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Manuscript Submission Overview

Types of Publications

Scientific Journal of Bielsko-Biala School of Finance and Law (hereinafter referred to as ASEJ) has restrictions on the length of manuscripts, that should be from 0,5 to 1 publishing sheet (1 publishing sheet has about 42000 characters), text should be concise and comprehensive and be written in English. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. ASEJ requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible.

Manuscripts submitted to ASEJ should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:

• Articles: Original research manuscripts. The journal considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. Authors should not unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts, although short Communications of preliminary, but significant, results will be considered. The quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review.
• Reviews: These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research.

Submission Process

Manuscripts to be published by ASEJ should be submitted online through the submission website. The submitting author (corresponding author), is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register and log in to the submission website. Once you have registered, click here to go to the submission form for ASEJ. All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

Accepted File Formats

Authors must use the Microsoft Word template template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. Article's size (amount of data) must not exceed 120 MB. If this is a problem, please contact the editorial office wydawnictwo@ansbb.edu.pl. Accepted file formats are:

• Microsoft Word: Manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must have one file format or be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, the ASEJ Microsoft Word template file must be used. Graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) must be inserted in the main text. All text and metadata identifying the authors should be removed before submission.

• Supplementary files: May be any format, but it is recommended that you use common, non-proprietary formats where possible (see below for further details).

Template in Word format to prepare the paper, including guidelines

Free Format Submission

Sustainability now accepts free format submission:

• We do not have strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the required sections: Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest and other Ethics Statements. Check the Journal Instructions for Authors for more details.
• Your references may be in any style, provided that you use the consistent formatting throughout. It is essential to include author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title (where required), year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate) and pagination. DOI numbers (Digital Object Identifier) are not mandatory but highly encouraged. The bibliography software package EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, Reference Manager are recommended.
• When your manuscript reaches the revision stage, you will be requested to format the manuscript according to the journal guidelines.

Cover Letter

A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission and should contain the full author names and affiliations, e-mails and further details about identifying text removed from the manuscript. It should explain why the content of the paper is significant, placing the findings in the context of existing work and why it fits the scope of the Journal. ASEJ requires that the Authors clearly indicate that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal. The names of proposed and excluded reviewers should be provided in the submission system, not in the cover letter.

All cover letters are required to include the statements:

• We confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal.
• All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to (journal name).

Author Biography

Authors are encouraged to add a biography (maximum 150 words) to the submission and publish it. This should be a single paragraph and should contain the following points:

1. Authors’ full names followed by current positions;
2. Education background including institution information (type and level of degree received);
3. Work experience;
4. Current and previous research interests;
5. Memberships of professional societies and awards received.

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Manuscript Preparatory Phase

General Considerations

1. Authors are obliged to save their manuscript in Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) format of single column single-spaced page, Times New Roman font type, and 10 points font size. Authors may use readymade ASEJ template in MS-OFFICE version.
2. Research manuscripts should comprise:
   • Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords
   • Research sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions.
   • Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.
3. Review manuscripts should comprise the front matter, literature review section and the back matter (it is not strictly required to follow the remaining structure). Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research papers and ensure they conform to the PRISMA guidelines.
4. Graphical abstract: should be provided as a self-explanatory image to appear alongside the text abstract in the Table of Contents. Figures must be prepared in image high quality image format (TIF, GIF, JPEG, etc.) and its size should be 11 by 9 cm.
5. Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the first time they appear and used consistently thereafter.
6. SI Units (International System of Units) should be used.
7. Equations: should be prepared with the use of the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. They should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.
8. Research data and supplementary materials: all materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication should be available to readers. Disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. Review the information about Supplementary Materials and Data Deposit for additional guidelines.

Front Matter

These sections should appear in all manuscript types:

• Title: should be concise, specific and relevant. It should identify the study (trial data, systematic review, meta-analysis or replication study).
• Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided (initials of middle names can be added). The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section.
• Abstract: should be a single citation-free paragraph, no more than 200 words, following the style of structured abstracts, but without headings. It should contain main items:
  • Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study;
  • Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and strains of any animals used.
  • Results: Summarize the article's main findings and
  • Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
• Keywords: three to six pertinent, specific to the paper, keywords added after the abstract.

Research Manuscript Sections

• Introduction: should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. The purpose of the paper should be defined including specific hypotheses which will be considered. The current state of the research field should be reviewed. The main aim of the work altogether should be highlighted.
• Materials and Methods: should be presented with sufficient details to allow others to use published results. It can be divided into subsections if a number of methods is used. 
• Results: concise and precise description of the experimental results should be presented. They should be discussed and explained how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. This section may be divided into subheadings or it may form one uniform part. Footnotes are not recommended - explanations should be placed in the text, in square brackets and written in italics.
• Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
• Conclusions: should briefly summarize the presented work, achieved results with special emphasis on its importance and relevance.
• Patents: this section is not compulsory, but may be added presenting results from the work reported in this manuscript.

Back Matter

• Acknowledgments: All sources of funding for the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate grants received for supporting research work or to cover publication costs. Acknowledgements should appear below the end of the paper and above the section References.
• Author Contributions: Authors' contributions to the conception or design of the work must be clearly defined (range of pages or part of the work) and the authors agree to be personally accountable for the thier own contributions and for answering questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work.
• Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest."
• References: This is an obligatory part of the work and it is the authors’ responsibility to ensure accuracy of references. Details for each work used or cited in a paper must be given in the Harvard reference style at the end of the paper and arranged alphabetically by the author. For more information use Harvard Referencing guide. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as Harvard Generator, EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Your reference list should look like this. 
  
  Adam, D.J., (1984). Stakeholder analysis. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  Adam, D.J., (2003). Stakeholder analysis today. Royal Journal of Management, 42(7), pp.34-66. 
  Dworzecki, J. (2010). Przestępczość zorganizowana. Zarys problematyki. In: A. Gałecki, M. Dalecka and T. Tabaczniuk, ed., Współczesne problemy bezpieczeństwa. Zielona Góra: Uniwersytet Zielonogórski, pp. 84-115 
  Dworzecki, J. (2009). Medzinárodná spolupráca v rámci prevencie a boja proti organizovanej kriminalite. In: L. Hofreiter, ed., Bezpečnosť a bezpečnostná veda. Liptovský Mikuláš: Akadémia ozbrojených síl gen. M.R. Štefánika. pp. 273-280 
  Brown, G. White, G. and Redding.G., (1984). Modern management.[e-book] London: Redfern Press. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library <http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk> [Accessed 9 July 2011] 
  Garrett, L.K., (2011). Skills for nursing and healthcare students. Harlow: Pearson Education. 
  Act No. 555 of 10 December 1992 on the Prison Service and the Judiciary Guards of the Czech Republic. Set of laws of 1992, item 112 with subsequent amendments.

Preparing Figures, Schemes and Tables

• Figures and schemes must be prepared with a sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher) in one of the preferred formats TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF. Figures and schemes in color should be prepared in a RGB at 8-bit per channel format. There is no additional cost for publishing full color graphics.
• Figures, Schemes and Tables should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Chart 1, Table 1, etc.). They should have a short explanatory title and caption.
• All table columns should have an explanatory heading (font 8 pt. in size). To facilitate the copy/editing process, Authors should use Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables. 

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Research and Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics Statement

ASEJ respects the respects the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We fully adhere to its Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines. The ASEJ editors enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of ASEJ take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers in ASEJ must abide to the following:

• Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
• Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
• Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
• Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated.
• Manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If any included - already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
• Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.

Citation Policy

Authors should:

• ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing) the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
• not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.
• not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
• not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.
• not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

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Reviewing process

Reviewer Suggestions

Authors are asked to indicate three potential reviewers with approriate expertise to review the manuscript. However, it should be noted that Thematic/Section Editors will not neceserily follow these referencess. Please provide potential reviewer contact informations including phone, e-mail address and the name of the institution the expert works for. Suggested reviewers shouldn't be from the same institutions as authors of the manuscript.

English Grammar

In order to respect the time and effort of reviewers, it is suggested that authors use a grammar and spelling check software and also seek assistance of a native speaker of English who will proofread the manuscript before submission.

Authorship

• 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. Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgements.
• Any change to the author list should be approved by all authors including any who have been removed from the list.
• The corresponding author should act as a point of contact between the editor and the other authors and should keep co-authors informed and involve them in major decisions about the publication.

Plagiarism

In ASEJ plagiarism is not tolerated in any area (text or images). The Editorial Board of ASEJ strive to detect any attempts of plagiarism. If plagiarism is discovered at any stage before publication of the manuscript, the author(s) will be alerted and asked either to rewrite the text or quote the text exactly and give credits to the original text. If the anti-plagiarism standards required by ASEJ are not met, the Editor has the right to return the manuscript to the author. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the Editor may publish a correction or retract the paper.

Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that may lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. If it is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, the Editor may reject the manuscript, and when identificatied and confirmed after publication, the Editor may correct or retract the paper.

Length Policy

The policy concerning the length of texts set by ASEJ provides guidance on the expected length of the manuscript submitted to the Publisher either as a regular research paper or a review paper. The authors must always respect the length requirements in preparing their manuscript for submission. The numbers given below contain Abstract, References and Appendices (figure captions or table content are not included in the calculation).

Regular research paper:

• Between 4500 and 5000 words: [fewer than 10 figures = acceptable]
• Between 4500 and 5000 words: [more than 10 figures = excessive]
• Between 5000 and 6000 words: [fewer than 8 figures = acceptable]
• Between 5000 and 6000 words: [more than 8 figures = excessive]
• More than 6000 words: [Any number = excessive]

Review paper

• Up to 10,000 words: [Less than 20 figures = Acceptable]
• Over 10,000 words: [More than 20 figures = Overlong]
• Please note that for all paper types the table limit is 12.

Copyright notice

Authors who decide to publish with ASEJ Journal agree to the following terms and conditions: Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License [CC BY-NC 4.0]. It means it is possible to:
• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

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Editorial Procedures and Peer-Review

Initial Checks

Manuscripts received by the Editorial Office will be checked by a professional in-house Managing Editor to determine whether they fits the scope of the journal, follow the editorial standards and ethical policies of the journal. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal's ethics policy or do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer-review and returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. Reject decisions at this stage will be verified by the Editor-in-Chief.

Peer-Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer-review. A double-blind peer-review process is applied.

In the process of manuscript submissions, in-house assistant editors will invite experts, including Editorial Board members, Guest Editors of the journal, recommendations by an academic editor or potential reviewers suggested by the authors.

Optional Open Peer-Review

The journal operates optional open peer-review. Authors are given the option for all review reports and editorial decisions to be published alongside their manuscript. Authors are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity as proof of the rigorous process employed in publishing their research. The names of referees will be revealed only if the referees agree to do so, and after a paper has been accepted for publication.

Editorial Decision and Revision

Articles, reviews and communications published in ASEJ journals go through the peer-review process and receive at least two reviews. The in-house editor will communicate the decision of the academic editor, which will be one of the following:

• Accept after Minor Revisions: 
  The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments and Authors have 10 days for minor revisions. All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.
• Reconsider after Major Revisions: 
  The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments, but the final acceptance would depend on the revisions. All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response. Authors have to resubmit the revised paper within a 15 days, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed.
• Reject and Encourage Resubmission: 
  If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.
• Reject: 
  It occurs in the case of the manuscript has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided. Authors may disagree with a reviewer, and opinion may express they must provide a clear response.

 Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. The Managing Editorof the journal will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, or Editorial Board member. The academic Editor being consulted will be asked to give an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer-review, or uphold the original rejection decision. A reject decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and, publication on the www.asej.eu website.

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Open Access and Article Processing Charge (APC)

Article Submission Charge (ASC) The Scientific Journal being an Open Access Journal (OAJ) has no article submission charges (ASCs) only Article Processing Charges for domestic authors (APC)

All articles published in the Scientific Journal (ISSN 2543-9103 and eISSN 2543-411X) are published in full open access. In order to provide free access to readers, and to cover the costs of peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving and journal management, an article processing charge (APC) of 1000 zł applies to papers accepted after peer review.

Article Processing Charges (APC) only in PLN, to the bank account number:
Bank Pekao S.A.
28 1240 4142 1111 0000 4823 0360

Title of transfer: name and surname and number from the subbmission system.

Local VAT or Sales Tax will be added if applicable.

Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English.