ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR PUBLICATION

The Philological Forum Journal upholds honesty, transparency and professionalism in all aspects relevant to its publication. The journal aims to publish original research presented in its best possible version and in accordance with the highest standards applicable, said research making considerable contributions to the sphere of the humanities. To achieve this objective, we require authors to strictly adhere to the following principles: integrity, trustworthiness and honesty. For their part, reviewers and the editorial board undertake to abide by the principles of fairness, objectivity and confidentiality.

The Philological Forum Journal accepts, supports and adheres to the codes of conduct and international standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)[1] and available on their website: http://publicationethics.org/. The relevant documents include the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors[2] and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers[3].

The following extracts from COPE documents Kleinert, S. and Wager, E. (2011); Wager, E. and Kleinert, S. (2011) serve to clarify key aspects of the work of authors and editors.

Editors

  • should make fair and unbiased decisions independent from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process;
  • should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency;
  • should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions and, where needed, reject texts;
  • should have appropriate policies in place for handling editorial conflicts of interest.

 

Authors

  • the research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation;
  • should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation;
  • should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others;
  • should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere (to this effect, they are obliged to fill out an authorship declaration);
  • should take responsibility for any and all material submitted for publication and the state of material sent for printing;
  • should undertake to ensure that authorship of publications (as stated in the line containing the names of authors) is accurately reflected as regards individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting;
  • should disclose any funding sources and any (potential) conflicts of interest.

[1]           Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

[2]          Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors

[3]         Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers