Publication ethics
1. Authorship and recognition of contributions
The authors will include in the materials proposed for publication only their own, original work. All co-authors of a material submitted for publication are equally responsible for the originality, accuracy and integrity of the manuscript.
Authorship will only be attributed to those who have contributed significantly to the design and execution of the research paper. Only researchers who have approved the final version of the article will declare themselves and will be considered authors/co-authors of the manuscript. Other persons who had contributions such as providing data, translating the paper, grammatical review, data collection, obtaining financial support, providing physical space for research, etc., will be explicitly mentioned in the Acknowledgements section of the paper (e.g., "participated in the technical editing of the manuscript").
The corresponding author is the one who must take care that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the article and that they agree to the terms and conditions of publication. Also, the corresponding author is in contact with the editor-in-chief and will communicate at all times, throughout the editing process, with all co-authors, informing them about the evolution of the editorial process.
The corresponding author must explicitly inform the editor-in-chief of the journal about significant changes to the manuscript, such as new content, new data, changing the order of the authors, adding, or removing one or more authors. All these changes must be authorized by the editorial board of the journal. Also, the corresponding author ensures that all the administrative requirements of the journal are met:
Drafting the article according to template requirements;
Submitting the Authors' Statement of Publication Ethics;
Providing an institutional/personal email address to be in contact with the editorial board;
Supplying the ORCID accounts of all authors, completed in accordance with the Author Guidelines (the ORCID account increases the credibility of authorship).
In recognizing authorship, the following situations violate publication ethics: (a) the existence of "ghost" authors; (b) the inclusion of "invited" authors who do not have clear contributions; (c) offering the article as a "gift" to persons with poor affiliation to a study. /li>
Any complaint regarding the status of an author or contributor will be sent to the editor-in-chief, as instructed in the Appeals and Complaints section.
2. Copyright and intellectual property
The journal Amfiteatru Economic allows authors to retain their copyright by granting a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International(CC BY 4.0) publication license. This license applies to PDF versions of published articles, in Romanian and English. The journal does not charge processing and publishing fees to authors, and readers have free permanent access to the content of the journal.
The copyright for publication in the Amfiteatru Economic journal is as follows:
Authors retain the right to patents and trademarks that they own;
Authors retain the right to use the research data, freely, without restrictions;
Authors can reuse their own material without permission or payment, while acknowledging that the original article was published in the journal Amfiteatru Economic;
Authors can reuse the scientific material in their own theses (e.g., PhD thesis)
Authors can use and send their own papers for teaching purposes, to conferences, through direct links to students and colleagues;
The manuscript and final published form (PDF) can be distributed on any website or uploaded to any server (e.g.
SSRN,
ResearchGate)), while maintaining bibliographic identifiers.
Plagiarism, in any form of manifestation, is prohibited. The Amfiteatru Economic journal uses plagiarism detection software for all submitted manuscripts that are considered eligible, before sending the respective manuscripts to peer review. A significant similarity (i.e., a similarity coefficient of more than 10%) leads to the automatic rejection of the manuscript.
The Amfiteatru Economic journal asks that all authors sign the Authors' Statement of Publication Ethics, clearly stating that their submitted work has not been previously published.
References to other works will be cited accordingly in the text of the article and included in the list of references, according to the citation style imposed by the journal, respectively
Harvard – Anglia Ruskin University style.
When authors want to use material from another source, they must analyze the license under which the cited material is provided. Depending on the obligations arising from that license, written permission from the copyright owner may be required to reuse any copyrighted material. Copyrighted material may include figures, illustrations, diagrams, tables, photographs, and snippets of text. The re-use of any borrowed material shall be appropriately marked, even if written permission is not required. Where applicable, written permission for any material taken from other sources must be obtained from the copyright owner, before submitting a manuscript to the Amfiteatru Economic journal. If authors reuse figures or tables published under licenses such as CC BY, CC BY 3.0, CC BY 4.0, CC BY-NC-ND, there is no need for written permission, although it is important that the source is mentioned as specified in the
Author Guidelines. If the figures and tables to be reused are under restrictive licenses, permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. A redrawn figure or modified table must be significantly different from the original source to be included without asking for formal permission. In this case, it is sufficient to indicate the original source (for example, "Based on"/ "After"/ "Redrawn from"/ "Adapted from"/ "Data from").
3. Conflicts of interest
The submission of the Authors' Statement of Publication Ethics is a mandatory step in the publishing process. Editors may use the information disclosed in this statement for editorial decisions. The interests to be disclosed are listed below, but are not limited to:
Funding: Research grants from funding agencies and/or support by organizations that may gain or lose financially by publishing a manuscript.
Employment: Recent, present, or anticipated employment by any organization that may earn or lose financially by publishing a manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).
Financial interests: Shares in companies that may gain or lose financially by publishing a manuscript; consultancy fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations with an interest in the work submitted; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by the publication of the manuscript.
Non-financial interests: professional interests, personal relationships, or personal beliefs (among others). Examples include but are not limited to: positions in the editorial board or scientific board of the journal, writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relationships.
In addition to the above, authors must specify the information on the funding received, in the Acknowledgements section of the paper.
Reviewers will treat all authors with respect and must show objectivity and provide specific and documented information on the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript being evaluated. Reviewers must be impartial in relation to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other personal or professional characteristics of the authors.
A reviewer who believes that he or she does not have the necessary expertise to evaluate the relevant aspects of a manuscript must notify the editor-in-chief.
Reviewers will not suggest to authors citations of the reviewers' works or those of their collaborators. "Coercive citation" (the inclusion of citations as a condition for accepting the manuscript) is a prohibited practice at the Amfiteatru Economic journal.
Reviewers must declare, directly to the editor-in-chief, their conflicts of interest regarding a particular work received for evaluation. If a reviewer suspects the identity of the author(s) of a paper received for evaluation, he or she must notify the editor-in-chief if there is a potential conflict of interest. This rule also applies to the double-blind evaluation system practiced by the Amfiteatru Economic journal. The reviewer who is currently employed at the same institution as any of the authors or has recently (in the last three years) been a mentor, doctoral supervisor, close collaborator, or beneficiary of joint grants with the author(s), should refuse to review the manuscript received. Usually, in these situations, the review request is canceled by the editor-in-chief and the manuscript is redistributed to another reviewer.
In order to preserve his or her objectivity, the reviewer must refuse to evaluate an article that is very similar to a paper that he or she has in preparation or sent for evaluation to another journal.
Reviewers may suspect an undeclared conflict of interest regarding the authors in an article that is in the review process. In this situation, the reviewers must immediately notify the editor-in-chief and wait for a resolution.
4. Availability of research data and reproducibility
Research data are the materials associated with the research project. This category includes: raw or processed data files; software; patterns; algorithms; protocols; methods; questionnaires, etc.
The journal encourages the publication of research data, anonymized in a permanent data warehouse with a DOI identifier (for example,
Mendeley Data,
figshare, Zenodo). The Amfiteatru Economic journal will not host/publish or manage research data. To cite the research data in the accepted version of the article, the Harvard system will be used. When suspicions of data manufacturing arise, reviewers will announce the editor-in-chief of the journal.
5. Ethical oversight
The Editorial Board assumes that all the necessary conditions for publication have been created and, in this way, compliance with the rules of ethics is guaranteed, both by authors and reviewers. At the same time, the editorial board assumes responsibility for making decisions regarding the publication or not of an article.
Paper submission must be accompanied by the Authors' Statement of Publication Ethics which will be completed and signed by all authors. This statement refers to the originality of the submitted work, the authors' commitment not to submit the paper simultaneously to other journals and the potential conflicts of interest of the authors.
The editorial board offers on the journal's website an
Author Guidelines to help the authors in the preparation and submission of the article, as well as a
Guide to reviewing to help the reviewers achieve the most objective evaluation of the article.
The editorial staff examines the ethical conditions of the research when human subjects and vulnerable populations were involved.
Manuscripts that have been declared eligible are verified in terms of the coefficient of similarity, using specialized software. All manuscripts are reviewed using the double-blind peer review procedure, solely on the basis of the scientific content of the article. At the same time, reviewers need to pay attention to multiple aspects, such as: manufactured or falsified research data, false citations, attempts to manipulate the peer review evaluation process.
Editors and reviewers are obligated to maintain confidentiality over the entire evaluation and review process. Reviewers will not use for their own benefit the information and ideas contained in the manuscripts received for evaluation. They may not discuss with third parties the content of the reviewed articles, and the manuscripts will not be shown to other experts, unless sharing a specific manuscript is authorized by the editor-in-chief. All conversations and materials sent between the authors and the editorial staff, and between the editorial staff and the reviewers, are confidential and remain confidential after the work has received a final decision.
The editorial board has the right to reject an article if it violates the rules of publication ethics. Complaints related to the violation of the aforementioned ethical rules are received on secretariat@amfiteatrueconomic.ro. The editorial board treats all authors with objectivity and respect, communicating promptly the decisions taken regarding the article in question.
6. Complaints and appeals
Appeals and complaints regarding authorship will be communicated to the editor-in-chief when a person considers that he or she is entitled to be considered as author, or when another person should not be named as author. The editor-in-chief will inform the persons involved and the corresponding author that an appeal has been filed. The editor-in-chief cannot give a resolution in cases of dispute over authorship, without consulting all the authors involved in conducting a study.
Plagiarism is an ethical issue to which the editorial staff attaches the utmost importance. Suspicions of plagiarism can arise from the stage of eligibility check, when all eligible papers are verified using a plagiarism detection software. Later, suspicions of plagiarism can be notified by the reviewer during the evaluation process or by readers after the publication of an article. Although the journal Amfiteatru Economic uses plagiarism detection software, the editorial staff will investigate any signals regarding the presence of plagiarism in the manuscripts or published works. The editor-in-chief will inform the contact author of the existence of a suspicion of plagiarism but will not disclose the origin of the complaint. The editor-in-chief will also give the contact author the opportunity to provide explanations on the situation. Depending on the nature of the explanations and the severity of plagiarism, the editor-in-chief can make decisions such as: rejecting the appeal, rectifications (for minor mistakes), or even retracting the article (for a major violation of academic ethics).
Self-plagiarism and redundant publication are issues that affect the originality of the papers sent to journals. These suspicions may be raised by reviewers and editors at the evaluation stage or by other interested parties after that article has been published. As in the case of suspicion of plagiarism, the editor-in-chief must inform the corresponding author and ask for explanations on the reported situation. Depending on the phase in which this problem was revealed and the severity of the case, the editor-in-chief can make several decisions: to leave the article as it is, to ask the authors to make corrections in the text, to reject the manuscript in the evaluation process, or to retract the published article. Also, the editor-in-chief of the Amfiteatru Economic journal can communicate to the editor-in-chief of the journal in which the previous publication was made if there is a redundant publication.
The authors' conflicts of interest can be noted by editors, reviewers (in the evaluation phase) or readers (in the post-publication phase). Depending on the actual existence of a conflict of interest and the severity of the reported situation, the editor-in-chief can make one of these decisions: to leave the article as it is, to publish a corrective mention on the journal's website, or even retract the article.
Manipulation of the peer review process and the conflicts of interest of reviewers are issues that can arise in the editorial process. Conflicts of interest of reviewers can appear even during the double-blind review process, when the reviewers suspect or know the identity of the authors. In that case, the assessment could be influenced by considerations other than purely scientific ones. The reviewer must immediately notify the editor-in-chief and withdraw from the evaluation process, if there is a conflict of interest, even apparently.
The fabrication of data and the manipulation of research outcomes will be treated with the utmost vigilance by reviewers and editors. If a reviewer raises suspicions about the authenticity of the data (in the evaluation phase) or if a reader complains about fabricated data (in a published article), the editor-in-chief will ask for explanations from the corresponding author or all authors. Depending on the authors' response, the editor-in-chief can make one of these decisions: the article follows the editorial process without any correction, the manuscript is rejected, the editorial office publishes a correction for an already published article or the published article is retracted.
The journal may receive other types of complaints from whistleblowers. The editor-in-chief will ensure that no complaint is left without a proper investigation. Also, reviewers or members of the editorial board may report various ethical issues, related to a particular manuscript or a group of authors. Editors will be vigilant about the following possible ethical issues: the request to change the list of authors prior to publication, suspicions of self-plagiarism, unverifiable email addresses, lack of consent in research involving individuals, substantial changes to the manuscript that were not requested by reviewers, indications suggesting the existence of conflicts of interest. In any case, an investigation must be completed in a timely manner, and the editor-in-chief must issue a resolution on a manuscript (during the review process), or regarding an article already published by the journal. All stakeholders will be announced by the final resolution.
7. Retractions and post-publication corrections
The retraction of an already published article can be done in the following situations: major errors in the processing and interpretation of research data; the manufacturing or falsification of data; plagiarism or self-plagiarism; redundant publication (i.e., the authors have published similar manuscripts in several journals); significant copyright infringement; lack of consent in research involving individuals; manipulation of the peer review process; existence of a conflict of interest, which has not been disclosed and which is of major significance to the presentation of research outcomes; defamation or slander; other serious ethical issues. A retracted article will be explicitly marked on the journal's website, along with the reasons for the retraction.
If a case of redundant publication is reported, the journal that first published the paper may issue a redundant publication notice but should not withdraw the article unless there are other justifications, such as the reliability of the data. Any journal that subsequently publishes a redundant article should withdraw it and state the reason for the withdrawal. The editor-in-chief of the Amfiteatru Economic journal will analyze all the circumstances and options in case of redundant publication, so that the scientific value of the research is not affected
Errata generally refers to a production error, which occurred during the publishing process. If an erratum is issued, it will appear on the page with the abstract of the online version of the work to ensure full visibility. Errata will also appear in the printed copy of the next volume or issue of the publication.