CODE OF ETHICS

PUBLICATION ETHICS

Our journal functions according to the COPE Code of Conduct. Every member of the staff engaged in the process of publication (editor, author, reviewer and publisher) should be acquainted with the code of conduct standards complied in the “Family Forum” magazine.

EDITORS

1. Editor in the magazine is responsible for making decisions which articles sent to the magazine should be published. Editor takes responsibility for everything what is published. Editor’s decisions should be based on the editorial’s committee policy as well as law regulations including defamation, copyright or plagiarism. All decisions can be consulted with other editors and reviewers. Editor should ensure academic publications’ standards, exclude practices encroaching ethical and moral standards and should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed. Editor is obliged to assure that advertisements, reprints or other commercial profits do not have any influence in publishing process.
2. Editors should be ready to justify sent materials only in accordance with the merits-related content and shouldn’t exclude anyone according to their race, sex, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship or political opinions. Editor shouldn’t reveal any information about considered material to anyone apart from their author(s), reviewers or potential reviewers, or other editors in justified cases.
3. Editor and every member of the editorial staff should ensure that material remains confidential while under review to anyone except for the author(s), reviewers or potential reviewers, other editorial consultants (e.g. translators or language proof-readers) and the publisher.
4. Editor (or editors) should take all the reasonable steps to ensure the just and merit-related review. Before starting the process of taking the material into consideration, the editor should reveal any conflicts of interests ensued from competition, cooperation or other relations and connections with the author or company related to the reviewed material. In such case, the editor should ask co-editors or other members of the staff to start the peer-review process. Editors should have systems for managing conflicts of interests of the whole staff and should be able to publish corrections if any contradictory interests were revealed after the publishing of the material. If necessary, all the obligatory steps should be followed, e.g. the material’s withdrawal or publishing clarifications.

AUTHORS

1. Someone is regarded as an author if managed to contribute to the conception, analysis or interpretation of data; made the original version of the text or critical evaluation, bringing important intellectual contribution; made decision about the final published text version. Editors should ask for clarifications if the author committed a non-ethical deed, e.g. plagiarism, data forging or repeated publication (autoplagiarism). Editor should follow the procedure set out in the COPE. The further mechanism should include informing the authorities of the relevant academic unit, as well as refusal of publishing any materials of the reprehensible conducting author.
2. It is important to eliminate two kinds of ethical infringement threats: ghostwriting and guest authorship before sending the material. Ghostwriting means that the person who played the main role in creating the material, is concealed. Or in similar case, when the technical contribution doesn’t qualify someone to be the author and he/she is not mentioned in the publication. Guest authorship is a contradictory situation, when someone is mentioned as an author but his work is insufficient or of no use. Authors should ensure that their materials are completely original. If any parts, conceptions, construction elements of the text or other author’s words were used, it should be identified and quoted.
3. If more than one person writes the text or takes part in preceding researches, it is essential to mention and describe all the authors contributions (not the percentage input). It should be described in details, e.g. “Individual authors contributions: DF is responsible for researches’ conception, BK collected data. Both authors co-created the original text.” or “Individual authors gave declarations regarding to their part in researches; researches’ conception: the first author, data analysis: the second author; creating the text: both authors.” The published material should contain this information.
4. According to the COPE Code of Conduct, any changes about authorship are obliged to have written consent of all authors. Each consent should be written separately and sent via e-mail to the general editor of the journal. Each author’s consent for changing information about the authorship of the text given to publication or already published, needs to be a declaration in written form. The author-correspondent’s duty is to inform about unambiguous reasons of proposed changes and coordinating interactions between authors and the editor. If the situation is not resolved satisfactorily, the relevant academic unit should find the solution to this problem. Editors aren’t engaged in mediating in such cases. If this situation happens after publishing the material, the changes are published in the new article with the relevant verification.
5. Multiple, redundant or simultaneous publishing. The author shouldn’t publish the same researches in more than one journal or other original publication (e.g. monograph). Simultaneous publishing as regarded as a non-ethical action.
6. Acknowledgments should contain all the names of the authors who took part in some parts of researches. The main author (or the one who is responsible for the correspondence) should ensure that all co-authors are mentioned and there aren’t any inappropriate persons. The main author (or the one who is responsible for the correspondence) should ensure that all co-authors saw and confirmed the last version of the article and agreed for the publication.
7. In case the material is published and the author has found any mistakes or inaccuracies in the article, the author is obliged immediately to notify the editor and the publisher and cooperate with them in the withdrawal of the article or publishing the relevant erratum.

REVIEWERS

1. Reviewer should help the editor to make all the necessary decisions in publishing the material and with the communication with the author optimize the quality of the article.
2. Reviews should be objective and should be prepared personally by reviewers who agreed to did them. Unacceptable is the personal critique of the author. Reviewers should clearly represent their opinions (according to presented in the reviewer’s form options), using appropriate arguments to prove their thesis.
3. The reviewer should immediately inform the editor if he/she doesn’t have enough competence or doesn’t have enough time to finish the review. The editor should have enough time to find another reviewer.
4. Every material submitted to the journal remains confidential while under review. It can’t be revealed or discussed with anybody from the outside without the editor consent and justified reason.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

It is the situation when the author (or the unit he/she represents), reviewer or editor are become involved in economic or personal relations which inadequately influence their actions. Similar terms for such situations are: conflict of obligations or conflict of loyalty. The potential influence of such conflict on the research is assumed between: negligible, and: very high. Sometimes the person may be unconscious that there is the conflict of interest. The most common examples of the conflict of interests are connected with economic relations, such as employment, payment, paid consultations and expert assessments. These situations take a risk to undermine the journal’s credibility, as well as the authors’ or even the researches’. Conflicts of interests may also derive from personal relations, research rivalry, political or intellectual passions.

Every author or the reviewer who has the conflict of interest should inform the editor about it; in case of justified reason he/she should resign from appointed tasks.

EDITORS DECLARATION

In case of alleged or proven research shoddiness, dishonest publication or plagiarism, the publisher in close cooperation with the editor will take all the necessary steps to explain the situation and make correction to the article. It includes fast publishing of the erratum or, in justified case, complete withdrawal of the article from the journal.

 Translation Michalina Trybuś