Academic Ethics Policy And Guidelines


The Editorial Board strictly follows all guidelines and recommendations issued by COPE - Committee on Publication Ethics (more details: https://publicationethics.org/resources).

More specifically, we would like to emphasize the attention of all authors (current and prospective), all reviewers, in-house and guest editors to the following provisions under COPE which we treat as the most essential for our work:

● All editors - in-house, acting, managing and guest - are responsible for maintaining the balance of high-quality materials published, freedom of expression and academic integrity
● High standards of research conduct and academic publishing shall always go first, prior to commercial interests and needs of the editorial team and publishers of the journal
● At any point of time the authors of already published materials have the right to contact the editorial team with the request of rectraction, publishing apology, clarification or correction. The editor shall fully support this decision of the authors, however, they may also request additional explanation before publication and/or retraction. The time and the issue of publishing additions/apology/clarification is to be determined by the editors depending on the technical capacities of the editorial office.
● Editors of the journal are responsible for determining whether the text fits the journal’s scope and general framework. The decision that the text does not fit either of them or both should be provided to the author(s) along with the explanation why so and (optional) recommendation on alternative publication options.
● Originality of the ideas and importance/relevance of the research output presented in an article are treated as the top-priority criterion when the text is considered for publication.
● Editors of the journal are responsible for explaining the details on the double-blind peer-review procedures to both the authors and the reviewers. Every time the reviewer gets the text for a blind review, they also get a reminder on rules and procedures accepted by the editorial team.
● Editors of the journal are responsible for revision of academic publishing rules and double-blind peer-review standards on the annual basis (at least once a year; additional changes can be introduced if the world standards and/or COPE regulations change).
● Newer editors shall not reverse the decision of previous editors, unless there is an external complaint filed about plagiarism or other misconduct.
● Editors are responsible for making sure the peer-review process is properly encoded and that neither the author, nor the reviewer are able to detect the identities on the opposite side.
● In case a complaint is filed by an author, a review or a reader of the journal, the editors shall follow the appropriate COPE procedures, using similar cases described on the COPE site as the benchmark in the field.
● Articles containing criticism of various previous works, encouraging academic debate and/or presenting negative results should be treated equally to more traditional types of articles describing authors’ own results. Articles of this sort are also subject to standard double-blind peer-review.
● All editorial rules and academic standards imposed and followed by the Editorial Board are similarly applicable to both published and unpublished (still under consideration) texts.
● In case the editors detect the case of plagiarism and have all the evidence to prove it - they maintain the right to contact the author’s employer, the related Ministry of Education and/or other appropriate authority (depending on a country and a specific case) and report the case of plagiarism.
● In case plagiarism or other misconduct have been reported externally, the editors are expected to fully cooperate on the case and provide all evidence they have on the case, apart from the identity of the involved reviewers.
● Editors shall be responsible for informing the international databases and catalogues on the cases of retraction. However, they cannot be responsible for the timing of the related updates in these databases and catalogues.
● Editors and publishers of this journal are expected to communicate following the principles of editorial independence. Despite the fact that editors are officially hired (or invited on the pro bono basis) to work in the editorial team, all decisions made by the editors are expected to be based solely on the quality and content of the provided texts and be independent from economic relations within the office or current political situation in the country/region.
● The journal prefers to restrain from any sort of advertising activities as such and concentrate on academic publishing solely. In exceptional cases advertisement still can be published. The decision on advertisement publication shall belong to publishers, not editors of the journal. Published advertisement shall be directly related to the fields of academic research, higher education and conferences within the scope and topics of the journal itself.
● All situations presented as the conflict of interests shall be resolved according to COPE regulations. In such situations editors and/or publishers are expected to find a relevant case among those described on the COPE site and take action accordingly.
● In case an author, a reviewer or a reader plans to file a complaint regarding the journal’s activities, they are kindly asked to contact the related editor as the first instance. In case the filer of the complaint disagrees with the decision and/or explanation provided by the editor - they are asked to contact the publisher. The publisher has the right to disregard the complaint if the filer did not try to settle the case with the editor first.

Editorial Privacy Policy And GDPR Compliance


Both Editorial Board and editorial team are strongly committed to maintain trustful relations with all the authors, current and prospective, as well as with all the reviewers. We have updated all our rules and internal regulations so that to fully comply with the GDPR policies. As of today, the key provisions of the editorial privacy policy are as follows:

● Editors that are in direct communication with the authors (online and/or offline) are responsible for keeping all personal data confidential.
● Neither the Board, nor the editorial team have technical capacities to track data from third-party sources.
● The Editorial Board and the editorial teams shall not use any personal data provided by authors and/or reviewers for own personal purposes, including those of purely research/academic nature.
● If the Board and/or editorial team conduct a survey, authors/reviewers/readers participating in it would be informed in advance and would be asked to provide their permissions.
● The Board and/or the editorial team shall share personal information on the authors strictly in the cases when plagiarism or other misconduct has been detected and there is an ongoing investigation. In such a case the Board and the editorial team are expected to be fully cooperative and contribute to the investigation.
● Authors’ current work affiliation and contact emails are published on the first page of each article and are treated as part of open-access information. If any author would NOT like to see their email published - they shall inform the editorial team about this decision at least 3 business days prior to the date of the article going online.
● Since author’s work affiliation is integral part of articles’ indexation in the international databases and catalogues, this information is treated as open-source data and all the authors are strongly encouraged to provide it during the submission of their texts.
● The Editorial Board and the editorial team shall not share personal contact information (such as phone numbers, emails, skype names and the like) with third parties.
● The Editorial Board and the editorial team shall not attempt to track the IP addresses of any senders establishing communication with the journal.
● Communication with the members of the Editorial Board and the editorial team using social networks is strongly discouraged. We ask all our authors, reviewers and reader to respect the privacy of our employees and partners and do not seek communication with them via the informal sources such as Facebook, Linkedin and the like.
● The minimum term of any personal data retention is 1 years calendar year since the day of the first contact.
● The editors of the journal maintain the right to delete any personal data on the authors and/or reviewers they consider unnecessary anymore.
● If any person/organization receives an email from the Board or the editorial team due to technical error or human mistake - we ask them to delete the email as soon as possible and notify the editorial office at earliest.
● If you have a specific enquiry about how we collect and save data - please, contact our managing editor. If you want all your personal data be deleted from our internal database - please, contact our managing editor.

Copyright and Open Access License


Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. For ease of dissemination and to ensure proper policing of use, papers and contributions become the legal copyright of the publisher unless otherwise agreed.

The following license will apply to the article: CC BY

The CC BY license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

The publisher will apply the Creative Commons Attribution Works 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY) to the Article for the purposes of publication in the journal on an Open Access basis. For further information, see the Open access options page. The full details of the license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.