This page details our ethics guidelines for authors. For information on the submission process, please click here.
Originality & Plagiarism
All articles published in any CJPA issue must represent original work.
A determination of plagiarism or fabrication by the Journal will require contacting the corresponding author and possibly institution. If plagiarism or fabrication is determined post-publication, the Journal will investigate potential courses of action, up to and including formal retraction of the article.
Use of AI Tools
The Journal does not allow artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or large language models (LLMs) to be listed as authors. The emerging consensus of scholarly organisations, including the Committee on Publication Ethics, is that AI tools do not meet the requirements for authorship since they cannot assume ethical and legal responsibility for their work.
CJPA authors must represent to the press and to readers that their work is original as well as responsible and scholarly in its use of material created by others. Authors who use AI tools to produce text or images/graphics, or to collect data, must inform their editors of this use and be transparent about it in their manuscripts so that readers understand the role of these tools in the development of the work. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts including any portions produced by AI tools, and are liable for any ethical breaches that may result from the use of such content.
Conflict of Interest
When an author or the institution of the author has a relationship, financial or otherwise, with individuals or organisations that could influence the author’s work inappropriately, a conflict of interest may exist. Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.
Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs. Authors should avoid entering into agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and nonprofit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyse and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose.
To report a conflict of interest, please contact the CJPA editorial team at editor.cjpa@gmail.com.
Informed Consent
Participants have a right to privacy that should not be infringed upon without their informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions or photographs unless the information is essential and the participant (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a participant who is identifiable be shown the manuscript before it is to be published. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. Informed consent is required for many different reasons:
- To include subjects/participants in a study;
- To publish identifying information in text and images;
- To publish a paper which includes details of the subject/participant.
In either the introduction or Methods section of the manuscript, authors must state the following verbatim, or after suitable modifications unique to the study:
“Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.”
Authors should also state whether the informed consent was written or oral. If informed consent was received orally, the author must include the following:
- Why written consent could not be obtained;
- That the institutional review board or appropriate research committee(s) approved the use of the oral consent;
- How oral consent was documented.
If informed consent was not obtained, authors are required to give an explanation why this was so.
Participants must be properly instructed and have indicated that they consent to participate by signing the appropriate informed consent paperwork. Authors should be able to submit, upon request, a statement from their institution or ethics committee indicating approval of the research. We reserve the right to reject work that we believe has not been conducted to a high ethical standard, even when acceptance by the editorial process has been observed.