Procedure for reviewing complaints regarding violations of ethical standards
A complaint about a violation of ethical norms can be submitted to the editorial board by authors, reviewers, readers or other members of the scientific community. The complaint must provide a clear description of the essence of the violation and evidence (references to sources, copies of documents, excerpts from texts, etc.), as well as the contact details of the applicant.
A complaint about a violation of ethical norms should be sent to the e-mail address: svitfin@wunu.edu.ua
The editorial board must confirm receipt of the complaint within 5 working days; the term for investigating the complaint is up to 30 working days.
The complaint is submitted for consideration by the editorial board, which establishes: the nature of the violation and the evidence presented. Types of violations can be: plagiarism, falsification of data, double publication of the same article in different journals, unlawful authorship, violation of the review procedure, conflict of interest, etc.
The complaint is registered by the scientific secretary of the editorial board and forwarded to the editor-in-chief, who conducts a preliminary analysis and determines whether it concerns issues of academic integrity and publication ethics. In case of insufficient data, the applicant may be invited to provide additional materials.
To consider the complaint, a commission of three members of the editorial board who did not participate in reviewing the article about which the complaint was received is created by the decision of the editor-in-chief. If necessary, independent experts are involved in the procedure for considering the complaint.
Based on the results of studying the materials, the commission may make one of the following decisions:
- reject the complaint;
- make remarks to the authors and oblige them to correct errors;
- reject the article if a violation is detected at the stage of its consideration;
- withdraw an already published article under the retraction procedure;
- notify the author's institution or employer of the detected violations;
- refuse the author from further publications in the journal for a specified period of time.
In the event of a retraction of an article, a notice stating the reasons is published on the journal website.
The authors and the applicant receive a written notification of the results of the review of the complaint regarding the violation of ethical norms.
The authors or the applicant have the right to file an appeal within 30 days from the date of receipt of the editorial decision. The appeal is considered by the editor-in-chief and, if necessary, by members of the editorial board or external experts.
The editorial board adheres to the principles of transparency, confidentiality and impartiality in its activities regarding the review of received complaints.
The authors bear full responsibility for compliance with the principles of academic integrity and publication ethics.
