Ethical Guidelines and Misconduct

1. Originality and Plagiarism

All content must be original. Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism (re-using substantial portions of the author’s own previously published work without clear citation), is strictly prohibited. Manuscripts with a Similarity Index exceeding 15% (excluding references and standard nomenclature) will be immediately rejected

2. Conflict of Interest (COI)

All authors must disclose any financial, professional, or personal relationships that could be construed as influencing the content of their submission. This includes funding sources for research, employment, consultancies, or stock ownership. A COI statement will be published alongside the article if accepted.Authors who are serving regulatory officials must ensure that their contributions do not disclose confidential regulatory information (not yet in the public domain) or prejudice ongoing stakeholder consultations

3. Data and Image Manipulation

For scientific submissions, intentional fabrication or deceptive manipulation of research data or images is considered scientific misconduct and will lead to immediate rejection.

4. Copyright, Licensing, and Liability

4.1 Copyright Transfer Upon acceptance of the manuscript for publication, the Copyright of the article is automatically transferred to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

Transfer Agreement: All authors must sign the mandatory ‘Copyright Transfer & Author Declaration Form’ prior to publication.

FSSAI Rights: This transfer grants FSSAI the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, display, and store the work in print, electronic, or any future formats, and to authorize its inclusion in databases or repositories.

4.2 Retained Author Rights Although copyright is transferred to FSSAI; authors retain the right to:

Use their article for non-commercial purposes (e.g., teaching, inclusion in their own thesis/dissertation, or internal circulation within their institution).

Self-archive the accepted version on their personal website or institutional repository, provided a link to the original FSSD publication is included.

4.3 Liability and Indemnification

Content Responsibility: The authors bear full responsibility for the scientific accuracy and content of the manuscript. FSSAI assumes no liability for any errors, omissions, or consequences arising from the use of information contained in the published articles.

AI Liability: Authors explicitly indemnify FSSAI against any claims, damages, or disputes arising from the use of Generative AI tools in the manuscript. The authors certify that they have personally verified all AI-generated text and citations.

Third-Party Material: Authors are solely responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any copyrighted material (figures, tables, data) from other sources. Any infringement of third-party rights is the sole liability of the authors.

5 Use of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs)

This policy aligns with the ICMR Ethical Guidelines for AI in Biomedical Research (2023) and the MeitYIndiaAI Governance Framework.

5.1 For Authors (Permissible Use)

AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) cannot be listed as authors. They lack legal personhood and accountability.Authors may use AI tools forimproving language/readability (copy-editing) and preliminary literature search (subject to manual verification).AI must notbe used to generate scientific data, synthetic data images/figuresor write the “Results” and “Conclusion” sections.

Mandatory Declaration: If AI is used, authors must include the following statement in the Acknowledgements:

“The authors acknowledge the use of [Tool Name, Version] for [Specific Purpose]. The authors certify that they have manually verified all AI-generated outputs and accept full responsibility for the content.”

5.2 For Reviewers (Strict Confidentiality)

Reviewers and Editors are strictly prohibited from uploading submitted manuscripts into public Generative AI tools. This constitutes a violation of author confidentiality and data privacy laws.

For any further clarification, please contact publications-fssai@nic.in