Conflict of Interest Policy

A conflict of interest arises when a financial, professional, or personal interest could reasonably be seen to influence judgement about a manuscript. Jurnal Pendidikan Karakter (JPKA) does not treat a conflict of interest as misconduct: what matters is that it is declared, so that readers, reviewers, and editors can judge the work in full knowledge of the circumstances.

▣ What Must Be Declared

Type Examples
Financial Funding or grants for the research; employment or consultancy; honoraria; paid expert testimony; ownership of a relevant interest; patents or royalties.
Professional Membership of a body with a stake in the findings; an advisory or editorial role connected with the subject; competing unpublished work on the same question.
Personal A close personal relationship with an author, reviewer, or editor; a family interest in the outcome.
Institutional Research conducted within, commissioned by, or evaluating the author's own institution, school, or programme.

✎ Authors

  • Declare all potential conflicts in the Disclosure Statement and all funding in the Funding statement, both of which are mandatory sections of the manuscript.
  • Where there is nothing to declare, state so explicitly: “No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.”
  • The corresponding author is responsible for collecting declarations from all co-authors.
  • Research evaluating a programme that the authors themselves designed or implemented must say so plainly in the Method, since this is a common situation in character education research.

↻ Reviewers

  • Decline an invitation where a conflict exists: recognising the authors, recent collaboration or co-authorship, working at the same institution, a supervisory relationship, or competing work on the same question.
  • Where a conflict becomes apparent during review, stop and inform the editor.
  • Do not use knowledge gained from a manuscript for personal or professional advantage.

★ Editors

  • An editor with a conflict of interest withdraws from handling the manuscript, and another editor takes it on.
  • A manuscript submitted by an editor or an editorial board member is assigned to another editor, and the editor-author has no access to the identity of the reviewers or to any information about the review.
  • Editors do not handle manuscripts from their own research group, their current or recent students, or their close collaborators.
⚑ When in doubt, declare. An undisclosed conflict that comes to light after publication is handled under the Research Misconduct policy and may lead to a correction notice. A declared interest, by contrast, rarely prevents publication.

See also the Publication Ethics, Authorship Policy, and Peer Review Process.