The mission of the Scientific Journal is to improve the culture of scientific publications by supporting bright minds in science and public engagement. This Journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Open Access (OA) stands for unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse which means making research publications freely available online. The papers are published under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC 4.0 license. Licensing information are indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs. This license allows others to remix, adapt and rely on your work for non-commercial purposes. Although their works must point to you as the creator and have a non-commercial character, further dependent works do not have to be licensed under the same conditions. The main output of research in general is new ideas and knowledge, which the Journal policy allows to publish as high-quality research articles. The Scientific Journal truly believes that maximizing the distribution of publications - by providing free, online access - is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture and cultivate good research ethic as well. The Journal supports unrestricted access to the published materials on it's main website as a fundamental part of its mission and a global academic community benefit to be encouraged wherever possible. Specifically: The Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law, Poland supports the principles and objectives of Open Access and Open Science The journal is issued regularly, without delay, continuously, quarterly This policy will be effective from 1st Oct 2014 and will be reviewed yearly The journal display licensing information in its articles.
Table of contents
1. ASEJ Journal Ethics Statement
4. Open Access Information and Policy
6. Authorship and Contributorship Polices
7. Complaints and appeals Polices
8. Conflicts of interest / competing interests Polices
9. Data sharing and reproducibility Polices
10. Journal’s policy on ethical oversight
11. Journal’s policy on intellectual property
17. Copyright without restrictions
20. Article Submission Charge (ASC)
ASEJ Journal Ethics Statement
ASEJ implements the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelinesis and takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Also undertakes efforts to counteract cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit. ASEJ takes publishing ethics issues very seriously and editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to ASEJ journal, iThenticate and anti-plagiarism platform to check submissions against previous publications is used. ASEJ works with Publons to provide reviewers with credit for their work. Submission of a manuscript to a ASEJ journal implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the journal’s policies.
Publication Ethics
Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement are mainly based on COPE's Core Practices for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011) that includes: General duties and responsibilities of editors. Relations with readers. Relations with authors. Relations with editors. Relations with editorial board members. Relations with journal owners and publishers. Editorial and peer review processes. Protecting individual data. Encouraging ethical research (e.g. research involving humans or animals). Dealing with possible misconduct. Ensuring the integrity of the academic record. Intellectual property. Encouraging debate. Complaints. Conflicts of interest. Reference: Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors COPE International standard for responsible research publication for authors.
Publication Frequency
The Scientific Journal is published 4 times per year. Accepted papers are published online ahead of hard-copy. It published online with eISSN: 2543-411X and a hard-copy is published with ISSN: 2543-9103 quarterly with 4 issues. The hard-copy of the Scientific Journalis published with all accepted online paper within each publication period.
Open Access Information and Policy
- everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in ASEJ Journal;
- everyone is free to re-use the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;
- open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.
Permissions
No special permission is required to reuse all or part of article published by ASEJ Journal, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. Reuse of an article does not imply endorsement by the authors or ASEJ.
Authorship and Contributorship Polices
Authorship implies responsibility and accountability for published work and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authors should understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for what is published. The Journal follows recommendations for authorship and contributorship, developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations 2018). These recommendations are based on criteria, which must be met jointly: Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work and, Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content and, Final approval of the version to be published and, Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 criteria for authorship are not listed as authors. However they are acknowledged. Activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are: acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group or general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship (do not meet the criteria for authorship) should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. They may be acknowledged individually or together as a group and their contributions should be specified ("served as scientific advisors" or "critically reviewed the study proposal" or "collected data" or "provided and cared for study patients" or "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript"). The Journal adheres to the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) that "all authors should agree to be listed and should approve the submitted and accepted versions of the publication. Signs that might indicate authorship problems - see further details specified in the COPE guidelines. How to recognise potential authorship problems - see further details specified in the COPE guidelines.
Complaints and appeals Polices
Authors have a right to appeal a rejection within 3-4 months of the rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief Editorial of the ASEJ Journal (journal@wsfip.edu.pl). The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. The appeal will be directed to the Managing Editor of the Journal that will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to the Editor-in-Chief or Editorial Board member. Based on the advisory recommendation of the Editor-in-Chief, consulted with selected representatives of the Editorial Board, on the manuscript, a final decision will be taken about acceptance, further peer-review, or uphold the original rejection decision. A reject decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed. The Managing Editor will forward the decision to the manuscript Author(s). ASEJ adheres to COPE guidelines regarding appeals to editorial decisions and complaints.
Conflicts of interest / competing interests Polices
To avoid conflict of interest / competing interests, the Journal meets COPE recommendations and draws attention to the following situations that are considered conflicts and should be avoided: Receiving professional or personal benefit resulting from the review, Having a personal relationship (e.g. family, close friend) with the author(s), Having a direct or indirect financial interest in the paper being reviewed, However, it is not considered a conflict of interest if the reviewers have worked together with the authors in a collaborative project (e.g. EU or DARPA) or if they have co-organized an event. All submitted manuscripts must include a Competing Interests section listing all competing interests. Where authors of the manuscript have no competing interests, the statement should be “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. More details of what to do if a reviewer suspects undisclosed conflict of interest (Col) in a submitted manuscript can be found in COPE recommendations.
Data sharing and reproducibility Polices
Editors and reviewers are required to treat manuscripts confidentially. ASEJ Publishing Office will not share manuscripts with third parties outside of ASEJ Publishing except in cases of suspected misconduct. Authors are responsible for making materials, code, data and associated protocols available to readers. The preferred way to share data is by publicly depositing it in specialized depositories given below, e.g.: Dryad Digital Repository, view FAIRsharing entry, Harvard Dataverse, Open Science Framework, Zenodo, Mendeley Data. Prospective authors may wish to explore the repositories listed at FAIRsharing.org or re3data.org. Data must be provided in a machine readable format. Any potential restrictions on data, code or materials must be disclosed at the time of submission.
Journal’s policy on ethical oversight
Authors should add a separate section of "Compliance with Ethics Guidelines", before the reference list, which should cover the following information: Conflicts of interest - presenting conflicts of interest for all authors, Experimental ethics (Humans), Experimental ethics (Animals). Ad 1. Conflicts of Interest (examples): Add a statement that: Single author - no conflicts of interest: Author Name, Surname declares that he has no conflict of interest. Add a statement that: Multiple authors - no conflicts of interest: Author Name, Surname, Author Name, Surname, Author Name, Surname declares that they have no conflict of interest, Add a statement that: Single author - conflicts of interest: Author Name, Surname has received a grant from..... Ad. 2. Experimental Ethics - Humans (example): Add a statement that: "All 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 1975, as revised in 2008." Ad. 3. Experimental Ethics - Animals (example): Add a statement that: "All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed."
Journal’s policy on intellectual property
ASEJ Journal of Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law complies with the open-access publishing policy. All articles are published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International License. All manuscripts submitted to ASEJ imply that they present original, unpublished work of authors, which has not been published previously, has not been accepted for publication elsewhere and is not under consideration for publication by any publisher in any print or electronic media. Leading Author on behalf of all authors of the manuscript will be required to sign and submit a completed Author Agreement Form when submitting the article for publication. All articles published in ASEJ Journal are open-access articles, published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits reproduction, distribution, derives and commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited and authors and the publisher are properly identified. Copyrighted Material: Authors wishing to reproduce text, figures, tables, graphs or charts, that are already been published or will be published elsewhere, must acknowledge the source of such material and obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) to reproduce the material in their manuscript. Author’s responsibilities is to secure all permissions prior to publication, including previously published material, if author's are not the copyright holder. Besides the Author will be required to sign a statement in the Author Agreement Form, stating that such permission was obtained by the corresponding author. Editor may ask the author to show such consent at any time.
Peer-Review Process
At the Journal we are committed to prompt quality scientific work with local and global impacts. To maintain a high-quality publication, all submissions undergo a rigorous review process. Characteristics of the peer-review process are as follows: The journal peer-review process is a "double blind peer review". Simultaneous submissions of the same manuscript to different journals will not be tolerated. Manuscripts with contents outside the scope will not be considered for review. Papers will be refereed by at least 2 experts as suggested by the editorial board. In addition, Editors will have the option of seeking additional reviews when needed. Authors will be informed when Editors decide further review is required. All publication decisions are made by the journal's Editors-in-Chief on the basis of the referees' reports. Authors of papers that are not accepted are notified promptly. All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. We expect our Board of Reviewing Editors, Associate Editors and reviewers to treat manuscripts as confidential material as well. Editors, Associate Editors and reviewers involved in the review process should disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, and remove oneself from cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation. Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must not be used for competitive gain. Our peer review process is confidential and identities of reviewers cannot be revealed. Note: All manuscripts submitted will be checked for plagiarism (copying text or results from other sources) and self-plagiarism (duplicating substantial parts of authors' own published work without giving the appropriate references). Plagiarism is not tolerated. Journal’s options for post-publication discussions and corrections The Journal allows post-publication debate through e-mails to the Editor. Mechanisms for correcting published manuscripts (that are not so seriously flawed as to warrant retraction), revising or retracting articles after publication are predicted. Corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction article, without altering the original article in any way other than to add a prominent link to the Erratum/Retraction article. When deciding whether a retraction is appropriate, Editor takes into account: availability of conclusive evidence; post-publication comments or discussions when alternative interpretations of published data are brought to light. The Editor will follow the COPE guidelines in such cases. Retraction articles are indexed and linked to the original article. Supplemental Material files published by ASEJ are considered to be permanent records. If there is a substantive change to a Supplemental Material file or Research Data file, ASEJ may publish a notice to potential readers.
GHOSTWRITTING BARRIER
To ensure honesty and transparency in science and to assure readers about reliability of authorship and results of research contained in the papers, and most of all about the disclosure of information about entities contributing to writing the paper (content input, in-kind and financial contribution), WSFiP Press in accordance with guidelines of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, implements procedures related to counteracting incidents of ghostwriting and guest authorship*. WSFiP University Press obliges the authors of papers published in the Research Journal to disclose contributions of any natural or legal persons in writing the paper. The authors must disclose contributors’ affiliation and extent of their contribution, i.e. information on who is the author of the concept and assumptions and methods applied while writing the paper. However, the main responsibility lies on the part of the person who submits the manuscript. The authors and co-authors of the publication may be asked to file a written statement with respect to the above. The Editor-in-Chief hereby states that ghostwriting and guest authorship are expressions of academic dishonesty and any abuses will be exposed and reported to relevant authorities (home academic centres, scientific societies, societies of academic editors etc.). The editor’s office is entitled to obtain information about the sources of financing the publication and contributions from R&D facilities, societies and other entities (financial disclosure). The editor’s office documents all instances of academic dishonesty especially connected to infringement of the academic ethics. Relevant documents are stored in the WSFiP University Press editor’s office. ………………………………………………………………………………………………… *Ghostwriting is the act of writing on behalf of a person who is then credited as author. Guest authorship (honorary authorship) is a practice in which senior researchers are listed as co-authors despite having had little to do with the work involved in publishing original research reports.
Section Polices ARTICLES
This is the main type of publication that ASEJ will produce. Open Submissions Indexed Peer Reviewed REVIEW ARTICLES A critical, constructive analysis of the literature in a specific field through summary, classification, analysis, comparison. Open Submissions Indexed Peer Reviewed LETTERS Letters are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields. Open Submissions Indexed Peer Reviewed
Archiving
This journal utilizes the ICI Masterlist and National Library of Poland to create a distributed archiving issues. The published articles can be downloaded freely without barrier of admission.
Deposit Policy
The publisher of Scientific Journals of Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law (ASEJ) recognizes the importance and relevance of open access policy, that provides the opportunity for broad access to research and scientific deliberation for scholars around the world.Copyright without restrictions
The Scientific Journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions.
Animal Research
For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates), appropriate approval must have been obtained according to either international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Review Board, or Ethics Committee). Authors must provide an ethics statement as a part of their Methods section detailing full information as to their approval. If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research). For research conducted on non-regulated animals, a statement should be made as to why ethical approval was not required. Experimental animals should have been handled according to the highest standards dictated by the author’s institution.
Screening for plagiarism
The Editorial Board of the Scientific Journal will check any case of plagiarism on its own merits. If the plagiarism is detected at any stage before publication of the manuscript - before or after acceptance, during editing or at page proof stage, we will alert the author(s), asking him/her to either rewrite the text or quote the text exactly and to cite the original text. If at least 15% of the original submission is plagiarized, Journal has the right to reject the manuscript.
Article Submission Charge (ASC)
The Scientific Journal being an Open Access Journal (OAJ) has no article submission charges (ASCs). The Journal is fully subsidized by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland and the program DUN, regarding activities disseminating science, so there are no charges to authors or their institutions. Authors do not pay an article submission and processing charge (APC) per processed paper regarding (concerning peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving, and journal management). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English.
Article Processing Charges (APC)
All articles published in the Scientific Journal (ISSN 2543-9103 and eISSN 2543-411X) are published in full open access. There is an article processing charges for domestic authors (APCs). The published articles can be downloaded freely without barrier of admission. The Journal is fully subsidized by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland and the program DUN, regarding activities disseminating science, so there are no charges to authors or their institutions. Authors do not pay an article submission and processing charge (APC) per processed paper regarding (concerning peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving, and journal management). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English.
Discounts on APCs - Waiver Policy
The Bielsko-Biala University of Applied Sciences University Press responsible for publishing The Scientific Journal of Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law provides discounts for authors under Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Selected articles invited by the Editorial Office are published for free.
Advertising Policy
The Scientific Journal of the Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law (ASEJ) accepts online advertising. ASEJ accepts advertising and sponsorship for its website and related e-mail services (e-mail alerts) subject to the following principles: Advertising is not related in any way to editorial decisions, Advertising is kept separate from editorial content and is clearly identified as such. Content is never altered, added, or deleted to accommodate advertising. Advertisers and sponsors don't have any influence in any editorial decisions or advertising policies. Advertising areas are limited, clearly identified as Advertising and specified by the editor to top, bottom or side banners. Pop-up or other types of banners are not allowed. Editorial decisions are never influenced by potential advertising or reprint revenues. Advertisers and Sponsors have no control or influence over the results of searches a user may conduct on the website by keyword or search topic. The Journal reserves the right to decline or cancel any advertisement at any time. Entities cooperating with ASEJ are entitled to advertise their educational events and website links free of charge, provided they are relevant to the Journal’s aims and scope. ASEJ does not partner with third-party advertising companies that provide behavioral advertising.