Our team follows world-recognised high standards of scholarly publishing. In our Code of Conduct we use the recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics. Being a publisher, we use such guidelines as Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers. Our editors use Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Editorial Board of the journal “Business Ethics and Leadership” follows the principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and expects all potential authors to read and understand the Ethics Policy before submitting manuscripts to the journals. For more information, please visit the COPE web-site: http://publicationethics.org.

Editorial Board of the journal “Business Ethics and Leadership” reserves the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the guidelines indicated below.

The authors (co-authors) are responsible for inaccurate information or failure to comply with the following provisions.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or results of the reported study.

Those who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project may be listed as contributors (for example, as technical assistants or with the definition of their specific functions).

All authors (co-authors) are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest that could inappropriately influence the objectivity of their work.

If necessary (in any request of the editor), the authors (co-authors) should promptly provide substantiated proof of authorship or originality of the submitted material, providing reasonable explanation for discrepancies or failures to disclose vital information.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested to the editorial board during peer review or after publication.

Authors are able to formulate complaints against publisher, editor, peerreviewers and other members of the editorial staff of journals if they are aware of editorial misconduct, copyright infringement, publishing without consent, or any other breach. Complaints must first be addressed directly to the publisher or editor-in-chief of the corresponding journal.

Integrity

Editorial Boards of the journals “Business Ethics and Leadership”, “SocioEco-nomic Challenges” and “Financial Markets, Institutions and Risks”  seek to protect the reputation of the journals against abuses and scientific misconduct.

Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research.

The main types of research misconduct are the following: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them. A more minor form of fabrication are references included in the text, which are actually fake.

Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained.

Plagiarism-fabrication – the act of taking an unrelated figure from an unrelated publication and reproducing it exactly in a new publication.

Self-plagiarism – or multiple publication of the same content with different titles and/or in different journals.

Manuscripts should not contain plagiarism. The Editorial Board will reject the manuscripts if they contain any form of plagiarism – willful and/or negligent plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is also unacceptable.

The presence of plagiarism in the article testifies the unethical and unprofessional behavior of the author (co-authors) and is likely to undermine the reputation of the author (co-authors) and the publisher.

Before sending the article to the review, it will be checked for originality with duplication-checking software by using Unicheck and StrikePlagiarism.
Where the article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, the Editorial Board reserves the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author’s (co-authors’) institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

Objectivity and transparency

In order to ensure the objectivity and transparency of the research in accordance with the accepted principles of ethical and professional behavior, authors should (if applicable) indicate in a separate section of the article entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” information on:

• funding sources contributing to the research;
• potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial);
• informed consent of research and experiments participants (if the article contains results of research with the human participation);
• statements about ensuring proper conditions for handling animals during experiments, if the animal participated in the study.

In the Author’s agreement the authors (co-authors) are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest Editorial Boards reserve the right to reject manuscripts on the basis of any declared conflict.

A conflict of interest may arise in the following cases:

• the author or his sponsor have financial, commercial, legal or professional relations with other organizations or with people who work with them, which may affect the research;
• the reviewer has information about the authorship of the article;
• the reviewer has recently collaborated with the author (co-author);
• the reviewer works in the same institution as any of the authors (co-authors);
• other.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors (co-authors) should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association with all current revisions and amendments.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors (co-authors) should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

All authors (co-authors) are required to follow the requirements on informed consent from study participants. They must confirm that any participant in any research or experiment described in their article has given written consent to the inclusion of material pertaining to themselves, that they acknowledge that they cannot be identified via the paper and that you have fully anonymized them. The article should describe the way in which the informed consent was obtained.

The authors (co-authors) can count on transparency and respect from the pub-lisher and the editor while preparing the article for publication.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND THE MEMBERS OF EDITORIAL BOARDS

The members of Editorial Board are qualified experts in their fields and experts in a variety of topics published in the journal.

They adhere to the Code of Conduct for Journal Editors.

All Members are invited to Editorial Board by an Invitation letter.

Editor-in-chief and the members of editorial boards of scientific journals have responsibilities toward the authors who provide the content of the journals, the peer reviewers who comment on the suitability of manuscripts for publication, the journal’s readers and the scientific community, the owners/publishers of the journals, and the public as a whole.

The composition of the Editorial Board is reviewed twice a year (in January and in June).

Editor-in-Chief gets the responsibilities and duties across to the members of Editorial Board and keeps them updated on changes and developments concerning the process of publishing journals.

Editor-in-Chief should respect the opinions and suggestions from the Editorial Board regarding the improvement of the editorial policy of journals.

Editor-in-Chief and the members of Editorial Board should:

• evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity) and its relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation;
• maintain and promote consistent ethical policies for their journals;
• ensure the confidentiality of the review process;
• work with authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members to ensure they are sufficiently advised regarding their journals’ ethics and publishing policies;
• promote compliance with the principles of fairness, impartiality and timeliness in the implementation of the publishing policy of journals;
• executive (technical) editors should refuse to process the manuscript if they have or may have a conflict of interest as a result of competitive, joint or other relationships or links to any of the authors, companies or (in some cases) institutions, associated with the manuscript.

Responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief and the members of Editorial Board of scientific journals towards authors:

• provide guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts;
• provide a clear statement of the Journal’s policies on authorship criteria;
• establish a system for effective and rapid peer review;
• be transparent about real or apparent competing interests, ensure that any conflicts of interest are clearly stated (if not avoided);
• treat all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency;
• respect the intellectual property rights of authors;
• ensure timely publication of accepted manuscripts
  timely introduce the authors to all editorial standards and changes in the editorial policy.

Responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief and the members of Editorial Board of scientific journals towards reviewers:

• appoint papers that meet the reviewers’ domain of interest and expertise;
• in case of rejection the invitation, accept it politely and be hopeful of work together in the time coming;
• provide adequate guidance for the reviewers
• fix reviewers an appropriate time to conduct an inspection of materials sent and complete their reviews;
• set a maximum number of times for review (3 times a year);
• respect the opinions of reviewers.

Responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief and the members of Editorial Board of scientific journals towards to readers:

• attract the best articles of high scientific level that will be of interest to readers;
• ensure that the journal provides information in the correct format for its intended audience (print, online, etc.);
• avoid publishing fraudulent materials and conflict of interest or other ethical problems within the editorial team;
• ensure that its reviewing and acceptance system is unbiased;
• that the journal is published on time, according to its stated schedule;
• guarantee access to the published information;
• establish a regular communication with the publisher and report any legal or ethical problems to him.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS

Members of the Editorial Board, who are qualified experts in a variety of topics published in the journal or external reviewers with whom the journal cooperates, can be involved in the articles review.

The reviewers should:

• be kept anonymous throughout the review process, unless they have authorized disclosure;
• immediately inform the Editor-in-Chief any competing or conflict of interest (personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious) that could affect the impartiality of their reviewing and decline to review where appropriate. Such conflicts of interest can occur if the reviewer is asked to referee a paper written by a colleague of the same organization, former or current student, former advisor, or closely-related person. Another type of conflict occurs, for example, when the reviewer is a direct competitor of the author of the paper for a grant. If the conflict is severe, the reviewer should refuse to review a manuscript;
• conduct themselves fairly and impartially in the process of review;
• agree to review a paper for which he/she has the subject expertise or if reviewer feels he/she is not competent to review a particular manuscript, he should inform about this fact the Editor-in-Chief immediately;
• not use information from the manuscript for their own benefit or that of other bodies before they are published;
• comment on evidences of plagiarism, duplicate submission, unethical research design or excessive fragmentation of results to achieve multiple publications of manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

Editors, authors, and peer reviewers should disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review work objectively. These might include relevant financial interests (for example, patent ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, or speaker’s fees), or personal, political, or religious interests.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors definition of conflicts of interest is as follows:

“A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.”

Strict policies preventing people with conflicts of interest from publishing might encourage authors to conceal relevant interests, and might therefore be counterproductive.

• Journal editors, board members, and staff who are involved with decisions about publication should declare their interests. Journals should consider publishing these on their website and updating them as required, as well as disclosing how conflicts of interest were managed for specific papers.

• Editors should clearly explain what should be disclosed, including the period that these statements should cover (for example, 3 years). Editors should ask authors to describe relevant funding, including the purpose of the funding (for example, travel grant and speaker’s fees), and to describe relevant patents, stocks, and shares that they own.

• Editors should publish authors’ conflicts of interest whenever they are relevant, or a statement of their absence. If there is doubt, editors should opt in favor of greater disclosure.

• If authors state that there are no conflicts of interest, editors should publish a confirmation to this effect.

• Editors should manage peer reviewers’ conflicts of interest. An invitation to review a manuscript should be accompanied by a request for the reviewer to reveal any potential conflicts of interest and a request for the peer reviewer to disqualify or recuse themselves when these are relevant.

• When editors, members of editorial boards, and other editorial staff are presented with papers where their own interests may be perceived to impair their ability to make an unbiased editorial decision, they should withdraw from discussions, deputize decisions, or suggest that authors seek publication in a different journal.

Editors and journal staff as authors

Editors or board members should not be involved in editorial decisions about their own scholarly work. Journals should establish and publish mechanisms and clearly defined policies for handling submissions from editors, members of their editorial boards, and employees. We recommend that:

• Editors and editorial team members are excluded from publication decisions when they are authors or have contributed to a manuscript.

• A short statement may be useful for any published article that lists editors or board members as authors to explain the process used to make the editorial decision.

Some journals will not consider original research papers from editors or employees of the journal. Others have procedures in place for ensuring fair peer review.