Central European Journal of International and Security Studies

Ethical Guidelines

(Last update: 9 October 2024)

Central European Journal of International and Security Studies (CEJISS) is committed to publishing high-quality research and upholding the integrity of the scientific record. To meet this objective, the peer review and publication processes should be transparent, impartial, and fair. The Ethical Guidelines discuss the role and responsibilities of Authors, Reviewers, and the CEJISS Editorial Team.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines and their application, please contact the CEJISS Editorial Team.

  • 1.1 CEJISS follows a double-blind review process. All the parties involved in the peer review process (CEJISS Editorial Team, Authors, Reviewers) should respect confidentiality of the review process.
  • 1.2 All research article manuscripts are peer-reviewed. Book review manuscripts are not peer-reviewed; however, their quality is assessed by the CEJISS Editorial Team.
  • 1.3 All the parties involved in the peer review process (CEJISS Editorial Team, Authors, Reviewers) or any other party that cooperates with CEJISS should comply with all relevant legislation.
  • 1.4 CEJISS is committed to publishing all of its content as open access material.
  • 1.5 No processing or publishing fees are required.
  • 1.6 CEJISS does not accept articles authored or co-authored by any form of AI. Please see section 2.1 regarding what constitutes authorship. However, AI, in its different forms, may be used as a supplementary tool for purposes which may include but are not necessarily limited to proofreading or facilitating data collection. Sections 2.17 and 4.11 provide additional information related to the usage of AI.

Authors’ responsibilities and entitlements

  • 2.1 To be defined as an Author, one needs to contribute to the development of the academic content of a given article - i.e. contribute to the development of ideas, arguments and reasoning expressed in the article, including methodological advancement of such ideas and developing empirical support for them - and be actively engaged in the process of composing and expressing the academic content in the written form.
  • 2.2 The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
  • 2.3 The submitted paper should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full).
  • 2.4 Research outputs have to be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data and image manipulation.
  • 2.5 Authors are expected to cite others' works and ideas, even if they are not quoted verbatim or paraphrased. All research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Book Reviews) must cite appropriate literature and resources in support of the claims made. Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given and permissions secured for copyrighted material. Excessive self-citation in order to inflate the citation count or citation brotherhoods are strongly discouraged.
  • 2.6 Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and leads to the manuscript rejection. It may also lead to the article retraction (see also 4.9). Moreover, the Author(s) may be barred from further submitting to CEJISS.
  • 2.7 Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting, and processing data.
  • 2.8 The authorship of submitted articles should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work. Minor contributions by other people (such as data gathering, data coding, commenting, or reviewing earlier versions of the paper) should be cited in the manuscript Acknowledgements.
  • 2.9 Upon request, authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information is excluded.
  • 2.10 Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are completely independent and not connected to the work in any way. Authors may also request that certain Reviewers not be used. Please note that the Journal may not follow the suggestions.
  • 2.11 Authors should not reveal themselves to the reviewers. Authors should be prompt with their manuscript revisions. If an Author cannot meet the deadline given, they should contact the Editor as soon as possible to determine whether the deadline should be extended or whether the paper should be withdrawn from the review process.
  • 2.12 Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.
  • 2.13 Authors are expected to eliminate biases in relation to gender, age, racial and ethnic background, sexual orientation, disability status, and socioeconomic status. Any potential biases of these kinds will be carefully examined by the CEJISS Editorial Team.
  • 2.14 Author(s) may withdraw the submitted manuscript at any time before CEJISS starts the production of the manuscript. The production of the article begins once the article is unconditionally accepted for publication and ends when the article appears on the CEJISS website.
  • 2.15 During the production of the article, Author(s) is/are informed about changes suggested by CEJISS (e.g. after language editing or final editorial suggestions) and is/are presented with the final form and content of the article. Author(s) shall approve the final form and content of the article while Author(s) can still suggest changes and corrections during this phase. However, these changes and corrections should not alter the article’s academic content in a significant way.
  • 2.16 Author (s) may request the CEJISS Editorial Team to correct or retract an already published article. In this situation, the principles stipulated below (see 4.8 and 4.9 of the Ethical Guidelines) should be followed. Requests of this character should be raised in a timely manner, ideally no later than five days after the article appeared on the CEJISS website for the first time. Requests raised later than that shall be considered by the CEJISS Editorial Team only if they are specifically justified. Author(s) is/are obliged to cooperate with the CEJISS Editorial Team when the article is being corrected or retracted.
  • 2.17 If AI is used as a supplementary tool, the Author(s) need to disclose and describe which AI tools were used and in which exact manner. The Authors(s) are also supposed to check all input generated by AI as they remain fully responsible for the article’s factual and citation accuracy, reasoning and originality. If asked by the CEJISS Editorial Team, the Author(s) are expected to submit supplementary material, including logs of interactions between the Author(s) and the AI interface.

Reviewers’ responsibilities and entitlements

  • 3.1 Reviewers should agree to review a manuscript only if they have appropriate subject expertise and sufficient time to complete the review, in accordance with the journal deadline.
  • 3.2 Corresponding to our definition of authorship (see sections 1.6 and 2.1), reviews cannot be authored by AI tools. However, when preparing reviews, reviewers may use AI tools as supplementary tools for purposes such as language editing.
  • 3.3 Reviewers should not reveal themselves to the authors.
  • 3.4 Reviews are intended to consider the quality of submissions and specify how their quality can be improved. The primary goal of reviews is to provide constructive feedback.
  • 3.5 Reviewers shall keep recommendations to use their work to a minimum.
  • 3.6 Reviewers are expected to respect the confidentiality of the review process and abstain from any breach of confidentiality. Until published, all the submissions should be treated as works that are shared privately between Authors, Reviewers, and the CEJISS Editorial Team. As such, they cannot be disseminated.
  • 3.7 Reviewers are expected to indicate any conflict of interest.

The CEJISS Editorial Team’s responsibilities and commitments

  • 4.1 The final decision regarding accepting or rejecting manuscripts rests with the CEJISS Editorial Team. Comments and suggestions of the CEJISS Editorial Team represent an integral part of the peer review process.
  • 4.2 The CEJISS Editorial Team has a responsibility to explain Author(s) their decision on a manuscript.
  • 4.3 The CEJISS Editorial Team is supposed to ensure that the Ethical Guidelines are followed and met at all stages of the submission, review, and publishing process.
  • 4.4 The CEJISS Editorial Team is responsible for managing and overseeing the peer review process and its quality.
  • 4.5 The CEJISS Editorial Team may consult any ethical question with the Steering Committee and the Editorial Board of CEJISS. In their decisions or recommendations, the Steering Committee and the Editorial Board are expected to follow the general principles specified by the Ethical Guidelines including transparency, impartiality, and fairness.
  • 4.6 The CEJISS Editorial Team shall communicate promptly with authors and reviewers. It shall be ready to clarify principles of the Ethical Guidelines to them.
  • 4.7 The CEJISS Editorial Team is responsible for checking manuscripts for any signs of plagiarism. Crossref Similarity Check is used to do so.
  • 4.8 The CEJISS Editorial Team may publish a corrected version of an already published article or an erratum to remedy mistakes or clarify information. If a corrected version of the article is published, the online version of the article shall include a notification that the article has been republished and shall indicate the character of the changes. Publishing a corrected article is mainly intended for cases when the academic content of the article is not impacted, when minor changes are introduced and when the corrected version can be published shortly after the article appeared on the CEJISS website for the first time. Publishing an erratum should be preferred if there is a noticeable time span between the original publication and the moment when the correction is to be published. Should the article’s academic content be impacted, the CEJISS Editorial Board needs to approve the publication of its corrected version or an erratum, and there should be a specifically justified reason for doing so.
  • 4.9 The CEJISS Editorial Team may retract an already published article in exceptional circumstances. These circumstances may include cases when fundamental research, legal or ethical flaws are revealed, including but not limited to data manipulation and plagiarism. The CEJISS Editorial Team’s decision to retract an article needs to be confirmed by the CEJISS Editorial Board. This decision should follow the Journal’s Ethical Guidelines while the COPE retraction guidelines should be consulted.
  • 4.10 The CEJISS Editorial Team shall not accept any fees for publishing or processing a manuscript from authors.
  • 4.11 In the case of suspected misuse of AI, the CEJISS Editorial Team retains the right to decide about the publication or rejection of a given article without the necessity of proving whether and how AI was or was not used.

Sources