Publishing ethics

Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement
(Based on the COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors)

DUTIES OF EDITORS

Monitoring the ethical standards

The Editorial board of Romanica Wratislaviensia is monitoring the ethical standards of scientific publications and takes all possible measures against any publication malpractices. Its members are obliged to observe the current law concerning copyright, protection of personal data, libel and plagiarism. They are also obliged to do everything possible to eliminate cases of plagiarism, ghostwriting and guest authorship.

Fair play

Submitted manuscripts are evaluated only on the basis of their intellectual content. 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. Citizenship, ethnic origin, race, gender and sex, or the Authors’ religious and political beliefs cannot have any impact on the evaluation of the paper.

Editors of Romanica Wratislaviensia who submit their manuscripts for publication in the journal are subjected to the publishing procedures (see tab PUBLISHING PROCEDURES).

Confidentiality

All the information concerning the Author and materials submitted to the journal remain confidential while under review. Information related to a submitted manuscript must not be disclosed to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. The information (results, data, conclusions, opinions, analyses, etc.) contained in the submitted paper cannot be used by any person until it is published.

Maintaining academic standards

In the case of complaints of violation of the ethical code of scientific publications addressed to the editors of Romanica Wratislaviensia, the Author(s) of the submitted article are informed in writing about the allegations and asked to address them. The lack of answer or answers raising justified doubts will result in the rejection of the paper.

The editorial board of Romanica Wratislaviensia will inform relevant parties (the author’s institution of affiliation, etc.) of all forms of scientific misconduct, especially any breaches of ethics applicable to science.

The Editorial board will always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Access to journal content

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility in Open Access on the website http://rwr.sjol.eu/pl.

DUTIES OF AUTHORS

By submitting a manuscript to Romanica Wratislaviensia, the authors attest and affirm that:
– the submitted manuscript has been prepared in accordance with the principles of academic integrity,
– the authors own the rights to this manuscript,
– the manuscript is free of legal defects,
– the manuscript was not published previously, in whole or in part, has not been submitted to another journal, and is not being considered for publication in any other form.

The submission of the manuscript is also tantamount to granting free consent for its publication in Romanica Wratislaviensia and its unlimited distribution, with regard to time and territory, including, but not limited to, restricted distribution of printed copies of the journal and open-access distribution of its current and archival volumes via the Internet. The papers accepted for publication in Romanica Wratislaviensia cannot be submitted to another journal or a book without written permission of the Editor-in-Chief and/or the Publisher.

Reporting standards

The main evaluation criterion of the submitted papers is the unequivocal and verifiable presentation of the problem. Providing false observations, faking research results, inventing and manipulating the data are considered to be unethical and unacceptable.

Acknowledgement of sources

Authors should base their papers on appropriate related literature relevant for the research problem. When the text refers to research, results or presentations of a given problem by other authors, the referred-to fragment should be appropriately quoted. Copying references to texts unknown to the Author from other works is considered to be unethical and unacceptable.

Multiple or concurrent publication

Romanica Wratislaviensia publishes articles that were not published previously, in whole or in part, have not been submitted to another journal, and are not being considered for publication in any other form. Submitting a manuscript to more than one journal is an unethical and unacceptable publishing behaviour.

Data retention

Authors may be asked to provide their raw data for editorial review, should be prepared to provide public access to such data, and should retain such data after publication of their paper.

Authorship of the manuscript

In order to avoid ghostwriting and guest authorship, the authors of multi-author texts are requested to specify the contribution of each author in the publication (by providing pertinent names, surnames and affiliations, and by indicating the authorship of the ideas, hypotheses, and methods used in the manuscript). The responsibility for providing information about the contributors to the text is borne by the author submitting the manuscript, and in the case of a collective submission, by the author mentioned in the first place.

The authors are requested to provide information concerning the financing sources of the manuscript’s publication (e.g. the number of the grant and the name of the institution providing the grant) and indicate the contribution of scholarly research institutions to its preparation (by unambiguously specifying the author’s/authors’ professional affiliation).

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS

By accepting to evaluate a paper, Reviewers commit themselves to:
– contribute to the editorial decision by providing a reliable, objective, impartial and properly justified evaluation of the assessed work, to respect punctuality,
– to keep the peer-review procedure confidential, to comply with standards of objectivity, to disclose any conflicts of interest,
– to inform the editorial board about any suspicion of ghostwriting, guest authorship, plagiarism and/or autoplagiarism and to point out the dubious fragment(s) of the article.

Contribution to editorial decisions

Each manuscript is sent to two independent external reviewers for evaluation (if possible, one abroad and one in Poland), and the review process is double blind.

The written reviews are the editors’ main criterion in their decision to publish; they can also help the authors to improve the quality of their works.

Standards of objectivity

The reviewers are requested to complete a form in which they evaluate the following elements of the manuscript and provide a written justification of their remarks: weight and formulation of the research topic, appropriateness of the methodology, soundness of the argument, quality of language, and selection of sources.

The evaluation should be reliable, objective, impartial and properly justified; it should only refer to the work being assessed, not the authors themselves.

Both reviews end with an unambiguous recommendation that the evaluated manuscript be either accepted for publication (with or without corrections) or rejected. In the case of expressly divergent opinions of the reviewers, the manuscript is submitted to a third reviewer, who has no access to the other reviews.

Acknowledgement of sources

The reviewers are obliged to inform the editors in the case of an identified conflict of interest. They are also obliged to inform the editors of unacknowledged use or incorporation of the work of other researchers in the evaluated manuscript. The dubious fragment(s) should be pointed out.

Confidentiality

Reviewers are subject to the duty of confidentiality in relation to the review process, the content of the evaluated text, and the evaluation itself.

The research results presented in the submitted manuscript cannot be used by the Reviewer until it is published.

Disclosure of conflict of interest

Reviewers should not consider evaluating manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relations with any of the authors, companies, or institutions involved in writing a paper.

Promptness

Any selected reviewer 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.

PROCEDURES IN THE CASE OF SUSPICION OF PLAGIARISM, AUTOPLAGIARISM, GUEST AUTHORSHIP AND GHOSTWRITING

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes an unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

In the case of suspicion of plagiarism, the Editors of Romanica Wratislaviensia apply control procedures involving the Reviewers and the author of the manuscript.

In the case of confirmed plagiarism, the editors inform the institution with which the Author is affiliated or with which he/she cooperates.

In the case of confirmed autoplagiarism, the Editor informs the Author(s) that the submission is rejected due to the lack of originality of the presented analyses.

Cases of ghostwriting and guest authorship are unethical and unacceptable. In the case of confirmed ghostwriting or guest authorship, the Author of the submitted article is informed in writing that the text is rejected because of legal defect. The case is reported to the institution with which the Author is affiliated and/or with which he/she cooperates.