Institute of Central Europe/Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe/Code of publishing ethics of the “Yearbook of the Institute of Central and Eastern Europe”

Code of publishing ethics of the “Yearbook of the Institute of Central and Eastern Europe”

Introduction

  1. Editorial team of “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe” is driven by principles determined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the COPE Code of Conduct.
  2. When preparing and publishing scientific studies, it is important to define the standards of ethical conduct of the parties involved in the publication process: the author, editor, reviewer and the publisher. These parties should comply with the principles and fulfill the obligations set out by the Editorial Boards of scientific journals, which in turn should aim at the highest quality of publications, and also, guided by social responsibility, take into account reliability and integrity in the search, creation and transfer of knowledge, and indicating the origin of the information used and transferred.
  3. To that end the Code of Publishing Ethics of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe” (the Code) – a document intended to steer the activities of all persons involved in the publishing process of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”. The Code has been prepared so that its addressees can become acquainted with and follow the adopted principles, which are binding at all stages of the publishing process.

Components of the Code

The Code of Publishing Ethics consists of the following chapters:

  1. Objectives of the Code
  2. Addressees of the Code
  3. Principles of Publishing Ethics
  4. Verification procedure for paper and publication
  5. List of Annexes

Chapter I
Objectives of the Code

Code aims to:

  1. Improve the work of all members of editorial team and persons involved in the publication of articles submitted to the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”;
  2. Determine the criteria and values that should influence the ethical attitude of the authors, members of editorial team and all persons involved in the publication of papers in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”;
  3. Prevent practices that would not be in line with the editorial team’s assumptions and would have a negative influence on the result of the review or publication of articles in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”.

Chapter II
Addressees of the Code

The entities to which the provisions of the Code are addressed are all persons involved in the process of publishing scientific papers that appear in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”. Among them are:

  1. Authors – individuals who create the work;
  2. Scientific Board – an independent collegiate body composed of experts from various of social sciencies and humanities. The main objective of the body is to ensure the realization of journal’s mission and compliance with its thematic scope;
  3. Editorial Board – the team responsible for planning and implementing the publishing policy and approving the papers. The team determines whether the studies meet the requirements for papers published in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”, and also determines, implements and improves publishing policy;
  4. Reviewers – experts in a given field of knowledge, whose task is to verify the submitted papers, formally and substantively, indicating the need for its possible modification, and then issuing an opinion on its rejection or acceptance for publication;
  5. Editor-in-chief – a member of the Editorial Board who manages it and supervises the scientific level of the papers submitted for publication in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”.

Chapter III
Principles of Publishing Ethics

Principle 1 – Responsibility

  1. Responsibility is the ability to bear the consequences of one’s own actions. It also involves ensuring that persons from the professional environment, particularly colleagues, display the same attitude and are able to accept the results of their actions and omissions.
  2. The author should:
    1. inform about the existence of a conflict of interests, especially financial, which may affect the content of the article or its reception;
    2. state the contribution of individual authors to the creation of the article (including information on the authorship of concepts, assumptions, methods, research, as well as affiliations of individual authors). The primary responsibility lies with the person submitting the article;
    3. disclose sources of financial support from research institutions and other entities, granted for research whose results were used in the article (financial disclosure);
    4. immediately notify the Editor-in-chief and the Editorial Assistant when he/she notices an error or critical inaccuracy in his/her article that has been published;
    5. cooperate with the editorial team to remove or correct a mistake or critical inaccuracy;
    6. strictly follow editorial requirements.
  3. The Editorial Board should:
    1. define and make the review rules public so that the authors know what the evaluation criteria are;
    2. decide on the need to incorporate revisions, reject or accept the article for publication, tak ing into account its substantive value, originality, clarity of the presented argument and compliance with the thematic scope of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”;;
    3. be prepared to clarify and justify any doubts arising during the evaluation of the article;
    4. guarantee a high substantive level of articles, and, if necessary, include corrections, clarifications and apologies;
    5. make corrections without delay when significant errors are noted in the article.
  4. Reviewer:
    1. should notify the Editor-in-chief of the existence of a conflict of interest that prevents the review of the article;
    2. cannot judge the article if there is a conflict of interest;
    3. should notify the Editor-in-chief and withdraw from participation in the reviewing process if he/she considers that he/she is not qualified to assess the article or concludes that a review within a specified period is impossible to be met;
    4. should notify without delay the Editor-in-chief of any circumstances that constitute sufficient grounds for rejecting the article for publication;
    5. should evaluate only the substantive content of the article, and justify each remark in the review form.

Principle 2 – Integrity

  1. The Editorial Board ensures fair procedure without anyone being directly or indirectly favoured or discriminated against. Persons involved in the publication process cannot tolerate plagiarism or other unethical conduct.
  2. Editorial Board:
    1. should not publish articles that raise suspicions about the author’s integrity. In such a case, the Editor-in-chief is obliged to ask the person who claims to be the author to provide explanations;
    2. counteracts phenomena such as ghost-writing and guest authorship, and as part of these activities, requires the input of individual authors in the creation of the article (with information on the authorship of the concept, assumptions, methods, research, as well as affiliations of individual authors);
    3. cannot tolerate plagiarism or other unethical conduct and, if necessary, he/she should delete the article that was in violation of ethical principles;
    4. decides to inform about the detected unethical conduct of institutions employing authors, scientific societies and others.
  3. The author is only the one who made a significant contribution to the preparation of the concept or project of a paper and the performance of the research or interpretation of its results. Everyone who has made an appropriate contribution should be indicated as a co-author. Author should:
    1. ensure that:
      • all co-authors were named;
      • each of them got acquainted with the final version of the paper and accepted it;
      • all co-authors agree on the publication of the paper in the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”;
    2. indicate persons (e.g. in the form of an acknowledgements) who participated in the development of detailed information on legislation or case-law, as well as those who provided other specialist assistance in the preparation of the article;
    3. submit a declaration certifying that:
      • is the author of a certain article;
      • indicated possible co-authors of the article, as well as the authors of the concepts, assumptions, methods and research used in the article;
      • the final version of the text sent to the editorial team was accepted by him/her;
      • all sources used to prepare the article were shown in the form of footnotes and bibliographies, including their own published works;
      • all statements or fragments of other authors’ works cited in the article are appropriately highlighted and marked with footnotes;
      • all information used in the article were obtained in an ethical manner;
      • possible conflicts of interest and sources of financial support for research the results of which were used in the article, have been disclosed;
      • the article is an original work, it was not and will not be published elsewhere or submitted for publication in other journals or publishing houses.
  4. The work is considered to have been published earlier if one of the following applies:
    1. the text has already been published in full (including in the commemorative book or conference materials);
    2. the sent text uses large fragments of the author’s already published works.
  5. Recviewer:
    1. may not utilize for his/her own benefit the information and ideas which he/she got acquainted with during the evaluation of the work;
    2. without the consent of the Editorial Board may not disclose the work to third parties and may not discuss it with other experts;
    3. is obliged to maintain objectivity. The author’s personal criticism is unacceptable;
    4. he/she should present his/her point of view clearly, using meritorious arguments.

Principle 3 – Transparency

With the exception of the cases specified in the law and in the Code of Publishing Ethics of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”, transparency of all activities in the area of accepting, reviewing, editing and publishing works should be ensured. The principle of transparency obliges everyone involved in these activities to provide useful, factual, understandable and reliable information. Therefore, it is appropriate to:

  1. preserve the integrity of the documentation that was collected during the publication procedure;
  2. respond promptly to the authors’ comments by proposing appropriate solutions;
  3. inform authors about the specificity and course of the review process, as well as justify any change in its course;
  4. inform authors about each stage of the publishing process at which the submitted text is currently located, as well as about the conclusions of the review.

Principle 4 – Confidentiality

The principle of confidentiality regards the fact that all persons involved in the publication process are obliged to keep confidential all information that they obtained while performing their tasks. For this reason it is appropriate to::

  1. keep secret and treat as confidential the information about each paperjemnicy i traktować jako poufne informacje dotyczące każdej pracy;
  2. ensure the confidentiality of the review process by not revealing the author’s identity to reviewers and not disclosing the identity of reviewers to the author (this is ensured by the double-blind review process). The identity of authors and reviewers is protected;
  3. not disclose any information about the submitted article to anyone other than the author, candidate for a reviewer, reviewer or journal’s editor;
  4. do not use the author’s unpublished materials in his/her own research and papers without the written permission of the author. The information and ideas learned during the review are confidential and cannot be used for one’s own benefit;
  5. ensure fair review. Editors should make fair and impartial decisions;
  6. ensure an adequate level of data protection for authors and reviewers, in particular against access by third parties, and not to pass them on to other entities.

Chapter IV
Work verification and publication procedure

Texts prepared contrary to the “Guidelines for Authors” will not be accepted by the editorial team. All papers accepted by the editorial team – prepared in accordance with these “Guidelines” – are subject to verification. The texts are approved for publication after the review process has been successfully completed. The paper verification and publication procedure consists of the following stages:

  1. Initial acceptance and internal review.
    The initial substantive selection of texts, which are then subject to the review procedure, is made by the Editor-in-chief and the Deputy Editor-in-chief. If the article meets the applicable requirements, it is then forwarded to an internal review to the person designated by the Editor-in-chief. This stage lasts about 2 weeks.
  2. External review
    After obtaining a positive internal review, the Editor-in-chief or Deputy Editor-in-chief proposes external reviewers. At least two independent reviewers – experts in the field covered by the article – are appointed to evaluate each text. The so-called double-blind review – the author / writers and reviewers do not know each other’s identity (double-blind review). Depending on the length of the article, this stage lasts about 3 weeks. In exceptional cases, a third reviewer may be appointed. The review must end with one of the following conclusions:
    1. the article can be published;
    2. the article cannot be published;
    3. the article may be published subject to revisions (in this case, comments and suggestions from reviewers are sent to the author to make appropriate modifications).
  3. Language correction
    Prior to the publication of individual issues of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”, the articles are addressed for language and composition correction. This stage lasts from 1 to 3 months, depending on the papers in the Volume. After this work, the authors receive the article for author’s correction and approval within the prescribed period.
  4. Publication
    After making any minor remarks of the authors, the ready-to-print article is published in the Volume previously indicated by the Editor-in-chief.

Final Provision

Code of Publishing Ethics “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe” enters into force after
its approval by the Editorial Board of the “Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe”.