Ethic and Malpractice

EDITORIAL RENSPOSIBILITIES

The Editor-in-Chief in cooperation with the Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Tokovi istorije will be published. The Editor-in-Chief is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by the relevant legal requirements in force, particularly regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication as soon as possible after the date of the manuscript submission.

Editor-in-Chief must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Board. If one or more members of the Editorial Board are in conflict of interest of any kind relevant for the process of the selection of reviewers this member (those members) will be excluded from the selection process. Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board members are obliged to timely report existence of such conlict of interests.

Editor-in-Chief shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

Authors’ responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Tokovi istorije.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in a footnote at the beginning of the text. A paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in Tokovi istorije unless it is translation, adaptation or reconstruction of existing research, wich needs to be flagged clearly.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to Tokovi istorije are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher, Editorilal Board or Editor-in-Chief will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Reporting standards

A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Authorship

Authors must make sure that all only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

Acknowledgment of Sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be immediatelly rejected. The decision will be noted in the records and consulted in the case of arrival of new manucscripts of the same author.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Tokovi istorije’s Editorial Policies.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same paper to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not be in conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Peer review

The Journal's Editorial Policy provides that peer review process takes no more than two months and that papers accepted by the Editorial Board are published within one year.

Тhe submissions received by Editorial Board of Tokovi istorije which in the opinion of Editor-in-Chief fulfill basic requirements regarding their content and form are further subject to double blind review by at least two independent scholars. The purpose of peer review is to assists the Editorial Board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper.

The choice of reviewers is at the Editorial Boards' discretion. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors. Reviewers are not compensated for their work.

Editor-in-chief sends submitted manuscripts to the chosen reviewers without the author’s name, affiliation or any other data that could reveal the identitety of the author(s), along with the reviewer form used by the Editorial Board of Tokovi istorije. The form contains questions for reviewers regarding the originality of the submission, the methodology, the sources and literature used, as well as the language and style of the submitted manuscript. On the basis of the form, the reviewers suggest whether the submitted manuscript should be published or not, with or without changes. The reviewers also suggests the category of the submission. There is a designated space in this form for the reviewers where they may present specific suggestions and objections, without revealing their identity to the author(s). The identity of the author(s) also remains unknown to the reviewers before, during and after the review.

All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Procedures for dealing with unethical behaviour

Anyone may inform the Editor-in-chief or Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

Investigation

  • Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
  • During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Minor violation of ethical standards

Minor violation will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

  • Communicating to offender whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
  • A warning letter to an offender regarding fairly minor misconduct.

Major offences of ethical standarrs

The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the offence.
  • Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any offence by means of a formal letter.
  • The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Staff will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): http://publicationethics.org/resources/.

Retraction Policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The main reason for withdrawal or retraction is to correct the mistake while preserving the integrity of science; it is not to punish the author.

Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Tokovi istorije: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

Tokovi istorije is an Open Access Journal.

All articles can be downloaded free of charge from the journal’s website and used in accordance with the Creative Commons Atribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing and production stages.

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

The journal Tokovi istorije allows authors to deposit Publisher’s PDF in an institutional repository and non-commercial subject-based repositories, or to publish it on Author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and/or departmental website, at any time after publication. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI in the form of HTML link.

COPYRIGHT

Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors grant to the Publisher the following rights to the manuscript, including any supplemental material, and any parts, extracts or elements thereof:

  • the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript in printed form, including print-on-demand;
  • the right to produce prepublications, reprints, and special editions of the Manuscript;
  • the right to translate the Manuscript into other languages;
  • the right to reproduce the Manuscript using photomechanical or similar means including, but not limited to photocopy, and the right to distribute these reproductions;
  • the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript electronically or optically on any and all data carriers or storage media – especially in machine readable/digitalized form on data carriers such as hard drive, CD-Rom, DVD, Blu-ray Disc (BD), Mini-Disk, data tape – and the right to reproduce and distribute the Article via these data carriers;
  • the right to store the Manuscript in databases, including online databases, and the right of transmission of the Manuscript in all technical systems and modes;
  • the right to make the Manuscript available to the public or to closed user groups on individual demand, for use on monitors or other readers (including e-books), and in printable form for the user, either via the internet, other online services, or via internal or external networks.

Authors retain the right to translate the article into another language, to use it for noncommercial purposes in a publication which compiles their works, their doctoral dissertation or a monograph, as long as it remains stated that the new work derives from a paper published in Tokovi istorije. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI in the form of the HTML link, i.e. URL address of the article’s initial publication.

The third parties can use the article in a way not covered by the Editorial policy and Creative Commons license – Attribution NonComercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) only if they obtain a written consent of the publisher and such requests should be sent to electronic address of the Editorial Board: tokoviistorije@gmail.com).

DisClaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.