Aim and scope

"Greater Poland Archeological Reports" is a journal that publishes the results of archaeological excavations carried out in the widely understood (within the historical, not administrative, boundaries) of Greater Poland. The main goal is to bring quick information, concerning research currently underway, even not always fully completed. In addition, there is a permanent place in the magazine where events from the life of the Greater Poland Branch of SAPA are presented.

History

The first volume of "Greater Poland Archeological Reports" was published in 1991. The editor of the first ten volumes was prof. Ph.D. Zofia Hilczer-Kurnatowska, who held this position until 2009. Starting from volume 11 (in 2010), the editor is prof. Ph.D. Andrzej Michałowski. The publication of volumes 12–18/19/20 (2011–2019) was the work of the Archaeological Foundation Publishing House in Zielona Góra, but the editorial staff remained in the hands of the Greater Poland Branch of SNAP in Poznań. Volumes 21 and 22 (2022–2023) have already been published with the participation of the Faculty of Archeology of Adam Mickiewicz University, and from 2023, the official co-publisher of the journal is the Faculty of Archeology of the Adam Mickiewicz University. From volume 13, the format of the journal has changed from B5 to A4, but the substantive profile remains constant.

Ethics

The editors of "Greater Poland Archeological Reports" 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).
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”).
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.

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.
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 COPE recommendations.

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.

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 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.

Review procedure

The procedure of reviewing articles in "Greater Poland Archeological Reports" is in compliance with the recommendations included in a brochure of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education "Good practice in review procedures in science", Warsaw 2011.
When submitting works for publication in the journal, the authors agree to the review process. The submitted articles are first evaluated by the editors and next are reviewed by independent reviewers who are not the journal’s editors. The submitted works are not sent to reviewers from the institution of the author’s affiliation or individuals who may be in a conflict of interests with the author. The texts are reviewed confidentially and anonymously (double-blind review), within a maximum of two weeks of being verified by the anti-plagiarism software. The reviewers must not use their knowledge of the work before publication thereof. The author is informed about the result of the evaluation. It is possible to correspond with the Editors of SA about the possible comments or qualification for print. The Editor in Chief makes the final decision about qualifying an article for print.