Journal Policy

Contents

• Ethics Statement
• Ethical policy for authors
• Research ethic
• Conflict of interest policy
• Privacy statement
• Copyright notice
• Preprint posting
• Publishing malpractice policy
• Similarity check procedure
• Archiving

This periodical is a diamond open access journal. All of its content is completely free to view, download, copy, distribute, print, search, and link to full texts of papers published in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or author. The journal does not charge any fees for the processing and submission of manuscripts. Papers published in the journal are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.

Ethics statement

We follow guidance from the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) in our pursuit to support the ethical publishing principles. Its guidelines are applied to the journal’s editors, authors, and peer reviewers. The journal will follow the COPE flowcharts regarding any potential acts of misconduct.

Ethical policy for authors

Authors should observe high standards concerning the ethical policy for the authors of the journal as set out by COPE. Any cases of ethical misconduct shall be treated very seriously and shall be dealt with by adhering to the COPE guidelines.

Authors should present an accurate account of the performed work (an objective evaluation of its significance). Details and references must be sufficient enough to permit others to replicate the work. The research results should be interpreted correctly in order to avoid damage to the trust in the journal.

Authors are responsible for assuring that data, results, quotes, citations, images and/or other material in the manuscript is cited accordingly and not fabricated or manipulated. Proper acknowledgement of the work(s) of others must always be given.

The journal publishes only original works which have neither been published elsewhere nor are under review elsewhere. Exceptions are granted only for new works which expand previous publications. Authors are required to provide information on the reuse of the material. Unethical publishing behaviour extends to cases when a single study is deliberately split up into several parts with the objective to increase the number of published works.

Significant contribution must have been made by each and every researcher included in the list of the authors in preparing the manuscript; the authors share collective responsibility and accountability for the results. Anyone who has made a significant contribution must be included in the list of the authors. After acceptance of a manuscript, the changing of authorship or the order of the authors is no longer possible.

We ask authors to provide information about financial support for the research or paper in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the paper. If the funding source(s) had no involvement, then this should be stated.

Research ethic

Authors must gain all types of necessary consent from the human participants prior to submitting the paper to empower the journal to use any related data as a way to ensure and maintain their right to privacy.

The journal expects authors to implement transparency of any data and any other related materials associated with the submitted manuscript. Authors must provide records of evidence to ensure that others were within reasonable position to replicate the research or to check its validity. We encourage authors to deposit data in the repository and kindly ask to provide persistent access to the archived data.

We expect authors to use inclusive language. The content of the manuscript should not contain anything what could show that some people are superior to others on the grounds of any aspects of culture, race, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, age, and/or ethnicity. It is recommended that writing should be free from offensive or exclusionary terms.

Conflict of interest policy

When it is reasonable to consider that issues outside the research could affect the objectivity of the submitted manuscript or its evaluation, conflicts of interest occur. We ask authors to declare in advance possible conflicts of interest whether or not they have affected the research so that we could make informed decisions. Conflicts of interest include affiliations (being related in any kind of affiliation with an organisation interested in the particular outcome of the work), financial (benefits or services received or expected to be received by authors in connection with the object of the work or by an organisation interested in the result of the work); and personal relationship (close personal ties), etc.

An author, by virtue of submitting a work, must declare any potential conflict of interests in the Comments for the Editor section. In this statement, all potential interests must be explained by elaborating why a conflict of interest may have been involved. The authors must indicate any former, current, and/or potential future benefits as well as any other payments, goods, perks, and services that could have affected the work. All the presently listed aspects, whether or not they actually caused a conflict of interest, must be properly and honestly specified in the Acknowledgements section.

If there is no conflict of interest, authors are asked to indicate it: ‘The author / authors state that there is no conflict of interested related to the publishing of this manuscript’.

On our behalf, we assure that, in most cases, honest declaration of interests will not stop the manuscript from being forwarded to review and subsequently published.

If you have any doubts in relation to potential conflicts of interest, you are kindly invited to discuss the issue(s) with the editorial board. If a conflict of interest is revealed during the peer review stage, the journal may initiate rejection. If the paper has already been published, the retraction / withdrawal process may be initiated.

The journal follows a policy of the editors and reviewers not being involved in any kind of interaction with a submitted manuscript. Editors or reviewers must abstain from further work on the manuscript and inform the editorial board about any conflicts of interest when they co-authored recently with the author(s); received or are likely to receive possible financial reward related to the subject of the work; are or recently were in some form of relationship such as marriage, parentage, other family/relationship bonds; recently worked/cooperated on the same project with the author; and are close/direct competitors; or have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors. In order to ensure maximum integrity and transparency of the publishing process, the editor-in-chief of the journal is responsible for the evaluation whether a certain specific situation is deemed to be recent enough.

Privacy statement

Names and e-mail addresses entered in this journal’s Website will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose(s) or to any other party.

Copyright notice

By submitting the manuscript of a research paper to a journal published by the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, the corresponding author inherently certifies that they have been fully and explicitly authorised by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements and they guarantee and warrant, on behalf of themselves and all of their co-authors that:
          1. They have the full power to enter into this agreement and to make the grants contained herein. They are the sole author(s) of the paper and have full authority to enter into this agreement and to grant the appropriate rights to the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of without breach of any other obligation.
          2. The manuscript is original and does not infringe any copyright, nor does it violate any other right(s) of any third parties.
          3. The manuscript contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or confidence or commitment given to secrecy.
          4. The authors agree to the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 agreement under which the paper published in the journal is licensed, and grant the Martynas Mažvydas National Library their permission to publish the previously unpublished and original manuscript, the abstract forming part thereof, all associated supplemental material, and the subsequent errata (if necessary) in the journal under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-4.0). The author maintains the copyright and the publishing and related rights.
           5. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s), the title of the published paper, the journal, and DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
           6. Anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the paper’s content in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the paper’s content) for any purposes, even commercially.

Preprint policy

The journal accepts manuscripts of papers that have previously been posted on a non-profit preprint server. The author(s) should notify the journal of any preprint related to the submitted manuscript. A preprint archive is not seen as overlap between publications when the versions of the paper are clearly recognisable.

Publishing malpractice policy

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, and plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, shall take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the paper in question. It includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in most severe cases, complete retraction of the affected work.

We explicitly do not support substantial overlap between large portions of texts of the publications and ‘self-plagiarism’. Exceptions can be made by the editor-in-chief if they see that the submitted paper can contribute to the academic discourse provided that there is no restriction from other publishers in relation with the publication, and that proper reference to the original source is provided.

We expect that the submitted manuscripts have not been submitted to any other journal or book, with exceptions being given only for preprints.

Our editors work in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines when considering retraction or correction of the published paper.

We provide a corrigendum when there is an error made by the author. The erratum will be issued if the journal is found to have made an error. Retraction is not initiated for minor corrections such as language or minor spelling issues. Retraction is initiated when the journal has obtained information that certain article findings or conclusions are false or that the content has been plagiarised. Any related actions will be carried out in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines.

When any suspicions of overlap between publications or ‘self-plagiarism’ have been raised, we expect our stakeholders to contact us via the e-mail Relevant.Tomorrow@lnb.lt.

Similarity check procedure

The editorial board actively engages in efforts to prevent scholarly as well as professional plagiarism, and the journal undertakes the similarity check procedure prior to the peer review process. The journal uses Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate to check for duplication and attribution in the submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts containing suspected plagiarism shall be rejected.

If plagiarism is discovered after publication, guidance outlined in the Publishing Malpractice Policy will be followed.

We expect our readers, reviewers, and editors to raise and share any suspicions of plagiarism by e-mailing Relevant.Tomorrow@lnb.

Archiving
This journal has an archival arrangement with PKP Preservation Network.