Ethics of Publication

Ethics of Publication

Our journal operates in accordance with the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/). All parties involved in the publication process (journal editor, author, reviewer, and publisher) should familiarize themselves with the ethical standards applied by the journal.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for decisions regarding the publication of submitted articles and is accountable for everything published in the journal. When making these decisions, the editor may be guided by the editorial committee's policy and legal requirements regulating issues such as defamation, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.

The editor may consult with other members of the editorial team and reviewers when making publication decisions. The editor should adhere to the standards accepted in academic publications, exclude practices that violate ethical and intellectual norms, and always be prepared to publish corrections, explanations, retractions, and apologies if necessary.

The editor is obligated to ensure that advertising, reprinting, or other commercial revenue of the journal does not influence editorial decisions. The editor or editors should evaluate submitted articles for content regardless of the author's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political preferences.

The editor does not disclose any information about the reviewed article to anyone other than the author(s), reviewers, or potential reviewers, and when necessary, other members of the editorial team or editorial committee.

The editor (or editors) should seek to ensure fair and substantive peer review. Before commencing the article review process, the editor should disclose any conflicts of interest arising from competition, collaboration, or other relationships with each author, company, or (if applicable) institution related to the articles proposed for publication. In the event of such situations, the editor should instead ask co-editors or other members of the editorial team to undertake the article review process.

The editorial board should require all collaborators to disclose existing conflicts of interest and publish corrections when conflicting interests are disclosed after the article is published. If necessary, other appropriate actions, such as withdrawing the publication or publishing a correction, should be taken.

Authors

An author of an article is considered to be a person who significantly contributed to the conception of the work, the analysis and interpretation of data, drafted the original version of the text, or critically reviewed it, making a significant intellectual contribution, and made the final decision on the version of the text to be published.

In case of the discovery that an author of a publication has engaged in unethical behavior, such as plagiarism, data falsification, or the re-publication of a previously published work or its part (self-plagiarism), the Editorial Board will ask for clarification and then take appropriate steps as outlined by COPE guidelines.

At a later stage, this may involve notifying the author's academic unit authorities, rejecting the article, and refusing to publish any texts by the author acting unethically.

Before submitting an article, authors should eliminate the threat of two types of ethical violations related to authorship, defined as ghostwriting and guest authorship. Ghostwriting refers to situations where a person who significantly contributed to the publication is not disclosed as an author or, in the case of a strictly technical contribution not qualifying the person as an author, their contribution is not described in the publication. Guest authorship constitutes the opposite situation, where a person is listed in the publication as an author, although their contribution to the text is insufficient or non-existent.

Authors should ensure that their written work is entirely original. If authors have used the works, concepts, text construction elements, or words of other authors, they should be properly cited or quoted. If more than one person participated in the research preceding the writing of the article, the article should include information about the nature of each author's contribution (not the percentage contribution), e.g., "Contribution of individual authors: DF is responsible for the research concept; BK collected the data. Both authors jointly created the original text of the article"; or "Individual authors made the following statements regarding their participation in the research process: research concept: first author; data analysis: second author; text creation: first author and second author." This information will be included in the published text.

According to COPE guidelines, any changes to authorship information require the written consent of all authors. Each author should express such consent separately, in an email sent directly to the editor-in-chief of the journal. The consent of each author to change the authorship information of the submitted or already published article must take the form of a written statement. The duty to provide a clearly defined reason for the proposed change (or changes) and to coordinate the interaction between the authors and the editor-in-chief rests with the corresponding author. If the authors fail to reach an agreement, they should appeal to the authorities of their respective units, which are responsible for making the final decision. The editorial office does not mediate in such disputes. If the described procedure concerns an already published article, a change in authorship information occurs in the form of publishing a new article containing the correction.

Multiple, unnecessary, or simultaneous publication. An author should not publish scientific works describing the same research in more than one journal or other primary publication (e.g., a chapter in a monograph). Simultaneous submission of the same article to more than one journal is an unethical practice. Persons who participated in some parts of the research, which resulted in an article, should be mentioned in the "Acknowledgments" section. The corresponding author (or the author to whom correspondence should be directed) should ensure that all co-authors (according to the above definition) are included as co-authors of the article and that there are no inappropriate individuals among the co-authors. The corresponding author (or the author to whom correspondence should be directed) should also ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the article and agreed to its publication. If an author discovers significant errors or inaccuracies in their own work that has been published, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with them to withdraw the article or publish the appropriate erratum.

Reviewers

The review assists the editor (or editors) in making editorial decisions and, through communication with the author, also helps the author optimize the quality of the article. Reviews should be conducted objectively, personally, by reviewers who have agreed to undertake this task. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Reviewers should express their opinions clearly (in the form of choosing one of the options indicated in the review form), using appropriate arguments to support their claims.

Any person invited to review who lacks the competence to review the article or knows that they will not be able to complete the review within the designated time should immediately inform the editor so that they can redirect the review request to another specialist.

Each reviewed article must be treated as a confidential document. It cannot be disclosed or discussed with third parties without the editor's permission and without a legitimate need.

Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest occurs when an author (or the unit they represent), a reviewer, or an editor involved has economic or personal relationships that inappropriately affect their actions. Other related terms for this phenomenon include a conflict of obligations and a conflict of loyalty. The potential impact of a conflict on scientific judgment ranges from negligible to very significant. A conflict of interest can also occur when the affected person is unaware of it.

Obvious examples of conflicts of interest are associated with economic relationships, such as employment, receiving remuneration, conducting paid consultations, and expert opinions. Situations of this kind also carry the greatest risk of undermining the credibility of the journal, authors, and even scientific research itself.

PUBLISHER'S STATEMENT

In cases of presumed or confirmed scientific misconduct, dishonest publication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the journal editor, will take all appropriate steps to clarify the situation and make corrections to the specific article. This includes promptly publishing an erratum or, in justified cases, fully retracting the text from the journal. [i] The inspiration for drafting the journal's ethics was drawn from the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics and the website http://lse.ptl.info.pl/informacje-dla-autorow/.