Ethics and malpractice statement

The MIND Journal is a peer-reviewed journal. The following statement presents the ethical behaviour of all parties involved in the process of publishing articles for this journal.

Table of contents

Formal framework
General issues
Authors' responsibilities
Reviewers' responsibilities
Editors’ responsibility
Post-publication discussions and corrections
Policy on Alteration of Author Names
Retractions

Formal framework
1. The ethical principles have been developed based on:
• the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) - https://mindjournal.wseh.pl/uploads/Full_set_of_Polish_flowcharts.pdf ,
• the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors - https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf
• COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers - https://publicationethics.org/files/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewe... ,
• The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity - The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity - ALLEA
• ethical principles applicable in other scholarly journals.

2. Open-access license
The journal offers open access to the contents based on the principles of the non-exclusive license Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.pl

General issues
Ethical Guidelines for Authors
When you submit a paper to the MIND Journal, you confirm that you have read the ethical guidelines in Article 1 and license rules in Article 2, agree to the contents, and have taken appropriate actions.

By submitting a paper to the journal, it is understood that all authors have thereby declared that they have read and agree on the content of the submitted paper. The Editorial Office may reject submissions if it is felt that the work was not carried out within an ethical framework. 

Ethics
The MIND Journal adheres to the principles outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) - https://publicationethics.org and follows their guidelines in respect of publication ethics and managing problems when they arise.

Competing/conflicting interests 
Authors are obliged to declare all potential competing interests involving people or organizations that might reasonably be perceived as relevant.
 
Publication fee
The MIND Journal is an open access quarterly scientific journal, available free of charge.

Plagiarism 
Plagiarism in any form constitutes a serious violation of the principles of scholarship and is not acceptable. Examples of plagiarism include: 
• Complete plagiarism - when a writer submits someone else’s work in their own name. Paying somebody to write a paper for you, then handing it in with your name on it, is an act of complete plagiarism as stealing or “borrowing” someone’s work and submitting it as your own.
• Direct plagiarism - is similar to complete plagiarism in that it, too, is the overt passing-off of another writer’s words as your own. The difference between the two is how much of the paper is plagiarized. With complete plagiarism, it’s the entire paper. With direct plagiarism, specific sections or paragraphs are included without crediting (or even acknowledging) the author.
• Paraphrasing plagiarism - is what happens when a writer reuses another’s work and changes a few words or phrases.
• Self-plagiarism - reusing content from your essay in your research paper would be an act of self-plagiarism.
• Patchwork plagiarism - also known as mosaic plagiarism, patchwork plagiarism refers to instances where plagiarized work is interwoven with the writer’s original work. This kind of plagiarism can be subtle and easy to miss, and it may happen in conjunction with direct plagiarism.
• Source-based plagiarism - this kind of plagiarism, the writer might cite their sources correctly but present the sources in a misleading way.
• False citation: material should not be attributed to a source from which it has not been obtained.
• False data: data that has been fabricated or altered in a laboratory or experiment; although not factually plagiarism, this is clearly a form of academic fraud

Publication and authorship
• All published papers should be in accordance with the thematic scope of the journal
• All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-reviewing process by at least two independent reviewers who are experts in the area of the particular paper.
• All papers published in the journal are written in Polish or English.
• Any form of scientific fraud and the infringement of intellectual property rights will be disclosed.

Authors' responsibilities
1. By submitting a text, the author vouches that it is an original work that does not infringe on the copyrights of third parties and has not been published or submitted for publication with any other publisher.
2. The author is obliged to inform of everyone involved in the work on the manuscript. If acknowledgments are to appear in the text for people who have made a particular contribution, the editors may ask for the designated person’s permission to publish their name.
3. It will be possible to publish copyrighted material, provided the authors have first obtained permission from the copyright holders. By submitting a text with illustrations, the author declares that reproduction rights have been secured.
4. The work should contain sufficient details and references to allow others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. Articles in reviews and professional publications should also be accurate and objective, and "opinion" editorials should be clearly marked as such. Authors should make sure they have written completely original work, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that they have been properly cited.
5. Submitting the manuscript is tantamount to ensuring that all stages of the research have been carried out with ethical insight, professional integrity, and transparency, in line with The European Code of Conduct of Research Integrity and Committee on Ethics in Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences guidelines.
6. Should the author discover any error or violation of research integrity or code of ethics that involves a manuscript that has already been submitted or the published article, they must notify the editorial team immediately.
7. If an author discovers a material error or inaccuracy in his or her own published article, it is the author's responsibility to immediately notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with him or her to withdraw or correct the paper. If the editor or publisher learns from a third party that the published article contains a material error, it is the author's responsibility to withdraw or correct the paper immediately or provide the editor with evidence of the correctness of the original work.
8. The author is obliged to collaborate with the editorial team to prepare the manuscript for publication (by responding to the comments and suggestions of peer reviewers and editors and by making corrections).
9. Authors assign copyright or license the publication rights in their articles, including abstracts, to University of Economics and Humanities.
10. In accordance with the Data Protection Law, if an article is rejected, all electronic submissions will be deleted from the publisher system, and submissions will be removed from the publisher's records and destroyed

Reviewers' responsibilities
1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat it as privileged.
2. A reviewer should inform the editorial team as soon as possible about any risk of conflict of interest involving the paper received for review and of any other reason why the reviewer would wish to withdraw from the review process.
3. Throughout the process of manuscript review and evaluation, reviewers are obliged to observe the strictest confidentiality.
4. Reviewers shall evaluate the manuscripts objectively, refraining from any subjective or personal comments. A review, the purpose of which is to support the author in improving their manuscript, should include a clearly stated explanation of the recommendation.
5. Reviewers should point out where the manuscript under review lacks pertinent references or bibliographical information. Whenever possible, reviewers are obliged to inform the editorial team if the manuscript or its part is similar to any other work which has already been published.
6. Reviewers do not recommend, without specific justification, that authors cite their own works.
7. Reviewers may not use the manuscripts under review for any purpose other than the review itself. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
8. Reviewers consent that their names will be disclosed in the list of reviewers published on the journal’s website.

Editors’ responsibility
The members of the Technical Editors’ Board and Scientific Editors’ Board of the MIND Journal are recognised experts in their fields. Their full names and affiliations are provided on the journal’s Web site in the Technical Editors’ Board and Scientific Editors’ Board section.
1. Editors assess the merits and linguistic correctness of submitted texts, taking care to treat all the authors equally and without any bias.
2. Editors, striving to ensure that any publication decision is free from undue influence, require authors, editors, and peer reviewers to disclose any competing interests and potential conflict of interests.
3. Editors choose peer reviewers in a way that ensures unbiased assessment of submitted articles.
4. Editors make sure that the peer review process is anonymous and that information about submitted texts is disclosed exclusively to their authors, peer reviewers, or appointed experts.
5. Editors are obliged to respect the principle of confidentiality throughout the process of working on the submitted texts, and in particular they must not use the texts for their own purposes in an unauthorized way.
6. Editors are obliged to react appropriately, i.e. in accordance with the guidelines provided by COPE and the Committee on Ethics in Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, to any instances of a contributor’s, editor’s, or reviewer’s lack of integrity. The first step is always asking the person in question for an explanation.
7. All submitted texts are screened for plagiarism. Editors will inform all relevant authorities and institutions (including the institution with which the contributor is affiliated) about any serious documented instances of the lack of scholarly integrity (such as plagiarism, self-plagiarism, ghostwriting, and guest/gift authorship).
8. Editors are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed. If there is a need to retract an article from publication, its electronic version will be marked accordingly (with a comment to that effect).
9. The final decision on the publication of a manuscript is taken by the Editor-in-Chief.

Post-publication discussions and corrections
Correction requests for the following cases can be addressed, provided that a notice is included:
• Mistakes that could influence the scientific interpretation, including mistakes in sections of an otherwise dependable publication that may lead to misinterpretation; errors in data or interpretation that do not impact the ultimate conclusions.
• Scientifically significant formatting modifications, including incomplete or unclear figures/tables; inclusion or exclusion of an author from the list of authors (including complete affiliations); Inclusion or exclusion of an entire reference.
Addition or removal of a substantial amount of text in the supplementary material, covering elements such as author contributions and acknowledgments. Upon the approval of the request for updates, the paper will be revised and reissued on the journal`s website, accompanied by a notice. This notice, published separately, provides a link to the updated paper and is featured in the journal's most recent issue. The Correction serves the purpose of notifying readers about a significant alteration in the paper and directs them to the revised version on the website. Following these updates, relevant indexing databases will be informed to ensure their versions are also amended.

Policy on Alteration of Author Names
In instances where authors desire to modify their names after publication, University of Economics and Humanities, as the publisher, will revise and reissue the article, providing updated metadata to relevant indexing databases (subject to the policies of those databases). Recognizing the sensitivity and privacy associated with name changes, especially concerning gender identity alignment, marriage, divorce, or religious conversion, no Correction will be published, and co-authors will not be informed. Authors are required to communicate their name change request to the Editorial Office of the journal.

Retractions
In cases where a paper needs to be withdrawn from the body of research literature due to errors, ethical violations, data fabrication, plagiarism, or other reasons, the MIND Journal follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for retractions. Following these updates, relevant indexing databases will be informed to ensure their versions are also amended.