COPE standards

Lublin University of Technology Publishing House has adopted the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for authors, editors, and reviewers. The following rules must be observed in relation to the publishing process, which takes place on the Lublin University of Technology Publishing House e-Platform:

• Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing compiled by COPE,
• Best Practices of the Reviewing Procedures compiled by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education,
• Researcher’s Code of Ethics formulated by the Polish Academy of Sciences.

If a violation of the ethical rules is suspected, the Lublin University of Technology Publishing House and the journals’ editorial teams will follow the procedures described in the COPE guidelines.

I. The principles governing the functioning of the Publishing House and the editorial teams.

1. The editorial teams are responsible for the proper course of the publishing process.
2. The editorial teams decide whether to accept received manuscripts for publication or reject them, taking care to follow ethical standards and maintain a high scientific level of published texts.
3. The editorial teams take care to maintain the integrity of the scientific record and editorial standards.
4. The Publishing House monitors whether the principles of publication ethics are followed by authors, reviewers and members of editorial teams.
5. The Publishing House and editorial teams supervise the review process, taking care to ensure impartiality, meet deadlines, prevent conflicts of interest, and prevent the misuse or disclosure of submitted manuscripts to third parties.
6. The Publishing House and editorial teams require that the author provides all consents necessary to publish the manuscript.
7. The Publishing House and editorial teams are impartial and treat authors equally, regardless of their gender, race, nationality, social origin etc.
8. The Publishing House and editorial teams attach particular importance to detecting all kinds of publication violations, especially plagiarism, duplicate publications, data fabrication, ghostwriting, and guest authorship. In such cases, the Publishing House proceeds according to a scheme of actions based on the COPE guidelines: contacts the author to explain the situation, gathers documentary evidence, and informs the relevant institutions concerned (in justified cases).
9. Editorial teams follow the COPE guidelines in case it is necessary to share the information about the received texts with Editorial Teams from outside the Publishing House when there are suspicions of misconduct by the participants of the publishing process, e.g. an author publishing the same text in a few publishing houses or journals.
10. In justified situations, the editorial team can withdraw the published material, e.g. when self-plagiarism is detected (the so-called text recycling), also after the issue has been printed, informing about it all the persons concerned.
11. If the author of the text is deceased, the editorial team, according to the COPE guidelines, contacts the person entitled to dispose of the copyright and determines if there is a need to publish a special note in the article indicating that the author is deceased.
12. In case a reader or a reviewer reports an undisclosed conflict of interests, the editorial team follows the COPE guidelines.
13. It is the duty of the Publishing House and the editorial teams to protect the personal data of the persons registered on the Platform (see more in the Regulations of the LUT Publishing House e-Platform).
14. The Publishing House and the editorial teams are obliged to refrain from any kinds of citation manipulation, e.g.: notoriety in suggesting the authors (or allowing the reviewers) to expand the references list with publications from the Publishing House or a particular reviewer, allowing the author to practice an excessive self-citation, ‘honorary citations’ or permitting the group of authors to practice the citation swapping. The only reason for adding publications to a work should be the strive to its highest substantive value, instead of artificial raising the citation ratings.
15. The Publishing House and the editorial teams continue to deepen their understanding of publishing malpractice to prevent misconduct. The Editorial Team does not use AI or AI-assisted technologies to make decisions requiring critical thinking or create any other substantive opinion.
    
    II. Principles for authors
     
    1. The author of the materials submitted for publication should state that the texts are fully original and that no infringement of the copyright of third parties has been made.
    2. The author makes every effort to ensure that the submitted texts meet the high scientific and editorial standards set by the guidelines on the webpage.
    3. The authors must follow the rules of peer-review transparency and, among other things, not list persons who did not contribute to the creation of the paper as coauthors (ghostwriting and guest authorship).
    4. The author is not allowed to list other persons as co-authors of the paper without their knowledge, because it can cause a dispute concerning double submission by the authors or an inability to contact an author to obtain permission to publish, if the university does not settle it in another way.
    5. The list of authors should not be changed before, during or after the publishing process (authorship dispute).
    6. The authors are allowed to propose the reviewers' names unless there is no conflict of interest between them and the proposed reviewers (they must not be connected by: direct personal relationships, professional subordination, or direct scientific collaboration within the last two years).
    7. The author of a rejected article should not name or criticise the reviewer publicly, because the claims concerning the review should be directed to editorial teams with confidentiality of the data maintained.
    8. It is the author’s obligation to inform the Publisher and the editorial team about a possible conflict of interest.
    9. Research must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, be approved by ethics committees, and detailed information on this approval must be included in the article. Also, informed consent must be obtained from all research participants.
    10. The author is obliged to refrain from any kinds of citation manipulation, e.g., an excessive self-citation, ‘honorary citations’ or joining the group of authors to practice citation swapping. The only reason for adding publications to a work should be the striving for its highest substantive value, instead of artificially raising the citation ratings. 
    11. In case of discovering any mistakes or inaccuracies in the published manuscript, the author should inform the Publishing House and the Editorial Teams about the problem and cooperate with the editors in correcting or withdrawing the work. If the error was found by the third party, the author should also cooperate with the editors to solve the issue.
    12. In case of applying the AI and AI-assisted technology in the work, the author is obliged to make a proper declaration in their work, providing information about the name of the tool/service and the reasons for using it.
    13. The AI cannot be credited as an author of the manuscript. Texts created with the use of AI might be fragmentary or incorrect, the author, responsible for the whole submitted article, is obliged to look carefully into the text created with the use of AI and correct it, if needed.
        
        

    III. The principles governing the reviewing process

1. The review of the submitted texts is a two-step process and consists of an internal review (the editorial team decides whether to qualify the material for the subsequent publishing process) and an external review (conducted by an appointed reviewer).
2. During the external review process, each scientific text is assessed by at least one or two independent reviewers in accordance with a double-blind peer-review process or another review procedure as indicated by the editorial office.
3. The reviewer should follow the COPE guidelines for reviewers, according to which they should, among others: possess proper competencies necessary to review submitted works; inform the editorial team of any possible conflicts of interest; maintain objectivity towards the works reviewed; and send reviews on time.
4. The reviewer and the editorial team should follow the COPE guidelines in case of suspicion of data fabrication by the author or undisclosed conflicts of interest.
5. The reviewer is obliged to refrain from any kinds of citation manipulation, e.g., notoriety in suggesting the author(s) to expand the references list with publications written by this reviewer, allowing the author to practice an excessive self-citation, ‘honorary citations’ or not informing about the group of authors practising citation swapping. The only reason for adding publications to a work should be the striving for its highest substantive value, instead of artificially raising the citation ratings.
6. In case of suspicion that the reviewer has appropriated the author’s ideas or data, the editorial team shall proceed according to the COPE guidelines, and specifically, to the following procedures: gathering documentary evidence, checking whether the allegations are well-founded, contacting the reviewer in order to explain the situation, checking the relationships between the author and the reviewer (or other persons asked to review a given manuscript), removing the reviewer from reviewer database and informing relevant interested institutions (in justified cases).
7. The decisions made during the reviewing process are kept confidential.
8. The reviewer does not use AI to make decisions that require critical thinking or to form any other substantive opinion about the manuscript. 

Detailed principles concerning publishing ethics described by the COPE are available in the COPE Flowcharts.

The author of the materials submitted for publication should state that their texts are fully original and that no infringement of the copyright of third parties has been made.