JOTMI Publication Integrity Protocol and Extended Retraction Policy

Note. The principles outlined in Section 1 are developed in their extended version in the JOTMI Responsible AI Use Policy, which sets out the preventive framework — author obligations, disclosure requirements, peer-review and editorial conduct, the audit infrastructure, and the journal's confidentiality and official-communications regime. Authors are encouraged to consult that policy before submission. The present document defines the consequences regime and retraction procedures that apply when those principles have been breached. Both documents are to be read jointly.

1. Declaration of Principles: The Role of Artificial Intelligence

At the Journal of Technology Management & Innovation (JOTMI), we recognize that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that, when used ethically, acts as a catalyst for scientific excellence and the democratization of knowledge. Far from opposing its use, the Editorial Board encourages the integration of advanced technologies in the construction, analysis, and refinement of manuscripts, understanding them as a vital support for the advancement of contemporary science.

The use of AI is not grounds for rejection or penalization. However, this technological openness demands a non-negotiable commitment to transparency: authors must declare its use and assume final and absolute responsibility for the truthfulness, empirical rigor, and parsimony of the presented results. AI assists the researcher, but authorship and scientific responsibility remain exclusively in the human domain.

2. Editorial Authority and Forensic Auditing

To safeguard the prestige of the academic community and the integrity of published records, JOTMI applies rigorous verification standards. By submitting a manuscript, authors agree that the Editorial Board reserves the right to implement digital forensic auditing modules at any stage of the process—including post-publication stages—to ensure that the integrity of the research has not been compromised by fraudulent practices.

3. Grounds for Unilateral Retraction (Retractum)

A formal and irrevocable Retraction will be initiated if a forensic audit or post-publication peer review confirms that the scientific record has been deliberately altered or corrupted. Primary causes include:

3.1. AI Negligence and Lack of Transparency

  • Undeclared Use: Failure to explicitly report the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) or generative AI in the creation or editing of the article.
  • Unsupervised Algorithmic Outputs: The submission of content that evidences a lack of human curation, such as the presence of residual chat prompts, empirical data fabricated by the model, or severe methodological hallucinations that invalidate the study.

3.2. Technical Obfuscation and Evasion Tactics

  • Malicious Formatting: The use of invisible characters, microtext, or the substitution of Latin characters with visual equivalents from other alphabets (homoglyphs) in order to bypass similarity detection systems.
  • Digital Tampering: Any technical intervention in the file's structure aimed at deceiving automated editorial analysis tools.

3.3. Bibliographic Fraud and Ghost Citations

  • Hallucinated References: The inclusion of non-existent or artificially generated bibliography without real substantiation, as well as DOIs that point to unrelated or already retracted documents.
  • Metric Manipulation: Detection of "ghost citations" inserted solely to inflate indicators, without a substantive relationship to the text.

3.4. Authorship Integrity and Ethics

  • Authorship Anomalies: Evidence of paper mill activity, the buying/selling of authorship, or cases of hyper-prolificacy that do not correspond to a real, verifiable contribution under the CRediT taxonomy.
  • Ethical Violations: Proven plagiarism or lack of approval by institutional review boards (IRB) in studies involving human subjects.

4. Execution of the Retraction

Should a violation of this protocol be confirmed, JOTMI will publish a formal Notice of Retraction permanently linked to the article's DOI. The original document will remain in the OJS system as part of the historical record but will be permanently marked with an indelible "RETRACTED" watermark on all its pages to alert the global scientific community.