TOWARD A PUBLICATION ETHICS STANDARDS SYSTEM FOR VIETNAMESE SCHOLARLY JOURNALS: A STAKEHOLDER–ARTIFACT INTERACTION FRAMEWORK, MODULAR TAXONOMY, AND VALIDATION PROTOCOL

Publication ethics has become a practical infrastructure requirement for journals rather than a purely normative aspiration. Yet many scholarly journal ecosystems—particularly those dominated by university- and institute-based titles with lean editorial staffing—face an implementation gap: international guidance is widely available, while locally operational policy architectures are uneven and difficult to maintain under rapid digitalization and AI- assisted writing and reviewing. This paper proposes VPESS (Vietnam Publication Ethics Standards System), a modular standards blueprint designed for Vietnamese scholarly journals but transferable to similar contexts. The study adopts a design-science orientation and develops VPESS through: (i) a stakeholder–artifact interaction model that locates ethical risks at concrete workflow events, (ii) a normative synthesis of internationally used ethics benchmarks and publisher policies, and (iii) an operational “element engineering” step that translates principles into auditable requirements linked to evidence artifacts and escalation pathways. VPESS v1.0 comprises three modules (Authors, Editors, Reviewers), 27 themes, and 81 implementable elements, each tagged as core or advanced to support capacity-sensitive adoption. Beyond the taxonomy, we contribute an evaluation layer— two lightweight indices for policy coverage and workflow readiness—and a Delphi-based validation protocol for consensus calibration and iterative updating. The framework is positioned as a versioned community resource that can remain extensible as norms evolve (e.g., around AI tools and bilingual/translation publication practices), while improving interoperability with global publishing expectations.