Editorial Policy

The journal supports the principles of ethical publishing and follows guidance from the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) and LSU Guidelines for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Tools (in Lithuanian language). The aforementioned guidelines are applied to the journal editors, authors, and peer-reviewers. The journal will follow the COPE flowcharts and LSU Guidelines regarding any potential acts of misconduct.

Editors and the Editorial Board Shall:

• make a decision to accept or reject a publication based on the relevance, originality, and clarity of the manuscript, the validity of the research and the relevance to the journal.
• ensure the confidentiality of the material submitted and not pass manuscripts to persons who are not involved in the review and publishing process.
• ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for the review.
• ensure that the journal uses double-blind peer review and appoints peer-recognised scholars in the field following the principles of professionalism, academic integrity and ethics.
• take reasonable responses to ethical complaints about a submitted manuscript or published article.
• support and promote plagiarism screening policies.
• may employ AI tools to support editorial and administrative tasks, provided confidentiality and ethical standards are strictly maintained. All editorial decisions must be made independently by human editors and must not rely solely on AI-generated assessments.

Reviewers shall:

• agree to review works whose subject matter corresponds to his/her competence and with the authors of which there is no conflict of interest.
• treat the received peer-reviewed manuscripts as confidential documents.
• submit a written review within the deadline set by the editor.
• inform the Editorial Board about suspected cases of unfair citation, use of previously published texts, the authors of which have not been named, plagiarism, falsification of research, and evaluate the accuracy and relevance of the sources indicated by the authors.
• adhere to the basic norms of academic ethics: non-abuse of one’s influence in decision-making, norms and rules of academic communication, and the principle of equal opportunities.
• must not upload manuscripts or any identifiable content into AI tools due to confidentiality obligations. Any limited use of AI must not compromise the integrity of the review, and reviewers remain fully accountable for their evaluations.

Authors shall:

• provide an original, previously unpublished work of scientific value.
• sign the authors’ Copyright Statement for the work submitted to the press; all co-authors shall approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting it for publication.
• edit the work within the time allotted by the editor, taking into account reasonable comments of the reviewers or explaining in a reasoned manner why the comments have not been taken into account.
• understand that any form of plagiarism is unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
• may use AI tools for language editing and limited analytical support, provided such use is appropriate and does not compromise the scholarly integrity of the work. All use of AI must be transparently disclosed, and authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, and validity of the content.

Conflicts of Interest. At the submission stage, authors shall report any potential interest and explain why a conflict of interest may arise. Authors submitting manuscripts are responsible for having their co-authors indicate their interest. In any case of a conflict of interest, editors and reviewers shall notify the journal and withdraw from the submitted manuscript. If authors have no interests to declare, then this should be stated, as: Disclosure of Interest: None.

Authorship and Artificial Intelligence Tools. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the work submitted. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest, nor can they manage copyright and licensing agreements. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must transparently disclose in the Materials and Methods (or a similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts generated using an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publishing ethics. COPE position statement, 13 February 2023, https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author

Plagiarism Check. The Editorial Board is actively working to prevent scientific and professional plagiarism, so the iThenticate program is used before the process of reviewing.

Misconduct. Misconduct includes falsifying data, plagiarising others’ works, and breach of confidentiality. Each case will be considered, and in all cases the author (or reviewer) will be contacted directly. If misconduct is confirmed during the review process, the manuscript will be immediately rejected. If misconduct is proved after publication then the publication will be retracted.

Post-Publication Corrections. 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. Authors and readers are encouraged to inform Editor-in-Chief if they notice anything that should be corrected.

Author Appeals. If an author considers that a decision of rejection was incorrectly made, they may appeal the decision. To appeal a decision the author must email the Editor-in-Chief, giving reasons why they think the decision was wrong. The appeal will be considered by a member of the Editorial Board who was not involved in the original decision.

Preprint Posting. In support of research dissemination, the journal accepts the submission of manuscripts that have previously been posted on a non-profit preprint repository. When submitting the manuscript or at any other time while it is being considered by the journal, the author(s) should provide information about any related preprint, including DOI and licensing terms. A preprint archive is not seen as overlap between publications when the version of record is recognisable. Once the preprint is published, it is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the publication on the journal website.

Archiving. Authors may archive the final published version of their work in personal, institutional or other repositories without embargo. The electronic versions of all publications affiliated to Lithuanian research and higher education institutions also are stored at Lithuanian Academic Electronic Library (eLABa), as a national aggregated open access (OA) repository (https://www.elaba.lt).

Data Sharing. We encourage all researchers to archive and share all data associated with their research. Inspired by the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) Principles, we believe that sharing data benefits research by enabling other researchers to find, reuse, and reinterpret it.

We strongly urge all authors to make their data available in suitable repositories where the item will be safely archived and given a unique accession number (or DOI), so that it can be cited in the authors’ manuscript. Visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to help identify registered and certified data repositories relevant to your subject area.

All research and review manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement, whether or not the data used in the manuscript is shared. For authors who have shared data: this statement should describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g. a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data.

If authors are unable to share data (for example, if sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements) then authors are not required to share it and must describe any restrictions in their Data Availability Statement.

Shared data should be cited following APA 7th edition guidelines.

ORCID Identifiers. We encourage authors to provide their ORCID iD, which will be included in their publication to ensure accurate attribution and improve discoverability of their research. Authors may use their ORCID accounts to manually add their publications in our journal to their ORCID record, helping maintain a complete and up-to-date profile of their scientific work.