Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statements (Authors, Reviewers, Editors)

Folia Malacologica has adopted and applies the principles of publication ethics in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (see: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).

It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer and the publisher.

1. Authors
It is assumed that all people listed as authors of submitted manuscripts meet the two basic authorship criteria: (1) they contributed substantially to study planning, data collection or interpretation of results; and (2) wrote or critically revised the paper. It is also assumed that all people listed as authors are aware of it and have agreed to be listed. On the other hand, it is assumed that no person who meets the authorship criteria has been omitted.

Therefore, the manuscript submitted for publication must be accompanied by the declaration by corresponding author on behalf of all authors that the manuscript is their original work, it has not been published or is submitted for publication in any other journal, and there is no conflict of interests between all authors and any other party. At the editorial office's request the corresponding author should certify that all authors fulfil standards for authorship and declare their contribution to the manuscript including research concept and design, collection and/or assembly of data, data analysis and interpretation, writing the article, critical revision of the article, final approval of article. While submitting the manuscript, the authors must declare that they accept the principles of publication ethics (especially those concerning ghost-writing and guest authorship) and the manuscript meets the requirements of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Lack of confirmation will exclude their paper from further editorial proceedings.

Folia Malacologica does not consider a working paper as a prepublication, nor would the existence of a working paper online disqualify an article from being considered for publication. However, the author should declare to the editor on submission of their article that: a working paper upon which the paper is based is publicly available; it is substantially developed from the working paper. Any working paper must be fully referenced on the submitted article, such as ‘This article is based upon a working paper X, hosted on X’.

Copyright assignment to the Association of Polish Malacologists is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a copyright agreement has been signed. The corresponding author will be required to assign the copyright of the paper on behalf of all co-authors.

Moreover, all people who are not listed as authors but contributed substantially to the study reported in the submitted manuscript or assisted in its writing (e.g. language professionals) should be mentioned in the acknowledgements. Finally, sources of funding for the study reported in the submitted papers should be revealed.

It is assumed that all experiments on animals conform to ethical standards and those experiments on legally protected molluscs or collecting in protected areas have been carried out by the authors who have got all necessary permissions. The permission must be declared by the authors during the process of paper submission. At the editorial office's request the corresponding author should provide copies of permissions.

Authors are required to provide a data availability statement to describe the availability or the absence of shared data. Data should be shared via an appropriate repository (such as GenBank, ZooBank), a citation or link to the repository should be included; in other cases authors should declare that “Data are available from the authors upon reasonable request”.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy
In order to detect and prevent plagiarism Folia Malacologica applies plagiarism detection software provided by Crossref and powered by iThenticate—Similarity Check (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/). Any detection of plagiarism will result in rejection of submissions at any point during the assessment process, including retraction of published articles.

Copyright infringement procedure
Acting against the above rules, especially every reported or discovered case of scientific misconduct (ghost-writing, guest authorship, copyright infringement, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, etc.), will be treated seriously by the Editors in accordance with the COPE guidelines. Any case of dishonesty should be reported to the Editors. They will investigate the case and inform scientific bodies and/or employers of dishonest authors.

2. Reviewers
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished information and data in their own research and publications, nor transfer them to others.

Reviews should be conducted objectively and presented clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper.

Reviewers should not review manuscripts when there arises a conflict of interests resulting from competitive, collaborative connections, companies or institutions connected to the publication.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process. Any conflict of interests that may influence paper’s findings, conclusions, or referee’s opinion to the extent that they could be unreliable must be excluded.

3. Editors
Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject or accept an article and are responsible for the contents and quality of the publication. The editors must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research.

All unpublished manuscripts and annexes sent to Folia Malacologica are treated by editors and publisher as confidential documents.

Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers and ensure that all research material they publish conforms to ethical guidelines internationally accepted.

At any time, an editor must evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the nature of the authors or the host institution including race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Editors should always discuss the reviews with authors permitting them to present their point of view, including possibility of the discussion with the reviewers.

Editors should always consider the needs of the authors when attempting to improve the publication and should publish errata pages or make corrections when necessary.

A retraction notice will be issued where a major error invalidates the conclusions in the article, or where research misconduct or publication misconduct has taken place. The decision will be made in accordance with COPE guidelines. A retraction statement will be linked to the retracted article on Folia Malacologica website.

Folia Malacologica may also publish a critique or response to a recent article published in the form of a short contribution, following peer review and editorial acceptance. The authors of the original paper are invited to write a response within a fixed timeframe, the tone of the comment and the reply should be appropriate for a scientific journal.

4. Complaints and appeals
Any case of complaints, appeals or reservations against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher (including actions incompatible with the above rules) should be reported to the editor-in-chief or the president of the Association of Polish Malacologists. They will be treated with due seriousness and the author of the complaint will receive a reply no later than three weeks from the date of notification.