Research Integrity & Standards

International Journal of Research, Exploration & Knowledge (IJREK) requires all published research to be conducted under the highest standards of scientific rigor, intellectual honesty, and methodological transparency. Authors must adhere to universally accepted research norms and institutional governance.

Scientific misconduct—including data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, failure to secure ethics clearances, and deceptive authorship—threatens the integrity of the scientific record and is dealt with decisively.

Authors must accurately record and present experimental protocols and findings:

• Data Fabrication: Generating artificial datasets, counterfeit test benchmarks, or invented empirical results is an egregious violation of research ethics.
• Data Falsification: Selectively altering measurements, omitting contradictory experimental runs, or misleadingly skewing statistical distributions to fit a preconceived hypothesis constitutes scientific fraud.
• Raw Data Preservation: Authors are expected to retain raw laboratory notebooks, unedited sensor logs, and digital experiment datasets for at least 5 years post-publication and provide them upon editorial request.

Digital images presented in manuscripts must accurately reflect original experimental observations:

• No specific feature within an image may be selectively enhanced, obscured, relocated, or introduced.
• Global adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable only if uniformly applied across the entire image and do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent scientific data.
• Electrophoretic gels, microscopy images, and engineering captures must clearly identify groupings from different gels or exposures using explicit dividing lines and corresponding figure caption descriptions.

All experimental investigations involving human participants or vertebrate animals must comply with national and international statutory requirements:

• Human Subjects & Informed Consent: Research involving human participants must conform to the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must state in the manuscript that formal Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee approval was obtained, citing the official protocol/approval number, and that written informed consent was secured from all participants.
• Animal Welfare: Studies involving laboratory animals must adhere to recognized humane standards (such as the ARRIVE guidelines) and state the approving institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC).

IJREK encourages open science principles. All accepted papers must include a mandatory Data Availability Statement specifying:

• Direct persistent links (DOI or URL) to open datasets deposited in stable public repositories (e.g. Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, or institutional servers).
• Access conditions for restricted datasets (e.g., proprietary industrial logs or anonymized clinical records).
• Public repository URLs for research source code, simulation scripts, and architectural models (e.g. GitHub, GitLab, Code Ocean).

When credible concerns regarding data integrity or ethical compliance are raised:

• The Editor-in-Chief conducts an initial confidential evidence review.
• The corresponding author is given 14 days to provide original data logs and a written response.
• If unresolved, an independent institutional inquiry or expert panel is commissioned.
• Sanctions include immediate manuscript rejection, formal notification of university ethics boards, publication of expressions of concern, or full article retraction.