Ethical principles

The editorial board of the “Prace Językoznawcze” quarterly has introduced principles aimed at preventing any cases of scientific misconduct, including the ghostwriting firewall and the guest authorship firewall.
Ghostwriting takes place when a person who has made a significant contribution to the creation of a work has not been mentioned as its co-author and their share in the publication has not been mentioned. The term “ghost-author” refers to a person who has been omitted in the list of authors, although they qualified for authorship. With the ghostwriting firewall, the editors require the authors of the publication to provide their affiliation and to disclose whether somebody else other than the author of the text has developed the concept, collected data etc. and to indicate the person who performed the above mentioned work. The responsibility for the accuracy of the information is on the author submitting the text for publishing.
Guest authorship occurs when the share of the author is insignificant, or totally absent, and in spite of that, they are indicated as an author or a co-author of the publication. A guest author or a gift author is somebody mentioned as an author, although they do not satisfy the criteria of authorship. With the guest authorship firewall, in case the text submitted to „Prace Językoznawcze” has two or more authors, the editors require providing the information on the percentage share of individual authors’ contribution to the publication. The statement should bear the signatures of all authors of the text.
The principles adopted by the editorial board of "Prace Językoznawcze” are consistent with the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) procedures, guidelines of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Code of Good Practice for Scientific Publications by UNESCO and the Code of the National Centre for Research with regard to research honesty and to application for funds for the research purposes.

In case of discovering any scientific misconduct, the procedure is consistent with the rules accepted by COPE and with COPE algorithm, available in Polish at: http://publicationethics.org/files/Full%20set%20of%20Polish%20flowcharts.pdf. The most important principles are presented below. The details of the procedures are available at the above mentioned website. In each case of suspected research dishonesty, the editors take into account detailed recommendations of COPE, including a contact with the author/authors and considering the responses obtained during the procedure

The procedure of the editorial board with regard to:
a) suspected redundant (duplicate) publication in the submitted manuscript: gathering full documentary evidence → checking the extent of overlap/redundancy using the anti-plagiarism software or other sources → depending on the results of examination concerning the extent of overlap/redundancy and response or lack of response from the author, decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication, correcting the text or further proceeding;
b) suspected redundant (duplicate) publication in the published article: gathering full documentary evidence → checking the extent of overlap/redundancy using the anti-plagiarism software or other sources → depending on the results of examination concerning the degree of overlap/redundancy and response or lack of response from the author, decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication, correcting the text or further proceeding;
c) suspected plagiarism in the submitted manuscript: gathering full documentary evidence → checking the degree of copying → depending on the results of the examination concerning the extent of overlap/repetitions or response or lack of response from the author, a decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication, notifying the author of the other journal involved in this case or the publisher of the plagiarised book, correcting the text or further proceedings;
d) suspected plagiarism (plagiarism is defined as using fragments of the text and/or data without attribution of authorship, presented as if they were authored by the plagiarist) in the published article: gathering full documentary evidence→ checking the degree of copying→ depending on the results of the examination concerning overlap/repetitions and response or lack of response from the author, decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication from the electronic version, placing a note about this issue in the subsequent published volume in the traditional and electronic version, notifying the author of the second journal involved in this case or the publisher of the plagiarized book if the accusations are confirmed;
e) suspected fabricated data in the submitted manuscript: a request to provide evidence to the person reporting the suspicion concerning data fabrication → data analyses, contact with the author, possibly consulting a third party → depending on the proceeding results, decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication, correction – in case of an unintentional error, or further proceeding in case of unfounded charges;
f) suspected fabricated data in the published paper: requests to provide evidence to the person reporting the suspicion concerning data fabrication → data analysis, contact with the author, possibly consulting a third party → depending on the results of the proceeding, decision on: contacting the authors institution, withdrawing the publication if the charges prove are true, corrections in case of an unintentional error;
g) changes in the list of authors before publication of the text: explaining the reasons for changing the authorship, checking, verifying whether all authors agree to add/remove another person → if so – adding / removing the author, if not – suspending the review/publication until the issue of authorship is settled by all authors, if necessary, through their institutions;
h) changes in the author list after publication of the text: explaining the reasons for changing the authorship, checking whether all authors agree to add/remove a given person → if so, adding/removing the author, if so – publishing the correction, if not – explaining to the authors that the changes will not be made until the consent of all authors is obtained, if it is obtained, publishing the correction, if not, submitting the case to the authors institution with a request to settle the problem, publishing the correction if it is required by the institution;
i) suspected ghost authorship, gift authorship or guest authorship: reviewing the text and the authors statement → in case of suspected omission/unjustified addition of any person, contact with the authors to clarify any doubts → in case of necessary changes in the author list, obtaining the consent of all authors → submitting for review/printing.

Any detected cases of scientific misconduct will be disclosed, including notification of appropriate entities (institutions employing the authors and/or supervising bodies). To prevent such situations, we request that the authors comply with ethical requirements and provide a statement proving that the paper is an original result of their research, indicating their percentage contribution in the creation of the text.