Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

GDI and DigiBUILT follow the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for authors, reviewers and editors. These principles govern every contribution from abstract to proceedings, and continue to apply when a paper is invited onward to a journal special issue or an edited book. Where a publisher applies its own ethics policy, that policy applies in addition to this statement, and the stricter provision prevails.

Submissions must be original and must not be published, accepted or under review elsewhere. Papers may be screened with similarity-detection software at submission and again before publication. A similarity score prompts editorial judgement: the organisers examine where any overlap occurs and whether it is properly attributed.

Substantial unattributed overlap with published work is grounds for rejection. This includes text recycled from the authors’ own earlier publications, which must be cited and kept to the minimum needed to describe established methods.

• Every listed author must have contributed substantially to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the work, taken part in drafting or critically revising it, and approved the submitted version.
• Contributors who do not meet these criteria, including those who provided funding, supervision alone, data collection services or language editing, are recorded in the acknowledgements.
• Gift, guest and ghost authorship are not acceptable.
• The author list cannot change after acceptance without the written agreement of every author, and cannot change after the camera-ready deadline.

• AI tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work.
• Any use of generative AI beyond language editing must be disclosed in the methods or acknowledgements, naming the tool, its version where known, and the purpose for which it was used.
• AI-generated images, figures and data are not permitted unless they are the subject of the research and are clearly labelled as such.
• Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality and referencing of all content, including any content produced with AI assistance.
• Reviewers and session chairs must not upload manuscripts, or any part of them, to generative AI tools.

Research with human participants, including surveys, interviews, workshops and studies using physiological, behavioural or neuroimaging data, requires approval from an appropriate ethics committee and the informed consent of participants. Papers should state the approving committee and the reference number in the methods section.

Research involving Indigenous communities, knowledge or data should follow the principles of the country in which it is conducted. In Aotearoa New Zealand this includes obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the principles of Māori data sovereignty.

• Methods should be described in enough detail for a competent researcher to understand and, where feasible, reproduce the work.
• Authors are encouraged to state where the underlying data, code or models can be accessed, or why they cannot be shared.
• Images and figures must not be altered in a way that obscures, removes or misrepresents information present in the original.
• Third-party figures, photographs and drawings require permission from the rights holder, and the source must be credited in the caption.

References should be accurate, relevant and drawn from the work actually consulted. Excessive self-citation, citation exchanges between authors, and requests by reviewers or editors that authors cite their own work without scholarly justification are treated as forms of citation manipulation.

Authors declare any financial, institutional or personal interest that could reasonably be seen to influence the work, including funding sources and commercial relationships with products or technologies discussed. Reviewers decline papers where they have a conflict, including papers by recent collaborators, by colleagues in their own department, or on which they have previously advised.

Full papers are reviewed double blind by the scientific committee and invited reviewers, normally by at least two reviewers per paper. Reviews are confidential and are judged on their substance, specificity and fairness.

Papers authored by conference chairs, committee members or stream leaders are handled by an editor with no connection to the authors, and those authors take no part in the review of, or decisions on, their own papers.

Manuscripts under review are confidential documents. Reviewers, chairs and organisers may not share, cite or use unpublished material from a submission for any purpose other than its evaluation, and should delete their copies once the review is complete.

Concerns about plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate submission, undisclosed conflicts or other misconduct can be raised confidentially with the organising committee. The committee will assess the concern following COPE guidance, give the authors a full opportunity to respond, and act proportionately. Outcomes may include correction, rejection or withdrawal of a paper, notification of publishers and institutions, and exclusion from future submissions.

Authors who discover a significant error in their own work should inform the organisers and, after publication, the publisher without delay. Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions of published papers are issued by the publisher of record under its own procedures, with which the organisers will cooperate fully.

Authors may appeal once, in writing, within 14 days of a decision they believe rested on a factual error or a procedural failure. Appeals are considered by the Scientific Chair together with a committee member not involved in the original decision. Disagreement with reviewers’ academic judgement is not in itself a ground of appeal. Decisions made by publishers are considered under each publisher’s own procedures.