Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics of the WSG Publishing House

 

Principles of publishing ethics aimed at counteracting unfair publishing practices, have been accepted and applied by WSG Publishing House, in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/

Prior to acceptance, publications submitted to the publishing house are verified for compliance with the principles of editorial ethics, reliability and scientific value.

 

Rules applicable to the publisher

1. The publishing house ensures that its employees, authors and reviewers respect the relevant standards, including the principles of publishing ethics.
2. The assessment of the transmitted texts is not affected by sex, religion or its lack, race, ethnic origin, nationality, political convictions of the author, but only by the relevant substantive and technical criteria of the content.
3. The editor-in-chief and the remaining publishing staff shall be bound by an obligation to maintain confidentiality with regard to the content of the submitted work. They shall not disclose information to anyone other than authors, reviewers (or persons intended to be reviewers) and other participants of the publishing process.
4. The publisher decides which of the submitted works will be published. When making decision, the publisher is guided by the opinions of reviewers concerning the scientific value of the text.
5. Unpublished texts shall not, without the written consent of the authors, be used in any way by publishing staff and other persons involved in the publishing process.
6. The publisher shall have the right to withdraw the published work if it becomes apparent that the work is plagiarism, violates accepted principles of published ethics or if the presented results of research are unreliable or falsified.

 

 

Rules applicable to the authors

1. The author should present his or her research with scientific integrity and make an objective description of its results. The works should include an appropriate reference to the sources and be sufficiently precise to allow the research to be repeated by other researchers. The presentation and interpretation of data that is not in accordance with the principles of publishing ethics, including false or intentionally inaccurate statements, is not acceptable.
2. The author may only submit works that are his or her original work (he or she owns intellectual property copyright to this work). The studies and information used in the work should be appropriately labelled (as a quotation). Plagiarism – meaning an unlawful appropriation of intellectual property – is unacceptable.
3. The author shall list in the bibliography all publications used in the creation of the work.
4. In the case of a multiple author work, the applicant shall disclose the contribution of the individual authors in the work and provide information on the affiliation of the authors.
5. Practices such as ghost-writing or guest/gift-authorship are not allowed. They are evidence of a lack of scientific reliability. Ghost-writing is understood as a situation where a given person makes a significant contribution to the creation of work, without disclosing his or her participation as one of the authors or mentioning his or her role in the acknowledgements. Guest authorship is a situation where a given person was not involved or was marginally involved in the creation of work and is marked as an author/co-author of the work.
6. The author is required to provide the publisher with information on sources of financing of the work, contributions of research institutions, associations and other bodies contributing to the creation of the work.
7. The author shall make every effort to ensure that the work submitted to the publisher does not contain any factual errors or inaccuracies.
8. Where the author notices significant errors or inaccuracies in the work submitted to the publisher, he or she shall immediately notify the publisher thereof and make any necessary corrections. If the work has already been published, the author is required to make corrections in the next edition or the second printing.

 

 

Rules applicable to the reviewers

1. The reviewer reviews the work at the order of the publisher.
2. The reviewer, the author and the publisher follow the principles described in “Good Practices in Review Procedures in Science” (MNiSW 2011).
3. The reviewer is required to deliver the review within a specified period of time agreed with the publisher. If it is unable to meet the deadline, it should immediately notify the publisher of this fact.
4. The review of the work should be objective. Personalised criticism is unacceptable.
5. The reviewer shall ensure that there is no conflict of interest or other circumstance between the reviewer and the work author which prevents from accepting the review order.
6. The reviewed work and the review itself are confidential. Their content shall not be shared with other persons, except those involved in the publishing process.
7. Where necessary, the reviewer should indicate the relevant works related to the subject of the work and not used by the author.
8. The reviewer shall report to the publisher any serious similarities of the reviewed work to other works.
9. The reviewer shall not use the reviewed work for its own needs or to obtain its own benefits.

 

Conflict of interests 

 

Obvious violations of publishing ethics include in particular: significant violations of the rules on conflicts of interest, plagiarism, violations of the rules on ghost authorship, guest/courtesy authorship.

The term "conflict of interest" is understood as a situation when the author, editor or reviewer (or the institution with which such a person is affiliated) is involved in personal or economic relations that may interfere with his substantive and scientific judgment in the period of 2 years preceding the submission of the article to publication. A conflict of interest between two parties, which are: the author, editor, reviewer, is not allowed.

Avoiding conflicts of interest is an extremely important issue, because scientific studies and research must always be reliable and credible, i.e. they must be created with the use of research methods applied impartially and faithfully and adequately present the results of the research conducted.

Conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to: Submission of a text that is largely a study that has already been prepared. Earlier author's activities may, however, be an inspiration for research and the submitted study, but they cannot be presented as the result of research in themselves.

In order for there to be no doubt as to their credibility and reliability, sources of research funding must be disclosed. Authors should also disclose any other circumstances related to the creation of the reported publication and conducted research (e.g. involvement in legal disputes, political or social activities), if these circumstances could reasonably be considered as raising doubts as to the author's impartiality in the way of presenting or interpreting the results research or possibly having a significant impact on the author's views expressed in the submitted study.

Reviewers inform the Editorial Board in the event of a conflict of interest between the author and the study. In the event of a violation of the principles of publishing ethics, the Editorial Board may decide to withdraw a work that has already been published. The work will be removed from the journal's website, and if copies have been printed - the matter will be clarified, and an adequate apology will be published in the next volume of the journal. Before taking these steps, the Editorial Board gives the author the opportunity to take a stand and defend themself.

Personal or professional relationships between the reviewer and the author (co-author) are also considered a conflict of interest. These include: consanguinity, marriage, affinity, a close personal relationship of a different kind (e.g. cohabitation). The reviewer and the author must not be in a relationship of professional subordination, close scientific or professional cooperation in the last 2 years.