ELLITE: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching, published by Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember, is steadfastly committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and takes all stringent measures against any form of publication malpractice. The journal's ethical framework, editorial workflow, and governance are strictly modeled upon the COPE Core Principles and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Every stakeholder involved in the publishing process—including authors, the Editor-in-Chief, editorial board members, peer reviewers, and the publisher—must adhere to the ethical responsibilities and standards outlined in the COPE Code of Conduct to safeguard the integrity, reproducibility, and trustworthiness of the scholarly record.

1. Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

Editorial Independence, Fair Play, and Decision-Making: The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team of ELLITE are accountable for everything published in the journal and exercise full authority over editorial content in accordance with COPE's Short Guide to Ethical Editing and the foundational Code of Conduct for Journal Editors. Manuscripts are evaluated exclusively on their intellectual merit, methodological rigor, originality, and relevance to the scopes of English language, linguistics, literature, and pedagogy, without discrimination regarding the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. Consistent with COPE's guidance on Journal Management, editorial decisions are never influenced by commercial revenue, institutional politics, or personal relationships, and editors will not overturn a previous editor's decision to accept a manuscript unless serious ethical or scientific flaws are discovered.

Confidentiality, Peer Review Oversight, and Conflict of Interest: Editors must protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, and editorial advisers. In managing the peer-review process, editors ensure fair, constructive, and timely evaluations, and reserve the right to screen or moderate reviewer reports that contain defamatory, hostile, or biased remarks in strict alignment with COPE's Guidelines on Editing Peer Reviews. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must never be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author, and editors must recuse themselves from handling any manuscript in which they have a competing collaborative, financial, or institutional relationship as stipulated by COPE's Policies on Conflicts of Interest.

2. Duties and Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions, Objectivity, and Promptness: Peer review assists the editors in making informed editorial decisions and, through constructive feedback, helps authors improve the scholarly quality of their manuscripts. All reviewers invited by ELLITE are required to conduct their evaluations objectively, fairly, and confidentially in full compliance with COPE's Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Reviewers must express their views clearly with supporting academic arguments, refrain from personal criticism of the author, and respect the intellectual independence of the work as outlined in COPE's Discussion Document on Peer Review. Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor immediately and decline the invitation.

Acknowledgement of Sources, Confidentiality, and Ethical Vigilance: Reviewers must treat any manuscript received for review as a confidential document and must not share it with, or delegate the review to, any third party or generative AI tool without explicit permission from the Editor-in-Chief. Reviewers are expected to identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors, while strictly avoiding coercive requests for authors to cite the reviewer's own papers unless there is a genuine scholarly necessity, in adherence to COPE's Discussion Document on Citation Manipulation. Furthermore, if a reviewer suspects duplicate submission, plagiarism, or any other ethical breach during the evaluation, they are obligated to notify the editor immediately so the issue can be addressed according to COPE's guidance on Reviewer Rights and Misconduct Reporting.

3. Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

Reporting Standards, Data Integrity, and Originality: Authors of original research reports in linguistics, literature, and English language teaching must present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying linguistic corpora, interview transcripts, classroom assessment data, and literary textual evidence must be represented accurately without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate manipulation, supporting transparency and replicability as advocated by COPE's Core Practices on Data and Reproducibility. Authors must ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted in compliance with COPE's Core Practice on Intellectual Property. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently, or publishing largely redundant ("salami-sliced") articles from the same study, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is strictly prohibited under COPE's standards on Duplicate and Redundant Submission. Additionally, authors may not unilaterally withdraw a manuscript after it has entered the peer-review or proof stage without compelling justification approved by the editor, in accordance with COPE's guidance on Withdrawal of Papers.

Authorship, Contributorship, and Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant scholarly contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All co-authors must approve the final version of the paper and agree to its submission for publication, while any request to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission requires signed consent from all listed authors in strict compliance with COPE's policies on Authorship and Contributorship and the COPE Glossary of Publication Ethics (which strictly forbids guest, gift, and ghost authorship). In alignment with the official COPE Position Statement on Authorship and AI Tools and COPE's editorial standards on Artificial Intelligence and Authorship, generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT or other Large Language Models) cannot be listed as an author of a paper because they cannot take legal or ethical responsibility for the submitted work. Authors who utilize AI tools in the writing process, language polishing, or data analysis must transparently disclose the tool's name and how it was used in the Methods or Acknowledgements section, and remain fully accountable for any inaccuracies or breaches of publication ethics, as emphasized in COPE's framework on Handling Articles Produced by AI.

4. Ethical Oversight and Protection of Human Participants

Research in English language teaching (ELT), sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics frequently involves human participants, including students, teachers, minor learners, and indigenous or vulnerable language communities. Authors must ensure that all research involving human subjects has been conducted in accordance with institutional and national ethical standards and the Declaration of Helsinki, and must include a clear statement in the manuscript confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants (or their legal guardians) prior to data collection, in full compliance with COPE's Core Practice on Ethical Oversight. Participant anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality must be rigorously safeguarded in all published transcripts, classroom recordings, and case descriptions.

5. Handling Allegations of Misconduct, Corrections, and Retractions

Investigation of Misconduct and Institutional Cooperation: ELLITE takes all allegations of research and publication misconduct seriously, whether raised before or after publication, including plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, peer-review rigging, and undisclosed conflicts of interest. Every manuscript is screened using plagiarism-detection software (Turnitin/iThenticate) upon submission. When suspected misconduct is identified, the Editorial Board follows the step-by-step diagnostic procedures outlined in COPE's framework on Allegations of Misconduct and the COPE Study on Publication Ethics in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Editors will initially seek a response from the individuals suspected of misconduct; if the response is unsatisfactory, the journal will escalate the investigation to the authors' employers or relevant authorities in accordance with COPE's Guidelines on Cooperation between Research Institutions and Journals on Research Integrity Cases.

Post-Publication Discussions, Corrections, Retractions, and Appeals: ELLITE welcomes constructive post-publication academic debate and provides clear channels for readers and authors to submit critiques, appeals against editorial decisions, or complaints regarding the editorial process. Whenever an author or reader discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in a published work, it is the author's obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate to issue an erratum or corrigendum in alignment with COPE's guidance on Errata and Corrections. If a conclusive investigation reveals that an article's findings are unreliable due to major error, fabrication, redundant publication, or unethical research, the Editor-in-Chief will issue a formal retraction or Expression of Concern strictly following the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Finally, as an open-access publication supported by the Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember Journal Center, the publisher guarantees permanent archival preservation, open licensing transparency, and ethical stewardship in full accordance with COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers and Open Access.