Duties and responsibilities

Duties and responsibilities of editors

• The editorial and scientific board of the journal consist of members who are recognized experts in the field. The full names and affiliations of the members are provided on the journal’s website.
• The journal provides contact information for the editorial office on the journal’s web site.
• The editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. Editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. Editors´ decision to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper´s  importance, originality and clarity, and the study´s relevance to the aim of journal.
• All of a journal’s content is subjected to double blind peer-review process before publication. Peer-review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers’ expert in the field. It is clearly described on the journal’s website.
• The criteria for evaluating the article are objective. The review form is available in downloads.
• Editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. Editors will ensure that material submitted remains confidential while under review.
• Publishers and editors take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred. In no case the journal editors will encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.
• In the event that a journal’s publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct the publisher or editor shall deal with allegations appropriately.
• The journal have guidelines for retracting or correcting articles when needed, described on the journal’s website.
• Publishers and editors are always encouraged to be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
• The editorial board will ensure digital preservation of access to the journal content by the Akademicka Platforma Czasopism Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.
• Copyright and licensing information are described on the journal’s website.
• The journal is owned by the Nicolaus Copernicus University. This information is clearly indicated on the journal’s website.
• The publisher does not use organizational names that would mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner.
• A journal’s website, including the text that it contains, demonstrates that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
• The quarterly periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated on the journal’s website.
• The journal name is unique and is not one that is easily confused with another journal or that might mislead potential authors and readers about the journal’s origin or association with other journals.

Duties and responsibilities of authors

• Submission fee that is required for manuscript processing is clearly stated in a place before authors begin preparing their manuscript for submission described on the journal’s website.
• The journal offers access to the contents in the open access system on the principles of non-exclusive license Creative Commons (CC BY-ND 4.0). There are no fees to pay by the readers.
• 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. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
• Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. The authors are requested to disclose the following information: funding sources of the article, names of the people or institution that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported paper and whether the article was presented in another form, such as a poster/abstract at a conference.
• Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the developing the concept and designing the study, collecting the data, analysing and interpreting the data, preparing the draft of article, revising the article critically for important intellectual content.
• 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 authors are obliged to report to the editorial board every significant errors discovered in their own work and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.
• Authors should disclose all data sources utilized in their research, ensuring that each source is properly documented and can be verified. This transparency is essential for the credibility and reproducibility of the research.

Duties and responsibilities of reviewers

• Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the article or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
• Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor. Informations disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer's own research without consent of the author.
• Reviews should be conducted objectively. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
• Reviewers should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
• 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 connected to the papers.

Publisher's confirmation

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work.