns relating to inconsistencies between in-text citations and reference lists, as well as statements in published articles that were not supported by adequate references.
To address these issues, the journal has:
- updated its Author Guidelines to require stricter citation and reference consistency;
- revised its Review Process to emphasize literature integration and citation accuracy during peer review;
- initiated article-level checks for selected previously published papers where citation or source-support issues were identified;
- determined that corrigenda, addenda, or editorial clarifications will be issued where necessary to correct omissions, incomplete references, or unsupported factual statements.
5. Strengthening Editorial and Production Quality Control
In addition to the policy revisions noted above, JSISD has implemented strengthened editorial quality control procedures, including checks for:
- ethics and consent statements, where applicable;
- conflicts of interest in editorial handling and peer review;
- methodological consistency across different sections of the manuscript;
- citation-reference consistency and adequacy of source support;
- production-level accuracy, including article metadata, page headers, and final PDF quality.
6. Commitment to Transparency and Continuous Improvement
JSISD values constructive feedback and regards scholarly publishing as a process that requires continuous improvement. The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the academic record and, where necessary, to improving transparency in both policy and practice.
The journal’s updated policies are now available on the journal website. Article-level corrective notices will be issued where appropriate following internal review and communication with authors.
We thank our authors, reviewers, readers, and evaluators for their continued support and for their contributions to strengthening the journal.
Editorial Office
Journal of Service, Innovation and Sustainable Development (JSISD)
April-15-2026
