ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT  

Ethics and publication malpractice statement concerning copyright materials published in

Publishing House journals (compiled basing on COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics – guidelines) 

Publishing House, as a publisher of technical and scientifical journals, is obligated to support adherence to ethical standards in copyright materials, publishing high quality materials and prevent any scientific misconduct. Adherence to ethical rules is expected equally from all participants of the publication process: authors, editors, reviewers and the publisher. 

Editor’s responsibilities  
The Editor evaluates papers in a fair and objective manner, with no regard to the author’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political philosophy, ethnic or geographic origin. The Editor’s decision is made only on the basis of the article being analysed, taking into consideration its originality, scientific value, clarity, importance of the research or information for the science and technology community in a given domain. 

The Editor treats all papers received form the Authors as confidential and does not disclose them to persons that are not directly participating in the publication process (authors, editors, reviewers etc.) and does not use them for their own research purposes without the Author’s written consent. 

The Editor enables the Author to publish a factual discussion concerning a part of an article being reviewed. The Editor does not block the possibility of publishing negative research results. 

The Editor and the Editorial Board pay special attention to the applicable legal requirements concerning copyrights. 

Reviewer’s responsibilities 
The object of peer review is to assist the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board in making decisions concerning the article’s publication and to possibly help the Author in correcting or improving their work. 

The Reviewer should objectively evaluate if they are able to review a given article, taking into consideration the paper’s substance and a deadline determined by the Editorial Board. 

The Reviewer declines reviewing a given article if they identify a conflict of interests resulting from e. g. financial, personal or professional connections with article’s author(s), company or an institution associated with the paper. 

The Reviewer treats all papers received form the Editorial Board as confidential and does not disclose them to third parties or use them for their own research purposes without the Author’s written consent. The Review should be formulated objectively, clearly, unambiguously, without personal criticism. Critical notes should be supported by matter-of-fact statements. 

The Reviewer should notify the Editor of any similarity of an article being reviewed to any other papers that they know. 

Author’s responsibilities  
The Author submits exclusively the original and unpublished papers, stating that they have the rights to dispose these materials. Submitting a paper simultaneously to several publishing houses in unacceptable. 

An article should be prepared with appropriate citing and present methods, research and results clearly so that the Author’s reasoning can be followed and possible repeating of the research can be done by other researchers in a given domain. The Article should take into account the state of knowledge in a given domain, and the research results should be described and analysed extensively and objectively. If partial results have been previously published, the Author should inform the Editor and state it in the article. 

The Author declares that the research data used in the publication have not been fabricated or manipulated. The article’s authorship is limited to the persons who made significant contributions to the idea, objectives, methods, research execution and interpretation of results as well as the substantial development of the article. All persons who made substantial contributions to the article must be listed as co-authors. The Author submitting the paper should disclose contributions of each and every author and make sure that all co-authors accept the article’s submission to the journal and the final version of the article. 

The Author should inform the Editorial Board about significant errors found in the paper and cooperate with the Editor to correct them before publication or to make a correction in form of an errata. 

The Author should store raw data to make it accessible to the Editorial Board or the authorized institutions if inquired. 

The Author confirms, in justified cases, that all research were conducted in accordance with ethical and formal regulations applicable in a given domain of science (e.g. bioethics commission’s consent). 

The Author should disclose information concerning financing the publication, contributions made by scientific research institutions, associations and other parties, as well as the possible conflicts of interest connected to the article. 

Procedures in case of unethical practices  
In case of alleged misconduct in the published or submitted artcile, especially in case of plagiarisms such as ghostwriting or guest authorship, the Editor takes measures to clarify the situation; the first step is to ask the Author to comment it. In case of confirmed misconduct significantly breaching the ethics, the Editor takes further action, for example: publishing an information about the discovered misconduct and informing entities in which the Author is affiliated. Any signs of scientific misconduct are documented by the Editorial Board.