Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Last updated: 12 November 2026

This statement covers the Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI Proceedings) and the other proceedings published by the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI). IJCAI is a non-profit corporation founded in California in 1969 for scientific and educational purposes. Since 2017, IJCAI has been the sole publisher of its own proceedings, which are published online and free of charge.

This statement follows the COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. IJCAI follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

1. Plagiarism and malpractice

Using another person’s words, ideas or any other part of their work without explicitly acknowledging the original authors and source is plagiarism, and an unacceptable breach of academic and professional conduct. Whether the prior work has been formally published does not matter. As stated in the Authors’ Code of Conduct, the only exception is copying basic definitions from a paper that shares authors with the submitted paper.

IJCAI rejects any submission, and corrects or retracts any publication, that does not meet the standards in this statement, following the Corrections, Retractions, Complaints and Appeals policy.

2. Duties of the publisher

  • IJCAI ensures the integrity of the scholarly record and follows COPE guidance when dealing with allegations of misconduct.
  • The Program Chair makes the final decision on which papers are accepted. Revenue sources, including sponsorship, grants and fees, do not influence editorial decisions.
  • IJCAI publishes the names and affiliations of the editors and the program committee of each volume, the publishing schedule, the copyright and reuse terms, and the author fees.
  • Together with the Program Chair, IJCAI publishes corrections, expressions of concern and retraction notices promptly, links them to the original paper, and makes them freely accessible.
  • IJCAI keeps electronic backups of the proceedings and registers DOI metadata for every paper with Crossref.
  • Publication ethics is overseen by the IJCAI Publication Ethics Committee, which can be contacted at .

3. Duties of the Program Chair (editor)

The Program Chair of each conference is the editor of that year’s proceedings.

  • The Program Chair has final responsibility for deciding which papers are published, and may consult the Associate Program Chairs, Area Chairs, the Senior Program Committee, the Program Committee and other reviewers in reaching that decision.
  • The decision is constrained by legal requirements on libel, copyright and trademark infringement, and by the rules on plagiarism in section 1.
  • Papers are evaluated without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin or citizenship. See also the Anti-Discrimination Policy.
  • The Program Chair keeps submitted material confidential and does not use unpublished material in their own research without the authors’ express written consent.
  • The Program Chair makes fair decisions free from commercial, political and personal bias, discloses all conflicts of interest, and takes no part in any decision on a paper where they have such a conflict. Everyone involved in the review process follows the IJCAI Conflict of Interest Policy.
  • Papers flagged by reviewers for significant ethical concerns are referred to an ethics committee, which assesses them and advises the Program Chair (see the Code of Ethics). In rare cases, the Program Chair, advised by the Ethics Chair, may reject a paper on ethical grounds.
  • Acceptance is never guaranteed in advance.
  • Acceptance decisions of the Program Chair are final and cannot be appealed. Decisions on retractions and misconduct can be appealed as described in the Corrections, Retractions, Complaints and Appeals policy.

4. Duties of reviewers and Program Committee members

Reviewers and Program Committee members follow the Reviewers’ Code of Conduct. In particular:

  • Reviewers deliver their reviews on time, or inform the chairs promptly if they cannot.
  • Reviewers do not review a paper if they suspect a conflict of interest.
  • Reviewers keep the review process strictly confidential, including reviewers’ names, paper contents, reviews and discussions, and use the material for no other purpose.
  • Reviewers evaluate submissions only on their intellectual content. Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate. Reviewers state their views clearly and support their conclusions.
  • Reviewers report any suspicion of serious misconduct, such as plagiarism, duplicate submission or fabricated data, to the Program Chair.
  • Reviewers must not upload a submission, its code, or any part of them to any generative AI tool, or share them with anyone outside the review process. See the Generative AI Policy.
  • IJCAI may act against reviewers who breach these principles, for example by barring them from promotion to Senior PC member or Area Chair, by banning them from submitting to a limited number of future IJCAI conferences, and by sharing this information with other conferences in the AI consortium.

5. Duties of authors

By submitting a paper, the submitting author certifies on behalf of all authors that they follow the Authors’ Code of Conduct. In summary:

  • Originality: the paper is original, respects the intellectual property of others, and is free of plagiarism.
  • Authorship: everyone who contributed substantially is an author, and every author has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work or taken part in writing the paper. Others who contributed are acknowledged in the camera-ready version. Generative AI models do not meet the criteria for authorship (see the Generative AI Policy).
  • Multiple publication: the work is not under review at any other archival venue, and the prior publications it builds on are documented. A technical report or arXiv preprint does not count as prior publication; as a guideline, a publication with a DOI, ISBN or ISSN does.
  • Funding and conflicts of interest: all funding is acknowledged in the camera-ready version, not in the anonymous submission, and any conflict of interest is declared.
  • Ethical oversight: the authors are aware of possible ethical issues and have obtained approval from ethics bodies where needed, for example for research involving human subjects or human-derived data.
  • Reproducibility: the authors follow the Reproducibility Guidelines and complete the reproducibility checklist at submission.
  • Errors: authors tell IJCAI promptly about any error they discover after submission. After publication, they request a correction or retraction as described in the Corrections, Retractions, Complaints and Appeals policy.
  • Good scientific conduct: all authors follow the principles of honesty, transparency and accountability.

6. Integrity of the scholarly record

  • Plagiarism and duplicate submission: see sections 1 and 5. IJCAI may screen submissions with a similarity-checking service.
  • Citation manipulation: reviewers and chairs may not ask authors to cite their own work, or any work, without a genuine scholarly reason, and authors may not include citations whose main purpose is to raise someone’s citation counts.
  • Falsification and fabrication: making up, changing or selectively omitting data or results is research misconduct.
  • Review manipulation: collusion between authors and reviewers, and hidden prompts aimed at automated reviewing tools, are forbidden.
  • Sanctions: these may include rejection or retraction of the work, notification of the authors’ institutions or employers and other relevant bodies, and exclusion from a limited number of future IJCAI conferences. Information may be shared with other conferences in the AI consortium.

7. Related policies

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