Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance
Publication Ethics Statement
Contents
Publication Ethics Statement
Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance is committed to publishing articles of high-quality in the spirit of academic and research integrity. All involved in the publication process, including publishers, editors, reviewers, and authors, are expected to strictly adhere to the following publication ethics and malpractice statement.
Editors’ Responsibilities
The editors screen all submissions and determine which will be forwarded to reviewers based on the originality and quality of content as well as observance of submission guidelines. Aside from thorough review of manuscript quality, editors also routinely use plagiarism check through Turnitin. They select reviewers, considering expertise and relevant qualifications, and ensure confidentiality through a blind-refereeing process. They oversee every step of the publication from the manuscript review to the production process.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities
The reviewers evaluate the articles, providing written assessments of the manuscript’s merits and limitations. They give information on relevant works not cited in the manuscript. They are expected to be objective in their evaluation and must disclose any conflict of interest and recuse themselves from the review process. They uphold the integrity of the blind-refereeing process and follow the schedule as agreed upon with the editorial team.
Authors’ responsibilities
Authors must submit articles that have not been previously published or are under review by other journals or publications. They must submit only original articles, following the journal’s citation and style guidelines. In case of co-authored articles, authors must provide attribution and agreement from their peers in the submission of their manuscripts for publication. They must disclose funding sources and other possible conflicts of interest. Authors are expected to uphold academic honesty and properly acknowledge sources and provide accurate data and factual information. They are responsible for securing permission for any copyrighted material. They must abide by the schedule for revision and production as set by the editorial team or request for a reasonable extension to avoid manuscript rejection.
Collegiality
Editors, authors, and reviewers are expected to observe collegiality in correspondences and in the exercise of their roles and responsibilities. The schedule as agreed upon with or set by the editorial team must be strictly followed.
Confidentiality
Akda maintains a strict code of confidentiality and information relevant to the review of the submitted manuscript will only be available to the editors.
Publication and Copyright
Authors are required to review and sign the publication and copyright agreement before the publication of their manuscripts.
Dealing with misconduct
Akda, including its reviewers and advisory board, reserves the right to determine misconduct and its corresponding sanctions.
AI Statement and Policy
AI Statement
We at Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance understand the rapid development and pervasive use of generative AI in the production of academic and creative materials across various fields, institutions, and industries. However, while we recognize the possibilities of integrating AI in certain scholarly works and its potential to open pathways for research innovation and production alongside technological development, we believe that current generative AI models fail to produce academically credible output. In its nascent stage, generative AI models continue to produce inaccurate, redundant, fabricated, and biased information (Aaron et al. 2024; Kim 2024), which we assert should not be used in any academic output. More importantly, controversies surrounding popular generative AI models and their alleged large-scale use of scholarly materials from pirated databases (Reisner 2025) and unlicensed use of copyrighted artistic materials for AI training and production (for examples, see Chayka 2023; Milmo 2025) highlight the technology’s potential for creative and scholarly theft. Reports have also shown how certain companies behind generative AI tools are engaging in unethical labor practices such as inadequate wages paid to “hidden” and contracted workers mostly coming from the Global South (Dias 2025) while AI data centers cause adverse environmental impacts without clear regulations (Liu et al. 2025; Ren and Wierman 2024). These issues, among others, far outweigh the “convenience” of integrating this technology into scholarship, compelling us to be more critical of its use in academia. There is no ethical use of generative AI when human intellectual and creative output and ownership are at risk while decent working conditions and livable wages for the industry’s laborers and the environment remain at stake. Ultimately, we do not believe that generative AI tools and similar programs can capture the kind of scholarly quality we seek to publish nor the ethical research conduct we advocate.
AI Policy
Akda does not support the use of generative AI in submissions to our journal except when these are used for proofreading and other grammatical editing to improve the language and readability of the article. Specifically, Akda does not support submissions that use generative AI exemplified in the following cases:
We encourage authors to disclose to the editors the extent of their use of generative AI in their submission. Unless these are strictly used for language and grammatical editing, the editorial team exercises its discretion to reject AI-generated submissions without going through our double-blind peer review process.
Authorship
Our journal believes and supports articles where human insight and scholarly rigor are at the forefront. We define authorship of the article as the scholars who have done the intellectual labor of and can take ownership and accountability for their work. They can comment and consent to editorial revisions, respond to and revise their work following recommendations from external reviewers, communicate with us throughout the editorial process, and understand and sign copyright agreement forms and other contracts with our journal. Generative AI cannot be considered an author of an article.
Works Cited:
Plagiarism Screening Statement and Policy
As part of its internal screening process, editors evaluate an article’s quality and originality before it undergoes our double-blind external peer review. The editors shall initially screen submissions through Turnitin’s plagiarism and AI-detection software. Editors use features of Turnitin’s similarity index report and AI detection results to determine if the work can proceed to further review. To uphold data privacy and confidentiality, submissions will not be indexed in Turnitin’s repository.
Acceptable works should have a similarity score of less than 20%, excluding bibliographic entries and quoted texts. Any work detected to have significant AI text, both AI-generated and AI-generated texts paraphrased through AI, will not be accepted. We recognize that Turnitin and other similar software can produce “false positive” results. Thus, alongside Turnitin, editors also evaluate the submission and contextualize the results of these reports based on the quality of the essay, its language, and perceptible human insight.
