Rights, obligations and responsibilities of authors:

• Reliability - the authors are responsible for presenting their research in the article in a fair and honest manner. The authors of submitted papers are always obliged to indicate the publications they have used for writing the article. The papers should contain sufficient information to enable identification of data sources, as well as verification of conclusions drawn and possible repetition of the analyses.
• Originality – the authors should only provide original articles that have not been submitted for review or published in another journal or book publication.
• Confidentiality – the author-editor relations are based on confidentiality. The authors should keep the communication with the Editorial Board of the journal confidential. Th authors, especially in the case of multi-author articles, should indicate the communication channel (e-mail address) through which communication will take place during the review and publication process.
• It is the responsibility of those who have done the research work (researchers), not those who publish the work (editors, publishers), to identify and the authors and other persons involved in research and/or the creation of the article, as well as the sources of funding. Researchers should determine which persons have made sufficient contributions to the work to recognise them as authors of the article. The persons who have contributed to research or to the creation of an article but whose contribution was not large enough to be recognised as authorship should be indicated in the acknowledgments. All persons who qualify for authorship or acknowledgements should be indicated. Any person identified as the author or indicated in the acknowledgements should meet relevant requirements. The final basis for identifying the authors is the scope of liability for the submitted work.

 

Rights, duties and responsibilities of reviewers:

• Timely delivery of a written, unbiased, accurate and constructive review containing information on the scholarly value of the article and the reasons behind the final recommendation.
• An assessment of the reliability, originality and scholarly significance of the article and the possible interest to the readers of the journal.
• Final recommendation submitted to the Editorial Board with suggestions of possible improvement to the author.
• Avoiding personal comments or criticism.
• Maintaining the confidentiality of the review process: not disclosing or communicating information about the reviewed article and its content to third parties.
• Notifying the editor that it is impossible to prepare a review within the prescribed period and the names of potential other reviewers.
• Informing the editor of a potential personal or financial conflict of interest; refraining from reviewing if there is a potential conflict.
• Following the editor’s instructions concerning the standards that the Editorial Board adopted for reviews with regard to the scope, content and quality of the reviews.
• Indication of any ethical suspicion, such as a significant similarity between the peer-reviewed article and another text already published or submitted for review in another journal.
• Refraining from direct contact with the author.

 

Rights, duties and responsibilities of editors (and, if applicable, of the Scholarly Board) include:

• Providing guidance to authors on preparing and submitting articles.
• Treating all authors objectively, fairly, honestly, transparently and politely.
• Providing instructions on ethical principles at each stage of publication and continuous monitoring of compliance with the standards adopted.
• Formulation and publication of the conflict-of-interest policy for all persons involved in the publication process, including editors, authors and reviewers.
• Protection of the confidentiality of the article.
• Using tools to verify texts for unauthorised borrowings (anti-plagiarism system).
• Ensuring ethics and integrity in academic publishing; following the principles formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org
• Investigating cases of detected or reported unethical behaviour or suspected forbidden practice in research and/or scholarly publication (plagiarism, ghostwriting, guest authorship, falsification of research, use of copyrighted material without permission, etc.). Reports of ethical misconduct in academic publishing can be made by a member of the editorial board, a reviewer, a reader of the journal or any other person who has reasonable suspicions about the integrity of the text.
• Requesting specialist legal assessment of a situation in terms of unfair publication practices.
• Publishing appropriate corrections, errata, explanations, apologies and corrigenda where necessary.
• Withdrawing the reported text from publication in the event of suspected unfair practices; taking clarifying and corrective steps and, if necessary, legal action; in the case of already published issues of the journal, withdrawing the reported article from the website and publishing information about the reasons for withdrawal on the website and additionally in the next printed issue of the journal; informing the author, the institution to which the author is affiliated, the reviewers and the persons affected, as well as the ethics regulators.
• Establishing and applying a methodology of effective and quick review by independent experts.
• Making editorial decisions within a reasonable time and communicating them in a clear and constructive manner.
• Counteracting significant delays in the review and/or publication procedure.
• Establishing an appeal procedure against the decisions of the reviewers and editors of the journal.
• Clear communication of standards and editorial rules.
• Selecting reviewers on the basis of the compatibility of the manuscript content with their competences, knowledge and research interests.
• Establishing a review procedure to ensure confidentiality and timeliness.
• Providing written, clear instructions to reviewers on the expectations as to the scope, content, quality and timeliness of the review in order to obtain an honest, constructive and reliable assessment of the reviewed article.
• Ensuring that reviewers inform about potential conflicts of interest and refrain from reviewing if they cannot remain impartial.
• Setting realistic deadlines to give reviewers adequate time for preparing reviews.
• Taking the final decision on accepting or rejecting the manuscripts.
• Documenting all manifestations of scholarly unreliability, especially violations and breaches of ethical principles.