CODE OF ETHICS
To ensure the highest standards of publications, the editors of "Białostockie Studia Literaturoznawcze" follow the policies developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Editorial ethics
The editorial process involves only the scientific evaluation of articles without any attention given to background, religion, sexual orientation, gender, nationality or worldview of the author. This procedure is supported by the Advisory Board.
The editors ensure that the double-blind peer review is reliable and secret and that the reader selection is based on content only.
Contributors receive a full anonymous review. Its content cannot be revealed to anyone outside the review process.
To ensure original and high quality articles, the editors use the quality-control tool CrossCheck. All submissions that do not meet citation standards or cases of plagiarism will be rejected. Detection of plagiarism will be investigated in compliance with the guidelines proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Documented cases of plagiarism are reported to the institutions that authors are affiliated with.
The editorial board will document all incidents of scholarly unreliability, particularly of scientific misconduct.
The editors cannot use unpublished materials submitted by contributors without authorization.
Ethical guidelines for authors
An author is fully responsible for submitting original material.
An author guarantees that the submission has not been previously published in the same form. If an article is a modified version of a previously published text, the earlier date and publisher should be acknowledged.
In case of multi-authored manuscripts, all collaborators should be acknowledged (including the affiliation and information on who contributed to particular, sections, parts, theses, etc.). The submission should also include signed authorship and contributorship statements. Publication authorship should acknowledge only the authors who contributed to preparation, project management, execution or interpretation.
Any cases of scholarly misconduct such as ghostwriting or guest authorship, which involves listing an author who did not provide any real assistance to the study, will be disclosed and documented.
An author is fully responsible for providing information on institutional funding in preparing the manuscript.
Ethical guidelines for reviewers
Readers are required to follow the rules of scientific integrity, objectivity, and anonymity in the review process.
A review should be free of personal commentary or bias that lack argumentation. The review should comply with the criteria provided in the online evaluation sheet, and present a clear recommendation for the submitted manuscript.
A reader cannot review an article if there is a conflict of interest resulting from any form of collaboration or connection between the reviewer and author. The no-conflict-of-interest clause is available in the evaluation sheet.
Cases of plagiarism and autoplagiarism must be considered as violation of scholarly ethics and should be brought to the publisher’s attention.
A reviewer cannot use unpublished parts of the manuscript without permission from an author.
Violation of ethics procedures
According to the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), all allegations of ethical violations must be carefully analyzed.
Authors have the right to present their opinions and defend themselves.
Cases of plagiarism, ghostwriting or guest authorship will be handled by the publisher or other experts. In some cases, the procedure will involve the institution affiliated with the author. The latter will be notified if scholarly misconduct has been proved.
Should the disclosure of proved misconduct take place after the publication, editors will retract the article. This includes the following situations: plagiarism, ghostwriting, guest authorship, presenting unreliable data, erroneous or unintentional mistakes, materials previously published without the required acknowledgement, consent or justification.
