Editorial Policy and Ethics
The journal Informatics. Culture. Technology adheres to an open access policy in accordance with international standards. By removing barriers to the dissemination of knowledge, we support the global exchange of scientific information and guarantee authors the retention of copyright to their works.
All published articles are available in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits free use of materials in any form, provided proper attribution is given. In particular, articles may be freely read, downloaded, copied, distributed, or cited without any technical or legal restrictions.
By submitting an article for publication, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, and archive the work.
The editorial board of the journal follows international standards of academic ethics, open access, and good editorial practice.
Editorial Ethics
The journal Informatics. Culture. Technology upholds high standards of academic integrity, guided by the recommendations of authoritative international initiatives. Our editorial policy is based on the principles of COPE, WAME, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto..
Compliance with COPE recommendations. We implement the ten core areas of COPE: policies regarding complaints and suspected misconduct, authorship and contributorship rules, procedures for handling complaints and appeals, mechanisms for managing conflicts of interest, data transparency and reproducibility, ethical oversight, protection of intellectual property, proper journal management, a transparent peer review process, and support for post-publication discussion and corrections. These standards ensure that editorial decisions are based on the quality of research rather than external pressure.
WAME. We adhere to the principles of editorial independence: the Editor-in-Chief has autonomy in selecting materials, while owners or sponsors do not interfere in the decision-making process.
DORA. We support the call for fair assessment of scholarly achievements: we reject the use of journal-based metrics for evaluating individual articles or authors and encourage recognition of diverse research outputs (data, software, policy impact, etc.).
Leiden Manifesto. We follow the ten principles for the responsible use of research metrics, including: combining quantitative indicators with expert assessment; evaluating performance in line with the mission of an institution or researcher; protecting locally relevant research; ensuring openness and transparency of processes; verifying and correcting data; taking disciplinary differences into account; emphasizing qualitative analysis of individual portfolios; avoiding false precision; understanding the systemic effects of indicators; and regularly reviewing metrics.
All participants in the editorial process—authors, reviewers, and editors—are responsible for complying with these standards. Our procedures for handling complaints, appeals, retractions, and article corrections are regulated by separate documents, ensuring transparency and fairness in resolving ethical issues.
Publication in an international scientific and technical journal is a form of scholarly communication that makes a significant contribution to the development of the field of information technologies.
Preservation of the scientific archive: The editorial board plays a key role in supporting the work of the editorial team and reviewers, as well as in ensuring the integrity of the journal’s scientific archive.
The editorial process is carried out on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, which provides secure registration and verification of communications among authors, editors, and reviewers. All stages of interaction are recorded in the system, ensuring transparency and control of the editorial process.
Editorial independence: The editorial board undertakes not to allow any external (financial or other) influence on editorial decisions. All decisions regarding review, acceptance, rejection, and publication are based solely on objective criteria.
Appeals policy: Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions by submitting a written request within one month of receiving the decision report. Appeals are considered only for peer-reviewed manuscripts and must include detailed justifications responding to editorial and reviewer comments.
Author identification: To ensure transparency of the publication process, authors are required to provide an ORCID identifier.
The ethical conduct of the Editor-in-Chief, reviewers, and authors is an integral part of the journal’s editorial policy. A detailed description is provided below.
Ethical Responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief
Publication decisions: The Editor-in-Chief bears full responsibility for deciding whether an article should be published, taking into account its scientific significance, reliability, and value to readers.
Peer review process: Editors ensure a fair, objective, and timely peer review process by appointing reviewers with appropriate professional expertise. They also promote diversity, inclusiveness, and transparency in the publication process.
Principles of fairness: All manuscripts are evaluated solely on their scientific and practical merit, regardless of the authors’ identity, origin, academic degree, gender, or nationality.
Confidentiality: The Editor-in-Chief ensures the confidentiality of manuscripts received for consideration, as well as correspondence with authors and reviewers.
Conflict of interest: All potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed and properly considered when making editorial decisions.
Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers
Assistance in editorial decisions: Reviewers provide constructive and independent feedback that helps the editorial board make well-founded decisions and assists authors in improving the quality of their manuscripts.
Confidentiality: All materials received for review are confidential documents and may not be shared with or discussed with third parties without permission from the editorial board.
Objectivity and independence: Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts impartially, in accordance with ethical principles and academic standards, and avoid personal or professional bias.
Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
Responsibility and reliability: Authors are responsible for the reliability, accuracy, and reproducibility of their research results. All data must be collected, processed, and presented honestly, without fabrication or falsification.
Data storage and access: Upon request of the editorial board, authors must provide the raw data supporting the results of the study and retain such data for a reasonable period after publication.
Originality and use of sources: Submitted manuscripts must be original. Authors are required to properly cite all sources used and avoid all forms of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism.
Authorship: Only those individuals who have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the design, execution, or analysis of the research may be listed as authors.
Conflicts of interest: All potential conflicts of interest (financial, academic, or other) that may influence, or be perceived to influence, the interpretation of results must be disclosed in the manuscript text.
Commercial impartiality: Manuscripts must not contain advertising materials or promote commercial products.
Correction of errors: If an author discovers a serious error or inaccuracy in a published article, the author is obliged to immediately notify the editorial board and cooperate in correcting or retracting the material.
Avoidance of duplication: Authors must not submit identical or substantially similar materials simultaneously to multiple publications. Duplicate publication without proper justification is considered a serious breach of ethics.
Research and Publishing Ethics
Authors guarantee that their manuscript is an original work that has not been previously published and is not under consideration by another journal. Simultaneous submission is considered a violation of editorial policy and constitutes grounds for rejection of the manuscript.
If the manuscript has previously been submitted to another publication, authors must inform the editorial board and provide details of the prior review or peer review process.
If the material is the result of a research project or has previously been presented at a conference (orally or in writing), this information must be indicated in the cover letter or note.
Authors confirm that the manuscript does not contain false statements and does not infringe the rights of third parties. In the event of claims regarding the content of a published article, the author bears legal responsibility.
Authorship
Authors must ensure that all individuals who made a significant contribution to the preparation of the manuscript are listed as co-authors, and that all listed authors agree with the final version of the article.
Participation in manuscript preparation that does not meet the criteria for authorship (for example, technical assistance, consulting, or provision of funding) must be properly acknowledged in footnotes or in the Acknowledgements section.
Changes in authorship after submission of the manuscript (addition or removal of authors) are permitted only upon submission of a written justification to the editorial board.
The journal considers attempts to include so-called “honorary,” “gift,” or “ghost” authorship to be a serious violation of publishing ethics.
Access to Data and Data Retention
During the review process, the editorial board may request raw (unprocessed) data supporting the results presented in the manuscript. Authors are required to retain such data throughout the review period and for a reasonable time after publication in order to ensure transparency and the possibility of verification.