Ethics

The authors, Editorial Board and Reviewers of the Journal “Lifelong Education: The 21st Century” (hereinafter also as Journal) observe the publication ethics while preparing materials.

The Publication Ethics is the set of rules of conduct of the editorial staff in relation to each other, reviewers and authors on the issues related to publishing scientific materials in the Journal. All the above-mentioned persons assume the obligations listed below and strongly adhere to them in their work. All disputable cases concerning the mentioned obligations are envisaged by the Editor-in-Chief.

The editorial staff monitors the implementation of ethical requirements, relying on guidelines prepared by foreign relevant organizations, associations and publishers, as well as the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers. The main documents that the editorial board relies on are the recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), United Kingdom; Elsevier Publishing House, Netherlands; Publishing Ethics Resource Kit for editors and Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement, as well as the Declaration on the Ethical Principles of Scientific Publications adopted by the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ASEP).

1. Duties of the Editor-in-Chief

The Editor-in-Chief of the Journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question, its scientific significance, and the results of reviewing must always lie at the root of such decisions.

2. Duties of Editors

The Editorial Staff and the Editorial Board are obliged:

to contact with the authors with goodwill and sympathy;
not to allow any preferences to the authors due to their race, gender and other circumstances which do not refer to the reliability of the submitted materials and scientific value of the article;
to provide participation of unbiased competent reviewers, to substitute them when necessary;
not to submit information on received manuscripts to all persons except the authors and reviewers;
not to allow publication of articles which give sufficient evidence of containing plagiarism, not having scientific value, not corresponding to the remit of the Journal and its editorial policy;
to take adequate measures in case of ethical complaints concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper (see section The regulation of violations of Publication Ethics).

3. Duties of Reviewers

The reviewers are obliged:

to treat the reviewed manuscript as a confidential document, not to submit it to other persons without authorization from the editors;
to give unbiased and argumentative evaluation of the research results;
not to use the unpublished data from the submitted manuscripts for personal use;
to inform the Editorial Board about their insufficient competence for the objective evaluation of the manuscript and about the circumstances which prevent such evaluation.

Reviewers should identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is a notice, conclusion, or an argument published before should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also draw editor’s attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper that is in their scientific competence. This similarity or overlap will be reason to reject the manuscript.

4. Duties of Authors

The authors realize that they are responsible for originality and faithfulness of research results.

The authors are obliged:

to include as co-authors all persons who sufficiently contributed to the research, and to exclude those who did not make such a contribution;
to ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication
to ensure that they have written entirely original articles, and in the case of using the article or words of other Authors must provide them appropriately cited or quoted;
to invoke research predecessors, the results of which are significant in the development of the perspective article;
to guarantee that the submitted article is published for the first time and was not previously published or submitted to another journal.

An article sent to the editorial board should not contain plagiarism. Term “plagiarism” is defined as positioning someone else’s work as your own one, rephrasing significant parts of someone else’s research without reference to the author’s name as well as appropriation of survey results. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Controversial statements addressed to any authors are allowed but should be worded with utmost care and respect. Criticism of any concept should be sustained. The author should avoid derogatory remarks about scholars whose concepts are in question in the article.

The author is responsible for the selection and accuracy of facts, quotations, proper names, geographical names and other information.

Authors have to indicate the source of financing of the researches presented in the article.

If the author has found out mistakes or misspellings in the article submitted for publication he has to inform the Editorial Board and correct the mistakes as soon as possible.

By agreeing to publication, the author enters into licensing agreement.

5. The regulation of violations of Publication Ethics

The editors and Editorial Board make every effort to prevent breaches of publication ethics. They reserve the right to reject the publication of articles in case of their violation.

The Editorial Board informs the author (or an unfair reviewer) with a warning letter of non-compliance with the above listed ethical standards, revealing the facts of violation of ethics and warning of possible consequences. The author (or an unfair reviewer) is given the opportunity to answer any charges.

Minor violations are handled without the involvement of the third parties.

Serious violations may require the official publication on the journal's website of the revealed facts of violations; notification of the employer of the accused (head's office where the author works). The Editor-in-chief together with the Editorial Board should take a decision on whether to inform the employer by examining the available data and through consultations with a limited number of experts.