Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice

For all parties involved in the act of publishing (the journal editor(s), the author, the peer reviewer and the publisher) it is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour. The ethics statements for Neofilolog are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

DUTIES OF EDITORS

Monitoring the ethical standards: Editorial board is monitoring the ethical standards of scientific publications and takes all possible measures against any publication malpractices.

Fairness: An editor at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Publication decisions: The editor is responsible for deciding which of the submitted articles should or should not be published. The decision to accept or reject a paper for publication is based on its importance, originality, clarity, and its relevance to the scope of the journal.

Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflict of interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent. 

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS

Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer reviews assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its timely review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.

Confidentiality: All manuscript received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except those authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with appropriate supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources: Reviewers should identify the relevant published work that has not been cited by authors. Any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper should be reported to the editor.

Disclosure and conflict of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

 DUTIES OF AUTHORS

Reporting standards: Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Data Access and Retention: Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Originality and Plagiarism: The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. 

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication: An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgement of Sources: Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. 

Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

In order to prevent from „ghostwriting (i.e. when a person makes a significant contribution to the publication but he/she is not listed as one or the authors of this publication or this person was omitted in the acknowledgements) and/or „guest authorship” (i.e. the contribution to the article is minimal or none but a person is listed as a co-author of the article) the author/authors of the publication are required to:

- Determine the contribution of the authors to the preparation of the publication by providing their affiliations and type of their input (i.e. who was the author of an idea and assumptions, methods and protocols, etc.), it has to be pointed out that the corresponding author (first author) is responsible for the provision of these type of information.

- Provide the information about all sources of funding (i.e. institutions, academia, associations, etc.), The authors of original research articles are obliged to reveal all financial relations to a company that manufactured a product described in the article or a competitive company by signing a declaration. This information will not be revealed and will not affect the decision on acceptance of an article for publishing.

- Any case of „ghostwriting” or „guest authorship” will be documented and revealed, including reporting this fact to designated institutions (i.e. authors’ employers, scientific societies, associations of scientific editors, etc.).