Ethical and Post-Publication Issues

JIS subscribes to the Brazilian Computer Society's Code of Conduct and follows COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) core practices in its editorial process and published materials. More than guaranteeing JIS adherence to high standards of ethical practices, JIS is committed to educating and supporting authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and all those involved in publication ethics towards more ethical practices.

Requests to editors to address ethical issues, complaints, corrections, retractions, updates, and other matters must be made to the "Request to Editors" Section using the "Make a New Submission" functionality (mark all the submission requirements to proceed). Interested parties must submit an "Other" PDF document, in plain text, describing the request in the most direct and substantiated way possible. 

Possible cases (not limited to) requiring analysis and actions by the Editorial Board are listed below. 

• Allegations of misconduct: any misconduct, pre-publication or post-publication, on the part of authors. Requests must directly present the issue to be analyzed, providing the necessary evidence or foundations.
  
  
• Authorship and contributorship: any problem or potential dispute regarding authorship, contributorship, or any information to be corrected regarding authors and their contribution. JIS encourages authors to outline their individual contributions to the paper using the CRediT taxonomy and suggests that requests regarding authorship refer to the same taxonomy when applicable. Because authors are responsible for their publications and must provide their ORCID numbers, requests for updating/correcting authors’ information (e.g., author name) must be legally grounded.
  
  
• Complaints and appeals: any complaint against the journal, editorial board, reviewers, or publisher related to the editorial process, practices, instruments, and attitudes. Requests or complaints involving the editors-in-chief must be sent directly to the Brazilian Computer Society publisher via email (publicacoes@sbc.org.br) with the subject "Communication regarding JIS Editorial Board."
  
  
• Conflicts of interest / Competing interests: any request or information regarding conflicts of interest of authors, reviewers, associate or invited editors, journal, and publisher, whether identified before or after publication. Requests must explain the conflicts or competing interests, providing the necessary evidence or foundations.
  
  
• Intellectual property issues: JIS has no Article Processing Charges, and all papers published follow the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Authors agree with the terms of the license, retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions, and are responsible for guaranteeing they have the right to use any third-party material that appears in their publication. JIS publishes only original work, and extended versions of papers published in conferences must have a minimum of 40% of original content. Allegations of plagiarism, redundant/overlapping publication, intellectual property violations, and related issues must be directly presented, and informants must provide the necessary evidence to support the analysis.
  
  
• Problems with data and reproducibility: JIS values rigor and reproducibility (or rationale), encouraging authors to make their datasets, methods, software, transcripts, and other relevant materials available. Issues related to the rigor and reproducibility of the research that affect its contribution and validity must be reported for analysis, providing the necessary evidence or explanations.
  
  
• Research ethics: as a submission requirement, JIS requests authors to explicitly indicate how the ethical issues of the research were addressed and managed, including the research approval by an Ethics Review Board and the adherence to specific national and international codes of conduct for research, when applicable. JIS invites the authors to critically examine their references, background, and methods, striving to avoid and fight different biases in science. Any ethical issue related to any aspect of the research must be pointed out and explained, and informants must provide the necessary information for analysis.
  

Analysis Process

JIS is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record and thoroughly investigating concerns formally reported by authors and readers. The Editors-in-Chief will analyze the received requests and provide an initial response within 30 days, indicating the result and subsequent actions, when applicable. If necessary, the editors may require additional information to complement, clarify, or ground the request. When a request is authored by third parties or when required by its authors, the Editors-in-Chief will guarantee an anonymous process.

Authors are always given an opportunity to respond to the concerns raised by a formal request and may be asked to provide original unprocessed data. The Editors-in-Chief may designate an advisory committee composed of at least three members to analyze the request and consult experts during an investigation, if necessary. 

Results 

The results of the analysis will be sent directly to the interested parties via the OJS system. The manuscript may be rejected and returned to the authors if it is still under consideration. If the paper has already been published, the results of the analysis may involve: 
i) No further action is needed, when the clarifications are sufficient and the request is closed;
ii) Corrections or Retractions, when revisions regarding the publication were conducted by the responsible parties and updated in the paper’s record; or 
iii) Removal of published content, when published content is removed and no longer available on the journal. 

Corrections and Retractions

JIS publishes corrections, retraction statements, and other post-publication updates, including Editorial Expressions of Concern on published content (articles, supplementary materials, data, etc.). All types of corrections\retractions are bi-directionally linked to the original paper and indexed. By clicking the DOI link, readers access the record for that paper, with all the published materials, formal amendments, and corrections. 

For corrections, the original paper (PDF) is usually corrected and bi-directionally linked to and from the published Editorial Note detailing the original situation and explaining the corrections made. When it is not possible to correct the original paper, it will remain unchanged, and the Editorial Note will provide all the necessary information and content.

Some common types of corrections and retractions are:

• Addendum: typically released when essential supplementary information or material vital for the readers’ comprehension of the paper becomes known, is produced, or is available after publication.
  
  
• Author Correction: issued to rectify significant errors made by the author(s) that impact the scientific integrity of the published paper, the publication record, or the reputations of the journal, the authors, their institutions, the research participants, or any other interested parties.
  
  
• Author Name Change: when authors undergo name change for justifiable reasons, they can request the correction of their name, pronouns, and other pertinent biographical details in papers published before the change. This correction may be discreet without any note, or the author may opt for a formal Author Correction.
  
  
• Editorial Note: published to inform readers on any relevant issue about a published paper that requires readers’ attention (e.g., the journal has initiated an inquiry in response to a formal request). 
  
  
• Editorial Expression of Concern: a statement issued by the editors to notify readers about significant concerns that impact the integrity of a published paper.
  
  
• Journal Correction: published to correct errors made by the journal that impact the scientific integrity of the published paper, the publication record, or the reputations of the journal, the authors, their institutions, the research participants, or any other interested parties.
  
  
• Retraction: A published paper may undergo retraction when the integrity of the published work is significantly compromised due to errors in the research's design, conduct, analysis, or reporting. Violations of publication or research ethics can also lead to the retraction of a paper. The original paper is labeled as retracted, but the PDF version remains accessible.
  

Editorial notes, Expressions of Concern, Retractions, and other relevant updates are published on the paper's record, accessible through its DOI. The retraction statement usually includes a statement of agreement or disagreement from the authors.

Content Removal

In extraordinary situations, JIS retains the right to remove a paper, supplementary material, data, or other content from its platform. Editors-in-chief may take this action under the following circumstances: (i) The published content has serious problems compromising its integrity, and corrections or retractions cannot resolve that. (ii) The content is defamatory, infringes on a third party's intellectual property rights, right to privacy, or other legal rights, or is otherwise unlawful; (iii) a court or government order has been issued or is likely to be issued, mandating the content removal; (iv) if not removed, the content may pose an immediate and severe risk to the integrity of people, organizations, nature, or other interested parties. Removal can be temporary or permanent, but bibliographic metadata (e.g., title, authors, DOI) will be retained, accompanied by a statement explaining the reasons for the content's removal.

The author’s institution may be informed on undergoing or concluded requests. Because JIS has no Article Processing Charges (APC), authors will be responsible for covering publication costs (e.g., DOI emission and metadata validation) that are not a result of errors in the editorial process.

JIS’s primary objective is to safeguard the integrity of the published material, prioritizing this over assigning blame to specific individuals or institutions. Therefore, while JIS is committed to providing straightforward and transparent notifications to readers, its statements will not identify or attribute responsibility to named individuals. Statements may direct readers to publicly available reports from institutional investigations for further information. 

Although JIS is dedicated to promptly addressing post-publication issues and is compromised to respond to the received requests quickly, the investigative process takes time due to the complexity of discussions and the necessity to obtain original data and consult with experts. Therefore, when concerns about published material arise, JIS will issue Editorial Notes or Editorial Expressions of Concern to inform our readers during the investigative process.