Studia Informatica Pomerania

As part of their duties, all members of the „Studia Informatica Pomerania” editorial board do their best to maintain high academic and ethical standards and take all necessary steps against negligence in this regard. Articles submitted to the editorial board are evaluated as to their reliability, ethical standards and contribution to the development of science by the editorial board and the reviewers.

Detailed ethical principles have been compiled on the basis of COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE)

Criteria of publication and responsibility

The decision to publish an article is made by the editor-in-chief after consulting the section editor. The decisions of both editors are made on the basis of recommendations and detailed evaluations of at least two reviewers, who are independent and anonymous to the author. As appropriate, the opinion of the Scientific Council is also considered. The decisions may be affected by the risk of defaming a third party, breaching copyright or other intellectual property rights, plagiarism or self-plagiarism and any doubt as to the (co-)authorship of the article, called ghostwriting and guest authorship.

Fair play rule

Articles submitted to the „Studia Informatica Pomerania” are evaluated according to the methodological criteria and ethical principles. Personal factors, such as race, gender, religion, origin, citizenship, or political affiliations of the authors do not play the role in the evaluation process.

The confidentiality principle

The members of the editorial board shall not disclose any information on submitted papers to any persons apart from – on suitable stages of the publishing procedure – authors, reviewers, authorised editors and publisher’s representatives.

Preventing conflict of interest of the editorial board members

Articles which have not been published cannot be used by the members of the editorial board in their entirety or in parts without prior written consent of the authors.

Rules concerning the reviewers’ participation in the works of the editorial board

The task of the reviewers is to support the editors in making decisions on accepting, referral back for corrections, or rejecting the article. Recommendations in this regard should be unequivocal. Reviewers may also aid the authors in improving their work.

Punctuality principle

Reviews should be submitted at a date agreed in advance. If a reviewer is subject to a conflict of interest or for any other reason cannot undertake to review the article or keep the deadline – he/she is obliged to inform the editorial board without delay.

Confidentiality principle

Articles received for review are confidential. It is inadmissible to disclose them to third parties or discuss their contents or conclusions – except with an authorised representative of the editorial board. Reviews are anonymous, which means that authors do not know the identity of their reviewers and reviewers should not know the identity of authors. It is inadmissible for the reviewers to disclose information on the articles received to persons from outside the editorial board.

Preventing the conflict of interest of reviewers

Articles received for review cannot be used by the reviewers for personal profit in their entirety or in part. In case of a conflict of interest, reviewers are obliged to inform the editorial board without delay.

The principle of the reliability of sources

Reviewers are responsible to identify and indicate those sources which the authors have not cited even though they should have. The duties of the reviewers also comprise informing the editorial board on any relevant similarity, partial overlap of the article with previous publications, regardless of their author, or other unauthorised borrowings or a suspicion of plagiarism.

Authorship principle

All persons mentioned as authors or co-authors of the article should have a significant share in creating the article, from the idea, through the concept and execution, to conclusions. Other persons, who may have had an impact on certain aspects of the article, may be listed as associates, but not as co-authors of the article. Ghostwriting and guest authorship are signs of academic unreliability and are therefore unethical and inadmissible. Detected signs of such unreliability will be publicly announced by the editorial board and disclosed to relevant entities, in particular to the institutions of origin of the authors and alleged authors. The duty of the author submitting the article is also to ensure that the final version of the article has been accepted by all persons cited as its co-authors.

Preventing the conflict of interest of authors

Authors are obliged to disclose all sources of funding of the project, the contributions of institutions, organisations or other entities, or other circumstances which may have affected the interpretation or the conclusions of the article.

The principle of reliable presentation of research reports

Authors presenting the results of empirical studies are obliged to reliably describe the completed research and to objectively interpret the findings. Data which are the basis for the most relevant conclusions should be presented in detail, with the possibility to identify the source of data in order to repeat the experiments if necessary. It is inadmissible and unethical to consciously present, comment or interpret data in an unreliable or inaccurate manner. The authors should be prepared to supply the unprocessed source data for the purposes of review for the period of one year after the article has been published.

Originality principle

Authors present only their own originals articles, which have not been published before in their entirety or in relevant parts or in any other authors’ line-up. The authors guarantee that the article submitted for review has not been submitted for publication in any other periodical, collective work, or any other publication. The degree of originality should be stated by authors in a separate declaration.

The principle of the reliability of sources

Authors are obliged to indicate (cite) publications they used when writing their article.

Principles concerning errors in published articles

The detection of relevant mistakes or errors which may affect the interpretation or conclusions must be reported by the authors to the editorial board without delay.

(based on the materials of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education)

Reliability is one of the quality fundamentals of science. Readers should feel sure that the authors of the publication present their findings in a clear, reliable and honest manner, regardless of whether they are direct authors or whether they have been aided by a specialised entity (natural or legal person). The proof of ethical attitude of academic staff and the highest editorial standards should be the transparency of information on entities contributing to the creation of the publication (substantive, in-kind, financial, etc. contributions), which is a sign of not only good manners but also of social responsibility.

Examples of unethical attitudes are ghostwriting and guest authorship. 

• „ghostwriting” denotes a situation when someone has made a substantial contribution to the development of an article and has not disclosed his/her work as one of the authors or has not been mentioned in the acknowledgements embedded in the publication.
• „guest authorship” („honorary authorship”) denotes a situation when the contribution of an author in the process of the development of an article was negligible or it had not taken place and yet he/she is the author or co-author of a given publication.

In order to counteract ghostwriting and guest authorship, the editorial board of „Studia informatica Pomerania” introduces the following procedure:

• The editorial board demands that the contribution of each author be disclosed (together with their affiliations and nature of contribution, e.g. who is the author of the concept, theoretical assumptions, methods, records, etc. used in the preparation of the publication), with the main responsibility lying with the author submitting the article.
• The editorial board demands that the authors provide information on the financial sources for the publication, the contributions of  research institutions, associations or other entities („financial disclosure”).
• The editorial board informs that all detected cases of unethical attitudes will be exposed, including disclosing the information to relevant entities (institutions employing the authors, scientific societies, associations of scientific editors, etc.).
• The editorial board documents all instances of academic unreliability, in particular of infringing the ethical principles of science.
• All authors are therefore asked to fill in the declaration (download a document), sign, scan, and send it via electronic mail (in *.jpg or *.pdf format) on the date of submitting the entire article at the latest. We kindly inform that articles submitted by people who do not abide by this rule will be rejected for formal reasons.