When submitting to Open and distance education, authors (group of authors) are aware that they bear primary responsibility for the novelty and validity of scientific results, which implies adhering to the following principles:
– Authors shall provide reliable research results. Deliberately false or fraudulent statements are not acceptable.
– Authors shall ensure that research results are completely original. Every borrowed fragment or statement must be followed by a mandatory indication of the author and the original source. Excessive borrowing and any form of plagiarism including non-documented citations, paraphrasing or appropriating another person’s research results are non-ethical and unacceptable. The editorial board regards borrowings without references as plagiarism.
– Authors shall only provide authentic facts and information; give enough information for verifying and repeating other researchers’ experiments; not use the information obtained privately, without an open written consent; not allow data fabrication and falsification.
– Authors shall avoid manuscript duplication (in the cover letter the author should indicate that the work is published for the first time). If some elements of the manuscript have been previously published, the author shall refer to the earlier work and specify the differences.
– Authors shall not submit the manuscript that has been submitted to another journal and is under consideration, as well as the manuscript already published in another journal.
– It is important to recognize the contribution of all persons who, in one way or another, participated in the research; in particular, the manuscript should contain references to the works that significantly influenced the research.
– Authors shall adhere to ethical principles when criticizing or commenting a third-party research.
– All those who have made significant contributions should be described as co-authors. It is not acceptable to list persons who did not take part in the research.
– Authors shall respect the work of the editorial board and reviewers and eliminate the indicated inaccuracies and justify them.
– Authors shall submit and prepare their manuscripts in compliance with the journal guidelines.
– If the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in the manuscript under consideration or after its publication, he/she should immediately inform the editorial board.
– Authors shall prove to the editorial board or the publisher that their initial manuscript is valid or correct substantial errors if the editorial board has become aware of them from the third parties.
If publication ethics is breached by the editor, authors or reviewers, a mandatory investigation is required. This applies to both already published and unpublished materials from the moment of publication. The editorial board shall seek clarification without involving those who may have a conflict of interest with any of the parties. If the material containing significant inaccuracies has been published, it shall be immediately modified in a way accessible to readers and indexing systems.