This ethics statement applies for Jurnal Pengajian Media Malaysia (JPMM); published by Department of Media and Communication Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. This ethics statement has been adapted from the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) that covers the code of ethics for JPMM. This ethics statement works as a guideline for any party involved in the scientific publishing of JPMM. We aim to develop good practice of ethical scientific publications.

Authorships
There is no definite definition of authorship; that it varies across disciplines. JPMM recommends the authorship is awarded based on every author's intellectual contributions to the conception, design, data collection, analysis, and writing. In the event of absentee of contribution, the individual should not receive any credit for an authorship of the scientific research paper. Each author is encouraged to confirm their authorship by providing an ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor ID).

All authors are responsible to the content of the scientific article; (1) original work; (2) the manuscript submitted is not under review by other journal or publication; (3) the manuscript submitted has not been published in other journal or publication; (4) to obtain permission to reproduce any content from other sources, that any breach of copyright laws will result in rejection of the submitted material or its retraction after publication; (5) responsible to the accuracy of the data in the scientific article, such case should be informed to the Chief Editor for correction; (6) liable for any positive or negative outcome of the scientific paper; (7) responsible to obtain and report an approval from any relevant ethics board (if required for the study conducted); (8) report any contribution of any other party, especially the fund contributor; (9) to declare any potential conflict of interest that could be considered or viewed as exerting an undue influence on his or her duties at any stage during the publication process; (10) to obtain an informed consent from the subjects of the research to publish the data; (11) to cooperate with the editor and publisher to publish an erratum, addendum, corrigendum notice or to retract the published article in JPMM, where this is deemed necessary.

Any authorship dispute will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Peer review
All submitted manuscripts to JPMM are subject to initial appraisal by the Editors, and if found suitable for further consideration, to be double blind peer reviewed. Peer reviewers are carefully selected by editors according to their expertise in area of the submitted manuscript. Their opinion and review of the submitted manuscripts are deemed useful in improving the manuscript. JPMM practices double blind peer review where the identity of both reviewers and authors are not disclosed to protect the review transparency. Authors may suggest any expert in the field of their submitted manuscript, however JPMM is not obligated to assign the reviewer suggested for their manuscript. The review’ recommendations are taken into consideration by the Editors before the publication and revision decisions. Comments and feedbacks are sent to the authors, and authors will be notified of the journal decision (accept, accept with revisions, reject). The review process takes up to around 3 months after the submission of the manuscript. Although, under any circumstances the review process may be longer than 3 months or get rejected after revision(s). All new submissions to JPMM are screened using Turnitin for plagiarism similarity. Editors may also choose to run the similarity report at any other point during the review process or post-publication.

Reviewers are responsible to maintain their integrity and required to (1) ensure an absence of any conflict of interest with any manuscript to be reviewed, such case should be disclosed and informed to the Chief Editor; (2) refuse review of any submission in the area of his/her has inadequate knowledge; (3) provide objective, fair, accurate, unbiased, courteous, justifiable and speedy report; (4) practice the confidentiality of the content of the manuscript reviewed; (5) not copy or use the data, arguments or interpretations in the manuscript without the author’s approval; (6) report any suspected misconduct, such case should be confidently reported to the Chief Editor; (7) to be aware of any potential conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, collaborative or other relationships between the reviewer and author) and to alert the editor to these, if necessary withdrawing their services for that assigned manuscript.

Any peer review misconduct or dispute will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Editorial board
Editors are carefully selected by the Chief Editor to steward JPMM to ensure the continuance and integrity of the journal’s publication mechanisms and processes. They are required to balance the interest of the constituents that include the readers, authors, owners, staff, editorial board members, advertisers and media. Their active contribution is imperative towards the development of JPMM.

Editors are responsible contribute to the journal by (1) being an active ambassador of JPMM; (2) upholding the identity of JPMM through the selection of suitable manuscripts for the journal; (3) supporting the journal by up taking assigned task; (4) evaluating each manuscript fairly; (5) upholding their integrity by ensuring the confidentiality of the manuscripts and review process; (6) ensuring the continuity of the journal’s publications; (7) identifying suitable reviewer(s) for any manuscript deemed relevant with JPMM remit; (8) publishing any correction and retraction with an apology note; (9) managing any dispute or misconduct report by adhering to COPE guideline.

Any editorial misconduct or dispute will be managed by the higher level of editorial board adhering to the COPE guideline

Plagiarism policy
Any editorial misconduct or dispute will be managed by the higher level of editorial board adhering to the COPE guideline Plagiarism US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines plagiarism as both the theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work. It does not include authorship or credit disputes. It includes miscredit of others idea or work (unreferenced), research grant applications to submission under a new authorship of a complete paper, published work in different language, of any version (print, or electronic). Authors are responsible for the authenticity of their work, and any shortcoming due to plagiarism dispute or report. Each manuscript should go through plagiarism check that may be obtained from Turnitin, Crossref Similarity Check, to name a few. The manuscript submitted should has not been published elsewhere (journal, newspaper, conference proceeding, or any other type of publication). Any potential or report on plagiarism will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice
JPMM encourages the best standards of publication ethics and take all possible principles of transparency and measures to avoid publication malpractice. We subscribe to the guideline set up by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) with regard to the expectations of editors, peer-reviewers, and authors (as outlined above).

Any issue or potential report regarding (not limited to) duplication or redundancy of publication, biasness language, ethnicity terms, human studies and subject consent, or conflict of interest should be directed to the Chief Editor and will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline. To add, bias-free language guide may be referred to Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association, Seventh Edition (2020). Guideline on the terms for ethnicity and race may be referred to the British Sociological Association (BSA).

Authors are required to confirm that informed consent has been obtained for any human subject that involve potentially vulnerable groups as listed by the Icelandic Human Rights Center . Further details and recommendation concerning research with this group may be referred to the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

Authors are required to include a statement in the manuscript; confirming the consent has been obtained from any of this potentially vulnerable group for the data gathered from them to be published. Consent for research participation is not a consent for data to be published. This is necessary as the information shared may lead to an identification of the individual within this group.

Duplicate or redundant publication
Duplication or redundant of publication is defined by White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications as authors must avoid duplicate publication, which is reproducing verbatim content from their other publications. COPE includes duplicate or redundant at any occurrence of two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions. These types of prior publications are excluded from concerns of duplication of redundant publication: 1) abstract or posters presented in conference proceedings; 2) research results presented at meetings (e.g to inform constituents such as participants, investigators, funders); 3) results that have not been interpreted, discussed, concluded, concluded in the form of tables and text to explain the data or information (in databases or clinical trials registries); 4) theses and dissertations in university archives. A publication of an abstract for any proceedings and papers published in other language require a full and prominent disclosure of details of the related papers, proceedings or publications (including of different language) and similar paper in press during the submission. Any potential or report of duplication or redundant report will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Bias-free language
Any research that include or refers to human subject needs to detail out the population using descriptors. The language and descriptors used are required to be bias-free. Further details on the recommendations of bias-free language for gender, age, racial and ethnic background, sexual orientation, disability status and socioeconomic status may be referred to the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association, Seventh Edition (2020). Any report concerning bias-free language should be directed to the Chief Editor, and will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Ethnicity and race
Authors are advised to be mindful in detailing demographic of any study population. when referring to ethnicity and race, it is recommended to use ethnicity terms compared to race. Authors may refer to the British Sociological Association (BSA) for terms guideline in relation to ethnicity and race. Any report concerning ethnicity terms should be directed to the Chief Editor, and will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Human studies and subjects
Authors are required to confirm that informed consent has been obtained for any human subject that involve potentially vulnerable groups as listed by the Icelandic Human Rights Center. They are: 1) women and girls; 2) children; 3) refugees; 4) internally displaced persons; 5) stateless persons; 6) national minorities; 7) indigenous peoples; 8) migrant workers; 9) disabled persons; 10) older adults; 11) HIV positive persons and AIDS victims; 12) ROMA/ Gypsies/ Sinti; and 13) lesbian, gay and transgender people. Further details and recommendation concerning research with this group may be referred to the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Authors are required to include a statement in the manuscript; confirming the consent has been obtained from any of this potentially vulnerable group for the data gathered from them to be published. Consent for research participation is not a consent for data to be published. This is necessary as the information shared may lead to an identification of the individual within this group. Any report concerning human studies and subject consent should be directed to the Chief Editor, and will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Conflict of interest (COI)
COPE defines conflict of interest as comprise those which may not be fully apparent, and which may influence the judgment of author, reviewers, and editors. A reader may possibly feel misled or deceived if the list of the authors, reviewers and editors are revealed. Conflict of interest include personal, commercial, political, academic or financial (includes stock or share ownership, employment, research fund, consultancies, etc). Authors are required to declare 1) any presence or absence of COI; and 2) relevant funding in the manuscript during the submission. Reviewers are required to declare any COI before reviewing any manuscript. Any editor that has any COI with any submission will be excluded from the review and selection process. Any potential or suspected undisclosed COI will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Licensing, Copyright and intellectual property
JPMM adopts CC-BY of Creative Common License. As such, JPMM would be grateful if the republication is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the work was originally published in JPMM.

Repository policy
JPMM does not have any repository policy in regard to author(s) work. Author(s) of work is/are allowed to deposit the work in their institution or any other repository of their choice. Each work should state the version (Before peer review/ Accepted version/ Published version) and full credit or referencing note.

Withdrawal or retraction
It is JPMM policy to strongly discourage withdrawal of any accepted scientific article. An accepted scientific article may be retracted for the reasons: 1) comprises error; 2) double submission; 3) infringes a professional ethical code. The accepted article will be deleted with a withdrawal and apology statement. JPMM is committed to maintain its scholarly integrity and has the right to retract articles under certain circumstances, such as: 1) major scientific error with strong evidence of problematic errors (e.g result of misconduct or honest error that include erroneous conclusion or experiment error); 2) the findings have been published in other publication without any appropriate referencing, approval or justification; 3) plagiarism issues (appropriately managed following COPE guideline); 4) report of unethical research; 5) infringement of the research subject's privacy; 6) unauthorized usage of data or material; 7) failure to disclose any conflict of interest, which may affect the findings or discussions of the research, subject to reviewer' and editor's discretion. At any occurrence of mistake in the accepted scientific article, authors are responsible to retract or amend any minor mistake. Following the correction, the scientific article will be republished with an apology statement from the authors. Authors are required to contact the chief editor for any request of amendment, or retraction. Any request for amendment or retraction; and report of any major issue leading to retraction will be managed adhering to the COPE guideline.

Media relations
Some scientific research findings may be very interesting that they attract mass media. Simultaneous publication in both mass media and JPMM is authorized. For such reason, authors are encouraged to assist journalist upon producing accurate information, without additional data. At such event, authors are encouraged to advise the journalist to cite JPMM and direct the readers to obtain further information from the author’s scientific article in JPMM.

Data analysis content
Researchers should appropriately analyse their data. However, an inappropriate analysis may not lead to a misconduct. Misconduct includes fabrication and data falsification. Authors are advised to include the following in their manuscript: 1) Detailed explanation of sources and methods to acquire data, including any electronic pre-processing and detailed explanations for any exclusions 2) Detailed explanation of the methods of analysis with appropriate referencing 3) The discussion section should include any bias issue, with explanation of the solution or how it was dealt. The detailed methodology and analysis are imperative for other researchers to adopt and adapt. Note: Any other issue that is not stated in this ethics statement yet related to the publication will be managed adhering to COPE guideline.