Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

CBLC follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics, and also follows the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. This statement sets out the duties of each party in the publication process. Where a case is not covered here, the editors follow the relevant COPE flowchart.

Duties of Editors

• Publication decisions. Editors decide which submitted manuscripts to publish on the basis of scholarly quality, validity, originality, and relevance to the scope of the journal. Decisions are never influenced by the nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, institutional affiliation, seniority, or funding of the authors.
• Fair play. Editors evaluate manuscripts on their intellectual content alone.
• Confidentiality. Editors do not disclose information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and the publisher.
• Disclosure. Unpublished material in a submitted manuscript is not used by an editor in their own research without the written consent of the author.
• Conflicts of interest. Editors recuse themselves from any manuscript in which they have a competing interest, and arrange for an independent editor to handle it.
• Investigation. Editors take reasonable steps to respond when an ethical concern is raised about a submitted or published article, however long after publication the concern is raised. This may lead to a correction, an expression of concern, or a retraction.
• Integrity of the record. Editors preserve the integrity of the published record, and issue corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when they are needed.

Duties of Reviewers

• Contribution to editorial decisions. Peer review assists the editors in reaching decisions and, through communication with the author, may also help the author to improve the manuscript.
• Promptness. A reviewer who cannot complete a review within the requested period, or who feels unqualified to review a manuscript, notifies the editor promptly and declines the invitation.
• Confidentiality. Manuscripts received for review are confidential documents. They are not shown to or discussed with anyone except as authorized by the editor, and they are not uploaded to any external service.
• Standards of objectivity. Reviews are conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is not acceptable. Reviewers express their views clearly and support them with argument and evidence.
• Acknowledgement of sources. Reviewers identify relevant published work that has not been cited, and alert the editor to any substantial overlap between the manuscript and other published work of which they have personal knowledge.
• Disclosure and conflict of interest. Privileged information obtained through peer review is confidential and is not used for personal advantage. Reviewers decline to review manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest.

Duties of Authors

• Reporting standards. Authors report their work accurately and provide sufficient detail and reference for others to evaluate and, where relevant, replicate it. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable.
• Data access and retention. Authors are expected to provide access to the data underlying their article where this is possible and ethically permissible, and to retain such data for a reasonable period after publication.
• Originality and plagiarism. Authors submit only entirely original work, and appropriately cite or quote the work and words of others. Plagiarism in all its forms is unacceptable.
• Multiple publication. Authors do not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time is unacceptable.
• Acknowledgement of sources. Proper acknowledgement of the work of others is always given.
• Authorship. Authorship is limited to those who have made a significant contribution, as set out in the Authorship and Contributorship policy.
• Human participants. Work involving human participants must comply with the Research Ethics and Human Participants policy.
• Disclosure and conflicts of interest. All authors disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript, and disclose all sources of financial support.
• Fundamental errors. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in a published work, the author notifies the journal promptly and cooperates with the editors to retract or correct the article.

Duties of the Publisher

• The publisher supports the editors in maintaining editorial independence, and has no role in decisions about individual manuscripts.
• The publisher supports the journal in following the COPE Core Practices, and in maintaining the digital preservation of the published record.
• The publisher does not permit any commercial consideration to affect editorial decisions.

Handling of Allegations of Misconduct

Any person may raise a concern about a submitted or published article by writing to cb.learningincontext@gmail.com. Concerns are acknowledged within 10 working days. The editors assess the concern, seek an explanation from the corresponding author where appropriate, and may consult the institution of the authors. The outcome may be no action, a correction, an expression of concern, or a retraction. The complainant is informed of the outcome.

Research Ethics and Human Participants

Ethics Approval

Research involving human participants, human data, or human material must have been conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate research ethics committee or institutional review board. The manuscript must state the name of the approving body, the approval reference number, and the date of approval.

Where the research was exempt from review, or where no formal review body exists in the setting of the study, the manuscript must state this explicitly and explain how the rights and welfare of participants were protected. The editors may request further information, and may decline to publish research that does not meet an acceptable ethical standard.

Informed Consent

Authors must state how informed consent was obtained from participants, or from parents or legal guardians where participants were children or otherwise unable to give consent themselves. Where research was conducted in classrooms or other institutional settings, the manuscript should also state how institutional permission was obtained and how the voluntary nature of participation was protected.

Where participants are identifiable in text, images, video, or audio, written consent for publication must have been obtained and must be stated in the manuscript.

Research with Children and Vulnerable Groups

Much research on computer-based learning takes place in schools and involves minors. Authors must describe the age range of participants, the consent and assent procedures used, and the safeguards applied to the collection, storage, and reporting of data. Individual learners must not be identifiable in published results, and small subgroup results must be reported in a way that prevents reidentification.

Data Protection and Privacy

Authors must describe how personal data were collected, stored, protected, and shared, and must confirm compliance with the data protection law that applies in the setting of the research. Learning platform data, log data, video recordings, and biometric or sensor data all require explicit attention in this respect.

Secondary Analysis of Existing Data

Where a study analyzes an existing dataset, the manuscript must state the source of the data, the permission or license under which the data were used, and whether ethics approval was required for the secondary analysis.

Research Involving Artificial Intelligence Systems

Where a study evaluates a generative artificial intelligence system with learners, the manuscript must describe the safeguards applied, including how learner data were prevented from being used to train external models, and how any risk of harmful output was managed.

Authorship and Contributorship

Criteria for Authorship

CBLC applies the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. An author is a person who meets all four of the following conditions.

• Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be published
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of any part of it

Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should be named in the Acknowledgements, with a description of their contribution and with their permission.

Contributor Roles

Every article must include an author contributions statement using the CRediT taxonomy, which distinguishes conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing of the original draft, and writing through review and editing.

Practices That Are Not Permitted

• Guest or gift authorship, meaning the naming of a person who did not meet the criteria
• Ghost authorship, meaning the omission of a person who did meet the criteria
• The listing of a generative artificial intelligence tool as an author

Corresponding Author

The corresponding author takes responsibility for communication with the journal during submission, peer review, and publication, for ensuring that all administrative requirements are properly completed, and for confirming that all listed authors have approved the submitted and final versions. The corresponding author remains available to respond to queries after publication.

Changes to the Author List

Any addition, removal, or reordering of authors after submission requires a written request to the editorial office from the corresponding author, stating the reason for the change, together with written confirmation of agreement from every author, including the author being added or removed. Changes after acceptance are made only in exceptional circumstances and at the discretion of the editors. Changes after publication require a published correction.

Authorship Disputes

The journal does not arbitrate authorship disputes. Where a dispute arises, the editors pause consideration of the manuscript and ask the parties to resolve the matter through the institutions concerned. The editors follow the relevant COPE guidance.

Deceased and Uncontactable Authors

Where an author dies or cannot be contacted during the publication process, the corresponding author informs the editors, and the remaining authors take responsibility for the accuracy of the contribution attributed to that person.

Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists where a person has a financial, professional, or personal interest that could reasonably be seen to influence, or to have influenced, their judgment. Disclosure does not imply wrongdoing. It allows readers, reviewers, and editors to form their own view.

Author Disclosure

All authors must declare competing interests in the manuscript. Interests to be declared include the following.

• Employment, consultancy, honoraria, or paid expert testimony related to the subject of the article
• Ownership of stock, options, or patents related to the technology or product studied
• A role in the development, ownership, or commercialization of an educational technology evaluated in the study
• Research grants and other funding, including the name of the funder and the grant number
• Unpaid roles such as board membership or advisory positions relevant to the subject of the article
• Close personal or family relationships that could be perceived to affect the work

Where there are no competing interests, the manuscript must state that the authors declare no competing interests.

Studies of Technology Developed by the Authors

Research on computer-based learning frequently evaluates systems built by the research team. This is legitimate and is not a barrier to publication. However, the relationship must be stated plainly in the manuscript, and the methods section should describe the steps taken to reduce the risk of bias, such as independent data collection, preregistration, blinded coding, or analysis by researchers not involved in development.

Reviewer Disclosure

Reviewers must decline an invitation where a conflict of interest exists, and must inform the editor of any potential conflict that becomes apparent during review.

Editor Disclosure

Editors declare their competing interests to the journal and recuse themselves from handling any manuscript in which a competing interest exists. Manuscripts authored by editors are handled as described in the Peer Review policy.

Funding Statement

Every article must include a funding statement naming every source of financial support for the research and stating the role, if any, of the funder in the design of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, in the writing of the article, and in the decision to submit it for publication.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Principle

Generative artificial intelligence tools may assist human authors, but they cannot take responsibility for scholarly work. Authors remain fully responsible for every part of their manuscript, including any content produced with the assistance of such tools.

Rules for Authors

• An artificial intelligence tool must not be listed as an author, and must not be credited with authorship in any other form.
• Authors must disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence in the preparation of the manuscript, naming the tool and version, describing what it was used for, and stating who verified the output. Disclosure belongs in the declarations section.
• Routine assistance with language, spelling, and grammar does not require disclosure, provided that the meaning of the text was not changed.
• Authors must verify every factual claim, citation, and quotation produced with the assistance of such tools. Fabricated references are treated as a serious breach of publication ethics.
• Generative artificial intelligence must not be used to create or alter data, results, or images in a way that misrepresents the research. Where such tools were used as part of the research method itself, for example to generate stimuli, to code qualitative data, or to act as a simulated learner, this must be described fully in the methods section rather than in the declarations.

Rules for Reviewers and Editors

Reviewers and editors must not upload any part of a manuscript, review, or decision letter to a generative artificial intelligence service, because doing so breaches the confidentiality of the manuscript. Reviewers and editors remain personally responsible for the content of their reviews and decisions.

Similarity Screening and Plagiarism

All manuscripts are screened for textual similarity with previously published work before they are sent for peer review, and again before publication.

A similarity report is a starting point for editorial judgment rather than a verdict. The editors examine the source and nature of any overlap. Overlap in method descriptions and in standard terminology is treated differently from overlap in the framing of a contribution or in results.

The following are treated as breaches of publication ethics.

• Reproducing the text of another author without quotation marks and citation
• Reproducing substantial parts of the earlier published work of the authors themselves without citation, which is known as redundant or duplicate publication
• Reusing figures, tables, or instruments without permission and attribution
• Dividing a single study into multiple articles in order to increase publication count, where the parts do not each make an independent contribution

Where a breach is identified before publication, the manuscript is rejected and the authors are informed of the reason. Where it is identified after publication, the journal follows the Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals policy and may inform the institutions of the authors.

Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals

The published version of an article is the version of record. CBLC does not remove or silently alter published articles. Where a change is necessary, it is made through one of the following formal notices, each of which is published, is linked from the original article, and receives its own persistent identifier.

Procedure

The editors follow the COPE retraction guidelines. Where a concern arises, the corresponding author is invited to respond, normally within 20 working days. Where the matter concerns possible misconduct, the editors may contact the institutions of the authors. A retraction notice states clearly who is retracting the article and why, and distinguishes between honest error and misconduct.

A retracted article remains available. It is clearly marked as retracted on every page of the file and in the article record, and the retraction notice is linked from it.

Withdrawal Before Publication

An author may withdraw a manuscript at any time before acceptance by writing to the editorial office. Withdrawal after acceptance is granted only for compelling reasons and at the discretion of the editors, because peer review and production resources have already been committed.