Publication Ethics
The editorial board of the journal "Rehabilitation and Recreation" maintains a certain level of requirements in the selection and acceptance of articles submitted to the editorial staff. These rules are determined by the scientific direction of the journal and the standards of quality of scientific works and their presentation, accepted in the scientific community.
The editorial calls for adherence to the principles of the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publications developed by the Committee on Ethics of Scientific Publications (COPE).
Ethical Obligations of Journal Editors
The editor should review all manuscripts submitted to the publication without prejudice, evaluating each manuscript properly, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or the position or place of work of the author (s).
Information is not allowed to be published if there is sufficient reason to believe that it is plagiarism.
All materials submitted for publication are carefully selected and reviewed. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the article or to return it for further revision. The author is obliged to revise the article according to the comments of the reviewers or editorial board.
The decision of the editor to accept the article for publication is based on such characteristics of the article as the importance of results, originality, quality of presentation of the material and the correspondence of the journal profile. Manuscripts may be rejected without review if the editor believes that they do not fit the journal's profile. In making such decisions, the editor may consult with members of the editorial board or reviewers.
Ethical obligations of authors
Authors should ensure that they have written completely original articles, and that if the authors have used the work or words of others, then it has been properly framed in quotation marks or quotes.
Submitting an identical article in more than one journal is considered unethical and unacceptable.
The article should be structured, contain enough links and be designed as required.
Unfair or deliberately inaccurate statements in the article constitute unethical conduct and are inadmissible.
The author who corresponds with the editorial board must ensure that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the article and have agreed to its publication.
The authors of the articles bear full responsibility for the content of the articles and for the very fact of their publication. The editorial board does not bear any responsibility to the authors for the possible damage caused by the publication of the article. The editorial board has the right to remove an article if it is found out that in the course of publication the article violated someone's rights or generally accepted norms of scientific ethics. The editorial board informs the author of the fact of removal of the article.
Ethical obligations of reviewers
The editorial staff adheres to double-blind peer review to ensure that the manuscripts are evaluated objectively
Since the review of manuscripts is an essential step in the process of publication and, therefore, in the implementation of the scientific method as such, each scientist is obliged to do some work on the review.
If the selected reviewer is not sure that his or her qualification is relevant to the level of research presented in the manuscript, he must return the manuscript immediately.
The reviewer should objectively evaluate the quality of the manuscript, the experimental and theoretical work presented, its interpretation and presentation, and the extent to which the work meets high scientific and literary standards. The reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the authors.
Reviewers should adequately explain and reason their opinions so that editors and authors can understand what their comments are based on. Any statement that an observation, conclusion, or argument has already been published must be accompanied by a reference.
The reviewer should draw the editor's attention to any significant similarity between this manuscript and any published article or any manuscript submitted to another journal at the same time.
Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in this manuscript unless the author agrees.
- All manuscripts are initially reviewed by editors to evaluate their relevance to the subject matter and requirements of the journal.
- The submitted manuscripts are sent to the reviewer (one of the members of the editorial board, a specialist in the relevant field). The manuscript is subjected to double-blind peer review: neither authors nor reviewers know each other.
The review procedure is focused on the most objective evaluation of the content of the scientific article, determining its compliance with the requirements of the journal and provides a comprehensive analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the article.
The reviewer concludes that it is advisable to publish the article, indicating the main shortcomings of the article (if any), as well as the conclusion about the possibility of publication: "recommended", "recommended with correction of these shortcomings" or "not recommended".
The most common reasons for refusing to publish an article are:
– bad or wrong structured publication;
– lack of scientific novelty;
– the article does not have enough actual references to literary sources;
– the article contains theories, concepts, or conclusions that are not fully supported by the data, arguments, or information;
– the article has poor language quality.
- The decision is forwarded to the author (s). Articles to be revised are sent to the author (s) along with a review text that contains specific guidelines for revising the article.
- The revised version of the article is sent for re-review. In case of negative result, the article is rejected and is not subject to further review.
The editorial board does not enter into discussions with the authors of the rejected articles.
General duties and responsibilities of the Publisher
Publishing House "Helvetica" and the society on behalf of which it publishes shall ensure compliance with the standards outlined above. To this end, the relationship between publisher, editor and other parties should be clearly defined.
- Foster freedom of expression.
- Supervise the peer-review process.
- Protect intellectual property and copyright.
- Respect privacy on research participants, authors, reviewers.
- Monitor submitted material to identify plagiarism, fraudulent data and overlapping content.
- Guarantee respect for the special requirements for human and animal research.
- Monitor transparency and integrity (e.g., conflicts of interest, research funding, authorship/contributorship)
- Publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
- Prevent business needs compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
- Prosecute any form of misconduct in accordance with international guidelines (flowcharts of the COPE’s code of conduct).
- Make sure that all actors in the process work effectively towards the achievement of timely publication.
Sponsors
It is published at the expense of the authors.
Plagiarism
All scientific articles submitted to the editorial office are subjected to a plagiarism test by special software Plagiat.pl. We protect the rights of authors/co-authors and investigate statements about plagiarism or misuse of the published articles. If a plagiarism is detected after publication, the journal may post the correction or recall the article.
Protection of Research Participants
All investigators should ensure that the planning, conduct, and reporting of human research are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013. All authors should seek approval to conduct research from an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board), and be prepared to provide documentation when requested by editors. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the local, regional or national review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. Approval by a responsible review body does not preclude editors from forming their own judgment whether the conduct of the research was appropriate.
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication. Patient consent should be written and archived with the journal, the authors, or both, as dictated by local regulations or laws. Applicable laws vary from locale to locale, and journals should establish their own policies with legal guidance. Since a journal that archives the consent will be aware of patient identity, some journals may decide that patient confidentiality is better guarded by having the author archive the consent and instead providing the journal with a written statement that attests that they have received and archived written patient consent.
Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are deidentified, authors should provide assurance, and editors should so note, that such changes do not distort scientific meaning.
The requirement for informed consent should be included in the journal’s instructions for authors. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article.
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
RETRACTION POLICY
The Editorial Board follows retraction policy to warn readers about self-plagiarism (authors submit the same data in several journals), academic plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification, disguise the conflicts of interests, which would affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use. The retraction of the scientific article is the mechanism of correcting published data and alerting readers about articles with serious gaps or invalid content, incl. unreliable one. The publication of such data may be accidental or intentional misconduct.
The retraction’s goal is to inform readers about the article which contains unreliable data.
Based on the Recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journal staff is guided by the below policy of retraction of previously published articles.
Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
it contains material or data without authorization for use;
the research findings have previously been published;
the article has serious errors (e.g., the misinterpretation of research findings) which call into question scientific value;
authorship is invalid (the inclusion of persons who do not meet the authorship criteria, or no one is worth being the author);
the author(s) failed to disclose a conflict of interests (as well as other violations of publication ethics);
the article was republished with the consent of the author(s);
there are other violations of ethics.
Grounds for initiating article retraction:
the author’s request to retract the article;
the request of the third parties (e.g., participants in the conflict of interests) who have evidence of the violations of academic ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;
the editorial board has found ethics violations by the article’s author.
The Academic Integrity Commission of National University of Water and Environmental Engineering decides about article retraction by relying on the decision of the Editorial Board.
Information on article retraction is available on the journal’s web-site.
The surname(s) of the author(s) and article title are kept in the contents of the relevant issue on the journal’s web-site, but reasons for retractions are specified.
The decision reasoning article retraction is sent to the author (s).
