Chirantan follows international standards of publication ethics, in the tradition of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Editors decide on a manuscript's merit alone - never the authors' identity, institution or seniority - keep manuscripts under review strictly confidential, and recuse themselves from any manuscript where they have a relevant relationship with an author, including their own submissions (see Guidelines for Editors). The journal's editorial workflow uses advisory software at several stages; none of it issues a decision - a human editor's judgement is required before any of it affects a manuscript.
Submissions by editors and board members. Members of Chirantan's editorial and advisory boards, including the Editor-in-Chief, may submit their own work to the journal. When they do, the submission is handled end to end by a different editor who is not an author of it, and the author-editor takes no part in its assessment: they cannot select or invite its reviewers, record its decision, resolve an appeal against that decision, or open the submission in the editorial console to read its reviews or reviewer identities. These are enforced by the platform itself, not left to undertaking - an attempt is refused rather than logged. Who handled the submission is recorded in its editorial history.
Reviewers keep manuscripts confidential, evaluate on scholarly merit alone, disclose conflicts of interest, and alert the editorial office explicitly if they suspect misconduct rather than simply lowering their recommendation.
Authors submit original work not under consideration elsewhere, limit authorship to genuine contributors (no ghost, guest or gift authorship), disclose funding and conflicts of interest, obtain ethical clearance for research involving human participants, animal subjects or sensitive community knowledge before submission, and notify the editorial office promptly on discovering a significant error in their own published work.
Attribution of traditional and indigenous knowledge is a distinct ethical duty here, not a subset of ordinary citation practice: authors drawing on a specific living tradition, oral knowledge or community practice are expected to attribute it as specifically and respectfully as a textual source would be cited, and editors or reviewers may raise attribution or cultural-sensitivity concerns even where no formal citation rule has been technically violated.
Artificial intelligence is governed by two separate policies. For authors: substantive AI use in producing a manuscript's text, analysis or data must be disclosed by name and description; AI tools may never be credited as an author, and authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of any AI-assisted portion. For the journal's own process: advisory software informs editorial and reviewer-matching decisions but never makes them, and every advisory output is logged and attributable. For reviewers: manuscripts under review may never be submitted to any AI tool for any purpose.
Allegations of misconduct - plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, data fabrication or falsification, undisclosed AI-generated content, authorship disputes or similar - are investigated by the editorial office, following COPE's published guidance, before any action is taken; authors are given the opportunity to respond before a decision is made. Possible outcomes include rejection or non-progression, a published correction, a retraction, or, in serious cases, notification to the author's institution.
Corrections, retractions and withdrawal. A correction is issued for an error that doesn't undermine the work's overall reliability, amended with a clear, dated notice; minor typographical errors don't warrant one. A retraction is issued where the findings are unreliable due to misconduct or serious error - a retracted article stays accessible with a clear retraction notice, never deleted from the record. A withdrawal applies only to manuscripts not yet formally published. Every published article carries a permanent, stable identifier; corrections and retractions are recorded against it, never a silent replacement. See Fees and waivers for the processing charge that applies if an accepted article is later retracted.
Editorial-board-authored submissions are handled entirely by an editor with no relationship to the author-editor, who is recused from every stage of that manuscript's handling.
Complaints, distinct from an appeal of an editorial decision, concern the conduct of an editor, reviewer or the journal's own process - a breach of confidentiality or an undisclosed conflict of interest, for example. Complaints go in writing to the Editor-in-Chief (or, where the complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief) and are investigated by someone with no personal stake in the outcome.
Data availability. Where a submission's underlying data can reasonably be shared - accounting for participant privacy, community consent regarding traditional knowledge, and third-party rights - authors are encouraged to deposit it in a recognised public repository and cite it in the manuscript. Where it cannot be shared, the manuscript should state why.
Archiving and long-term preservation. Chirantan's digital preservation arrangement is not yet finalized; this section will be updated with the actual arrangement once decided.