Authorship
Authorship should reflect individuals’ contribution to the work concept, project, implementation or interpretation. All co-authors who contributed to the publication should be listed. Persons who are not authors but made substantial contributions to the article, should be listed in the acknowledgements section. The author should make sure that all co-authors have been listed, are familiar with and have accepted the final version of the article, and have given their consent for submitting the article for publication. Authors who publish the findings of their research should present the research methodology used, an objective discussion of the results and their importance for academic purposes and practice. The work should provide reference to all the sources used. Publishing false or intentionally untrue statements is unethical.
Conflict of interests and its disclosure
Authors should disclose all sources of their projects funding, contribution of research institutions, societies and other entities as well as all other conflicts of interests that might affect the findings and their interpretation.
Originality and plagiarism Authors must only submit original works. They should make sure that the names of authors cited in the work and/or cited fragments of their works are properly acknowledged or referenced.
Ghost/guest authorship
Ghost authorship is when someone makes a substantial contribution to a work but he/she is not listed as an author or his/her role in the publication is not acknowledged. Guest authorship takes place when someone’s contribution is very small or inexistent but his/her name is listed as an author.
Ghost and guest authorship are manifestations of a lack of scientific integrity and all such cases will be disclosed, involving a notification of component entities (institutions employing the authors, scientific societies, associations of editors etc.). The Editorial Board will document every instance of scientific dishonesty, especially the violation of the ethical principles binding in science.
In order to prevent ghost or guest authorship, authors are requested to provide declarations of authorship.
1. Select your topic. Is it scientific/scholarly, or are you perhaps going to remain in the realm of common-sense considerations? Is your approach global, regional, country-specific? It is not enough to know all that, it ought to be clearly declared.
2. Be concious of the importance of global approach, but do not hesitate to demonstrate a local one. Some major indexing services stress the importance of „local” or „regional” journals and works, as they are keen to record what they call „emerging” themes and sources.
3. Having said that, let us add that when offering a local subject, you can never leave out at least a comparatistic introduction. As you are reaching a world-wide audience, you have to start with explanation of any possible local specificity.
4. Watch current trends and the body of publications which they produce. Identify scholarly journals which provide you most valuable information and opinion: they are likely to become those which will happen to accept your works for publication.
5. See to it that you use information discovered in and retrieved from scholarly journals. As you cite the other authors, they may develop an urge to cite you.
6. Read the journal you are going to submit your work to. Try to assess – perhaps with the assistance of your librarian – if its impact (citedness) meets your expectations. Follow its technical requirements and bibliographic style, and adopt some of the verbiage of its most prolific authors.
7. Be prepared for teamwork. Much of the most innovative research is interdisciplinary, also in social sciences. Learn how to work with scholars from other fields, share duties, invite experienced researchers and successful authors.
8. Think of a structure of the article. See how medical journals divide papers into chapters and imagine yourself following that practice, even if eventually you end up writing for a journal whose editorial practice does not support sections.
9. Write just a good text. There are quite a few bad ones around, do not compromise on that. Your topic is well defined, your hypothesis is clearly stated, your approach is imbued with critical thinking, your conclusion is convincing.
10. The language of the article is up to you, as long as you select English. Just kidding. In many cases, your Polish (etc.) is just all right. To be sure, the paper written in English by its non-native author is a better selection than the text translated into English by a third party. The editor should offer you a writing correction service. This is the practice. And it works.
11. Be a true narrator, do not allow errors and sloppiness. Process data and pictures that you use, do not paste them mechanically to your text.
12. Do not trust journals, which would leave your mistakes without any remark. Read the reviews: are they written by referees who understand the need of novelty in scholarship? Expect questions from the editor(s), be ready to further work on your text and improve it upon.
13. Be precise in your footnotes and bibliography, they contain data which will circulate in databases.
14. As an author, always use your name in one standard version. To avoid affiliation doubts, extend that practice on the name of your organization.
15. Your editor or publisher may also request from you the sources of funding information and the conflict of interest declaration. As well as English keywords and, perhaps, acknowledgement on contribution of particular authors.
16. Be able to write an abstract, which is supposed to be a summary of the text, and not just an introduction to it.
17. This is how it works in journals which deserve your contribution. Make right choices, have fun, and then have more fun from citations that you will have received.
18. All in all, let the others find out that you enjoyed your work.
