Ethics Policy

Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Sage Sphere Higher Education (SSHE) is fully committed to upholding the highest ethical standards throughout every stage of the editorial process. To ensure the integrity and transparency of its scientific publications, the journal adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct and the ICMJE guidelines, which govern ethical practices in manuscript preparation, submission, peer review, and publication. Below are the core ethical principles followed by the journal. For further details, readers are encouraged to consult the official documents provided by COPE and ICMJE.

Editorial Board Responsibilities

Editorial Independence and Fair Assessment

Manuscripts are assessed exclusively based on their academic merit—originality, clarity, coherence, and relevance to the journal’s scope. Personal characteristics such as race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or institutional affiliation of the authors are not considered. All editorial decisions are made independently, free from external influences, and fall under the sole responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief.

Confidentiality

All submitted manuscripts and related communications are handled with strict confidentiality. Access to manuscript details is limited to the corresponding author, designated reviewers, and essential editorial staff involved in the process.

Conflicts of Interest and Disclosure

Editorial team members are prohibited from using unpublished information from submitted manuscripts for personal or financial gain without the authors' explicit written consent. If an editor has a conflict of interest involving the manuscript’s authors, affiliated institutions, or funding sources, they must recuse themselves from the review process and delegate it to another editor.

Publication Ethics

All research articles submitted to Sage Sphere Higher Education must comply with the ethical regulations applicable in the country or region where the study was conducted. Authors are responsible for securing all necessary ethical approvals before initiating their research.

If manuscripts include identifiable human images or data, privacy and confidentiality must be preserved. SSHE adheres to the ICMJE’s recommendations on preparing and publishing scientific manuscripts, available in their official guidance.

Research Involving Humans and Animals

Studies involving human or animal subjects must conform to ethical standards such as those outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki (available in English and Spanish).

Authors must obtain informed consent from all human participants and clearly state this in the manuscript.

Randomized clinical trials must be approved by an institutional ethics review board (or its local equivalent), disclose funding sources, and be registered in a publicly accessible clinical trials registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose any financial or personal relationships that could have influenced the research, analysis, or publication of the manuscript. If no conflicts exist, the following statement should be included:

"Conflicts of interest: none."

If any conflict of interest is present, authors must report it in the relevant manuscript section and include a Conflict of Interest Statement, using the ICMJE’s recommended format available here. All information provided must match what appears in the submitted article.

For additional guidance, refer to section II-B-2 of the ICMJE Recommendations.

Funding Disclosure

Authors are required to disclose the organizations that provided financial support for the research and/or manuscript preparation, including their role in study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript writing, and publication decisions.

If the study did not receive any external funding, this must be clearly indicated in the appropriate section of the manuscript.