Privacy Statement

Ethical publishing

Dealing with unethical behaviour

Any individual or institution may at any time report to the Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Board of the Journal information about violations of ethical norms by the authors, as well as other irregularities, which they will support by credible information and evidence whit the aim to initiate an investigation procedure. In that case, a procedure of verification of the presented evidence and assertions will be initiated, including the following steps:

  • The Editor-in-Chief decides to launch an investigation.
  • During the course of this procedure, all attached evidence will be considered confidential material and will be presented only to those persons who are encompassed by the given case.
  • Persons presumed to have violated ethical standards will be given the opportunity to respond to allegations.
  • If it is determined that there were indeed irregularities and violations of ethical norms, the Editorial Board of the Journal will assess whether it is a minor or a serious violation of ethical standards.

Minor violations, without major consequences for the reputation and integrity of the Journal (for example, misunderstanding or unintentional misapplication of publication standards), will be resolved in direct communication with authors and reviewers, without the involvement of third parties. This procedure may include the following steps:

  • Sending a warning letter to authors and reviewers.
  • Publishing corrected version of the paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list.
  • Publishing an error (erratum) if the error was made by editorial staff.

In case of serious violation of ethical norms and standards and established plagiarism, the Editorial Board of the Journal may take the following measures:

  • The formal, pre-announced retraction of the published article, in accordance with the Journal`s Retraction Policy.
  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial description of the misconduct.
  • Official notification intended to inform the affiliation and/or organization to which the author and/or reviewer belongs.
  • Imposing a ban on paper submissions to the Journal for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional competent organizations and legal authority for further investigation and taking actions within their competence.

These measures may be taken individually or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the unethical behaviour issue, the Editorial Board of the Journal may consult the external competent expert organizations, bodies and individuals. In resolving ethical disputes, the Editorial Board of the Journal will rely on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Plagiarism prevention

Plagiarism, i.e. transcription, copying and literally taking over other authors’ ideas, attitudes, words and other creative expressions, is a serious violation of the law, scientific and publishing ethic. In addition to violation of copyright law, plagiarism practices also include following:

  • Verbatim (word for word) or almost literally taking over or deliberately paraphrasing portions of other authors’ text, without clearly pointing to and quoting the sources used or
  • Copying images, charts, tables, equations and other illustrations from someone`s else paper, without properly citing the source or without obtaining explicit permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

 

Manuscripts with clear indications of plagiarism will be immediately rejected and will not be subject to further consideration. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the Journal of Social Sciences, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under Retraction policy and adopted practice and standards for resolving publishing disputes.

 

Retraction policy

In case of violation of the authors’, publishers’ or the rights of copyright holders and serious violation of professional codes of ethics and standards, or in case of concurrent submission of the same manuscript to several journal editorial boards, as well as in case of false claims, established plagiarism, unauthorized data manipulation etc., the Editorial Board will retract the published article. In some cases, already published paper may be withdrawn due to the correction of subsequently observed errors. The Editorial Board of the Journal of Social Sciences consistently applies standards and procedures adopted for resolving such publishing disputes.

The Editor-in-Chief, the authors or both parties may consensually announce a retraction of the published article. Retraction of the paper takes the form of a special item listed in the content and marked as "Retraction of the article". The original article is kept unchanged, except for the watermark on the corresponding PDF document indicating on each page that the article has been "retracted". Retraction of articles are published according to COPE requirements operationalized by CEON/CEES, i.e. Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia.

Conflict of interests

The authors are obliged to state financial or any other forms of conflict of interest in a note or Acknowledgments section of the manuscript, which could affect the presented research results, their interpretation and conclusions.

Errors in published articles

In the case of discovering an important error after the publication of their article by the authors, they are obliged to inform immediately the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, as well as to initiate the retraction of the paper in order to correct it. By submitting their manuscript to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social Sciences, the authors undertake the commitment to respect the stated ethical standards and obligations.