CODE OF ETHICS
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
The ethical policy of the Legal Studies journal is consistent with the recommendations of the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org/). The ethical principles for Authors, Editors and Reviewers of the Legal Studies are therefore consistent with the recommendations of the COPE Committee on Publication Ethics, Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, and COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
Authors
The ghostwriting procedure, ethical standards and conflict of interest, personal data processing
- Ghostwriting
„Ghostwriting” i „guest authorship” procedures (based on the guidelines of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education).
Reliability is one of the science qualitative foundations. Readers should be sure that the authors of the publication in a transparent, reliable and honest way present the results of their work, regardless of the nature of authorship. The proof of the highest editorial standards, as well as the researchers’ ethical attitude, should be the disclosure of information about entities contributing to the publication (substantive, factual, financial contribution, etc.).
Ghostwriting is the lack of revealing a person who made a significant contribution to the publication (lack of mentioning as an author, or in the acknowledgements).
Guest or honorary authorship is the mention of someone’s authorship without (or with minimal) participation in the creation of the publication.
To counteract the above-mentioned phenomena, and to ensure scientific objectivity, research transparency, and adherence to ethical principles, the authors are obliged to disclose (submitting a statement) any:
- contribution of individuals to the creation of publications (including affiliation, and actual contribution, e.g. who is the author of the concepts, assumptions, methods used, who conducted the research, etc., in all co-authored studies: the estimated percentage of individual contribution);
- information on conflicts of interest;
- information on financing sources, contributions from scientific and research institutions, and other entities.
The editors reserve the right to collect and store information about detected cases of ghostwriting or guest authorship, and to transfer them to relevant entities (e.g. workplaces, scientific societies).
- Conflicts of interest
Moreover, to ensure objectivity and transparency of research and compliance with the accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct, the authors, apart from providing data on the sources of financing, should also include information on potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial).
- Plagiarism and self-plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work as your own without specifying the source of that work.
Self-plagiarism is the activity of using as original your own previously published work without specifying the source of the work.
To maintain ethical standards, the Authors in the declaration are also required to confirm the originality of the submitted texts for publication and to cite all sources. If the authors provide third-party illustrative material for publication (illustrations, tables, charts, etc.), they are required to obtain the necessary permission for their reproduction and hand it over to the publisher.
The editorial team, to maintain ethical standards, must not tolerate plagiarism and other unethical behaviour. To prevent cases of scientific misconduct, the Editorial Board has procedures for "ghostwriting" and "guest authorship", "plagiarism" and "self-plagiarism". If such unethical behaviour is detected, the Editorial Board may remove such an article and decide to present the detected unethical behaviour to the Ethics Committee, institutions employing the authors, and scientific societies. The editors may also apply non-mutually exclusive sanctions as consequences of proceedings before the Ethics Committee, such as prohibiting the publication of a plagiarism article in the journal, notifying the editors of other journals about plagiarism, a yearly ban on publishing in legal journals or an indefinite ban on publishing in such journals if the author also commits other infringements.
- Personal data processing
The author/authors also consent to the processing of personal data, the administrator of which will be the editorial office of the journal under the following rules.
Personal data processing is carried out following the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27th April 2016 on the protection of natural persons about the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).
The administrator is the editorial board of the journal entitled Studia Prawnoustrojowe, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland, postal address: Obitza 1, 10-725 Olsztyn, Poland. To obtain information about the processing of personal data, please contact the University Data Protection Inspector, e-mail address: bkw@uwm.edu.pl.
The authors’ personal data will be processed only to publish articles in the journal, based on Art. 6 (1) a GDPR, and as regards the processing is the fulfilment of legal obligations, based on Art. 6 (1) c GDPR.
Personal data will not be transferred to a third country or international organizations; will be kept for the period necessary to achieve the purposes of the processing, but not longer than 5 years, and in the scope of data whose storage period is defined by law, during this period; will not be processed for publishing after the withdrawal of the expressed consent; however, data demonstrating fulfilment of the information obligation, and consent, will be stored for the period necessary to prove the legality of the processing of personal data, which is the legitimate interest of the administrator, in this respect, the legal basis for processing is Art. 6 (1) f GDPR. The authors have the right to access their data, and rectify, delete, limit processing, the right to data transfer, to raise objections, to withdraw consent (at any time without affecting the compliance with the law of processing, which was made based on consent before withdrawing), to lodge a complaint to the supervisory body (if they feel that the processing of their data violates the provisions of the GDPR).
Contact details
Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, ul. Obitza 1, 10-725 Olsztyn.
Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board
The decision to accept an article for publication is made by the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal.
The decision to publish an article is based on two independent reviews (so-called blind reviews, double-blind) and the opinion of the thematic editors and the Scientific Council.
An important criterion when deciding whether to accept or reject an article for publication is its consistency with the scientific profile of the Journal (scientific disciplines: legal sciences and security sciences), not the origin of the author, affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, political views, gender, race or confession.
The Editorial Board does not disclose data about the authors to reviewers or the data about reviewers to the authors. In addition, the information obtained in the process of the initial evaluation and review (including the data on rejected articles) would not be used in own research by the members of the Editorial Board or reviewers without the author’s written consent.
The Editorial Board does not appoint as reviewers the persons who are directly connected with the authors or who are in other direct personal relationships with the authors (conflict of interest).
The Editor-in-Chief is obliged to comply with the current legal norms in the field of defamation, infringement of copyright and plagiarism. Therefore, after the Editorial Board receives the information about the violation of ethical standards by the author or there is a suspicion of plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief is obliged to take steps to verify the legitimacy of the presented allegations. In the event of a violation of ethical principles by the author (e.g. duplicate publication, plagiarism, fabrication of data, false list of authors, ghost authorship), the Editor-in-Chief is obliged to reject the text, collect full documentation with evidence, inform the author about the result of the procedure and actions of the Editorial Board, contact the author's institution and inform her or his superiors and/or other persons responsible for supervision over the research, as well as inform the reviewer about the actions taken.
Reviewers
A reviewer who is unable to review the text submitted for publication in Legal Studies should immediately inform the Editor assigned to a given article. Reviewers should not review articles if they are suspected of having a conflict of interest resulting from the relationships with the author, his or her company or institution.
Reviews should be based on scientific argument, objectivity, and ethical standards. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
All reviewed texts are confidential documents, they should not be disclosed to other people, discussed outside the Editorial Board, and should not be used for personal gain by the reviewer.
All reviews are anonymous. The Editorial Board does not share the authors' data with the reviewers.
The reviewer should inform the Editorial Board about the breach of ethical standards by the author, including significant similarity, partial overlapping of the content of the reviewed work with any other published and known work, or suspicion of plagiarism, ghost authorship or a false list of authors.
