Every author listed in a journal article should have contributed significantly to the work reported (in research conception or design, acquisition of data, or the analysis and interpretation of data). As an author or co-author, you share responsibility and accountability for the content of your article. Do avoid:

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• Gift (guest) authorship: where someone is added to the list of authors who have not been involved in writing the paper.

• Ghost authorship: someone has been involved in writing the paper but is not included in the list of authors.

Plagiarism is 'when somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own without proper acknowledgment.' So when citing others’ (or your own) previous work, please ensure you have: 

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• Marked quoted verbatim text from another source with quotation marks. Attributed and referenced the source of the quotation clearly within the text and in the Reference section.

• Obtained permission from the original publisher and rights holder when using previously published figures or tables, published figures or tables.

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Make sure you avoid self-plagiarism too. Self-plagiarism is the redundant reuse of your work, usually without proper citation. It creates repetition in the academic literature and can skew meta-analyses if the same data sets are published multiple times as “new” data. If you’re discussing your previous work, make sure you cite it. IMPACT uses Turnitin to screen for unoriginal material. Authors submitting to IMPACT should be aware that their paper may be submitted to Turnitin during the peer-review or production process.

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The Editor will investigate any allegations of plagiarism or self-plagiarism made to IMPACT. If the allegations appear to be found, all named authors of the paper will be contacted, and an explanation of the overlapping material will be requested. The Editorial Board members may be contacted to assist in further evaluation of the paper and allegations. If the answer is unsatisfactory, the submission will be rejected, and no future submissions may be accepted (at our discretion).

All data must be accurate and representative of your research. Data sharing is increasingly prevalent, thus increasing raw data's transparency. Some journals request that raw data be uploaded as a supplemental file for publication (you can check the instruction for authors to see if this is the case on the journal you submit to). IMPACT encourages you to submit your supplemental data with your article.

The journal's editor will evaluate issues of data fabrication/falsification. Authors may be contacted to provide supporting raw data where required. IMPACT Editorial Board members may be contacted to assist in further evaluation of the paper and allegations. If the explanation is unsatisfactory, the submission will be rejected, and no future submissions may be accepted (at our discretion).

It is imperative, to be honest about any conflicts of interest, whether sources of research funding, direct or indirect financial support, supply of equipment or materials, or other support. Remember to declare it when you submit your paper. Suppose a conflict of interest is not reported to the journal upon submission or during the review, affecting the results' actual or potential interpretation. In that case, the paper may be rejected or retracted.

IMPACT provides open access to articles we publish using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Under this license, we require publishing rights from authors to publish and disseminate their research articles, while authors retain ownership of the copyright in their works. This allows anyone to download, print, distribute, reuse, modify and copy the content without requesting extra permission from the authors or the publishers only if appropriate credits are given to the original authors and source.

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IMPACT provides immediate open access to its content on the principle of making research freely available to the public for a greater global exchange of knowledge.

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Unless otherwise specified, all articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). For more details, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.