The ethical rules
The editors of Slavia Antiqua rigorously apply the highest standards of publishing ethics established with reference to the rules recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Integrity is one of the pillars of quality of science. The readers should enjoy the certainty that the authors of the publications present the results of their work in a transparent, reliable and honest way. It does not matter whether they are the direct authors or were supported by an expert (a natural or legal person). The editorial board of the journal does not charge authors any fees for publishing articles
Disclosure of information about the individuals and entities contributing to the publication (the content, contributions in kind and financial support) is evidence of an author’s ethical approach and the highest editorial standards. This stems from a sense of morality as well as social responsibility. This is in stark contrast to phenomena referred to as ghostwriting and guest authorship. In order to prevent ghostwriting and guest authorship, the editors request the authors to provide the contribution of specific authors in the form of footnotes (including the individuals’ affiliation and contribution i.e. information about the author of the concept, the assumptions, the methods, the protocol used etc.) where the main responsibility rests with the author submitting the article. What is more, if a publication is sponsored, please notify the editors about the sources of financing, the contribution of research and academic institutions, associations and other entities (“financial disclosure”).
The Editorial Board of Slavia Antiqua recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) offers opportunities to accelerate academic research and disseminate its results. While these opportunities may be groundbreaking, they are not capable of replicating human creativity or critical thinking. Various applications of artificial intelligence and related technologies are distinguished, including assistive, generative, and prohibited uses. The journal’s policy on the use of artificial intelligence technologies has been developed to assist authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers in making sound decisions regarding the ethical use of this technology.
Authors bear full responsibility for the content of the manuscript, including any materials developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that violate the principles of publication ethics and research originality.
Cases of violating copyrights, especially plagiarism in the form of:
- conscious appropriation of someone else’s text;
- use of somebody else’s intellectual effort without permission;
- concealing the source and the author of an entire text or a fragment thereof
will be documented by the editors and disclosed to the public while the respective institutions will be duly notified.
Other types of violating copyrights like ghostwriting, ghost authorship and guest authorship will also be documented and communicated to the public and the scientific community.
Declaration of text’s originality
The editors’ responsibilities:
Maintaining the ethical standards: the editors will be held responsible for maintaining the ethical standards of the academic publications and for preventing any publishing-related misconduct. The editorial board does not have any influence on the content of the author's polemical statements (reviews, review articles). Consequently, the views expressed in the published texts are not opinions of the editorial board but exclusively views of the authors, and it is they who take responsibility for their words expressed therein.
Preliminary evaluation of the texts: the submitted texts are evaluated with respect to their scholarly value (originality, content-related value, clarity of the presentation) and their significance to the journal. The text are verified by an anti-plagiarism program.
Publication-related decision: the editors are responsible for deciding which of the submitted texts should be published. The decision about accepting a specific text for publication or rejecting it is made by the editors on the basis of its originality, content-related standard and significance to the journal’s subject. The editors provide an honest, double-blind review of texts submitted for the journal and make every effort to avoid a potential conflict of interests between the author and editors and reviewers.
Confidentiality: the editors ensure that the materials submitted to the journal will remain confidential in the course of the editorial process. They mustn’t reveal information about the submitted text to anyone except for the authors, reviewers or editor (possibly the editors’ advisors).
Revealing a conflict of interests: in the case of a conflict of interests, the editor-in-chief will ask another editor to handle the submitted article.
Publication-related decisions: the editors ensure that all the submitted texts will be submitted for review by at least two reviewers, experts in their respective disciplines. The editor-in-chief decides which of the works submitted to the journal will be published. The decisions are made by taking into account the following elements:
- evaluation of the work’s quality
- scholarly significance
- the reviewers’ comments
- legal requirements like the regulations regarding violation of copyrights and plagiarism.
In the course of making this decision, the editor-in-chief should communicate with the other editors and reviewers.
Guidelines for the editorial board regarding special issues: the journal should carefully manage guest-edited collections of articles, taking into account the risk of unethical practices, such as citation manipulation, inappropriate publication practices, and peer-review fraud. It is important to vet guest editors thoroughly by assessing their qualifications and subject-matter expertise, as well as clearly communicating expectations regarding their responsibilities, the journal’s thematic scope, and ethical standards. The journal’s editors are responsible for the content of all guest-edited collections, and the review process for these collections should be suspended if there are suspicions of, or ongoing investigations into, potential breaches of ethical standards.
Cooperation in investigations: in cooperation with the publisher, the editors will regularly respond to and adopt effective measures when a submitted work or article raises ethical doubts. Any act of unethical publishing-related behaviour will be investigated; the editors will then follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations. As well as COPE Guidelines on Authorship and AI tools
The editors will consider withdrawing a publication if:
- they have substantial evidence that the submitted results have been achieved as a result of discreditable conduct (manipulating data, compiling a few texts etc.)
- the research results were published elsewhere and have been now resumed without proper reference, permission or justification (cases of duplicated publications)
- the work has been submitted simultaneously to several different journals
- the work is an act of plagiarism or concerns unethical research.
Compliance with ethical standards regarding the use of AI tools: the Editorial Board reserves the right to decide whether to accept or reject a manuscript based on information concerning the scope and manner of use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The Editorial Board considers it unacceptable to present any substantive content generated by AI as if it were the result of the author’s research. However, the Editorial Board permits authors to use tools intended for the linguistic editing of manuscripts. The editors permit the use of AI tools to assist in translating an original text into the target language. The entire bibliography should be prepared by the author, and if it has been formatted using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool, all entries must be appropriately verified and checked for accuracy. The author remains fully responsible for the final editing of the work prepared in this manner. Any use of assistive artificial intelligence (AI) tools must be disclosed in a statement, the text of which will be included in the article. A statement is not required when only automated tools for linguistic editing and proof-reading are used. Any violation of these guidelines for authors will result in the rejection of the manuscript by the Editorial Board, in accordance with the recommendations of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.
The editor’s duties:
-in the case of a compiled text or an act of plagiarism, in cooperation with the editors, the publisher will adopt any measures in order to explain the situation at hand;
- in cooperation with the editors, the publisher must adopt appropriate measures in order to avoid publishing articles which reflect unethical or discreditable research conduct. At the same time, the publisher will not encourage the authors to get involved in these discreditable acts or knowingly allow involvement in them;
- the publishers of the journal Slavia Antiqua (the Faculty of Archaeology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences), upon discovering the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate the substantive content of a specific text, are required to take appropriate legal action against the author. At the same time, texts in which the use of artificial intelligence tools for the generation of substantive content is detected during the peer-review or editorial process will not be published in the journal;
- the publishers must strictly respect the rights of authors as set out on the journal’s website and comply with the ethical principles formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics.
The reviewers’ duties:
Contribution to the editorial decisions: double-blind reviews make it possible for an editor to make decisions about a specific article and assist the authors in improving their texts.
Timeliness: every selected reviewer should write a review within maximum two weeks upon receiving the text from the editors.
Confidentiality: the texts submitted for reviewing should be regarded confidential documents. They mustn’t be forwarded to other individuals.
Evaluation standards: the evaluation should be objective, fair and carried out in accordance with the reviewers’ knowledge, skills and experience.
Disclosure and a conflict of interests: the reviewers should not agree to evaluate works if there is a conflict of interests with any of the authors involved in a specific text.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): reviewers are required to prepare their reviews independently and must not delegate this task to artificial intelligence (AI) tools, automated systems, or third parties who have not been appointed by the Editorial Board as reviewers. Reviewers are required to report to the Editorial Board and the publishers any identified use by authors of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate substantive content. Artificial intelligence tools may be used solely as technical assistance for checking linguistic accuracy and formatting the text. If a reviewer has used such tools, this fact must be disclosed in the review.
Additional materials: