Journal of Digital Governance (JODIGO) is committed to maintaining a fair, transparent, independent, and academically rigorous editorial process. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, and contribution to digital governance, public administration, digital policy, institutional transformation, public innovation, and technology–society research.
Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, political, governmental, technological, or personal interests. The publisher does not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.
Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on scholarly quality, originality, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, transparency, relevance, and contribution to digital governance and public policy scholarship.
All submitted manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening before external peer review. The editorial team evaluates whether a manuscript fits the journal's Focus and Scope and meets minimum standards of scholarly quality, research integrity, and presentation.
Initial screening may include assessment of:
Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient scholarly contribution, or do not meet minimum editorial standards may be declined without external peer review.
JODIGO applies a double-anonymous peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.
Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise relevant to digital governance, public administration, regulation, public policy, technology governance, or related fields.
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, confidential, evidence-based, and academically independent assessments.
Reviewer recommendations inform but do not automatically determine the final editorial decision. The responsible editor considers reviewer reports together with the manuscript's scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, transparency, and relevance to the journal.
Editorial decisions may include:
Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance. Final publication decisions remain the responsibility of the editorial team.
Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, institutional, professional, political, technological, consulting, or personal relationships that could reasonably influence or appear to influence the research, peer review, or editorial decision-making process.
Potential conflicts may include relationships with government agencies, technology companies, platform providers, policy institutions, regulators, consulting organizations, political bodies, or organizations directly affected by the research. Editors should transfer responsibility for manuscripts where a relevant conflict exists.
JODIGO supports internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and publication-ethics practices informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, selective reporting, undisclosed data manipulation, and undisclosed conflicts of interest are not acceptable.
Allegations of misconduct will be assessed objectively, confidentially, and proportionately based on available evidence.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are evaluated contextually and are not judged solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.
Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate publication, redundant publication, or substantial reuse of previously published material may result in rejection or appropriate post-publication action.
Artificial intelligence systems, generative AI tools, large language models, or autonomous software agents cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for scholarly content, ethical compliance, originality, or accountability.
Authors remain fully responsible for all AI-assisted content, including text, coding, analysis, references, policy interpretation, classification, visualization, and research conclusions.
Substantive use of AI in manuscript preparation, coding, data analysis, policy analysis, text classification, sentiment analysis, automated decision analysis, translation, visualization, or literature synthesis should be transparently disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished datasets, reviewer reports, government records, policy documents, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or data security cannot be assured.
Research involving citizens, public officials, digital-platform users, administrative data, government databases, social media, digital identity systems, or other potentially sensitive information should comply with applicable ethical, privacy, consent, and data-protection requirements.
Authors should explain how personal or sensitive information was collected, processed, anonymized, stored, and analyzed where relevant.
Studies involving human participants should report institutional ethics approval and informed consent where required.
Research involving automated decision systems, algorithms, AI-enabled public services, digital identity, surveillance, or platform governance should transparently discuss relevant issues of fairness, accountability, explainability, privacy, discrimination, human oversight, and institutional responsibility.
Studies using government records, platform data, digital trace data, administrative datasets, social media content, or proprietary digital systems should describe data sources, access conditions, preprocessing, analytical procedures, and relevant limitations.
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a significant factual, methodological, procedural, or ethical issue affected an editorial decision.
Appeals should identify the specific issue being challenged and provide a clear scholarly justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the decision.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, or published content will be considered objectively by an appropriate journal representative.
JODIGO is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections may be issued when errors affect the accuracy, attribution, interpretation, metadata, analysis, or completeness of a published article without invalidating its principal findings.
Retractions may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, manipulated data, or other serious integrity concerns.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when substantial concerns exist but sufficient information for a definitive editorial action is not yet available.
