Policies

Voices of English Language Education Society (VELES) is an open-access journal serving the English Language Education (ELED/ELT) community, with a distinctive emphasis on EFL contexts in Indonesia and the wider Global South. The policies below govern our publishing practice and uphold integrity, accessibility, and transparency.

Open Access Policy

VELES provides immediate, free, and permanent access to all published articles. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts without financial, legal, or technical barriers.

  • License: All articles are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, allowing sharing, adaptation, and commercial use with attribution and share-alike.
  • Author rights: Authors retain copyright and grant VELES the right to publish the Version of Record.
  • Self-archiving (Green OA): Authors may deposit preprint, accepted manuscript, and Version of Record in repositories, institutional pages, or personal websites immediately upon publication. Please include the article DOI.
  • Article availability: Articles are posted on the journal site with stable DOIs (prefix 10.29408/veles).
  • Preservation: Long-term preservation is ensured (see the Archiving page).

Publication Ethics

VELES adheres to internationally recognized standards of publication ethics and COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidance. We expect integrity from authors, editors, and reviewers.

  • Authors must submit original work, accurately report methods/results, cite sources, obtain permissions for third-party materials, and disclose funding and conflicts of interest.
  • Human participants: Studies involving people must state ethics approval (IRB/REC) and informed consent (or justified exemption); ensure confidentiality and data protection.
  • Editors make unbiased decisions based on scholarly merit and journal scope; they manage COI, ensure fair review, and handle allegations of misconduct transparently.
  • Reviewers provide constructive, confidential, and timely reports; they declare COI and evaluate methodology, analysis, and contribution.
  • Use of AI tools: Generative-AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Limited assistance (e.g., language polishing) must be disclosed, and authors remain fully responsible for accuracy and integrity.

Plagiarism Policy

All submissions are screened for text similarity. VELES rejects plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate submission, and unethical text recycling (“salami slicing”).

  • Threshold: As a guideline, total similarity should be ≤ 15% (excluding references, common phrases, and properly quoted text). High similarity in any single source is scrutinized.
  • Detection & action: Suspected cases may lead to clarification requests, revision, rejection, or post-publication action (correction/retraction), depending on severity.
  • Preprints: Allowed; authors must disclose the preprint and ensure no breach of the original license.
  • Copyright holder: Authors retain copyright.
  • License to publish: Authors grant VELES a non-exclusive license to publish the article as the Version of Record on the journal site and to disseminate it.
  • User rights: Content is distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Users must provide attribution and share derivative works under the same license.
  • Third-party content: Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions and credit lines for any materials not covered by fair use.
  • How to cite: Include the article DOI and follow APA 7th style (see Author Guidelines).

Article Retraction & Withdrawal

VELES follows COPE-aligned procedures for corrections and retractions to maintain the scholarly record.

  • Corrections: Minor errors not affecting conclusions are addressed via Erratum or Corrigendum.
  • Retractions: Issued for serious issues (e.g., proven plagiarism, data fabrication, unethical research, duplicate publication). The retraction notice explains reasons and links to the affected article; the article PDF/HTML may be watermarked “Retracted.”
  • Expressions of Concern: May be posted when an investigation is ongoing.
  • Article removal: Reserved for rare legal/ethical cases (e.g., court order, severe privacy risk); a tombstone page will state the reason.
  • Withdrawal (pre-publication): Authors may request withdrawal before acceptance with a written justification. After acceptance, withdrawal is generally not allowed unless compelling reasons exist.

Privacy Statement

Names and email addresses entered in this journal site are used exclusively for the stated purposes of VELES and are not made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

  • Data we keep: author/editor/reviewer profiles, submission metadata, correspondence, and usage analytics necessary for editorial management and indexing.
  • Protection: Access is role-based within OJS; we apply reasonable technical and organizational measures to safeguard data.
  • Cookies & logs: The platform may use cookies and server logs to ensure secure and efficient operation.
  • User rights: To update or delete your profile data, contact the editorial office at [velesjournal@gmail.com].

Article Processing Charges (APC)

VELES is funded through a combination of institutional support and limited APCs to sustain peer-review management, editorial processing, hosting, DOI registration, and preservation.

  • When charged: APC applies only after a manuscript is formally accepted; there are no submission fees.
  • Domestic authors (Indonesia): IDR 1,500,000 per accepted manuscript.
  • International corresponding authors: One accepted manuscript per corresponding author per calendar year is fully waived; additional accepted manuscripts by the same corresponding author within the same year are charged the standard APC.
  • Independence: APC policy is entirely independent of editorial and peer-review decisions; manuscripts are evaluated solely on academic merit.
  • Billing & payment: Invoiced to the corresponding author after acceptance and payable before publication (payments in IDR; sender covers transfer fees). Electronic invoices/receipts are issued.
  • Refunds: APCs are non-refundable after publication. If an editorial/production error prevents publication, VELES will publish at no cost or refund in full.

For operational details or institutional invoices, contact velesjournal@gmail.com

Policy Updates

These policies are reviewed periodically to reflect evolving best practices and operational needs. The version in force at the time of submission applies to each manuscript. Updates will be announced on the VELES website.