Principles

Publishing

Principles of Publishing Ethics

  1. The journal abides by the standards of scientific and ethical excellency.
  2. The journal has a policy (see below) against malpractices such as plagiarism, self-plagiarism, ghostwriting, and guest authorship, and it counteracts such misconduct.
  3. The Publisher publishes articles on the basis of lincences granted by the Authors according to Polish Copyright Law (see the act in Polish).
  4. Authors are obliged to disclose the sources of funding of the research on which the submitted article is based, as well as contributions made by scientific and research institutions, associations and other entities (financial disclosure).
  5. Articles are evaluated purely on the basis of professional and linguistic competence. Race, sex, sexual orientation, religious affiliation or lack thereof, national origin, citizenship status and political beliefs of the Authors play no part in the process of manuscript evaluation.
  6. All submissions are processed confidentially by the Editorial Team. In particular, no information related to the submitted papers is revealed to any person who is not taking part in the editorial process. Individuals authorized to access such information are: the Authors, the Reviewers, the relevant Editors and the Publisher.
  7. The journal allows debate post publication through letters to the editor, as well as publishing the result of such a debate on the website.
  8. In special, justified situations, the journal makes it possible to correct, revise or retract articles after publication.
  9. In the case of publishing issues that are post-conference volumes or thematic volumes with external editors, for which the publisher will receive external funding (the so-called sponsored volume), the review procedure and publishing rules remain unchanged. In these cases, the selection of reviewers may be entrusted to the editors of the volume, who then present the reviewers for approval by the editorial team.

Malpractice Policy

  1. By submitting an article for publication, the Author claims it to be his or her own original work, unpublished before either as a whole or in significant parts, and not under consideration for publication in any other journal. The Author is asked to submit such a declaration.
  2. All persons named as authors or co-authors should have made a significant contribution to the paper. So-called “guest authorship” is not accepted. To be considered the paper’s Author, a person needs to fulfil all three criteria listed below:
    • they have significantly contributed to the research project or the concept on which the project is based, or have gathered or analysed or interpreted data obtained in the research;
    • they prepared the first draft of the manuscript or played a significant part in its preparation, or provided critical examination of its intellectual content; and
    • they have approved the final version of the article submitted for publication.
  3. All persons who have contributed to the final version of the paper should be listed as co-authors (the paper is not a product of “ghost-writing”).
  4. The submitting Author takes responsibility for the veracity of their statements regarding the absence of ghost-writers and guest authors.
  5. Manuscripts are checked for plagiarism and self-plagiarism using the available tools.
  6. In case of justified suspicions of scientific misconduct (plagiarism, self-plagiarism, unjustified duplication of articles or their fragments, false authorship attribution, non-attribution of due authorship, lack of transparency regarding a conflict of interest, falsification or fabrication of data), the Editorial Team will suspend publication or retract the already published article.
  7. All identified cases of scientific misconduct will be publicly exposed (this includes notification of the institution employing the author, relevant authorities and professional associations).

Complaints and Appeals

  1. All complaints and appeals will be thoroughly investigated by the editorial team.
  2. If the complaints are justified, the editorial team takes optimal corrective action.
  3. If it results from the law or ethics in force in Poland, the competent authorities will be informed about the violations.
  4. The president of the Programme Committee is informed about complaints and appeals.
  5. Complaints about the actions of the editorial team are forwarded to the president of the Programme Committee and to the Publisher.

Conflicts of interest

  1. All Authors must disclose any conflict of interest defined as a financial or personal relation with other individuals or organizations, activities or positions that can bias the submitted article. Such conflict includes but is not limited to the matters of familial kinship, employment, consulting services, honoraria, and funding.
  2. Conflict of interest also refers to any of the above-mentioned relations between Authors and the Journal’s Editors, Reviewers, Editorial Board, Editorial Office, as well as the Publisher.
  3. Authors are advised to disclose any potential conflict of interest before submitting the manuscript or during the editorial procedure. The Journal will also acknowledge the post-publication disclosure.
  4. Competing interest among the Journal staff, including Editors, Board, staff members and the Publisher, will be disclosed, if applicable, on the Journal’s website.
  5. Articles written by Editors, members of the Board or anyone else having a potential conflict of interest with the Journal (that needs to be disclosed) will be subject to the standard peer review procedure conducted by the other members of the Editorial Team and Reviewers who do not have such correlation with the Authors.
  6. Reviewers are advised to disclose any potential conflict of interest when they agree to review a manuscript or, if not yet known, after the publication.
  7. If a concern about a conflict of interest is made, the manuscript will be assigned to a different Editor or Reviewer.
  8. In the case of an acknowledged conflict of interest, the review procedures and the editorial decisions will be made independently of the disclosed information, based solely on the quality of the manuscript. More information can be found in the peer review section of the journal website.

Data and Reproducibility

  1. Research data typically refers to digital, machine-readable files and can be defined as the results of experiments and observations that validate the research. The Journal encourages Authors to post their data in standard formats that can be accessed and re-used by others.
  2. The Journal follows the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets (FAIR) principles . It supports data integrity and encourages Authors to share the data associated with their research and any other information that supports it. The Journal also encourages Authors to share their data on social media, repositories, and personal and institutional websites.
  3. The Journal supports the TRUST principles for digital repositories and encourages Authors to place the data in one of the repositories listed in OpenDOAR. Authors should also follow institutional and, if applicable, the funding body’s guidelines when choosing the platform to share their data.
  4. Authors are also encouraged to cite the data in their manuscript or indicate how to access the data by providing the DOI or access number.
  5. The Journal encourages Authors to share the VoR (Version of Record) and the AAM (Author Accepted Manuscript) together with the data associated with the research.
  6. The Journal encourages Authors to consult the journal’s publishing policies in order to determine how the published article can be shared.

Intellectual Property

Authors

  1. All Authors are required to accept the licence agreement terms and conditions. The Corresponding Author provides a signed agreement after acceptance.
  2. By submitting the manuscript, the Corresponding Author, also on behalf of all the Authors, agrees that:
    1. the work is original,
    2. it has not previously been published and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere,
    3. all copyrighted material (e.g. block quotation or extracts) is properly acknowledged and the Author has obtained permission to use it.
  3. The Journal is published in an Open Access model (CC BY 4.0), which allows for redistribution, reuse, and adaptation with attribution to the Authors. See the journal publishing policies.

Reviewers, Editors, Editorial Staff, Publisher

  1. The Journal treats submissions as confidential during the whole editorial process until the manuscript is published. All individuals involved in the process, including Reviewers, proceed with adequate caution, most importantly to ensure that the manuscript or any of its parts are not disclosed, stolen or plagiarised. This also refers to instances of stealing research ideas.
  2. Any allegations of theft or plagiarism must be substantiated and will be adequately investigated.

CC Licence

  1. The Journal publishes under the CC BY 4.0 licence (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) that allows to share and adapt the contents of the published material with appropriate attribution to the authors.
  2. Sharing is defined as copying or redistributing the article or its parts through any medium and in any format for any purpose.
  3. Adapting is defined as remixing, transforming, and building upon the published material for any purpose.
  4. Users can freely access and use the published articles only when appropriate credit is given to the original publication and on the condition that they will not apply any legal terms or technological measures to restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
  5. Authors retain the full rights to the published material but are asked to credit the original publication when their manuscript is reprinted.
  6. Authors grant the Journal a non-exclusive licence to publish their articles.
  7. If Authors are not permitted to retain the copyrights to the manuscript, they should contact the Editorial Office before submission.

Fees

  1. The Journal is published in an Open Access model. All published materials are freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication, without any charges (subscription, pay-per-view, etc.) or registration barriers.
  2. There is no fee for Authors to publish their manuscripts. The Journal does not charge an Article Processing Charge (APC), submission fees, the editing process fees or page charges.
  3. Readers are free to read and use the published materials as per the CC BY regulations.

Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication, and Fabrication

  1. Only original work can be submitted. All quotations need to be appropriately indicated and referenced.
  2. Any unacknowledged copying of large chunks of text, misattributing the original authorship (including ideas, arguments, results) will be treated as plagiarism. According to the Office of Research Integrity such practices include, but are not limited to theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and a substantial unattributed textual copying of another’s work: https://ori.hhs.gov/ori-policy-plagiarism.
  3. When paraphrasing or summarising publications by others, Authors have to proceed with due care.
  4. Text recycling is not allowed and will be treated as self-plagiarism.
  5. Duplicate/redundant publication occurs “when an author intentionally or unintentionally republishes his or her own work without informing the editor of the previous publication (…) and refers to publication of an article’s content, which has substantial overlaps with one΄s paper already published in print or electronically.” without proper references. (F. A. Habibzadeh and M. Winker, “Duplicate Publication and Plagiarism: Causes and Cures.” Notfall Rettungsmed 12, (2009), 415–418. DOI: 10.1007/s10049-009-1229-7).
  6. The Journal is part of the Similarity Check service (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/) and uses an anti-plagiarism tool (iThenticate) to verify the originality of the submitted manuscripts. In the event of a plagiarism detection, the Editors will immediately reject the manuscript and they may, depending on the case, take further steps.
  7. Already published articles will be retracted or marked as plagiarised.

In accordance to guidelines and practices of the University of Warsaw, the journal follows all proper RODO regulations as to protection of personal data.