The Journal of Science, Technology, Education, Art, and Medicine (J-STEAM) is committed to ethical, transparent, independent, and responsible scholarly publishing.
These policies apply to all material submitted to or published by J-STEAM, including Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Short Communications, Guest Editorials, and other scholarly or non-scholarly content.
J-STEAM’s policies are informed by:
Reference to these organizations and standards does not imply formal membership unless such membership is explicitly stated and verifiable.
The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the editorial content of J-STEAM and the final responsibility for decisions concerning submitted manuscripts. Editorial decisions are made independently of the publisher, journal owner, authors, advertisers, sponsors, funders, institutions, commercial organizations, and other external parties.
Decisions are based on:
Decisions are not influenced by an author’s nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, institutional affiliation, political beliefs, professional seniority, geographical location, ability to pay an article processing charge, or whether the findings are positive, negative, confirmatory, or inconclusive. The publisher does not interfere with reviewer selection, peer review, manuscript acceptance, rejection, correction, or retraction.
J-STEAM uses a double-anonymized peer-review system, also commonly called double-blind peer review. The identities of authors are concealed from reviewers, and the identities of reviewers are concealed from authors.
Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Short Communications, Guest Editorials presented as peer-reviewed scholarly content, and other research manuscripts are assessed by at least two independent external reviewers with relevant subject expertise.
Supplementary materials relevant to the scholarly evaluation are also made available to reviewers. Reviewer reports are confidential, anonymous, and are not routinely published with articles.
Editorials or other non-research content that undergoes a process different from standard external peer review will be clearly identified. News items, videos, memes, medical art, and other educational or media content are editorially assessed and must not be presented as peer-reviewed research unless they have undergone the journal’s full peer-review process.
Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The handling editor evaluates the reports and the manuscript before making a recommendation. The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for acceptance or rejection. An additional reviewer may be consulted when reports conflict substantially or specialist methodological, statistical, ethical, or technical assessment is required.
Submission does not guarantee external review, acceptance, or publication.
Complete details are provided on the J-STEAM Peer Review Process page.
Manuscripts submitted by editors, editorial-board members, reviewers, journal employees, or persons affiliated with the publisher are subject to the same editorial and peer-review requirements as all other submissions.
An editor or board member who is an author, contributor, collaborator, supervisor, institutional colleague, or otherwise has a competing interest must not participate in:
Such manuscripts will be assigned to an independent editor who has no relevant conflict of interest.
J-STEAM will monitor editorial endogeny. Research articles in which an editor, editorial-board member, or reviewer is an author should not constitute more than 25% of the research articles in either of the journal’s two most recent issues.
J-STEAM follows the ICMJE criteria for authorship. Every listed author must meet all four of the following requirements:
Individuals who do not meet all four criteria must not be listed as authors. Their contributions may be acknowledged with their permission.
J-STEAM prohibits:
Authors should provide a contributorship statement using the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) where applicable.
The corresponding author must:
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors must include:
The editor may investigate the request and may contact the authors’ institutions where an authorship dispute cannot be resolved.
Authorship changes after acceptance are permitted only in exceptional and fully justified circumstances. Changes after publication require a formal correction notice. J-STEAM will not adjudicate authorship disputes that require institutional investigation.
Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be named in the Acknowledgements section after providing permission to be acknowledged.
Authors must disclose:
Third-party submission does not transfer responsibility from the authors. The corresponding author remains accountable for the submission and all associated declarations.
J-STEAM strongly encourages all authors to provide a verified Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID iD). The corresponding author should provide an ORCID iD during submission.
ORCID information should be authenticated through the journal’s submission system where this functionality is available. Authors must not submit an ORCID iD belonging to another person.
All submissions must include a Funding Statement identifying every source of financial or material support, including grant numbers where applicable.
Authors must describe the funder’s role, if any, in:
If the funder had no involvement, this should be stated. If no specific funding was received, authors should state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.” Funding must not restrict the authors’ access to data, independent analysis, interpretation, or right to publish.
Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial-board members must disclose all financial and non-financial relationships that could influence—or reasonably be perceived to influence—their work or judgment.
Potential conflicts include:
Authors must include a Conflict-of-Interest Statement in the manuscript. If none exist, the statement should read: “The authors declare that they have no competing interests.” Reviewers must decline an invitation when they cannot provide an impartial assessment. Editors must recuse themselves from manuscripts involving a relevant conflict. If an undisclosed conflict is identified after publication, J-STEAM may publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction, depending on its effect on the article and editorial process.
Research involving human participants, identifiable human material, or human data must:
If an ethics committee determined that approval was not required or granted an exemption, the name of the committee and the basis for the exemption must be reported. Retrospective ethics approval does not ordinarily correct the absence of prospective ethical review. J-STEAM may reject research that began without required approval. The journal may request protocols, approval letters, consent documents, or other evidence. When serious concerns arise, the journal may contact the relevant ethics committee or institution.
Voluntary informed consent must be obtained from participants or their legally authorized representatives unless an ethics committee has approved a justified waiver. For children and persons unable to provide consent, permission must be obtained from a parent or legally authorized representative, together with participant assent where appropriate.
Special care is required for vulnerable populations or circumstances involving dependency, unequal power relationships, reduced capacity, or possible coercion.
Written informed consent for publication is required when a manuscript contains identifiable personal information, clinical details, images, audio, video, pedigrees, or other material through which a person could reasonably be recognized.
For children, consent must be obtained from a parent or legal guardian, with assent from the child where appropriate. If the individual is deceased, consent should normally be obtained from an authorized representative or next of kin.
Removing a name or masking the eyes may not be sufficient to protect identity. Unnecessary identifying details must be removed without altering the scientific meaning of the material.
Case Reports and Case Series should:
Consent documents should not normally be submitted with the manuscript unless requested, but authors must retain them securely and provide confirmation to the journal when required.
Animal research must receive approval from an appropriate institutional animal ethics committee before the study begins and comply with relevant national and international standards for animal care and welfare.
The manuscript must state:
Animal research should be reported according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Studies conducted across countries or in resource-limited settings must comply with ethical requirements in every relevant jurisdiction. J-STEAM does not accept “ethics dumping,” exploitation of vulnerable communities, or research conducted in locations selected to avoid appropriate ethical oversight.
Collaborations should appropriately recognize local researchers and contributors and avoid exclusionary or inequitable authorship practices.
J-STEAM follows the ICMJE definition of a clinical trial.
Prospective interventional clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible primary registry accepted by the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform or in ClinicalTrials.gov before enrollment of the first participant.
The registry name, registration number, and registration date must appear in the abstract and Methods section.
Retrospective registration does not satisfy prospective-registration requirements. A retrospectively registered trial will be considered only in exceptional circumstances when the authors provide a compelling explanation, the registration record is complete and publicly accessible, and the registration status is transparently reported.
Registration does not replace institutional ethics approval.
Authors must follow the reporting guideline appropriate to their study design, including, where applicable:
Relevant checklists and flow diagrams may be required at submission.
Systematic reviews should be prospectively registered in PROSPERO or another appropriate public registry whenever eligible. Study protocols and analysis plans should be registered or made publicly available where appropriate.
All research manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement explaining:
J-STEAM encourages authors to deposit de-identified data, study protocols, analysis plans, questionnaires, statistical code, and other reproducibility materials in trustworthy repositories.
Data containing identifiable or sensitive information must not be shared in a manner that violates consent, privacy, ethical approval, or applicable law.
Authors must retain the original data and analytical records for an appropriate period under institutional, funder, disciplinary, and legal requirements. Editors may request underlying data or documentation during peer review or following publication.
Failure to provide requested supporting information without reasonable justification may result in rejection, an expression of concern, correction, or retraction.
Submission to J-STEAM confirms that the manuscript:
Authors must disclose related manuscripts, previous reports, conference abstracts, registry entries, protocols, theses, dissertations, and preprints.
Posting a manuscript on a recognized, non-commercial preprint server is not considered prior publication. The preprint must be disclosed during submission.
Following publication, authors should update the preprint record with the citation and DOI of the J-STEAM Version of Record.
Work derived from a thesis, dissertation, academic repository, conference abstract, poster, or oral presentation may be considered if:
Secondary or translated publication may be considered only when it complies with ICMJE guidance, has approval from the relevant editors and copyright holders, and is transparently identified as a secondary publication with a citation to the original work.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software.
A similarity percentage alone does not establish plagiarism. Reports are evaluated by editors to distinguish appropriately cited overlap, standard terminology, methods, references, and legitimate reuse from unattributed copying or misleading duplication.
Plagiarism includes the unattributed use of another person’s:
Text recycling or reuse of an author’s own previously published material must be transparent, appropriately cited, limited to what is necessary, and consistent with copyright requirements.
Substantial plagiarism, misleading duplication, or inappropriate text recycling may result in rejection, correction, retraction, notification of institutions, or other action under COPE guidance.
J-STEAM does not apply an automatic acceptance or rejection decision based only on a fixed similarity percentage.
J-STEAM takes allegations of misconduct seriously. Misconduct includes, but is not limited to:
Permissible image adjustments must be applied to the entire image and must not obscure, remove, introduce, move, or misrepresent information. Composite images and splicing must be clearly disclosed. Original, unedited image files must be provided when requested.
When a concern is raised, J-STEAM will:
The journal will follow due process and relevant COPE guidance. Editorial investigations are separate from institutional or legal investigations, and J-STEAM does not determine criminal or employment liability.
Possible actions include rejection, suspension of review, correction, expression of concern, retraction, reviewer removal, restrictions on future submissions, and notification of relevant organizations.
Artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies cannot qualify as authors because they cannot accept responsibility or accountability for published work.
Authors must disclose the use of generative AI beyond routine spelling, grammar, language correction, or formatting. The disclosure should identify:
Authors remain fully responsible for:
AI-generated output must not be cited as an authoritative or primary source. Generative AI must not be used to fabricate, alter, or misrepresent research data, clinical images, figures, participants, results, or references.
Submitted manuscripts are confidential. Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts, figures, data, supplementary files, or correspondence to public generative-AI systems or other tools that cannot guarantee confidentiality and non-retention.
Generative AI must not replace independent human evaluation or be used to generate substantive reviewer reports or editorial decisions.
Any permitted limited use for improving the language of a reviewer’s own comments must not involve uploading manuscript content, requires prior editorial permission, and must be disclosed.
J-STEAM may use appropriately tested automated tools to assist with similarity screening, reference checks, integrity screening, reviewer identification, or image assessment. Automated results are reviewed by a human editor and are not used as the sole basis for editorial decisions.
J-STEAM is committed to maintaining an accurate and reliable scholarly record.
A correction will be published when an error affects the interpretation, accuracy, attribution, or completeness of an article but does not invalidate its main conclusions.
Corrections will:
Minor typographical or formatting errors that do not affect meaning may be corrected without a separate notice when they are identified immediately after publication. Material changes require a formal correction.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when:
An article may be retracted when:
A retracted article will normally remain accessible, clearly marked as retracted, and linked to a retraction notice explaining the reason. Retraction is intended to correct the literature, not to punish authors.
Removal is reserved for exceptional circumstances, such as a court order, serious legal infringement, an immediate risk to health or safety, or a major violation of privacy that cannot be resolved through correction or retraction.
A removal notice and bibliographic record will remain wherever legally possible.
Readers may submit evidence-based comments, questions, or concerns about published articles to the editorial office.
The journal may:
Comments must be relevant, respectful, evidence-based, and free from defamatory or abusive content.
Authors may submit one reasoned appeal, normally within 30 days of the editorial decision.
An appeal must identify a significant:
An appeal is not a new submission and should not be based solely on disagreement with reviewer recommendations.
Where possible, the appeal will be reviewed by a senior editor who was not responsible for the original decision. Additional expert advice may be sought. The decision following completion of the appeal is final.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, delays, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, peer review, discrimination, or publication ethics should be submitted in writing to the editorial office with relevant documentation.
Complaints against the Editor-in-Chief will be referred to an independent senior editor or an authorized representative of the publisher.
Complaints will be handled confidentially, fairly, and in accordance with relevant COPE guidance. Where a complainant remains dissatisfied, the journal will explain any further available route of review.
Authors may request withdrawal before acceptance by submitting a written request from the corresponding author confirming that all authors agree.
J-STEAM will acknowledge the withdrawal and record the reason. Authors should notify the journal promptly and must not submit the manuscript elsewhere while active peer review is continuing.
Withdrawal after acceptance is permitted only in exceptional circumstances because editorial and production work may already have been completed.
Once an article has been published, it cannot be withdrawn as an unpublished manuscript. Post-publication concerns are managed through correction, retraction, or removal procedures.
J-STEAM does not charge a manuscript-withdrawal fee.
Special issues must fall within J-STEAM’s aims and scope and meet the same ethical, editorial, and peer-review standards as regular issues.
The Editor-in-Chief retains overall responsibility for every special issue. Guest editors must:
Special-issue manuscripts undergo the same double-blind external peer review as regular submissions and must be clearly labelled.
A manuscript authored by a guest editor must be handled independently. Articles authored by guest editors should not constitute more than 25% of the special issue.
Funding, sponsorship, or payment related to a special issue does not guarantee publication and must not influence editorial decisions.
Authors retain copyright in their published articles and grant J-STEAM the right of first publication.
The copyright holder must be identified on the full text of each article in both HTML and PDF formats.
All J-STEAM scholarly articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).
This licence permits users to copy, distribute, display, adapt, translate, and build upon the work, including for commercial purposes, provided that:
The licensing statement must appear consistently on every article webpage and PDF.
Copyright in the journal website, logo, design, and non-article material is separate from copyright in published articles and is not covered by CC BY 4.0 unless expressly stated.
Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce copyrighted figures, tables, images, questionnaires, instruments, or other third-party material not covered by an appropriate licence or lawful exception.
The source and permission status must be stated in the relevant caption or acknowledgement. J-STEAM may request evidence of permission before publication.
J-STEAM provides immediate, permanent, free access to published scholarly content without subscription charges, embargo periods, or registration barriers.
Authors may deposit the following versions in institutional, disciplinary, funder, or general-purpose repositories without embargo:
Repository records should cite and link to the final published article and DOI.
J-STEAM is published semi-annually, with two issues each year. Any exceptional change to the publication schedule will be communicated transparently.
Published scholarly articles display, where applicable:
Each scholarly article is assigned a persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
J-STEAM maintains routine backups of its article files, metadata, and website content. For long-term digital preservation, the journal’s published content is archived through the Internet Archive. This preservation arrangement is intended to maintain permanent access to the scholarly record if the journal or publisher ceases operation or the journal’s website becomes unavailable.
J-STEAM charges the following article processing charges:
APCs are payable only after a manuscript has completed peer review and been formally accepted for publication.
There are no submission fees, editorial-processing fees, page charges, colour charges, fast-track charges, or manuscript-withdrawal charges.
Authors who lack institutional, grant, or other publication funding may request a waiver of up to 50%. Waiver requests must be submitted at the time of initial manuscript submission by the corresponding author and should explain the financial circumstances of the author group and the absence of available funding.
Waiver requests are assessed separately from the scholarly evaluation. Reviewers are not informed of waiver requests, and an author’s ability to pay or waiver status has no influence on peer review or editorial decisions.
J-STEAM’s publishing activities are financed primarily through article processing charges collected only after acceptance.
Revenue considerations do not influence reviewer selection, peer review, editorial decisions, corrections, retractions, or any other editorial activity.
Any future institutional subsidy, grant, sponsorship, partnership, or other material source of publishing support will be disclosed transparently on the journal website.
J-STEAM does not accept or display commercial advertising, sponsored content, or paid promotional material on its website or within published articles.
All editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit and are made independently of commercial interests. Advertisers, sponsors, funders, and other commercial entities have no influence over manuscript selection, peer review, editorial decisions, or published content.
Any communication or manuscript solicitation conducted on behalf of J-STEAM must be:
The journal does not purchase authorship lists, send indiscriminate mass solicitations, or misrepresent its indexing, metrics, affiliations, or editorial services.
Submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, and deliberations are confidential.
Editors and reviewers must not:
Personal information collected during submission, peer review, and publication is used only for legitimate journal operations, legal compliance, integrity investigations, and scholarly communication.
Information may be disclosed to institutions, ethics committees, regulators, funders, or legal authorities when reasonably necessary to investigate serious ethical or legal concerns. Otherwise, personal and manuscript information will not be disclosed to unrelated third parties.
J-STEAM is owned and published by JSTEAM LLC, an independent academic publisher founded in 2023, headquartered in Nottingham, Maryland, United States of America.
Registered address:
3620 Parkhurst Way
Nottingham, Maryland 21236
United States of America
Editorial email: editor@jsteam.org
The journal’s ownership, management, editorial team, institutional affiliations, contact information, and publisher details must remain current and readily accessible from the journal homepage.
J-STEAM periodically reviews these policies to reflect developments in publication ethics, open-access publishing, research integrity, technology, and applicable law.
Material policy changes will be dated and communicated transparently. The policy version in effect at the relevant stage of a manuscript’s processing will normally govern that manuscript unless an immediate change is required to protect research participants, confidentiality, legal rights, or the integrity of the scholarly record.
Last reviewed and updated: September 2026