Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
1. General provisions
1.1. Journal of Baltic Science Education (JBSE) is an international, double peer-reviewed research journal issued by the Scientia Socialis Ltd. in cooperation with SMC “Scientia Educologica”. The Journal of Baltic Science Education is published bi-monthly (from 2013).
1.2. JBSE is an open access journal. The journal is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
1.3. Editorial board of JBSE is using the principles of ethics of scientific publications upon recommendations of The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
1.4. Scientia Socialis Ltd. is a member of Lithuanian Publishers Association. SMC “Scientia Educologica” is a professional international science and other organisation member: the International Council of Associations for Science Education (ICASE), European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), Lithuanian Scientific Society (LSS), the Association of Lithuanian Serials (ALS).
1.5. All presented manuscripts are checked for possible plagiarism. SMC „Scientia Educologica“ as a member of the Association of Lithuanian Serials uses ithenticate a plagiarism detection service iThenticate. Verification/checking may also be done by other means available to the publisher.
2. Publication and authorship
2.1. Handing in an application for the journal, the authors (or a corresponding author on behalf of all authors) have to confirm, that they agree with these essential requirements.
2.1.1 The author guarantees, that the presented Work is the author’s (authors’) worksheet, which has never earlier been printed and is not submitted to be published in another journal, the copyright has not been breached and in which directly or indirectly other authors’ thoughts are marked, with reference to the source.
2.1.2. Author (-s) give the publishers right without limitation to publish the article in open access.
2.1.3. There are all necessary parts of the article in the article text, the manuscript is prepared according to the journal’s specific requirements.
2.1.4. The text is prepared following stylistic and bibliographic APA style recommendations.
2.2. All publications are published in English language due to the wide spreading of authors’ ideas among many other authors/researchers from different countries. All the articles were focused on the aims of the journal.
2.3. Authors must declare any possible professional, financial or personal interests from other parties or other conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript.
2.4. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the reported study/research.
2.5. All authors are asked to give the following details about themselves on a separate sheet of paper: name, surname, degree of education and title, the name of the working place and address, phone or fax number, e-mail.
2.6. The received articles are registered. The receiving date of the article is set up according to the time of the article received by e – mail.
2.7. Peer reviewed and accepted for publication article manuscripts are edited, layed out and published.
2.8. Authors are informed about the decision of the editorial board to publish or not to publish a concrete text just after the peer review process is over.
3. Author's responsibilities
3.1. The authors of the articles have to confirm, that the submitted work is original and, that it is prepared by those authors, who are indicated in it.
3.2. All authors must take public responsibility for the content of their paper.
3.3. If the article was submitted to other journals earlier and a decision was made not to publish it, the author has to point out, which journal the manuscript was submitted to and what were the reasons for its rejection.
3.4. The authors ensure that all individuals named as authors have legitimate input into the work and manuscript and that everyone who was involved with the work and preparation of the manuscript is listed.
3.5. Every author can submit for publishing only of a scientific value, original, neither fully nor in parts previously not published articles.
3.6. Submitting the same manuscript to several journals at the same time is considered as a gross academic ethics infringement and such an action is unacceptable.
3.7. Authors are required to prepare their manuscripts according to the format given in the Guidelines for Contributors.
3.8. The authors must assure, that all references used in the manuscript are indicated and; to the extent the manuscript incorporates text passages; figures; data or other material from the works of others; the authors have obtained any necessary permissions.
3.9. Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
3.10. Author (-s) cannot use other scientists’ ideas, statements, research methodology, their results, etc. in their articles without references to these authors’ publications.
3.11. Author (-s) have to assure, that their submitted articles contain no personal criticism of other scientists.
3.12. Authors have to amend articles accepted for publishing, taking into consideration the comments received in the reviews, or give a motivated explanation in written form, why the comments were not taken into account at all.
3.13. The author has to submit the electronically amended article to the editorial board in 14 days.
3.14. If the authors find out, that there are some inaccuracies and serious mistakes in the published article, he/she must inform the editor of the journal about this and by common efforts to make amendments and corrections.
3.15. Author (-s) become responsible for intellectual property owner’s (both physical, and juridical person’s) right infringement, any inaccurately submitted information etc., also SMC „Scientia Educologica“ (together with Scientia Socialis, Ltd.) agree to compensate for damages.
3.16. If the article was prepared by a few authors, then the one submitting the article for publication is considered the first and the main Author (corresponding author). He undertakes to introduce the rest of the authors with this order and to maintain relations with this scientific publication.
3.17. The corresponding author signs a 'Licence to publish/Declaration' on behalf of all the authors. Any change in authorship after initial submission must be approved by all authors and justified to the editor.
3.18. Author (s) give the journal publisher right without limitation to publish the article in open access.
4. Peer review / responsibility for the reviewers
4.1. Each manuscript of the article submitted to the editorial board of the journal "Journal of Baltic Science Education“ is reviewed by two independent reviewers.
4.2. The reviewers are appointed confidentially, a double blind review is used. If the problematic of the submitted publication is interdisciplinary, one review is of a scientist from a related scientific field or trend.
4.3. The reviewers are active scientists of that sphere, i.e. choosing a reviewer, his/her interest sphere and competence are taken into account.
4.4. The reviewers are appointed from a country other than that of the author.
4.5. In that case, if the conclusion of one reviewer is positive, and of another – negative, the third reviewer is appointed.
4.6. If the reviews of two reviewers are negative, the manuscript is rejected and not valued any more.
4.7. The referee must decide whether he/she recommends acceptance of the paper or not. Reviews should be conducted objectively.
4.8. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. The reviewers are encouraged to avoid cynical, destructive and unhelpful comments to the author(s).
4.9. The reviewers undertake to carefully and professionally evaluate the submitted article. It is necessary to fill in the form of the review, which is announced in the journal website. The reviewer evaluates the submitted manuscript and gives one of the following recommendations:
- accept without revision,
- accept with minor revisions,
- accept with moderate revisions,
- pre-accept: major revisions and re-evaluation,
- reject: rework and re-submit,
- reject: do NOT re-submit.
4.10. The reviewers provide written feedback to the authors’ manuscript, where there are comments regarding scientific value of the manuscript. The reviewers also indicate whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant and rating the work’s composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest to the journal’s readers.
4.11. Preparation of the review is necessary in all cases. At the same time the reviewers are encouraged to give thorough comments and remarks and/or propose questions directly in the manuscript under review, if the reviewer thinks, that it is necessary.
4.12. The reviewers submit the reviews of the article in 21 days. The full review cycle usually lasts 4-6 weeks. Two review cycles are possible if the article provided requires actual corrections (unless the reviewer's conclusion is minor corrections are needed).
4.13. The reviewers must declare possible conflicts of interest, informing about this Editorial Board by e-mail or by other communication device. The reviewers should declare any potential conflicts of interest and excuse themselves from involvement with any manuscript they feel they would not be able to review objectively or fairly.
4.14. The reviewers are encouraged to carefully evaluate not only the scientific level of the submitted manuscript, compliance with the journal problematic, but to pay special attention to the cited (used) in the article scientific information sources.
4.15. The reviewers also have to inform the editorial board about the cases of publication similarity to other known for the respondents publications, including wide extent text insertions, the authors of which are not indicated.
4.16. The reviewer, having received under review article, evaluates his own competence and if it is not sufficient, informs the journal editor about this.
4.17. The manuscripts, submitted to the reviewers, are impersonal.
4.18. The names of the reviewers are not declared to the authors.
5. Editorial responsibilities
5.1. Before submitting a received manuscript for reviewing, an editor (-s) evaluates if the article complies with the journal profile and thematic, if it is prepared properly and corresponds to the main technical requirements.
5.2. In case it does not meet the requirements, the manuscript is returned to the author (s).
5.3. The Editorial board, having received amended articles and answers to the reviewers’ comments in written form, in case of need, once again can ask the reviewers to evaluate the authors’ corrections and answers, and then makes a final decision on article’s appropriateness for publishing.
5.4. Editorial decisions are based only on the manuscripts’ intellectual/scientific content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s).
5.5. The journal’s editor-in-chief has to assure, that there is no conflict of interest for those people involved in reviewing any submitted manuscript.
5.6. The journal’s editor-in-chief and other editors agree to respect the intellectual independence of authors.
5.7. The journal’s editorial staff assures, that the submitted articles remain confidential while under review. Editor-in-chief protects the confidentiality of every author’s work.
5.8. The Editorial board guarantees every journal’s edition published on time and a fixed journal’s periodicity.
5.9. Editor-in-chief regularly communicates with all other members of editorial board.
5.10. Editor-in-chief makes editorial decisions and communicates them in a clear and constructive manner.
5.11. The Editorial Board provides guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts.
6. Publishing ethics issues
6.1. The Editorial Board, even with the help of the experienced reviewers, has no possibility to compare the submitted articles with the entirety of published educational texts, therefore the originality of the articles first of all is their authors’ responsibility object.
6.2. In case of plagiarism, the editorial staff announces a public apology to readers.
6.3. In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the Editorial Board, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question.
6.4. The publisher is committed to ensuring the autonomy of editorial decisions, without influence from advertisers or other commercial partners.
6.5. The Editorial Board follows the principals of justice, conscientiousness, honesty and impartiality in its activity.
7. Authors’ rights
7.1. Copyright terms are indicated in the Republic of Lithuania Law on Copyright and Related Rights, Articles 4-37.
8. Personal data protection declaration
8.1. Personal data and e-mail addresses and/or telephone numbers, given to the journal (or journal network), will be used only according to the declared purpose – for journal publishing and publication.
8.2. These data will not be announced publicly or handed over to the third countries (except the cases, when according to the valid laws, it is necessary to do this).
9. Final provisions
9.1. This document is previewed and renewed once a year.
9.2. This document can be changed on the decision of Board of Administration of Scientia Socialis Ltd.
9.3. Confirmed order is announced in the journal website.
Renewed and updated document was confirmed in the Scientia Socialis Ltd. Board of Administration meeting, on June 12, 2018 Protocol No. 18-01