Commitment to Research and Publication Integrity

Caucasus Studies is committed to maintaining the highest standards of research integrity, editorial independence, transparent peer review and responsible scholarly communication. The journal expects all authors, reviewers, editors and members of the Editorial Board to act honestly, impartially and professionally throughout the publication process.

The journal’s ethical policies are informed by internationally recognised principles and guidance, including the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Where relevant, the journal also takes account of established recommendations concerning authorship, conflicts of interest, research involving human participants, data integrity and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.

Allegations of misconduct are assessed fairly, confidentially and consistently. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance and relevance to the journal’s aim and scope.

Editorial Independence

The Editor-in-Chief and authorised editors have full responsibility for editorial decisions. The publisher respects the editorial independence of the journal and does not interfere with decisions to accept, revise or reject manuscripts.

Decisions must not be influenced by the authors’ nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, political opinion, institutional affiliation, academic status, personal relationships or financial considerations. Sponsorship, advertising, institutional partnerships and publication fees, where applicable, do not influence editorial decisions.

Responsibilities of Editors

• Evaluate manuscripts fairly and exclusively on the basis of their academic quality, originality, relevance, methodological reliability and ethical compliance.
• Protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities, author information and unpublished research materials.
• Select reviewers who possess appropriate expertise and who are reasonably free from conflicts of interest.
• Avoid using unpublished information obtained through the editorial process for personal research, professional advantage or the benefit of another person or institution.
• Withdraw from handling a manuscript when a financial, professional, institutional, academic or personal conflict of interest exists.
• Ensure that manuscripts submitted by editors or Editorial Board members undergo independent editorial handling and the same peer review standards as other submissions.
• Respond appropriately to concerns involving plagiarism, data manipulation, authorship disputes, duplicate publication, undisclosed conflicts or other suspected misconduct.
• Publish corrections, retractions, expressions of concern or other notices when necessary to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

• Accept a review assignment only when they have sufficient subject expertise and can complete the review within the requested period.
• Provide objective, evidence-based and constructive comments that help editors make decisions and authors improve their manuscripts.
• Avoid hostile, insulting, discriminatory, defamatory or personally directed comments.
• Treat the manuscript and all associated files as confidential documents.
• Not share the manuscript or involve another person in the review without prior permission from the journal.
• Disclose any potential conflict of interest and decline the review when impartial assessment may not be possible.
• Identify relevant published work that has not been appropriately acknowledged when this is important to the evaluation.
• Notify the editor of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated data, manipulated evidence or other ethical concerns.
• Not use unpublished ideas, findings, data or arguments obtained through peer review for personal or professional advantage.

Accuracy, Originality and Accountability

Authors are expected to:

• Submit original work that has not been published previously and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.
• Present research methods, evidence, analysis and conclusions accurately and honestly.
• Avoid fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, misrepresentation or inappropriate omission of evidence.
• Cite all sources accurately and clearly identify quotations, paraphrases, ideas, data, images and other material obtained from previous work.
• Obtain permission for third-party copyrighted material when permission is legally required.
• Disclose funding sources, institutional support and all relevant financial or non-financial conflicts of interest.
• Identify all persons who qualify for authorship and acknowledge contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria.
• Retain research records and provide underlying data, documentation, permissions or ethics approvals when reasonably requested by the journal.
• Cooperate fully with the peer review process and respond to reviewer comments accurately and respectfully.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error or ethical problem is discovered before or after publication.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must reflect genuine and substantial intellectual contribution. Every listed author must have contributed significantly to the conception or design of the study, collection or interpretation of evidence, drafting or critical review of the manuscript, and approval of the final version.

All authors must agree to be accountable for the integrity of their own contributions and must cooperate in resolving questions concerning the accuracy or integrity of the work.

Individuals who provided administrative assistance, translation, language editing, technical support, funding acquisition or general supervision without making a qualifying intellectual contribution should not be listed as authors. Their contributions may be recognised in the acknowledgements section with their permission.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, gift authorship, purchased authorship and the omission of qualifying contributors constitute unethical practices.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove or rearrange authors after submission must be supported by a clear explanation and written consent from all listed and affected authors.

Authorship changes after acceptance are permitted only in exceptional and properly documented circumstances. Undisclosed authorship changes or the addition of authors in return for payment, influence or institutional benefit may result in rejection or further investigation.

Plagiarism and Text Reuse

Plagiarism includes presenting another person’s text, ideas, arguments, interpretations, data, images, tables or creative work as one’s own. It also includes inadequately acknowledged translation, close paraphrasing and unauthorised reuse of unpublished material.

Submitted manuscripts may be examined using similarity-detection software. A similarity report is used as an editorial screening instrument and is not treated as automatic proof of misconduct. Editors assess the source, extent and context of matching material.

Manuscripts containing substantial plagiarism may be rejected. If plagiarism is confirmed after publication, the journal may issue a correction, expression of concern or retraction and may notify the authors’ institution or other appropriate authority.

Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Previously published work must not be submitted as an original article.

Manuscripts based on theses, dissertations, conference papers, working papers or preprints may be considered when the previous version is disclosed, the submitted manuscript contains a meaningful scholarly contribution and any relevant copyright requirements are satisfied.

When several publications arise from the same dataset or research project, each manuscript must address a distinct research question and must transparently cite related publications. Artificial division of one study into multiple minimally different papers is not acceptable.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers and editors must disclose relationships or interests that could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgement. Conflicts may be financial, institutional, professional, academic, political or personal.

Authors must include a conflict-of-interest statement in the manuscript even when no conflict exists. Funding sources and the role of funders in the design, analysis, writing or publication of the research must be stated.

Disclosure of a conflict does not necessarily prevent publication. Failure to disclose a significant conflict may, however, require editorial investigation and post-publication correction.

Data Integrity and Availability

Research data must be collected, processed, analysed and reported accurately. Fabrication, falsification, selective deletion, inappropriate alteration or misleading presentation of data is prohibited.

Authors should preserve the evidence, datasets, interview records, coding materials, questionnaires and analytical documentation necessary to support their findings, subject to ethical, legal, confidentiality and data-protection restrictions.

Authors are encouraged to provide a data availability statement explaining whether supporting data are publicly available, available on reasonable request, subject to restricted access or unavailable for a legitimate ethical or legal reason.

Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving individuals, students, teachers, interview participants, survey respondents, vulnerable groups, private records or identifiable personal information must comply with applicable ethical principles, institutional requirements and national legislation.

Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review body before commencing the research. The manuscript should identify the approving body and approval number when available.

Informed consent must be obtained when applicable. Participation must be voluntary, and participants should be informed about the purpose of the research, the handling of their data and their right to withdraw where withdrawal remains practically possible.

Identifying details, photographs, recordings, direct quotations and sensitive information must not be published without appropriate consent or another valid ethical and legal basis. Particular care must be taken when research involves children, displaced persons, conflict-affected communities or other vulnerable populations.

Sensitive Historical, Political and Conflict-Related Research

The journal recognises that research concerning conflicts, territorial disputes, ethnic communities, religion, migration, identity and historical memory may involve contested interpretations and sensitive claims.

Such manuscripts must distinguish documented evidence from opinion, cite sources accurately and avoid discriminatory, dehumanising, inflammatory or defamatory language. Claims concerning individuals, communities and institutions must be supported by credible and verifiable evidence.

The publication of an article does not indicate that the journal, editors or publisher endorse all interpretations expressed by the author. Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, legality and scholarly integrity of their claims.

Unacceptable Practices

Research and publication misconduct includes, but is not limited to:

Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Ethical concerns may be raised before or after publication. The journal will conduct an initial assessment to determine whether the allegation is specific, credible and supported by relevant evidence.

Authors will normally be given an opportunity to respond. The journal may request original data, ethics documents, permissions, authorship confirmations, correspondence or other supporting records.

Where appropriate, the journal may consult independent experts or contact the authors’ institution, employer, funding organisation or another journal. The journal does not normally make final findings of institutional research misconduct but may take editorial action to protect the published record.

Possible actions include rejection, suspension of review, correction, retraction, expression of concern, notification of relevant institutions and temporary restrictions on future submissions in serious cases.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

This policy applies to generative artificial intelligence, large language models, chatbots, AI-assisted writing tools, image generators, automated translation systems, coding assistants, analytical systems and other technologies capable of generating or substantially transforming scholarly content.

General Principle of Human Responsibility

Artificial intelligence may assist aspects of research and manuscript preparation, but it cannot assume responsibility for scholarly work. Human authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, integrity, legality and ethical compliance of every element submitted to the journal.

AI-generated output may contain false statements, invented references, hidden bias, inaccurate translations, inappropriate paraphrasing or copyrighted material. Authors must independently verify all AI-assisted content against reliable primary and scholarly sources.

AI Tools Cannot Be Authors

An AI system, chatbot or large language model must not be listed as an author or co-author. AI cannot approve the final manuscript, disclose conflicts of interest, enter into publishing agreements, hold copyright or accept responsibility for errors and ethical violations.

All named authors must be human individuals who meet the journal’s authorship criteria and accept responsibility for the submitted work.

Permitted Uses of AI

Subject to human verification and appropriate disclosure, AI-assisted tools may be used for:

• Grammar, spelling, punctuation and language improvement.
• Improving readability without changing the scholarly meaning of the text.
• Translation assistance, provided that a qualified human verifies the accuracy of the translation.
• Generating preliminary outlines, keywords or organisational suggestions.
• Assisting with coding, transcription, classification or data processing when the method is transparent and reproducible.
• Supporting literature discovery, provided that every source is independently located, read and verified by the authors.

Mandatory AI Disclosure

Authors must disclose any use of generative AI or AI-assisted technology that materially contributed to the preparation, analysis, translation, visual content or presentation of the manuscript.

The disclosure must identify the tool, version when known, purpose of use, relevant stage of the work and the manner in which the output was reviewed and verified by the authors.

Prohibited and Unacceptable Uses of AI

• Submitting a substantially AI-generated manuscript without meaningful human intellectual contribution.
• Using AI to fabricate, alter or misrepresent data, interviews, survey responses, archival evidence, historical documents or research findings.
• Including invented references, quotations, DOI numbers, page numbers, legislation, statistics or source details generated by AI.
• Using AI to create false participant statements, synthetic interviews or artificial qualitative evidence and presenting them as authentic research data.
• Using AI to conceal plagiarism, duplicate publication or inappropriate text reuse.
• Generating or manipulating images, maps, charts or figures in a way that misrepresents research evidence.
• Uploading confidential, personal, copyrighted or restricted research data into an AI system without an appropriate legal and ethical basis.
• Citing an AI chatbot as the authoritative or primary source for a scholarly or factual claim.

AI-Generated References and Factual Claims

Authors must not rely on an AI tool’s representation of a source. Every cited publication must be independently located and checked against the original document or an authoritative bibliographic record.

Authors are responsible for verifying author names, titles, publication years, journal names, volume and issue numbers, page ranges, URLs and DOI identifiers. The presence of fabricated or unverifiable references may result in revision, rejection or investigation.

AI-Generated Images, Figures and Research Data

AI-generated or AI-modified visual material must not be presented as documentary, historical, archaeological, geographical or empirical evidence unless its synthetic nature is explicitly identified and its use is methodologically justified.

Authors must disclose the tool and method used to generate or modify visual content. They must also ensure that the material does not violate copyright, privacy, confidentiality or research integrity.

Generative AI must not be used to invent research data. Synthetic data may be used only when scientifically justified, clearly labelled, fully explained in the methodology and not represented as observed or collected evidence.

Use of AI by Reviewers

Reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts, supplementary files or unpublished research data into public or third-party AI systems where confidentiality, data retention and intellectual property protection cannot be guaranteed.

AI must not replace the reviewer’s independent scholarly judgement. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the accuracy, fairness, originality and professional quality of their reports.

If a reviewer wishes to use an AI tool for a permitted and confidentiality-preserving purpose, prior permission from the journal must be obtained and the use must be disclosed to the editor.

Use of AI by Editors

Editors must protect the confidentiality of submissions and must not upload unpublished manuscripts or reviewer reports into AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured.

AI tools may assist with limited administrative, language or screening tasks, but they must not make autonomous decisions regarding acceptance, rejection, reviewer selection or allegations of misconduct.

All editorial decisions must be made and approved by qualified human editors. Editors remain accountable for the fairness, accuracy and integrity of the editorial process.

Undisclosed or Misleading AI Use

Failure to disclose substantial AI use may be treated as a breach of publication ethics. The journal evaluates the nature, extent and consequences of the undisclosed use rather than relying solely on automated AI-detection systems.

Depending on the seriousness of the case, the journal may request clarification or revision, reject the manuscript, suspend editorial consideration, publish a correction, issue an expression of concern or retract a published article.

Corrections and Version Control

Errors that do not invalidate the central findings of an article may be corrected through a formal correction notice. The notice will identify the original article, explain the correction and remain permanently linked to the published record.

Published articles will not be silently altered in a manner that obscures the publication history. Updated versions and correction notices will be clearly dated and linked whenever substantial changes are necessary.

Retractions and Expressions of Concern

An article may be retracted when its findings are unreliable because of misconduct or serious error, when it contains substantial plagiarism, when it represents unauthorised or redundant publication, or when it reports unethical research.

Retraction notices will clearly identify the affected article, explain the reason for retraction and indicate who initiated the action. The original article will normally remain accessible and will be clearly marked as retracted to preserve the transparency of the scholarly record.

An expression of concern may be published when serious questions exist but the evidence is inconclusive, an investigation is incomplete or a responsible institution has not yet reached a conclusion.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual misunderstanding, procedural error or demonstrably unfair assessment affected the outcome.

Appeals must provide a clear and evidence-based response to the editorial decision and reviewer comments. Disagreement with the result alone is not sufficient grounds for appeal.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, publication ethics or journal procedures will be considered confidentially by the Editor-in-Chief or another independent senior editor when the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest.

Preservation of the Scholarly Record

The journal seeks to preserve the integrity, accessibility and continuity of its published content. Articles, corrections, retractions and related editorial notices form part of the permanent scholarly record.

Removal of a published article is considered only in exceptional circumstances, including a serious legal requirement, an immediate risk to personal safety, a major privacy violation or content that creates a substantial and unavoidable risk of harm.

Protecting Trust in Scholarly Publishing

Caucasus Studies, its editors and IMCRA Publisher are committed to protecting the accuracy, transparency and credibility of the academic record. Ethical standards apply equally to all submissions, regardless of the authors’ institutional position, nationality or professional status.

These policies may be revised when necessary to reflect developments in research practice, publication ethics, digital technologies and international scholarly publishing standards.