Editorial Policy
Responsibilities of Editors, Authors and Reviewers
The Editorial Policy defines the responsibilities of all participants in the publication process. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final publication decision, taking into account the scientific significance and reliability of the manuscript and the reviewers' assessments. The Editorial Board ensures impartial evaluation, confidentiality of the editorial process, and protection of unpublished information from unauthorized use.
Authors are required to submit original and reliable research, provide appropriate citations and bibliographic references, avoid simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to multiple journals, ensure appropriate authorship attribution, and approve the final version of the manuscript.
Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential documents, provide objective and well-reasoned assessments, identify relevant omitted publications and significant similarities with previously published works, and withdraw from the review process when they lack sufficient expertise or cannot provide an appropriate review.
Policy on Conflicts of Interest, Unethical Conduct, Corrections and Retractions
Editors, Editorial Board members and reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could affect the objectivity of editorial decisions. Authors must disclose all sources of research funding and any commercial, financial, personal or professional circumstances that may constitute a conflict of interest. A reviewer or editor with a relevant conflict must withdraw from consideration of the manuscript.
Unethical conduct includes, among other practices, plagiarism, falsification or fabrication, citation manipulation, inappropriate authorship and simultaneous submission. Where unethical conduct is identified before publication, the manuscript may be withdrawn from further consideration; serious violations identified after publication may result in retraction from the journal website, archive and scientific indexing databases.
Where errors are identified in published manuscripts, information on corrections may be published in subsequent issues.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy
The journal recognizes the opportunities and risks associated with the use of generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, in scientific research and publication. Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors. If generative AI is used for text preparation, data analysis, literature review, images, tables or other research elements, its use must be explicitly disclosed in the manuscript. The Methods section should specify the full name and version of the tool, how it was used and the purpose of its use. AI used solely for technical language editing, such as grammar, spelling, stylistic or formatting corrections, does not require separate disclosure. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, reliability and integrity of all materials created or processed using AI. Reviewers are prohibited from uploading manuscript content to generative AI systems, and editors should not use such systems to analyse, evaluate or summarize submitted manuscripts.
