The Publisher’s Code of Ethics sets out the core principles for all involved parties: authors, reviewers, editors and encourages to help them with ethical issues that emerge during their professional editing practice and promote the highest professional standards.
Board of Editors exercises general supervision over the publication process guided by the principle of confidentiality, impartiality and neutrality and promotes high ethical standards and effective methods of conflict and dispute resolution.
The Editorial Board comprises of Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board members. Editor-in-Chief remains the chairperson of the board, and is empowered to take the final decision in any regard.
Editorial Board is obliged to:
- Promote intellectual independence and freedom of expression regardless the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief or ethnic origin of the authors
- Strive for quality through regular collecting and analysing opinions, suggestions and encouraging critical debate both authors, reviewers and readers to prevent irregularities.
- Maintain the highest integrity of academic records, assist authors and reviewers with the process of meeting the requirements.
- Develop systems of authorship or co-authorship verification promoting good practices and prevention of abuse (i.e. ghost and guest authors).
- Respect for confidentiality and not to disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone than the author, reviewers and the publisher.
- Decide which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published based on the substantive value of the content and appropriately with the thematic profile of the journal.
- Process manuscripts promptly and cooperate with the publishing house at each stage of the work.
- Exclude commercial purposes that breach intellectual or/and ethical standards.
- Provide verification, by suitably qualified reviewers, all of the published reports and opinions of research (including, as appropriate, statistical reviewer).
- Provide appropriate reviewers, free from conflicts of interests, related to the subject matter in a manner ensuring reliable assessment of a material for publication.
- Act in accordance of policies of the journal’s editorial board and legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism by apply (including antiplagiarism system) (e.g. software searching relevant/similar titles) in the submitted manuscript.
- In case of suspected misconduct in making decisions regarding acceptance/rejection of publishing material editors should act appropriately and use all reasonable endavours to resolve the problem.
- Prevent/explain and/or disclose conflicts of interest among workers, authors, reviewers and members of Board.
Ethical Code for Authors
Submission of a manuscript is equal to the author’s copyright declaration and that the work is free from legal defects, and implies the author’s consent for it to be published and disseminated (publication unlimited in time and space as well as grants permission to free copies and online accessibility).
Author(s) is obliged to:
- Present original, written by himself/herself work.
- Declare that the submitted manuscript is original, not published previously, neither in whole nor in part, in any language, and has been submitted to the journal.
- Indicate the sources of any images or figures used if they are not originals, show the reproduction permit.
- Provide all needed in the process of publication copyright valuers and permissions to use third parties properties (e.g. text, translation, figure etc..), third parties properties.
- List co-authors who have made substantial contribution do the submitted manuscript.
- To prevent the phenomena of ‘guest’, ‘gift’ or ‘ghost’ authorship the authors should ensure they fulfill the criteria to be listed as authors and none of them is disregarded.
- Properly assign authorship and design one of the authors responsible for contact and transmission of information between the Editorial Board and co-authors, and should be involved in key decisions making relating to publication (e.g. review responses).
- Describe the applied methods clearly and unambiguously so that the findings can be confirmed by others.
- Present clearly and accurately cited and annotated sources.
- Cooperate with editors in issuing corrections and/or retractions when required.
- Disclose all sources of research funding, including direct and indirect financial support, supply of equipment or materials, and other support (such as specialist statistical or writing assistance).
Ethical Code for Peer Reviewers
To evaluate an article at least two reviewers are invited to evaluate an article. In case of controversy or disagreement regarding the merits of the work, an additional review may also be solicited or one of the journal’s editors might give an evaluation. In addition to fairness in judgment and expertise in the field, peer reviewers have important responsibilities toward authors and editors. Reviewers whose expertise most closely matches the topic of the paper are chosen and invited to review the paper.
In agreeing to cooperate, a reviewer agrees to the following code of conduct:
- Provide written version of professional, objective, and thorough review on the scholarly merits and the value of the evaluated work.
- Avoid conflicts of interest stemming from relationship with the author that may bias an unfair approach to a manuscript, and declare any competing interests.
- Inform the editor should they be unqualified to review the manuscript.
- Not to retain copies of submitted articles or use the knowledge of their content for any purpose unrelated to the peer review process.
- Respect the principle that criticism of a manuscript should not extend to personal criticism of the author/s.
- Respect the independence of authors.
- Review each manuscript with impartiality, without regard to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, institutional affiliation, or other similar bias.
- Express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and not be defamatory or libelous.
- Act promptly, adhere to the instructions for completing a review and submitting it in a timely manner.
- Treat the manuscript in review as a confidential document, i.e. not to share, discuss with third parties or disclose information from the reviewed paper.
- In scope not regulated by the Regulation hereby, relevant Copyright laws are applicable and the procedure set out in the COPE is followed.
