Focus and Scope

Section Policies

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

This journal employs a rigorous, multi-stage double-blind peer review (reviu) system designed to ensure the quality and scholarly suitability of all published manuscripts.

I. Initial Assessment and Desk Review

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial evaluation for adherence to the journal's submission guidelines and scope. Submissions failing to meet these preliminary requirements will be returned to the author for necessary revisions. The journal reserves the right to desk reject (reject without external peer review) manuscripts deemed unsuitable or out of scope at this stage.

II. Review Methodology: Double-Anonymized

The journal strictly adheres to a double-anonymized review policy. This protocol ensures complete mutual concealment of identities: the authors' identities are hidden from the reviewers, and the reviewers' identities are hidden from the authors. Reviewers communicate their assessments and recommendations exclusively through the editorial team (Editor-in-Chief/Associate Editor/Editorial Assistant). The journal maintains full confidentiality, as no information regarding the peer review process (including reviewer comments or identity) is made public alongside the final published article.

III. Review Requirements and Decision

• Standard Review: A minimum of three independent peer reviews is generally required before a manuscript can receive a decision of "Revise" or "Accept."

• Exceptions: Certain manuscript types, such as Editorials and Viewpoints, may be accepted without requiring two independent reviews. A third reviewer may be consulted if additional expertise is necessary.

• Final Authority: Reviewers provide comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) and Associate Editors/Editorial Assistant, who retain the final decision-making authority on all submissions, including those designated for special issues or collections.

• Reviewer Assignment: To uphold the integrity of the process, the journal assigns reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations for reviewers.

IV. Ethical Policy for Editorial Submissions

To maintain objectivity and prevent conflicts of interest, any manuscript submitted by an Editor or Editorial Board member will have its peer review process managed by alternative, non-submitting members of the Board. The submitting Editor or Board member will be strictly excluded from the decision-making process for their own manuscript.

Open Access Policy

Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat provides immediate open access, which means that all content is free of charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, provided they cite the original source. 

All articles published in Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Under this license, authors and readers are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited.

Authors retain full, without restrictions copyright to their work. Authors grant Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat the right of first publication. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Publication Frequency

Shihatuna: Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat is published three times a year, with issues released in April, August and December.

Publishing Ethics and Malpractice Statement

This following statement clarifies the ethical behavior of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in this journal, including the author, the editor, the reviewer, and the publisher (Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara).

Our ethic statements are based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Duties of Editors

Publication decisions
The editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.
The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play
An editor at any time evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions
Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of Objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgment of Sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Originality and Plagiarism
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgment of Sources
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the Paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or another substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Correction

Shihatuna provides a correction for errors that occur after the proofreading process. This includes writing, typing, editing, or publication errors (e.g., a misspelling, a dropped word or line, or mislabeling in a figure) in a published article. The corresponding authors need to send a direct email to the editorial office(shihatuna@uinsu.ac.id) to request an erratum, and the correction will be made based on the last proofread version provided, without altering the overall basic results or conclusions of the published article. We do not permit the addition of new data. For corrections of a scientific nature or issues involving authorship, all disputing parties must agree in a written agreement to the correction of the publication. For the omission of an author's name, letters must be signed by the authors of the article and the author whose name was omitted. The editor who handled the article will be consulted if necessary.

Retraction

The retraction process for this journal follows the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Please check the guideline here.

Author Fees

This journal apply the following article processing charge (apc). Authors are required to pay an Article Fee (Rp 350.000) as part of the submission process to contribute to editorial and administrative work, peer review management, typesetting and formatting and online hosting and digital preservation.

Generative Artificial Intelligence Policies

Shihatuna: Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat upholds the highest standards of academic integrity, originality, and transparency throughout the publication process. This policy defines the ethical boundaries and specific responsibilities regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies for authors, editors, and reviewers.

A. Author Responsibility

Authors retain ultimate control over and responsibility for the novelty, accuracy, and integrity of their submitted work.

1. Permitted Use: Authors may utilize AI tools solely for language editing, grammar and spelling correction, enhancing clarity, and restructuring text under direct human oversight.
2. Prohibited Use: AI tools must not be used to generate substantial manuscript content, create or manipulate research data, fabricate references, or submit AI-generated text as original work.
3. Mandatory Disclosure: Authors must explicitly state any AI tool used and its specific role within the Acknowledgments or Methods section of the manuscript.
4. Accountability: Authors remain fully accountable for the validity and originality of the entire manuscript and must promptly respond to editorial inquiries regarding AI usage.

Note: Violations of these guidelines may result in immediate desk rejection, post-publication retraction, or further disciplinary ethical actions.

B. Editor Responsibility

Editors act as the primary custodians of the journal’s publication ethics and quality control.

1. Screening and Detection: Editors are responsible for evaluating submitted manuscripts for unauthorized AI use, utilizing specialized AI-detection software and rigorous editorial assessment where appropriate.

2. Enforcing Transparency: Editors must ensure that authors provide clear, honest, and comprehensive disclosures regarding AI assistance prior to peer review.

3. Ethical Adjudication: Editors reserve the right to request clarification, issue a desk rejection, or halt the publication process if there is verifiable evidence of data manipulation or substantial text generation by AI.

4. Confidentiality Safeguards: Editors are strictly prohibited from uploading authors' manuscripts into generative AI tools for editing, summarizing, or decision-making purposes, thereby protecting the author's intellectual property.

C. Reviewer Responsibility

Reviewers ensure that the evaluation of manuscripts is conducted with strict confidentiality, critical expertise, and objective judgment.

1. Strict Prohibition on AI-Driven Reviewing: Reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts, abstracts, or any part of the text into generative AI platforms to generate peer-review reports, summaries, or recommendations. Doing so constitutes a severe breach of confidentiality.

2. Reporting Suspected Malpractice: If a reviewer detects anomalies, unnatural phrasing, or structural patterns suggesting undisclosed AI-generated content or fabricated data, they must immediately report these concerns to the Editor.

3. Human-Centric Evaluation: The peer-review process must rely entirely on the reviewer's personal scientific expertise, critical thinking, and professional judgment, independent of automated machine intervention.

Plagiarism Policy

The Editor may make use of Turnitinfor checking the originality of submissions received.  Definition: Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Policy: Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source. Any text of an amount exceeding fair use standards (herein defined as more than two or three sentences or the equivalent thereof) or any graphic material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and, if feasible, the original author(s) and also requires identification of the source; e.g., previous publication.

1. Every manuscript submitted to the Shihatuna: Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat must be free from content containing plagiarism. Authors are advised to use plagiarism detection software to check content similarities. Editors detect plagiarism in articles submitted to journal using anti-plagiarism software (Turnitin). 
2. The Editorial Team of the Shihatuna: Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat recognizes that plagiarism is unacceptable. This condition establishes a specific action policy (punishment) if plagiarism is identified and indicated in an article submitted for publication in the Shihatuna: Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat.

3. We use Turnitin to evaluate the similarity index and then the editor decides the case of possible plagiarism (Similarity report will be provided to the author). Editorial board has passed the following actions:

   A. Similarity Index above 40%: Article Rejected (due to poor citation and/or poor paraphrasing, article outright rejected, NO RESUBMISSION accepted).
   B. Similarity Index (15-40%): Send to the author for improvement (provide correct citations to all places of similarity and do good paraphrasing even if the citation is provided).
   C. Similarity index Less than 15%:  Accepted or citation improvement may be required (proper citations must be provided to all outsourced texts).
   In cases 2 and 3: The authors should revise the article carefully, add required citations, and do good paraphrasing to outsourced text. And resubmit the article with a new Turnitin report showing NO PLAGIARISM and similarity less than 15%.

Reviewer Response Letter

Please download and use this REVIEWER RESPONSE LETTER  to address reviewer feedback for your manuscripts. A reviewer response letter is used to provide clear, structured, and professional replies to all comments raised by the reviewers during the manuscript evaluation process. This document helps both editors and reviewers understand how each piece of feedback has been addressed in the revised version of the manuscript.

Authors are expected to use the reviewer response letter to:

• Respond systematically to every reviewer comment, including both major and minor points.

• Explain the revisions made to the manuscript, including the specific locations of the changes (e.g., page numbers, paragraphs, or line numbers).

• Provide clarification or scientific justification when a particular comment cannot be accommodated or does not require modification.

• Demonstrate that the authors have carefully considered the reviewers’ feedback and have undertaken substantive revisions as appropriate.

Open Access, Licensing and Copyright Policy

Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat provides immediate open access, which means that all content is free of charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, provided they cite the original source. 

All articles published in Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Under this license, authors and readers are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited.

Authors retain full, without restrictions copyright to their work. Authors grant Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat the right of first publication. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Shihatuna : Jurnal Pengabdian Kesehatan Masyarakat

Published by :
Fakultas Kesehatan Masyarakat, Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara Medan

Editorial Office:
Jl. IAIN No.1, Gaharu, Kec. Medan Tim., Kota Medan, Sumatera Utara 20235