Publication ethics

Introduction - General rules

The “Institute of National Remembrance Review” Editorial Board endeavors to follow the ethical standards of conduct in relations with the authors, reviewers, authors of the translations, members of the Academic Board and with the engaged third parties. The standards of practices used follow in general the guidelines set by the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The “Institute of National Remembrance Review” Editorial Board seeks to publish the texts of significant academic value and unquestionable original character. For this reason the editorial board strives to shape the editorial and reviewing process after the strict rules providing the impartiality and integrity of assessment and aiming at raising the academic quality of the papers. The editorial board may check the texts submitted to publication on the regular basis to the verification of its contents to exclude possible plagiarism cases.

The authorship (and eventual contributorship, i.e. contributions of research assistants, tutors, etc., as well as share of authorship and/or contributorship) of the papers must be clearly stated on the stage of submitting of the text, with the marking of the academic ID (ORCID or other) and academic and/or institutional affiliation of the author/s (contributor/s) (see the Author’s declaration and Explanations on the reliability concerning authorship disclosure of the submitted papers and the participation of third sides in its creation, and the Guidelines for the Authors). The filing of the abovementioned Author’s declaration is obligatory before the publication.

The allegations of misconduct (especially concerning plagiarism, idea, data or query appropriation, or other authorship and contributorship matters, as well as conflict of interest) will be examined immediately by the Editorial Board with the participation of the Academic Board and competent Institute of National Remembrance authorities, and with use of available verification tools (including plagiarism detection systems and additional review). The Editorial Board reserves the right to withdraw the questionable texts from periodical’s website and cooperating repositories and replace it with remarks containing information on grounds and date of withdrawal. The access to the retracted papers for the legal or research purposes is guaranteed on the separate request. The reservation of appropriate legal measures applies. The Editorial Board is entitled to share the information on suspected or found misconduct with other professional and / or academic bodies, especially other academic periodicals’ editorial boards and academic societies. In cases of interest conflict, the persons affected will be excluded from the decision-making process.

To exclude the conflicts of interests that could emerge in the editorial or reviewing process, the Editorial Board will not let the reviewing of the submitted texts to the persons related to the authors, their supervisors, tutors, promoters, reviewers of the text submitted in the academic degree proceedings, persons entitled to make financial decisions in author’s benefit, or persons being in publicly acknowledged or declared personal conflict with the author. The texts submitted to the other periodicals or publishing houses for the publication in English, or previously published in English will not be accepted.

The source data, datasets, publications and documents cited or embedded in the submitted texts must offer clear bibliographical description or collection description, enabling the unhindered opportunity of verification.

The texts handling vulnerable personal data, confidential data, concerning vulnerable populations, or containing opinions that could be considered as libelous will be consulted by Editorial Board members with competent Academic Board members, and with the legal branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. The reviewers of the texts in question will be additionally briefed on such passages.

The polemics with previously published texts as well as replies or letters to the editor will be accepted to publish (in the periodical’s printed version and on the periodical’s own website and in the cooperating repositories) with the reservation of editorial board’s right to terminate the discussion when in its assessment the debatable questions were cleared.

The implementation of the corrections, adjustments and supplements in the periodical’s website and cooperating repositories (as well as publishing of correction note in printed editions of following periodical issues) is guaranteed after additional editorial board’s assessment or – in adequate cases – additional peer review. The corrections caused by founding of misconduct (especially plagiarism), conflict of interests, etc., will be implemented accordingly by the Editorial Board on its own behalf.

Complaints concerning the periodical’s contents should be sent to the Editorial Board (inrr@ipn.gov.pl). The Editorial Board will confirm the reception of complaint, and inform the claimant on the legal status of complaint, the procedure of its handling, person responsible for further contacts and the foreseen term of complaint’s settlement. In cases of interest conflict, the persons affected will be excluded from the decision-making process.

The Editorial Board will seek to follow the guidelines of the COPE flowcharts of conduct concerning the editorial ethics and procedures.

Publication ethics - Detailed rules

The principles of publication ethics applied by the editors of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” are based directly on the recommendations of best practices developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) - see COPE Core Practices and their detailed explanations available on the COPE website.

Academic integrity and impartiality

1. The Editorial Board makes every effort to ensure that the studies published in the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” meet the highest academic standards and are of significant importance for the development of fields and disciplines corresponding to the subject of the periodical.
2. The Editorial Board of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” and the independent reviewers appointed by it bases its work on the principles of: objectivity, impartiality, independence from external influences, openness in discussion, and academic reliability.
3. The decision to accept material for publication depends on the academic level of the study, its importance for research and the field, as well as the originality of the work and consistency with the topics discussed in the “Institute of National Remembrance Review”.
4. An academic publication is reliable and credible only when it is prepared using impartially and objectively applied research methods and when it faithfully and scrupulously presents the results of the research conducted.
5. Authors are obliged to indicate sources of financing for academic research and other work resulting in a study submitted for publication in the “Institute of National Remembrance Review”.
6. Academic integrity requires that all borrowings, quotes, citations, and references fully and adequately point out its sources. Actions that do not respect the abovementioned principle constitute a violation of the intellectual rights of the relevant authors.
7. At the request of the Editorial Board, the authors should provide source data and provide comprehensive explanations regarding the research methods used in the scholarly work resulting in the text submitted for publication. If errors are detected in a text already accepted for publication, or in relation to the data on which the study was based, the authors are obliged to make corrections. If errors are detected in a paper that has already been published, the Editorial Board allow the authors to publish a correction or explanation in the next volume and on the website of the periodical.

Editors’ obligations

The Editorial Board of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” is responsible for the efficient organisation of individual stages of the publishing process: initial assessment of the submitted article by members of the editorial team, submission of the text for external reviews, supervision of linguistic and technical editing, and placement in academic repositories (see: repository policy of the periodical).

1. The Editorial Board decides on the need for possible modification, rejection or acceptance of the work for publication, taking into account only its originality, clarity and logic of the argument presented and compliance with the profile of the yearbook.
2. The Editorial Board takes the necessary actions to immediately correct the publication if misleading statements or significant inaccuracies appear in the publication.
3. The Editorial Board reacts to the unethical behaviour and, if necessary, rejects an article that has been prepared in violation of ethical principles.
4. The Editorial Board provides appropriate information to authors and reviewers via the regularly updated periodical’s profile on Open Journal Systems website or individual e-mail correspondence (treated as confidential documentation), acting on the basis of legal provisions under the conditions specified in the GDPR – Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC.
5. The Editorial Board is obliged to avoid conflicts of interest in regard to accepted texts, i.e. situations in which certain relationships (professional, personal or other) may influence the assessment of the article or the decision to publish it.

Authors’ obligations

1. The authors are responsible for the content of the published texts and the reliability of the data used in them, as well as any possible violation of the personal rights of third parties.
2. Articles sent to the editors must be original texts – publishing works that are plagiarised (self-plagiarised) or co-authored works without indicating their co-authors, or the result of unreliable practices such as ghost authorship, guest writing or gift authorship, is excluded.
3. The authors certify the originality of the text in the relevant declaration, stating that the work has not been published anywhere before and has not been simultaneously submitted to another publishing house and is solely their own work, does not bear the characteristics of a derivative work and does not infringe the copyrights or personal rights of third parties.
4. The authors consent to the publication of their work in the so-called open access for academic, non-commercial purposes on the website of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” and in academic repositories and full-text databases in which the periodical is registered.
5. The authors undertake to obtain consent, in accordance with the principles of copyright law, from the authors, other owners of copyrights or heirs of iconographic materials used in the work and other source materials to use these sources.
6. The order in which names are given in a multi-authored publication should be consistent with the custom in a given academic discipline and should be approved by all co-authors at an early stage of preparing the publication.
7. The texts sent by the authors should be consistent with the profile of the periodical and be prepared in accordance with the technical guidelines and rules specified in the editorial instructions, in the general questions of text and back matter formatting the Chicago Manual of Style standard applies.

Counteracting discriminatory practices

8. Materials submitted for publication in the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” are assessed based on their academic level, importance for the field of academic disciplines and topics covered by the periodical, regardless of the author’s origin, national or ethnic affiliation, political views, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Confidentiality

• The Editorial Board of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” protect data, documents and information obtained at every stage of the publishing process, which – due to their nature – should remain confidential (e.g. reviews, correspondence between the editors and authors).
• Reviewers and authors are also obliged to maintain confidentiality in this respect.

Anti-plagiarism policy

• The Editorial Board of the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” declares the possibility of using anti-plagiarism software used by the IPN Publishing House, intended to verify the originality of the text and the scope of possible borrowings from third-party publications. Reviewers also ensure that the originality of the studies is maintained.
• If the author of the material submitted for publication in “Institute of National Remembrance Review” uses the work of third parties – in the form of borrowings, quotes, citations and references – the author is obliged to cite their source in an exhaustive and adequate manner. This means the obligation to correctly cite all sources on which the author relied when preparing the study.
• In the case of a literal quotation of fragments of other people’s works (sentence, paragraph), the appropriate fragment should be placed in quotation marks and provided with an appropriate citation.
• Activities that do not respect the above principles constitute a violation of the copyrights of the relevant authors (plagiarism) and constitute the most blatant type of violation of the principles of academic integrity.
• If there is a suspicion that the author has committed this type of practice, the editors take steps in accordance with the procedure specified by COPE. Any cases identified by the editors will be disclosed, including notifying relevant entities (institutions employing authors, scholarly societies, associations of academic editors, etc.), as well as law enforcement agencies.

Anti-duplication policy

• A manifestation of academic dishonesty are cases of sending for publication texts that constitute duplicate publications, i.e. containing, to a significant extent, repetition of research results, analysis and theses formulated in the author’s previous publications (self-plagiarism).
• If there is a suspicion that the author has committed this type of practice, the editors take steps in accordance with the procedure specified by the COPE principles. Any cases identified by the editors will be disclosed, including notifying relevant entities (institutions employing authors, scholarly societies, associations of academic editors, etc.).

Ghost authorship, guest writing, gift authorship

• Authorship and co-authorship of a study submitted for publication in the “Institute of National Remembrance Review” should be limited to people who significantly contributed to its creation; the participation of research assistants, people conducting queries, and possibly other people contributing to the concept or methodological basis of the text should be indicated.
• The periodical does not publish texts in which the actual author/co-author of the study is someone other than the person indicated as its author/co-author, and therefore prepared by the so-called ghost author who made a significant contribution to the creation of the publication, without disclosing their participation as one of the authors.
• The editors also do not accept texts for printing where the participation of the person indicated as the author or co-author is negligible (guest writing) or does not take place at all (gift authorship).
• If there are suspicions that the author/authors have committed this type of practice, the editors take steps in accordance with the procedure specified by COPE. Any cases identified by the editors will be disclosed, including notifying relevant entities (institutions employing authors, scholarly societies, associations of academic editors, etc.).

Withdrawal of an already published study

• In cases of alleged or proven academic dishonesty, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the periodical publisher, in close cooperation with the periodical’s editorial team, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and make corrections to the specific article. This includes the prompt publication of erratum or, in justified cases, full withdrawal of the work from the periodicals.
• The editors decide to withdraw a work that has already been published if they notice an obvious violation of the principles of publishing ethics applicable to the “Institute of National Remembrance Review”. The work will then be removed from the periodical’s website run in the OJS system and cooperating repositories, in accordance with the provisions of agreements with the entities maintaining them and the rules of publication in these repositories.
• If copies of a given volume were printed, an explanation and/or apology will be published in the next volume of the periodical.
• Obvious violations of publishing ethics include in particular: plagiarism, unjustified and undisclosed duplication, as well as cases of significant violations of the rules on conflicts of interest and the rules on ghost authorship, guestwriting and gift authorship; before making a decision to withdraw a given publication, the Editorial Board asks the author for a comment, enabling them to respond to the allegations presented.
• In the event of a violation of the principles of publishing ethics by the authors of published works, the Editorial Boards reserves the right to take appropriate legal measures.