Instructional Design and Ethical Pedagogy (IDEP) conducts journal promotion and direct marketing in a responsible, accurate, transparent, and professional manner. Any communication intended to attract authors, reviewers, readers, or academic partners must accurately represent the journal’s scope, editorial policies, peer-review process, publication schedule, publisher, fees, and indexing status.
Direct marketing activities must not contain misleading claims, exaggerated statements, false guarantees, or information that could reasonably create an inaccurate impression regarding the journal’s scholarly standing or publication process.
IDEP may disseminate journal information through legitimate academic and professional communication channels, including:
- the official IDEP journal website;
- official publisher websites and communication channels;
- academic mailing lists and professional networks;
- institutional and scholarly social-media channels;
- academic conferences, seminars, workshops, and scholarly events;
- direct invitations to researchers whose expertise is demonstrably relevant to the journal’s scope; and
- other appropriate scholarly communication channels that respect professional and ethical standards.
All promotional materials must accurately reflect the journal’s current policies and status. IDEP will not claim indexing, accreditation, citation metrics, impact indicators, affiliations, or other forms of recognition unless such information has been officially confirmed and can be independently verified.
Direct invitations to submit, review, or engage with the journal should be relevant to the recipient’s academic expertise and professional role. IDEP seeks to avoid indiscriminate, excessive, repetitive, or unsolicited mass communication that could reasonably be regarded as spam or coercive solicitation.
An invitation to submit a manuscript does not constitute a guarantee of peer review, acceptance, rapid publication, citation, indexing, or any other publication outcome. All submitted manuscripts remain subject to the journal’s normal editorial screening, scope assessment, research-integrity checks, and double-blind peer-review process.
Where publication fees or other author charges apply, such information must be communicated clearly and consistently through the official journal website. Marketing communications must not conceal, misrepresent, or introduce unofficial charges outside the journal’s published fee policy.
Contact information used for direct scholarly communication should be obtained and handled responsibly. Email addresses, professional affiliations, and other contact details must not be misused, sold, or shared for unrelated commercial marketing purposes.
Where practical and applicable, recipients of direct promotional communications should be able to indicate that they no longer wish to receive similar messages. IDEP will seek to respect reasonable requests to discontinue non-essential promotional communication.
IDEP does not support promotional practices involving:
- false or misleading claims about indexing, accreditation, rankings, impact factors, or citation metrics;
- guarantees of manuscript acceptance or publication;
- claims of unrealistically rapid peer review or publication that compromise editorial quality;
- misrepresentation of editors, reviewers, institutions, partnerships, or publisher relationships;
- deceptive use of journal titles, logos, identifiers, or affiliations;
- excessive or indiscriminate mass solicitation;
- pressure on authors to cite IDEP articles for the purpose of artificially increasing journal citation indicators; or
- any marketing practice that compromises editorial independence, scholarly integrity, or trust in the journal.
Marketing considerations must remain separate from editorial decision-making. The selection, review, acceptance, rejection, correction, or retraction of manuscripts must be based on scholarly merit, journal scope, research integrity, methodological quality, and editorial policy rather than promotional, financial, personal, or commercial interests.
IDEP is committed to truthful, relevant, respectful, transparent, and non-coercive scholarly communication. Direct marketing is intended solely to increase legitimate academic awareness of the journal and must never compromise editorial independence, publication ethics, or the trust of authors, reviewers, readers, and the wider scholarly community.