Research Ethics Policy

• Informed Consent: If your study involves human participants (e.g., surveys, interviews, questionnaires or behavioral observations), participants must be informed about the purpose of the research and voluntarily agree to participate.
• Parental/Guardian Permission: For participants under the age of 18, consent must be granted by a parent or legal guardian.
• Anonymity & Privacy: Personal identifying information (e.g., full names, phone numbers, addresses, or photos showing faces) must not be included in the dataset or paper unless explicit written permission is provided.

• Ethical Treatment: Studies involving living organisms, animals and field data collection must cause no harm, distress and environmental disruption.
• Non-Invasive Methods: Research involving vertebrate animals must prioritize non-invasive observation, public datasets and survey methods.

• Data Transparency: All reported findings, measurements and survey results must be genuine. Fabricating data or falsifying (altering) research outcomes is strictly prohibited.
• Proper Citation: Every external idea, data point and direct quote used from existing literature must be properly cited using the required reference style.
• Use of AI Tools: Generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Claude, or automated grammar checkers) may only be used during the writing process for language editing, grammar improvement, or text polishing.
• Prohibited Uses: AI tools cannot be used to generate research data, analyze primary findings, draw primary conclusions and write core scientific content.
• Authorship Restriction: AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors under any circumstances, as they cannot take ethical or legal responsibility for the manuscript.
• Mandatory Disclosure: Authors must declare the use of AI tools in their submitted manuscript by including the standard AI Disclosure Statement provided in the author guidelines. Authors remain fully responsible for all factual, ethical, and original content in their published work.

AI Disclosure Statement

During the preparation of this manuscript/paper, the author(s) used [Tool Name, e.g., ChatGPT / Claude / Grammarly] solely for language editing, grammar correction and structural refinement. The author(s) reviewed, edited and verified the content after using the tool and take full responsibility for the accuracy and originality of the final manuscript.

Declaration for Papers Not Using AI Tools

The author(s) declare that no artificial intelligence tools, large language models (LLMs), or automated writing assistants were used in the writing, editing, or preparation of this manuscript.

• Declaration of Oversight: During submission, student authors must confirm that their research was conducted ethically and, where applicable, under the guidance of a school supervisor or academic mentor.
• Parent / Guardian Consent: For student authors under 18, a parent or legal guardian confirms the submission by email after it is sent, including consent to publication and to the publication licence.