Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

All articles submitted to the AFPUO Studia Germanistica journal must be original, and cannot be submitted to other journals for simultaneous consideration. It is not acceptable to submit manuscripts that have been published previously. All quotations and paraphrases must be properly documented in accordance with the journal′s guidelines.

Contributors to the journal are obliged to

• cite all sources used in writing the study;
• provide references and/or statements of financial support for their research papers at the end of the article;
• participate in the peer review process (they are expected to redraft the paper or revise it critically in accordance with the recommendations of reviewers, provided that publication of the paper is conditioned upon such redrafting);
• refrain from any form of plagiarism.

Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements and plagiarism in any of its forms constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. In such cases, the contribution will be rejected (see Peer-review process). The articles in each issue are randomly checked by iThenticate – SimilarityCheck to help detect plagiarism.

In the AFPUO Studia Germanistica, the authorship of an article is defined on the basis of these principles:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; and/or
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically with regard to important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who do not meet the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. The corresponding author should obtain written permission for such acknowledgement from all acknowledged individuals.

The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors and non-authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of the publication.

Articles are first reviewed by editors-in-chief. They may reject an article out of hand either because it does not deal with the appropriate subject matter (i.e. subject matter that does not correspond to the specialization of the journal) or because it is manifestly of a low quality so that it cannot be considered at all.

The subsequent peer-review process is double-blind; reviews are provided by at least two independent reviewers who are experts in the given fields. These experts are always from different universities than the authors and do not have any conflicts of interest with the authors of the contributions under review. In the review process, the editors do not disclose the identity of authors and reviewers. Before sending a paper for a review, the editors-in-chief remove any information that might indicate the author of the paper. If the reviewer recognizes the author or suspects who the author is, the reviewer is requested to notify the editors-in-chief immediately. In such a case, the editors-in-chief designate another reviewer.

The review process takes into account the necessity for confidentiality in dealing with research data. Reviewers are responsible for giving an objective, unbiased assessment of the submitted contribution.

In cases of any doubts regarding possible plagiarism, the reviewer must draw attention to such doubts. If the reviewers and/or editors-in-chief detect plagiarism or any other cases of misconduct, the contributions will be rejected and his/her institution will be informed.

Reviewers are asked to classify the paper as publishable immediately, publishable with amendments and/or improvements (in this case the evaluations include explicit recommendations for the author), or not publishable.

Editors-in-chief decide on the acceptance, or rejection of the article, or they return it for revision, based on the reviewers′ reports. If the reviewers′ recommendations differ, the opinion of a member of the editorial board who is a specialist in the given field is requested and subsequently, editors-in-chief and the editorial board vote on acceptance, rejection or returning for revision.

The editors-in-chief are obliged to inform the authors about the results of the review process and to give them important feedback (based on the peer reviewers′ reports) which may lead to improvements in the quality of the article.

The editors-in-chief and the editorial board make a constant effort to improve the professional and formal quality of the journal. They will also ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential before publication. The editors-in-chief reserve the right to make changes to the language, form and style of the papers submitted.

All journal submissions are assigned to the reviewers and members of the editorial board in such a way as to minimize potential conflicts of interest that may influence their judgement on what is published. The journal avoids the following relationships between the members of the editorial board and/or reviewers and authors: colleagues (current or recent), recent co-authors, and doctoral students for which editor / reviewer served as a committee member or the Ph.D. supervisor. Our editors-in-chief, members of the editorial board and reviewers are asked to declare any competing interests.

In addition, authors are requested to disclose all financial and non-financial interests that could lead to bias regarding the work submitted for publication.

All complaints will in the first instance be handled by the editors-in-chief responsible for the journal. The editors-in-chief will handle all complaints concerning scholarly content (e.g. an appeal against rejection), complaints about the failure of processes (e.g. excessive time taken to review) and complaints about publication ethics. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback.

In case of appeals against rejection, the editors-in-chief will consider the author′s arguments and the reviewers′ reports, and based on these considerations, will decide whether:

• The decision to reject should stand; or
• Another independent review is required; or
• The appeal should be accepted.

The complainant will be informed of the decision with an appropriate explanation. The decision on the appeal is final.

In cases of complaints about publication ethics, the editors-in-chief will follow guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The editors-in-chief will decide on a course of action and will provide feedback to the complainant.

If the editors-in-chief are the subject of the complaint, the complainant should address the communication to the Vice-Dean for Research at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava (contact).

Concerns regarding the compliance to ethical standards may be reported to the editors-in-chief or the publisher at any time. Whoever reports such concerns must provide conclusive evidence to enable further investigation. All the reports will be taken seriously and handled equally until an ultimate conclusion is reached. All reported concerns regarding the compliance to ethical standards will be investigated, even if the article in question was published years ago. In cases of reports regarding the compliance to ethical standards in submitted or already published articles, the editors-in-chief will take all the necessary steps.

The editors of the journal recognize the growing role of artificial intelligence tools in scholarly, editorial and publishing work, as well as the risks arising from this development. The editors emphasise that AI-tools may serve a supporting function; however, they are not capable of replacing critical and original thinking that remains the foundation of scholarly work. For this reason, we recommend restrained and critical use of AI-tools in the process of preparing articles for our journal with particular attention to the limitations of these tools. The author is obliged to give a statement about the use of AI at the end of the article.

We support transparency and openness around data and other materials associated with research. The journal thus encourages authors, where possible and applicable, to deposit data that support the findings of their research in a public repository.

The journal′s policy concerning oversight on how ethical principles are observed is built on mutual trust among all participants in the publication process and acknowledgement of the essential necessity to observe all principles of publication ethics.

The journal follows the COPE definition of Ethical oversight, understanding it as “the act of monitoring and reviewing research and publication practices to ensure that they comply with recognised ethical standards” and to “safeguard the integrity of the scholarly record and protect participants′ rights and interests.”

Concerns and doubts regarding the compliance to ethical standards in research and publication regarding manuscripts submitted to or published by our journal may be raised by anyone involved in the research and publication process as well as by readers and whistle blowers. They will be considered by the editors-in-chief or the publisher, respectively, provided that they are substantiated and not anonymous (see also How the journal will handle complaints and appeals). In the process of ethical oversight, the responsible persons will follow the guidance and tools provided by COPE. Such concerns and doubts regarding the compliance to ethical standards may include but are not limited to suspected plagiarism, the appropriation of ideas or research data, data fabrication, ghost authorship, guest authorship or gift authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, unethical conduct of research involving animals or humans with special attention to vulnerable populations, unresponsible handling of confidential data, and unethical business and marketing practices.

All corrections and retractions will be considered by the editors in line with COPE′s Retraction guidelines. If an author or journal are found to have made an error, this may result in the editors′ implementation of the following measures, depending on the situation:

• if the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author;
• if the article has already been published online and in print, then depending on the nature of the error,
  1. a correction may be placed with the article;
  2. an editor′s note or editorial expression of concern may be placed with the article.
• in severe cases, if the article has already been published online but not in print, a retraction of the article may occur. Reasons will be given in the published retraction notice. The article will be retained on the website, but will be watermarked as “retracted”.

The online version of the AFPUO Studia Germanistica has been a fully open access journal since number 27/2020. All articles will be made immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose. Author(s) contributing to the journal agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Open Access publishing in Studia Germanistica is free of charge.

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work′s authorship and initial publication in this journal.