Publication ethics and Publication malpractice statement

All parties involved in the publication of an article – the author, the editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board, reviewers and the publisher have a responsibility to comply with the publishing ethics outlined in the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Best Practice Guidelines (www.publicationethics.org).
Responsibilities of the author, Responsibilities of the editor and Responsibilities of the reviewer have been drawn up in compliance with these guidelines.

All articles are anonymously reviewed by at least two independent experts.

The decision on publishing an article is taken by the editor, liaising with the members of the editorial board, on the basis of the written review/ opinion submitted by reviewers on the scholarly quality of the article, i.e., admissibility for publication. Articles that unfoundedly discredit other persons, infringe copyright or contain plagiarism shall not be published.

The manuscripts submitted by the authors are assessed only as to their scientific content, without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality or political opinions of the author.

Neither the editor nor a member of the editorial board, nor an employee of the journal may disclose information on the submitted manuscript prior to the publication of the article to anyone else but to the respective author and reviewers.

The editor will take reasonable measures of response if information has been received on a violation of ethical norms in connection with a submitted article, reviewing thereof or a published article. In case of any form of malpractice, the editor will be guided by the information provided in the flowcharts published by the Committee on Publication Ethics on their website https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts.

In order to prevent malpractice, all submissions are screened by the Turnitin™ software.

 

Responsiblities of the editor

The editor is responsible for maintaining ethical standards and high scientific quality of the papers admitted for publication in the journal.

The editor evaluates the manuscripts before sending them to reviewers. The papers which do not correspond to the aims and scope of the journal are already rejected at this stage. The papers which need substantial changes for language and formatting may be rejected as well.

On the bases of the received double-blind peer reviews, the editor together with the editorial board members takes the final decision whether to accept or reject a paper.

The editor ensures that the reviewers are selected according to their expertise.

In case of being informed about the research misconduct (e.g. plagiarism, citation manipulation, data falsification or fabrication), the editor or the publisher will deal with it according to the COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations. The editor and the publisher will ensure that corrections or apologies are published when needed.

 

Responsibilites of the reviewer

The reviewer assists the editor in decision making about the inclusion of the article in the journal as well as may assist the authors in improving the article.

The reviewer should treat a manuscript as confidential proprietary information and may not use it in any way or disclose it to any third party, except for the editor or the deputy editor.

The reviewer is requested to evaluate:

• the originality of the manuscript and its international significance;
• the selection of theories and the analysis thereof, as well as the appropriate citing of the sources;
• the choice of research methods and application thereof;
• the analysis of the results and relevant conclusions made;
• the language use and formatting of the paper.

See the Review form.

The reviewer provides an objective analysis of the paper, as well as formulates recommendations to the author(s) for improving the quality of the paper.

The reviewer should notify the editor about any unexpected delays in the review process.

The reviewer should inform the editor about any existing conflict of interest prior to the reviewing process.

 

Responsibilities of the author

Authors ensure that their submissions are completely original. Plagiarism in all its manifestations is considered as being unethical behaviour in publishing and is unacceptable. If the authors have used the work of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted. The amount of references and sources should be sufficient to allow other persons to ascertain the objectivity of the research.

Authors must confirm that their submission is their original work, has not previously been published and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Submission of work that is fully or partly submitted or published in another journal is not acceptable.

Authors are obliged to clear all necessary copyright permissions to reproduce any kind of third-party material (figures, tables, texts, etc.) which is treated as a separate copyright item. Copies of each permission should be provided to the editor.

All sources of financial support should be disclosed in the Acknowledgements section. The author must disclose in the manuscript any possible significant conflict of interest (inter alia, the financial source of the research), which might be considered as being such that influenced the results of the research or the interpretation of the sources used.

Author ensures that all those, who have significantly contributed to the elaboration of the research described in publication are acknowledged as the authors or co-authors of the article. The author must ensure that all co-authors have approved of the final version of the article for publication and have agreed to accept it for publication in an open access journal. All authors agree that articles are available in open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0)  license.

Before submission of the article, the author ensures that it is well-structured, easily readable, proofread and formatted according to the Manuscript guidelines. In case of the need for substantial changes for language and formatting, the reviewers may reject the manuscript. Papers written in English language should preferably use British English. A mixture of different variants of English is not acceptable.

If the author discovers in his/her own published work a significant error or inaccuracy, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the editor or the deputy editor of the magazine about it. The author, in cooperation with the editor or the deputy editor and the publisher, ensures that the publication is retracted or corrected.