Core Principles

Innovation Midwifery and Child Health Practice (IMCHP) is committed to maintaining integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, editorial independence, and protection of research participants throughout the scholarly publishing process. The journal's publication-ethics framework is informed by the COPE Core Practices, the ICMJE Recommendations, and, for research involving human participants, the current WMA Declaration of Helsinki.

Authors, reviewers, editors, editorial-board members, and the publisher are expected to comply with the principles described below. Ethical concerns may be considered before submission, during peer review, during production, or after publication.

Research involving human participants, identifiable human data, or identifiable human biological material must comply with applicable ethical and legal requirements. Authors must identify the approving ethics committee or institutional review board and provide the approval/reference number when applicable.

• Informed Consent: Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained or provide the ethics-approved basis for a waiver.
• Privacy and Confidentiality: Identifying information should not be published unless scientifically necessary and appropriate consent for publication has been obtained.
• Vulnerable Populations: Research involving pregnant participants, neonates, infants, children, persons unable to consent, or other vulnerable groups must describe appropriate safeguards.
• Clinical Images and Case Reports: Identifiable images or case information require appropriate consent for publication.
• Clinical Trials: Prospective registration in an appropriate public trial registry should be provided in accordance with applicable journal and disciplinary standards.
• Animal Research: Studies involving animals must state relevant ethics/welfare approval and applicable standards.

For manuscripts reporting clinical trials, IMCHP expects trial-registration information to be reported where applicable. Prospective registration supports transparency and reduces selective reporting. Where registration was delayed, authors should explain the circumstances, and the editorial team may determine whether the manuscript remains eligible for consideration.

• Editorial Independence: Decisions must be based on scholarly merit, scientific validity, relevance to scope, ethical compliance, and reporting quality. Commercial considerations, APC payment, institutional prestige, or personal relationships must not determine acceptance.
• Fair Assessment: Editors must avoid discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, disability, seniority, institutional affiliation, or other irrelevant personal characteristics.
• Confidentiality: Editors must protect confidential manuscript and reviewer information throughout the editorial process.
• Conflict of Interest: Editors must disclose relevant conflicts and recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
• Reviewer Selection: Editors should appoint reviewers with appropriate subject and/or methodological expertise and avoid reviewers with known material conflicts.
• Integrity Concerns: Editors should take credible allegations seriously and follow a fair, documented process rather than dismissing concerns because an article has already been published.
• Correction of the Record: Editors must support appropriate post-publication corrections, retractions, or other notices when necessary to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.

• Confidentiality: Manuscripts and unpublished material received for review must be treated as confidential.
• Competence: Reviewers should accept assignments only when they have sufficient expertise to provide a meaningful assessment.
• Objectivity: Reviews should be evidence-based, constructive, respectful, and focused on the manuscript rather than the authors.
• Promptness: Reviewers who cannot complete the review within the requested period should notify the editorial office promptly.
• Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers should disclose relationships or interests that could affect impartiality and decline when necessary.
• Citation Ethics: Reviewers must not require irrelevant citations, excessive self-citations, or citations designed to manipulate journal or individual metrics.
• Misconduct Concerns: Suspected plagiarism, data manipulation, unethical research, duplicate publication, or other integrity concerns should be reported confidentially to the Editor rather than investigated independently by the reviewer.

• AI systems cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume authorship responsibility or accountability.
• Authors must disclose substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies when required by the journal's Generative AI Policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for factual accuracy, citation accuracy, originality, confidentiality, and intellectual integrity.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, tables, figures, or substantial manuscript content to public AI systems when this would compromise confidentiality or author rights.
• Automated AI-detection tools may inform editorial screening but should not be treated as definitive evidence of misconduct without contextual review.

IMCHP operates a double-blind peer-review process. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and author identities are withheld from reviewers wherever reasonably possible. Participants in peer review must not attempt to circumvent this process.

• Reviewer reports are confidential editorial records.
• Unpublished ideas or data obtained through review must not be appropriated or used for personal advantage.
• Peer-review recommendations are advisory; final decisions remain with the Editor.
• Manuscripts handled by an editor, reviewer, or editorial-board member with a material conflict should be reassigned to an independent editor where appropriate.

IMCHP takes credible allegations of misconduct seriously, whether raised before or after publication. Concerns may include, but are not limited to, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate submission/publication, inappropriate image manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, citation manipulation, unethical research, or deceptive reporting.

The editorial office will conduct an initial assessment, seek clarification and relevant documentation where appropriate, and may consult authors, reviewers, editors, institutions, ethics committees, funders, or other responsible bodies when necessary and legally appropriate. The journal does not replace institutional or regulatory investigations.

Outcomes may include no further action, editorial clarification, manuscript rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, removal in exceptional circumstances, or referral to an appropriate institution or authority. Actions should be proportionate to the evidence and designed primarily to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Authors must disclose relevant prior publications, preprints, abstracts, conference reports, protocol publications, theses, datasets, or other dissemination that substantially overlaps with the submitted work. Legitimate secondary publication or reuse may be considered only when transparent, ethically appropriate, legally permitted, and clearly disclosed. Undisclosed duplicate or redundant publication may lead to editorial action.

• Authors should provide a Data Availability Statement appropriate to the study.
• Public sharing is encouraged where ethically, legally, contractually, and technically permissible.
• Restrictions related to participant confidentiality, consent, sensitive health data, institutional policy, or law should be explained transparently.
• Analytical methods, instruments, coding, and statistical procedures should be reported with sufficient transparency for critical appraisal and reasonable reproducibility.
• Authors must not fabricate a repository location, accession number, registration record, or data-availability claim.

IMCHP is committed to maintaining an accurate scholarly record. Post-publication notices will be linked to the affected article and should explain the reason for the editorial action transparently while respecting legal, confidentiality, and due-process considerations.

• Correction: used when an error affects accuracy or interpretation but does not invalidate the article as a whole.
• Expression of Concern: may be issued when serious questions remain unresolved and an investigation is ongoing or inconclusive.
• Retraction: may be appropriate when findings are unreliable, publication is redundant, plagiarism or serious misconduct is established, or ethical approval/consent is materially deficient.
• Removal: reserved for exceptional circumstances such as serious legal risk, privacy violations, or other situations where continued public availability would cause substantial harm.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise a reasoned complaint or appeal concerning editorial procedure, ethical handling, or a decision. Appeals should identify the manuscript or article, explain the specific grounds, and provide relevant evidence. Disagreement with a scientific judgment alone does not automatically justify reversal.

• Appeals should normally be reviewed by an editor who was not solely responsible for the original contested decision where feasible.
• Additional independent expert advice may be sought when the dispute concerns methodology, ethics, or specialized scientific interpretation.
• Complaints involving the Editor-in-Chief may be referred to the publisher or another independent responsible officer.
• Retaliation against individuals who raise legitimate concerns in good faith is not acceptable.

PT. Inovasi Analisis Data, as publisher, supports the journal's editorial infrastructure while respecting editorial independence. Editorial decisions must not be influenced by advertising, sponsorship, APC payment, institutional relationships, commercial pressure, or the publisher's financial interests.

• Support appropriate peer-review and publication-ethics procedures.
• Protect confidential editorial and personal information.
• Maintain journal policies, metadata, and publication infrastructure.
• Support corrections, retractions, and responses to credible integrity concerns.
• Make publication fees and relevant business practices transparent to authors and readers.

Authors must ensure that submitted material does not infringe copyright, privacy, confidentiality, or other third-party rights. Permission must be obtained for copyrighted tables, figures, instruments, photographs, or substantial reused material when legally required. The definitive terms governing author copyright, Open Access licensing, reuse, and permissions are those stated on the current Copyright and License and Open Access Statement pages of the IMCHP website.

IMCHP is committed to preserving the scholarly record and maintaining continued access to published content. The journal's current preservation mechanisms and repository arrangements are described in the separate Archiving Policy. Only preservation services and repositories that are actually enabled or contracted by the journal should be represented publicly as active archiving arrangements.

Reporting an Ethical Concern

Questions, complaints, appeals, and confidential concerns regarding research integrity or publication ethics should be submitted to the IMCHP editorial office through the official journal website or designated editorial contact. Correspondence should identify the relevant manuscript/article and provide sufficient information for a fair assessment.

Ethics and Editorial Standards

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) — Core Practices
• ICMJE — Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals
• World Medical Association — Declaration of Helsinki

© 2026 Innovation Midwifery and Child Health Practice (IMCHP)

Published by PT. Inovasi Analisis Data • E-ISSN 3063-1009 • P-ISSN 3063-1017