Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics of Babylonian Journal of Internet of Things (BJIoT)

Ethics policy for Internet of Things research, connected systems, data, and responsible innovation

Version: Revised July 8, 2026

By submitting a manuscript to Babylonian Journal of Internet of Things (BJIoT), authors confirm that they have read and accepted the journal's editorial, ethical, and publication policies. Submission confirms that the work is original, transparently reported, ethically prepared, and suitable for a journal covering Internet of Things technologies, connected devices, sensors, embedded systems, edge and cloud systems, smart environments, IoT cybersecurity, AI-enabled IoT, data privacy, and networked infrastructure.

BJIoT applies the COPE Core Practices and relevant COPE guidance when handling publication-ethics matters. Reference to COPE supports, but does not replace, the journal's responsibility for fair editorial decisions and protection of the scholarly record.

Authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, and publishing staff are expected to act responsibly, protect confidential information, disclose relevant interests, and avoid practices that could mislead readers or expose people, organizations, devices, systems, or communities to avoidable harm.

1. Introduction and Ethical Framework

BJIoT is committed to publication ethics, research integrity, editorial accountability, and responsible communication of IoT scholarship. Editorial decisions are based on relevance to the journal's scope, scholarly contribution, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, transparency, and clarity of reporting.

Decisions are not influenced by nationality, ethnicity, political opinion, religion, gender, institutional affiliation, commercial interest, or other personal characteristics. Editors and reviewers must declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartial judgment could reasonably be questioned.

IoT research may involve people, devices, private spaces, organizations, communication networks, software, firmware, telemetry, or security-sensitive information. Authors must comply with applicable laws, institutional requirements, contractual duties, research-ethics standards, and responsible disclosure practices.

1.1 Scope-Specific Ethical Responsibility

Authors must design, conduct, and report IoT research in a way that respects privacy, security, safety, and public trust. Manuscripts should provide enough detail for scholarly evaluation while avoiding unnecessary disclosure of live credentials, private keys, exploit-ready instructions, confidential system details, or personal data.

1.2 Ethical Approval and Lawful Authorization

Where work involves human participants, user studies, surveys, interviews, biometric signals, behavioral data, non-public datasets, organizational logs, network traces, or systems not owned by the authors, the manuscript must include appropriate statements on ethics approval, consent, permission, or lawful authorization. BJIoT may request supporting documentation during review or investigation.

Work based on unauthorized access, undisclosed private-data collection, unlawful device testing, or use of data obtained in violation of legal, institutional, contractual, or ethical requirements is not acceptable.

1.3 Accuracy, Originality, and Author Responsibility

Authors must describe datasets, devices, code, models, experiments, benchmarks, threat analyses, and results accurately. Fabrication, falsification, selective reporting, misleading benchmarks, manipulated evidence, and unsupported claims are serious breaches of publication ethics.

All borrowed ideas, wording, code, data, images, tables, figures, and other material must be properly cited and attributed. Plagiarism, redundant publication, citation manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and peer-review manipulation are unacceptable.

1.4 Standards of Reporting

Manuscripts should describe assumptions, hardware and software environments, data sources, evaluation settings, limitations, and ethical or security implications clearly enough to support editorial assessment, peer review, and responsible reproducibility where lawful and safe.

2. Editorial Screening, Peer Review, and Confidentiality

All manuscripts submitted to BJIoT undergo initial editorial screening before external peer review. Editors assess scope, originality, completeness, methodological quality, ethical statements, conflicts of interest, data or code availability statements where relevant, and possible integrity concerns.

2.1 Pre-Review Editorial Assessment and Desk Review

A manuscript may be returned or rejected before external review if it is outside the journal's scope, lacks a clear scholarly contribution, has serious methodological weaknesses, omits required ethical or disclosure information, fails to meet submission requirements, or raises unresolved integrity concerns.

2.2 Similarity Screening and Integrity Review

Submissions may be screened with Turnitin or comparable tools. Similarity reports identify text overlap but do not by themselves prove plagiarism. Editors assess matched text in context, including source attribution, quotation, methods descriptions, reference lists, reused material, and the nature and extent of overlap.

Similarity findings may lead to author clarification, revision, rejection, or further investigation. BJIoT does not apply a universal numerical similarity threshold and does not make automated misconduct findings from a similarity percentage alone.

The journal may use third-party editorial integrity tools to help identify manuscript-level indicators requiring human review, such as unusual citation patterns, unverifiable references, or manipulated text. These tools support editorial assessment but do not replace peer review or human judgment.

2.3 Peer Review Process and Editorial Responsibility

BJIoT uses a double-blind peer review process: reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and author identities are not disclosed to reviewers during review where this is practicable within the journal workflow. Research articles sent for external review are normally evaluated by at least two independent experts with relevant subject knowledge.

Reviewers are selected for expertise, independence, and ability to provide objective assessment. Authors may suggest reviewers but must not nominate collaborators or people with conflicts of interest. Reviewer comments inform editorial decisions, but the final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief or an unconflicted delegated editor.

2.4 Confidentiality of Submissions and Review Materials

Submitted manuscripts, review reports, decision letters, editorial correspondence, personal data, and integrity-case records are confidential. Editors, reviewers, and staff must not disclose manuscript content except to people directly involved in editorial evaluation, production, legal compliance, or ethical investigation.

Unpublished information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal advantage or in another person's research without the author's explicit written permission. Relevant materials may be shared confidentially with appropriate editors, ethics advisers, institutions, or authorities when needed to investigate serious concerns.

2.5 Appeals, Complaints, and Ethical Investigations

BJIoT considers genuine appeals and complaints about editorial decisions, peer review, ethics, authorship, conflicts of interest, delays, confidentiality, discrimination, or editorial conduct. Appeals must identify the decision being challenged and provide evidence or a reasoned argument showing a material error, conflict, or overlooked information. Appeals and general editorial complaints should be sent to editorial@mesopotamian.press. Disputes, complaints, and ethics-related disagreements may be sent to dispute@mesopotamian.press. Matters requiring Editor-in-Chief attention or escalation may be sent to nicolae.tapus@cs.pub.ro.

Ethical concerns are handled fairly and confidentially as far as practicable. The process may include preliminary assessment, author notification and response, reviewer or editor consultation, institutional communication where necessary, and a recorded editorial outcome.

2.6 Editorial Tools and Human Oversight

Secure editorial tools may support administrative checks, metadata review, similarity screening, integrity screening, and reviewer discovery. All editorial decisions, peer-review assessments, and misconduct evaluations remain under qualified human oversight.

3. Authorship, Contributions, and Affiliations

Authorship gives credit and assigns responsibility for the integrity of published work. Every listed author must have made a substantial scholarly contribution, approved the submitted and final versions, and agreed to be accountable for their contribution.

3.1 Authorship Criteria

Authorship should be limited to individuals who contributed substantially to conception or design, data or code acquisition, analysis or interpretation, drafting or critical revision, and final approval. Funding acquisition, supervision, administrative support, technical assistance, or data collection alone does not automatically justify authorship.

All authors must approve the author list and order before submission. The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal and for confirming that all co-authors have approved the manuscript and required disclosures.

3.2 Contribution Details

Authors should describe individual contributions using clear categories where appropriate, such as conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing, review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. BJIoT supports use of the CRediT taxonomy.

3.3 Changes to Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors must include a clear reason and written agreement from all authors, including any person being added or removed. Authors must complete the BJIoT Change of Authorship Form. Unresolved authorship disputes may be sent to dispute@mesopotamian.press. Approved post-publication authorship changes will be made through a linked correction notice.

3.4 Authorship Disputes and Acknowledgments

Disputes that cannot be resolved among authors may be referred to the relevant institution. BJIoT may pause review or publication until the dispute is resolved. People or organizations that contributed but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with permission. Writing, technical, statistical, material, or AI assistance must be disclosed where relevant.

3.5 Affiliations and Author Identifiers

Authors must provide accurate affiliations representing where the work was conducted or supported. Current addresses may be added when authors have moved. Independent researchers must identify their status accurately. Funders should be reported in the Funding statement rather than presented as affiliations. BJIoT encourages ORCID identifiers for all authors and may require them for submission metadata.

4. Competing Interests and Funding Disclosure

4.1 Competing Interests

Authors, reviewers, editors, and guest editors must disclose financial and non-financial interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work or its evaluation. These may include employment, consulting, funding, intellectual property, device or software ownership, personal or professional relationships, institutional roles, academic competition, and strongly held positions relevant to the manuscript.

Every published article must contain a competing-interest declaration, including a statement that none exist when applicable. Authors and reviewers should use the Conflict of Interest Form for authors and reviewers where required. Editorial members should use the Conflict of Interest Form for editorial members. Reviewers and editors must recuse themselves when a conflict could affect impartiality. Submissions by editors or editorial-board members are handled by an independent, unconflicted editor. Interests discovered after publication may require a correction or other editorial action.

4.2 Funding Disclosure

Authors must identify every funder and grant number and describe the funder's role in study design, device or dataset access, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to submit. Authors should complete the Financial Disclosure Form where required. If the funder had no role, this must be stated. Articles without external funding must include a corresponding declaration.

5. Citations and Reference Integrity

Citations must be accurate, relevant, balanced, and supported by the cited source. Authors should cite original work where possible and must not omit relevant literature or add citations solely to increase metrics.

  • References should support the claims made in the manuscript.
  • Editors and reviewers must not request unnecessary citations for personal, journal, institutional, or metric-related benefit.
  • Standards, datasets, software documentation, vulnerability advisories, technical reports, and legal materials may be cited when they are relevant and reliable.

Editors may request correction, clarification, or removal of inappropriate references. Confirmed citation manipulation may lead to editorial action in accordance with publication-ethics guidance.

6. Originality, Similarity Screening, and Integrity

6.1 Plagiarism and Text Recycling

Submitted work must be original and properly attributed. Plagiarism includes presenting another person's words, ideas, data, code, figures, tables, models, results, or other material as one's own. Reuse of an author's own previously published material must be transparent, cited where appropriate, and justified by the scholarly context.

Similarity-detection tools may be used as screening aids. Editors assess the source, location, attribution, extent, and context of overlap before deciding whether clarification, revision, rejection, correction, or further investigation is required.

6.2 Duplicate Submission and Publication

Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Manuscripts must not have been previously published in whole or substantial part unless the submission is clearly identified as an authorized secondary publication and complies with copyright and editorial requirements.

Authors who reuse prior datasets, code, figures, methods descriptions, benchmark settings, or conference versions must cite the prior work and explain the new contribution of the submitted manuscript.

6.3 Data, Code, Image, and Results Integrity

Data fabrication, data falsification, manipulated device logs, misleading benchmarks, undisclosed exclusion of unfavorable results, inappropriate image or signal manipulation, and misrepresentation of code, firmware, models, or experimental settings are serious breaches of publication ethics.

Figures, screenshots, dashboards, plots, images, and visualized data must accurately represent the underlying evidence. Synthetic or AI-generated material must be identified. Authors should retain original data, code, logs, configurations, model parameters, and analysis materials needed to verify the work, subject to legal, ethical, security, and confidentiality restrictions.

7. Open Access, Copyright, and Permissions

7.1 Open Access Policy

BJIoT is an Open Access journal. Published articles are made freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise stated.

Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, adapt, and use published articles, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author(s), journal, and source.

7.2 Eligibility to Submit and Author Rights

Authors may submit an original manuscript if they hold the necessary rights or have obtained permission from the relevant rights holder(s) for all submitted content. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal non-exclusive rights to publish, distribute, preserve, and identify the article as the version of record.

7.3 Copyright Statement

The copyright and license statement should appear clearly in each published article. Third-party material must be used only with appropriate permission, license compatibility, and attribution.

8. Human Participants, Privacy, and Sensitive IoT Data

8.1 Consent and Ethical Approval

IoT research may involve people directly or use data relating to them, including usability studies, surveys, interviews, wearables, smart-health measurements, biometrics, images, audio, household or workplace sensor data, precise location, online behavior, device identifiers, and network telemetry. Authors must respect participant autonomy, privacy, safety, and dignity.

Research requiring review by an institutional review board, research ethics committee, or equivalent body must receive approval before the study begins. The manuscript must state the committee name and approval identifier. If formal review was not required, authors must explain the basis and identify the authority or institutional policy relied upon. The journal may request supporting documentation.

Authors must state how informed consent was obtained or document an approved waiver. Additional safeguards are required for children and people whose circumstances may increase vulnerability. Separate consent for publication is required whenever a person could reasonably be identified in the article or supplementary material.

8.2 Privacy, De-Identification, and Re-Identification Risk

Collection and use of personal data must be necessary and proportionate to the research question. Authors must describe consent or other lawful authority, data minimization, access controls, de-identification or pseudonymization, security, retention, and sharing arrangements.

Claims that data are anonymous must consider re-identification through linkage, especially for biometrics, mobility traces, smart-home information, device fingerprints, and high-dimensional sensor data. Authors must not publish live credentials, private keys, personal identifiers, confidential organizational information, or details that unnecessarily expose people or systems to risk.

9. Authorized Cybersecurity Research and Dual Use

IoT cybersecurity research may involve dual-use knowledge, including device vulnerabilities, exploit demonstrations, firmware analysis, malware behavior, attack simulations, penetration testing, cryptographic weaknesses, unsafe device-control methods, and defensive bypass techniques. Authors must balance transparency with responsible risk reduction.

  • Testing must be lawful and authorized, especially when involving third-party devices, networks, cloud platforms, mobile applications, users, or operational environments.
  • Experiments on public or operational systems must include risk assessment, containment, data minimization, and incident-response safeguards.
  • Manuscripts reporting vulnerabilities must describe the responsible-disclosure process where safe and lawful, including notification to affected vendors, maintainers, or operators when appropriate.
  • Exploit code, attack workflows, malware samples, live credentials, private keys, and sensitive infrastructure details must not be published in a form that creates unnecessary immediate risk.
  • Sensitive artifacts may be redacted, delayed, restricted, or shared through controlled access when open publication would create substantial harm.

BJIoT may request additional information, modifications, redactions, timing adjustments, or specialist advice when a manuscript presents significant security-sensitive or dual-use risks.

10. Data, Code, and Reproducibility

Manuscripts must report methods and results accurately and in enough detail for qualified readers to evaluate the claims. As applicable, authors must identify hardware, firmware, and software versions; network and experimental configurations; datasets and collection dates; preprocessing and exclusion rules; model architecture and training procedure; evaluation protocols and baselines; statistical methods; random seeds; and material limitations.

Every research article should include a Data and Code Availability Statement. Supporting data, code, models, protocols, and other materials should be deposited in a trustworthy repository with a persistent identifier when sharing is lawful, ethical, secure, and technically feasible.

Legitimate restrictions based on privacy, security, contract, confidential infrastructure, proprietary devices, or other obligations must be explained, including what may be accessed, by whom, under what conditions, and through what process. Even when materials cannot be shared publicly, authors should report methods clearly enough to support peer review and responsible scholarly evaluation.

11. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

BJIoT maintains the scholarly record through transparent post-publication updates in accordance with publication-ethics guidance. Correction, retraction, and post-publication record concerns should be sent to editorial@mesopotamian.press. Disputed post-publication ethics concerns may be sent to dispute@mesopotamian.press. When necessary, the journal may publish a correction, editorial note, expression of concern, retraction, or removal notice. Notices remain linked to the original article where possible.

11.1 Corrections

A correction may be issued when an error or omission affects interpretation, metadata, disclosures, authorship information, funding, conflicts of interest, data availability, or another part of the published record without invalidating the article's main conclusions. BJIoT will not silently alter the version of record.

11.2 Retractions

A retraction may be issued when the journal no longer has confidence in the article's findings or integrity, including cases involving fabricated or falsified data, serious methodological error, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, compromised peer review, or other serious misconduct.

Retraction notices identify the article, explain the reason for retraction, state who initiated the retraction where appropriate, and link the notice and original article in both directions when technically possible. Notices will follow the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

11.3 Expressions of Concern and Removal Notices

An expression of concern may be issued when credible concerns exist but an investigation is incomplete, inconclusive, delayed, or dependent on information from institutions or third parties. Removal is reserved for exceptional legal, privacy, rights, or immediate safety and security circumstances. A public notice and metadata record will remain wherever legally possible.

12. Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies

BJIoT recognizes that generative AI and AI-assisted tools may support language editing, translation, coding assistance, analysis, visualization, or manuscript preparation. Human authors remain fully responsible for all submitted content.

12.1 AI-Assisted Writing Policy

  • AI tools cannot be credited as authors because they cannot approve the work, disclose interests, or accept responsibility.
  • Material use of generative or AI-assisted tools in writing, coding, image creation or alteration, data generation or processing, analysis, model development, or interpretation must be disclosed.
  • Authors must verify accuracy, originality, citations, permissions, code, data, and claims generated or assisted by AI tools.
  • AI tools must not be used to fabricate data, invent references, conceal plagiarism, misrepresent authorship, or create misleading IoT or security claims.

12.2 Use of AI in Peer Review and Editorial Work

Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts, figures, supplementary files, review reports, decision letters, or editorial correspondence to public or unapproved AI systems. AI may be used in an editorial workflow only when the journal has assessed confidentiality, data retention, security, intellectual property, and human oversight. AI must not replace reviewer or editor judgment.

12.3 AI-Related Integrity Risks

Editors may assess indicators of inappropriate AI-assisted manipulation, including fabricated references, distorted terminology, unsupported claims, inconsistent methods, unverifiable datasets or code, and misleading synthetic evidence. Such indicators do not automatically establish misconduct but may trigger additional editorial assessment.

13. Misconduct Policies and Investigations

BJIoT takes allegations of research, publication, and peer-review misconduct seriously before and after publication. Research-integrity and misconduct allegations may be sent to dispute@mesopotamian.press, with the manuscript or article identifier and supporting evidence. General editorial-office queries may be sent to editorial@mesopotamian.press. Matters requiring Editor-in-Chief escalation may be sent to nicolae.tapus@cs.pub.ro. Concerns are handled fairly, confidentially where possible, and without retaliation against good-faith complainants.

13.1 Types of Misconduct

Misconduct may include plagiarism, duplicate submission or publication, data or code fabrication, data or code falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, undisclosed competing interests, authorship manipulation, affiliation misrepresentation, peer-review manipulation, misuse of third-party material, unethical research, unlawful data collection, unauthorized device or network testing, or irresponsible disclosure of security-sensitive information.

13.2 Investigation Process

Concerns may be raised by editors, reviewers, authors, readers, institutions, or other parties. An unconflicted editor will conduct a preliminary assessment, preserve relevant records, request evidence where needed, seek author response, consult reviewers or experts, and document decisions. Authors are expected to cooperate with ethical inquiries.

BJIoT distinguishes honest error and scholarly disagreement from possible misconduct. When specialist fact-finding is required, the journal may refer the matter to an institution, funder, ethics body, or competent authority while retaining responsibility for editorial action.

13.3 Outcomes

Outcomes are evidence-based and proportionate. They may include no action, clarification, a request for underlying records, manuscript revision, rejection, correction, editorial note, expression of concern, retraction, removal, reviewer removal, a defined restriction on future submissions, or referral to an appropriate authority. Institutional notification and submission restrictions are not automatic.

14. Duties of Editors, Reviewers, and Authors

The journal and its editorial board expect all participants in publication to act with integrity, confidentiality, transparency, objectivity, and respect.

14.1 Duties of Editors

Editors are responsible for fair and timely editorial handling, reviewer selection, conflict management, confidentiality, ethical oversight, and decisions based on scholarly merit and journal scope. Editors should correct the record when errors or ethical concerns are identified.

14.2 Duties of Reviewers

Reviewers should provide objective, constructive, timely, and confidential assessment. Reviewers must declare conflicts of interest, decline reviews outside their expertise, avoid personal criticism, and notify editors of suspected misconduct, relevant uncited work, substantial overlap, or serious ethical or security concerns.

14.3 Duties of Authors

Authors must submit original work, report methods and results accurately, cite sources properly, disclose conflicts and funding, obtain permissions and approvals where required, protect sensitive data, cooperate with review and ethical inquiries, and promptly notify the journal of significant errors in submitted or published work.

15. Use of Third-Party Material

Authors must obtain permission or confirm appropriate licensing before using third-party text, figures, tables, screenshots, datasets, code, diagrams, images, audio, video, software documentation, device manuals, firmware extracts, or other materials not owned by them.

All third-party material must be properly attributed. Public availability on the internet does not automatically permit reuse. Authors are responsible for ensuring that permissions and licenses are compatible with publication under the journal's open access license.

16. Preprints Policy

Authors may share preprints before submission, during review, or after acceptance, provided that this does not violate legal, ethical, confidentiality, funder, institutional, security, or third-party requirements. Preprints are not considered redundant publication by BJIoT.

Authors must disclose related preprints, conference versions, datasets, and manuscripts at submission, provide a DOI or stable URL where available, and explain the new contribution. If a preprint is accepted and published in BJIoT, authors are encouraged to link the preprint to the final published version using the article DOI.

17. Special Issues and Editorial Appointments

17.1 Special Issue Topics

Special issue topics must fit BJIoT's scope and editorial standards. Calls for papers should describe the topic, expected contribution, submission process, review process, and timeline clearly.

17.2 Appointment of Guest Editors

Guest editors are selected based on subject expertise, editorial experience, academic integrity, and absence of unmanaged conflicts of interest. Appointments are approved by the Editor-in-Chief with appropriate editorial oversight.

17.3 Editorial and Review Process for Special Issues

Special issue submissions follow the same ethics, originality, peer review, conflict-of-interest, data, and correction policies as regular submissions. Guest editors may manage review and recommend decisions, but final acceptance decisions remain with the Editor-in-Chief or an assigned unconflicted BJIoT editor.

17.4 Publication Timing

Submissions are considered according to editorial readiness, peer review outcome, and publication schedule. Special issues must not compromise peer review quality, editorial independence, publication ethics, or regular publication workflow.

18. Editorial Independence and Journal Information

Babylonian Journal of Internet of Things (BJIoT) is dedicated to ethical dissemination of research in Internet of Things technologies, connected devices, sensors, embedded systems, edge and cloud systems, smart environments, IoT cybersecurity, AI-enabled IoT, data privacy, and networked infrastructure.

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, journal scope, validity, and ethical compliance. The publisher does not direct decisions on individual submissions for commercial, political, or personal reasons. The Editor-in-Chief is accountable for editorial standards and delegates cases only to suitably qualified, unconflicted editors.

BJIoT maintains publicly available policies on publication ethics, peer review, authorship, competing interests, complaints and appeals, corrections and retractions, data integrity, open access, copyright, responsible use of AI-assisted technologies, and IoT-specific research risks. Material policy revisions will be dated, and public descriptions of journal practice will be kept consistent with the actual editorial workflow.

For more information, please visit: COPE Core Practices | COPE Flowcharts | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

Key contacts and forms: Editorial office: editorial@mesopotamian.press | Disputes, complaints, and research integrity: dispute@mesopotamian.press | Editor-in-Chief: nicolae.tapus@cs.pub.ro | Financial Disclosure Form | Conflict of Interest Form for editorial members | Conflict of Interest Form for authors and reviewers | BJIoT Change of Authorship Form

Version: Revised July 8, 2026

© Babylonian Journal of Internet of Things (BJIoT) — Published in accordance with COPE Core Practices.