About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Journal of Buddhist Psychological Counseling (JBPC) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on the development of knowledge, research, and professional practice in the fields of psychology, counseling, and Buddhist studies. JBPC serves as an academic platform for researchers, lecturers, mental health practitioners, and students to integrate modern psychology with Buddhist values.

The scope of this journal includes:

Mental Health & Integrative Psychotherapy: Studies on the integration of Buddhist teachings (Metta, Karuna, Satipatthana) with contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches.
Mindfulness Interventions: Research on mindfulness-based interventions and their applications in clinical and non-clinical settings.
Emotional Well-being & Resilience: Studies examining emotional well-being, resilience, and character development based on noble values.
Character Education & Spiritual Growth: Research on character education frameworks and spiritual development within Buddhist contexts.
Cross-Cultural Counseling: Studies on counseling practices that bridge Buddhist wisdom and diverse cultural backgrounds.

JBPC is published twice a year (May and November). Each article is assigned a DOI through Crossref and undergoes a double-blind peer review process by national and international reviewers. After two years of consistent publication, the journal will be submitted for national accreditation through ARJUNA (Sinta).

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to this journal must follow the focus, scope, and author guidelines. Submitted manuscripts must demonstrate scientific merit or novelty appropriate to the focus and scope. All manuscripts must be free from plagiarism; authors are strongly encouraged to use plagiarism detection software. The editorial team checks similarity using Turnitin.

Each research article undergoes a double-blind review by at least two expert reviewers. Reviewers provide scientific and valuable comments to improve the manuscript quality. The final decision regarding article acceptance is made by the Editors based on reviewer comments. Publication sequence is determined by the Editor-in-Chief, considering order of acceptance, geographical distribution of authors, and thematic issues.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. JBPC is an open access journal, meaning all content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full text articles without prior permission from the publisher or author, in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Our publication ethics and malpractice statement are based on COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. This journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

Duties of Editors

Fair play and editorial independence: Editors evaluate manuscripts based on academic merit and relevance to the journal's scope, without regard to author characteristics. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over editorial content.

Confidentiality: Editors and staff will not disclose information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and publisher.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Editors will not use unpublished information for their own research without explicit consent and will recuse themselves from manuscripts where conflicts exist.

Publication decisions: The Editor-in-Chief decides which manuscripts to publish based on validation, importance, reviewer comments, and legal requirements.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer review assists editors in making decisions and helps authors improve their manuscripts.

Promptness: Reviewers unable to assess a manuscript promptly must notify the editors immediately.

Confidentiality: Manuscripts are confidential documents and must be treated as such.

Standards of objectivity: Reviews must be objective, with clear, supported observations.

Acknowledgement of sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work not cited by authors.

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards: Authors must present accurate accounts of their work and objective discussions of its significance.

Originality and plagiarism: Authors must submit entirely original works; all forms of plagiarism are unethical and unacceptable.

Multiple, duplicate, or concurrent submission: Papers describing the same research should not be published in more than one journal.

Authorship: Only persons who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest that could influence results or interpretation.

Fundamental errors: Authors discovering significant errors in their published work must promptly notify the journal.

Author Guidelines

Manuscripts are written in English or Indonesian and will first be reviewed by the editorial board.

Formatting requirements: Submit as Word document (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf). Manuscript should consist of at least 5000 words, single column on A4 paper, using 12 pt Times New Roman. The manuscript must be original and have potential contributions to scientific advancement.

Manuscript structure (in this order): Title, Author's Name, Affiliation, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgement, References (APA style using Mendeley/Endnote/Zotero).

Publication Frequency

JBPC is published twice a year: May and November. Each issue consists of 5–8 rigorously selected articles. Volume numbering begins with Vol. 1 (2026). Publication is conducted online (online first if needed).

Copyright Notice

Authors transfer copyright to the journal upon publication. All published articles are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, and adaptation in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Author Fees

Article Submission	Free (0.00 IDR)
Article Publication (if accepted)	Free (0.00 IDR)

Policy on the Use of GenAI

Authorship and accountability: AI cannot be an author. Authors remain fully responsible for all manuscript content. Human oversight is required.

Transparency and disclosure: Authors must disclose AI tool names, purposes, and extent of use in the Acknowledgements or Methods section.

Permissible uses (with disclosure): Language and grammar refinement, drafting support (non-critical sections), brainstorming, literature summarization (with verification).

Prohibited uses: Generating fictitious content, data, or references; plagiarism; violating confidentiality.

Consequences of misuse: Rejection, retraction, author ban, or notification to institutions.