About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Research on English Teaching and Applied Linguistics (IJRETAL) is a peer reviewed, open access journal published twice a year by the Department of English Education, Faculty of Tarbiyah, Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Bone, Indonesia. The journal publishes research that advances understanding of how English is taught, learned, assessed, and used, with particular attention to settings in which English is a foreign or additional language.

IJRETAL welcomes empirical studies, methodologically explicit review articles, and conceptual contributions that carry clear implications for classroom practice, teacher education, assessment, or language policy. The editors give priority to work that is theoretically grounded, transparent about its methods, and specific about what it adds to existing knowledge. Studies situated in Indonesian and other Southeast Asian contexts are particularly welcome, provided the argument is framed so that it speaks to an international readership rather than to a single institution.

The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

classroom discourse, classroom interaction, and teaching methodology
curriculum design, syllabus development, and materials development, adaptation, and evaluation
teacher education, teacher identity, and continuing professional development
language assessment, testing, and programme evaluation
needs analysis, English for specific purposes, and English for academic purposes
second language acquisition and language learning psychology in instructed settings
reading, literacy, and the development of academic writing and speaking
technology in language education, including digital literacy and artificial intelligence literacy
discourse analysis, pragmatics, and the sociolinguistics of English
language policy, language planning, and the position of English in education systems

The journal does not consider manuscripts that report routine classroom activity without an analytic argument, descriptive surveys without a theoretical framework, or studies whose data cannot support the claims they make. Manuscripts outside the scope are returned to the authors at the screening stage.

Article Types

IJRETAL publishes research articles of 6,000 to 8,000 words, review articles, conceptual articles, short reports of 3,000 to 4,000 words, and book reviews of 1,500 to 2,000 words. All submissions must follow the IJRETAL manuscript template and use the seventh edition of the APA style for citations and references.

Peer Review Process

IJRETAL operates a double blind peer review process in which the identity of the authors and the identity of the reviewers are withheld from each other throughout. Authors must therefore upload an anonymised version of the manuscript in addition to the complete file.

Technical screening. The Editorial Office checks the manuscript against the scope of the journal, the manuscript template, the completeness of the required declarations, and the similarity report produced with Turnitin. Manuscripts that fail screening are returned within two weeks, with the reasons stated, and may be resubmitted once the defects have been corrected.
Editorial assessment. A handling editor evaluates the theoretical framing, the methodological soundness, and the contribution of the manuscript. A manuscript with a fundamental design flaw, or one whose claims cannot be supported by its data, is declined at this stage without external review.
External review. The manuscript is sent to at least two independent reviewers with demonstrated expertise in the topic. Reviewers assess relevance to the scope, theoretical grounding, methodological soundness, originality and significance of the contribution, coherence of the argument, currency and accuracy of the references, ethical conduct of the research, and clarity of the English. Reviewers are asked to complete their reports within four weeks.
The handling editor formulates a recommendation on the basis of the reports and submits it to the Editor in Chief. The possible decisions are accept, accept subject to minor revision, major revision with a further round of review, and reject. Where reviewer recommendations diverge substantially, a third reviewer is invited. The decision is sent to the corresponding author together with the full reviewer reports.
Authors returning a revised manuscript must supply a point by point response that states how each comment has been addressed and identifies where the change appears in the text. A reasoned disagreement with a reviewer is acceptable and will be considered on its merits. An invitation to revise is not a guarantee of acceptance.
Final decision and production. The final decision rests with the Editor in Chief and is recorded at an editorial board meeting. Accepted manuscripts proceed to copyediting, layout, and the assignment of a DOI, and authors are asked to approve the proof before publication.

The journal aims to communicate a first decision within eight weeks of submission and to publish accepted manuscripts in the next available issue. A manuscript that has been rejected is not reconsidered unless an appeal is upheld under the Complaints and Appeals policy below.

Publication Frequency

IJRETAL publishes two issues a year, in June and in December. Articles are published as a complete issue on the scheduled date.

Open Access Policy

IJRETAL provides immediate open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, and link to the full texts of all articles without charge and without registration. No embargo is applied.

Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain the copyright in their work and grant IJRETAL the right of first publication. All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0), which permits others to share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author and to the journal, that a link to the licence is provided, that any changes are indicated, and that derivative works are distributed under the same licence.

Authors are free to deposit the published version in an institutional repository, a subject repository, or a personal or departmental website, provided the deposited version carries the full bibliographic reference and the DOI of the published article. Where a manuscript reproduces material owned by a third party, the author is responsible for obtaining written permission before submission and for supplying the permission to the Editorial Office on request.

Archiving and Preservation

IJRETAL participates in the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN), which provides distributed archiving of the journal's content. The journal also maintains a local digital archive under the responsibility of the Faculty of Tarbiyah, IAIN Bone, and deposits article metadata with Crossref at the point of DOI assignment.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The International Journal of Research on English Teaching and Applied Linguistics, referred to below as IJRETAL, is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and takes all reasonable measures against publication malpractice in any form. The Editorial Board is responsible for preventing publication malpractice, and unethical behaviour is not tolerated.

Authors who submit to IJRETAL affirm that the content of the manuscript is original, that it has not been published previously in any language either wholly or in part, and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Editors, authors, and reviewers working with IJRETAL are expected to be fully committed to good publication practice and to accept the duties set out below.

The journal follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), published at https://publicationethics.org, and applies the COPE flowcharts when handling suspected misconduct. COPE guidance is revised from time to time, and the Editorial Board reviews this statement whenever a revision is issued so that the journal is never bound to a framework that has been withdrawn.

Publication and Authorship

All submitted papers are subject to a rigorous peer review process conducted by at least two reviewers who are experts in the area of the paper.
The review model is double blind.
The factors taken into account in review are relevance to the scope, theoretical soundness, methodological rigour, significance and originality of the contribution, ethical conduct of the research, readability, and quality of the language.
The possible decisions are acceptance, acceptance subject to revision, major revision with a further round of review, and rejection.
Where authors are invited to revise and resubmit, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
A rejected manuscript is not reviewed again unless an appeal is upheld under the Complaints and Appeals policy.
Acceptance is subject to the legal requirements in force concerning defamation, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
The same study must not be published in more than one journal, and a manuscript that divides a single study into several thin publications will be declined.

Responsibilities of Authors

Authors must certify that the manuscript is their own original work.
Authors must certify that the manuscript has not been published previously elsewhere.
Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Authors must participate in the peer review process and respond to editorial correspondence within the stated deadlines.
Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections when errors are identified.
Every author named in the paper must have made a substantial contribution to the research, and all named authors must have approved the submitted version.
Authors must confirm that all data reported in the paper are genuine and authentic, and must retain the raw data for at least five years after publication.
Authors must disclose to the editors any conflict of interest, whether financial, professional, or personal.
Authors must identify all sources used in the preparation of the manuscript and must obtain permission for any third party material reproduced.
Authors must disclose any use of generative artificial intelligence in the preparation of the manuscript, as set out in the policy on generative artificial intelligence.
Authors must report to the editors any error they discover in their published paper.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must keep all information concerning a manuscript confidential and must treat it as privileged. A manuscript under review must not be shared, quoted, or used to advance the reviewer's own work.
Reviews must be conducted objectively, and personal criticism of the author is not acceptable.
Reviewers must express their views clearly and support each judgement with reasons that the author can act on.
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that the authors have not cited, but must not require citation of the reviewer's own work in order to increase its citation count.
Reviewers must alert the Editor in Chief to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published work of which they have personal knowledge.
Reviewers must decline to review a manuscript where a conflict of interest arises from competition, collaboration, supervision, institutional affiliation, or any other relationship with the authors or their institutions.
Reviewers must not use generative artificial intelligence to produce a review report or to process the manuscript, since uploading a manuscript to an external tool breaches confidentiality.
Reviewers who cannot meet the agreed deadline must inform the Editorial Office promptly so that the manuscript can be reassigned.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors have full responsibility and authority to accept or reject a manuscript.
Editors are responsible for the content and the overall quality of the publication.
Editors should consider the needs of authors and readers when seeking to improve the journal.
Editors must safeguard the quality of the papers published and the integrity of the scholarly record.
Editors must publish corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern when these are needed.
Editors should have a clear picture of the funding sources of the research they publish.
Editors must base their decisions solely on the importance, originality, clarity, methodological soundness, and relevance of the paper to the scope of the journal, without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, institutional affiliation, or political outlook of the authors.
Editors should not reverse their own decisions, or overturn those of a previous editor, without serious reason.
Editors must preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
Editors must ensure that all research they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
Editors should accept a paper only when they are reasonably certain of its soundness.
Editors must act on any suspicion of misconduct, whether the paper is published or unpublished, and must make all reasonable efforts to obtain a resolution. Editors must not reject a paper on suspicion alone, and must establish evidence of misconduct before acting.
Editors must not allow a conflict of interest to arise between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.

Handling of Alleged Misconduct

Where an allegation of misconduct is made, whether by a reader, a reviewer, or a member of the Editorial Board, the Editor in Chief follows the relevant COPE flowchart. The corresponding author is informed of the allegation and is given a reasonable opportunity to respond before any decision is taken. Where the matter is not resolved, the Editorial Office may contact the institution of the author. Confirmed misconduct may lead to rejection of the manuscript, retraction of a published article, notification of the author's institution, and refusal to consider further submissions from the authors concerned for a defined period.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship is limited to those who have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data; who have drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; who have approved the version to be published; and who agree to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work. Those who do not meet all four conditions should be named in the Acknowledgements instead.

Every manuscript must include a statement of author contributions using the CRediT taxonomy. The order of authors and the identity of the corresponding author must be settled before submission. A request to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be made in writing by the corresponding author, must give the reason, and must be accompanied by the written agreement of all authors, including any author being removed. Requests received after acceptance are considered only in exceptional circumstances. Honorary authorship, guest authorship, and ghost authorship are forms of misconduct.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must disclose any financial or personal relationship that could be seen to influence the work reported, including employment, consultancies, grants, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications, and membership of an advisory board. Where there is no such interest, the manuscript must carry an explicit statement to that effect. Reviewers and editors are subject to the same obligation and must withdraw from handling a manuscript where an interest exists.

Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants must be conducted in accordance with recognised ethical standards. Manuscripts reporting such research must state the body that granted ethical approval and the reference number of that approval, or, where no formal review body exists at the author's institution, must state which institutional or professional guidelines were followed and how compliance was assured.

Authors must confirm that informed consent was obtained from every participant, that participation was voluntary, that participants were free to withdraw at any point without penalty, and that the confidentiality of participants and institutions has been protected. Where participants are minors, consent must be obtained from a parent or guardian in addition to the assent of the child. Identifying details, including real names, class identifiers, and institution names, must be removed or replaced by consistent pseudonyms unless written permission to identify has been obtained.

Policy on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

IJRETAL recognises that generative artificial intelligence tools are now widely used, and the journal permits their use for limited purposes provided that the use is disclosed and that responsibility remains with the authors.

An artificial intelligence tool cannot be listed as an author, because it cannot take responsibility for the work, cannot approve the final version, and cannot declare a conflict of interest.
Authors must include a declaration naming any tool used, its version, and the purpose of the use, for example language editing, translation, or code generation. Where no such tool has been used, the declaration must say so explicitly.
Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, the originality, and the integrity of every part of the manuscript, including every reference in the list. Fabricated or unverifiable references are grounds for immediate rejection, and their discovery after publication is grounds for retraction.
The use of generative tools to produce research data, to generate results that were not obtained, or to create or manipulate images constitutes research misconduct.
Reviewers and editors must not upload a manuscript, or any part of it, to a generative artificial intelligence tool, because doing so breaches the confidentiality of the review process.

Research Data Policy

Every manuscript must carry a data availability statement that indicates where the data supporting the findings can be found, whether the data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request, or which ethical or legal restriction prevents sharing. Authors are encouraged, but not required, to deposit anonymised datasets, instruments, and coding schemes in a recognised repository and to cite the deposit in the reference list. The Editorial Office may ask to inspect the underlying data at any stage of review or after publication where a question of integrity arises.

Preprints and Self Archiving

IJRETAL does not regard the posting of a manuscript on a recognised preprint server as prior publication. Authors who have posted a preprint must disclose this at submission and must give the persistent link. On publication, authors are asked to update the preprint record with the full reference and the DOI of the published article. Deposit of the published version in a repository is permitted under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

Where an error that affects the interpretation of an article is identified, the journal publishes a correction that is linked to the original article and carries its own DOI. Where the findings of an article are shown to be unreliable, whether through honest error or through misconduct, the journal publishes a retraction notice that states the reason and identifies who is retracting the article. Retracted articles remain available and are clearly marked as retracted, so that the scholarly record is preserved rather than erased. Where a serious concern is raised but the investigation is not complete, the journal may publish an expression of concern. All such decisions follow the COPE guidelines.

Complaints and Appeals

An author who wishes to appeal against an editorial decision should write to the Editor in Chief at ijretal@iain-bone.ac.id within thirty days of the decision, setting out the specific grounds of the appeal and responding in detail to the points raised by the reviewers. An appeal that rests only on disagreement with the decision will not be considered. Appeals are assessed by an editor who was not involved in the original decision, and additional review may be sought. The outcome of an appeal is final. Complaints about the conduct of the editorial process, about a member of the Editorial Board, or about publication ethics should be sent to the same address and are acknowledged within two weeks.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made on scholarly grounds alone and are not influenced by the publisher, by the host institution, or by commercial considerations. Members of the Editorial Board may submit to the journal, but a submission by an editor is handled in full by another editor who has no working relationship with the author, the submitting editor is excluded from the editorial system for that manuscript, and the reviewers are selected independently. The proportion of articles authored by members of the Editorial Board in any issue is monitored and kept low.

Policy of Screening for Plagiarism

Manuscripts submitted to IJRETAL are screened for plagiarism using the Turnitin similarity detection tool before they are sent to reviewers. The screening is carried out by a member of the editorial team. The similarity index must be below 20 per cent, calculated with the reference list and quoted material excluded, and no single source may account for more than 5 per cent of the text. A manuscript that exceeds these limits is returned to the author. IJRETAL rejects any manuscript found to involve plagiarism or redundant publication of the author's own earlier work.

Plagiarism is the presentation of another person's thoughts or words as though they were one's own, without permission, credit, or acknowledgement, or through failure to cite the source properly. It takes several forms, from literal copying to unattributed paraphrase. In judging whether plagiarism has occurred, the journal considers the following situations.

Literal copying. An author reproduces another author's work word for word, in whole or in part, without permission, acknowledgement, or citation. This is identified by comparing the source with the manuscript.
Substantial copying. An author reproduces a substantial part of another author's work without permission, acknowledgement, or citation. Substantial is understood in terms of both quantity and quality, quality referring to the relative importance of the copied passage within the work as a whole.
Unattributed paraphrase. An author takes ideas, words, or phrases from a source and recasts them into new sentences without citing or acknowledging the original. This is the form that is hardest to detect and is treated as seriously as literal copying.
Redundant publication. An author reuses substantial portions of their own previously published work without citation, or divides one study across several publications.

The same standard applies to the journal's own published material, including the pages that describe its policies and its scope.

Author Fees

IJRETAL does not charge authors at any stage. There is no submission fee, no article processing charge, no page charge, and no charge for colour figures. Publication is funded by the Department of English Education, Faculty of Tarbiyah, IAIN Bone.

Advertising and Direct Marketing

IJRETAL does not carry advertising, does not sell advertising space, and does not accept sponsorship that could influence editorial decisions. The journal does not send unsolicited invitations to submit and does not use agents to solicit manuscripts. Any message that appears to invite submission to IJRETAL in exchange for payment is fraudulent and should be reported to the Editorial Office.

Journal Contact

Editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Editorial Office, International Journal of Research on English Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Department of English Education, Faculty of Tarbiyah, Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Bone, South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Email: ijretal@iain-bone.ac.id
Journal website: https://jurnal.iain-bone.ac.id/index.php/ijretal