"Medical Law Quarterly" applies COPE standards and guidelines on publication ethics. They can be consulted at:
https://publicationethics.org/files/Full%20set%20of%20Polish%20flowcharts.pdf
Publication Rules
- Only original, previously unpublished works are accepted for publication. Articles should be submitted for publication after obtaining the consent of all co-authors. Persons submitting texts should ensure that everyone who contributed to the article is listed as a co-author.
- Authors are required to provide information on sources of funding for the publication, such as national grants.
- All original articles published in "Medical Law Quarterly" undergo double-blind peer review. The journal’s editors appoint as reviewers persons who have no relationship of dependence of any kind with the authors of the articles.
- "Medical Law Quarterly" treats issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of publishing practices very seriously and documents all cases of research misconduct. The journal opposes the practices of “ghostwriting” and “guest authorship.” All detected cases will be disclosed, and the relevant entities will be notified of the situation.
Authorship and Authors’ Responsibilities - An author of an article is a person who:
- has made a significant contribution to the concept or design of the work, or acquired, analyzed, or interpreted the data used in the work; and
- has drafted the initial version of the article or critically revised it for important intellectual content; and
- has approved the final version for publication; and
- has taken responsibility for all aspects of the work, ensuring that issues related to the accuracy and integrity of any part of the work have been appropriately investigated and resolved.
- The corresponding author is the person responsible for the entirety of the submission sent for publication and who receives and responds to reviewers’ comments.
- Where a work is prepared by several authors, each is required to submit a statement regarding their contribution to its creation, and separate consent from each author is required to submit the work to the journal. Information on the nature of each author’s contribution must be provided.
- The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors are listed as co-authors of the article, that there are no inappropriate authors included, and that all have seen and approved the final version of the article and agreed to its publication.
- Authors’ responsibilities include, in particular:
- presenting research results in a competent, reliable, honest, and unambiguous manner;
- preparing the text on the basis of the most up-to-date literature relevant to the research problem presented;
- conducting research ethically in accordance with COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/node/19891);
- publishing original scholarly work that has not yet been submitted for publication in another journal or other outlet;
- refraining from submitting the same text simultaneously to another publication;
- refraining from multiple, unnecessary, or concurrent publication of the same text;
- providing an appropriate citation in every case where the text refers to claims, research results, or data developed by other authors;
- obtaining the explicit, written consent of a third party in every case where the text cites information obtained in conversation or correspondence with such third parties;
- providing information on sources of research funding.
- Before submitting a text, a statement must be filed declaring no risk of breaching publishing ethics related to authorship, referred to as ghostwriting and guest authorship. Ghostwriting means a situation in which a person who has made a significant contribution to the publication is not disclosed as its author or, in the case of a strictly technical contribution that does not qualify such a person as an author, their contribution is not described in the publication. Guest authorship is the opposite situation, in which a person is listed in the publication as an author despite an insufficient contribution or no contribution at all.
- If more than one person participated in the creation of the text and the preceding research, any changes to authorship information, in accordance with COPE guidelines, require the written consent of all authors. Each of them should express such consent separately in an email addressed directly to the editor-in-chief of the journal. The corresponding author is responsible for providing a clearly defined reason for the proposed change and for coordinating interactions between the authors and the editor-in-chief.
- If the authors cannot reach agreement on authorship of the work, they should appeal to the authorities of their home institutions, which have the competence to make the final decision. The publisher does not act as an intermediary in such disputes.
- If the procedure described concerns an article that has already been published, changes to authorship information are made by publishing an editorial note in the next issue of the journal.
Intellectual Property and Licensing - The author declares that the work is original and does not infringe any personal or property rights of third parties. In particular, the work does not constitute plagiarism, understood as the unlawful attribution of authorship of all or part of another person’s work or the deliberate misrepresentation of authorship, nor self-plagiarism, understood as the re-publication of fragments of one’s own previously disseminated works or their parts as new works without disclosing this fact.
- Authors of articles accepted for publication in the journal retain copyright to their works.
- The publisher retains copyright to the content of the journal’s website.
- The author concludes a publication agreement under which they grant the publisher a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use the work without territorial limitations and for an indefinite period in the following fields of exploitation:
- producing copies of the work by a specified technique, including printing and digital techniques;
- placing the original or copies of the works on the market, lending, or renting them;
- public display and performance, as well as making the works publicly available in such a way that anyone can access them at a place and time of their choosing;
- including the work as part of a collective work;
- introducing the work and the work’s metadata in electronic form on electronic platforms;
- disseminating the work electronically on the Internet, Intranet, Extranet, or another network, as part of a collective work as well as independently;
- making the work available in accordance with the license model Attribution – (CC BY-ND 4.0) as available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.pl or another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons;
- making works publicly available in such a way that anyone can access them at a place and time of their choosing.
- The publisher has the right to make necessary changes to the work resulting from editorial processing.
- The journal provides open access to all published texts in accordance with the principle that openly accessible research increases and accelerates the global development of science and the exchange of knowledge.
- All works are permanently archived on the journal’s website in the version in which they were published.
- The journal does not charge authors any fees related to the submission and editing process. No fees are charged for processing articles after acceptance, either.
Peer Review Process - All articles published in the journal undergo double-blind peer review (the principle of mutual anonymity of reviewer and author is maintained).
- Reviewers are asked to prepare their reviews using a standardized review form. The form contains the necessary guidelines regarding the elements that a review should include.
- The review must contain an unambiguous conclusion by the reviewer on the conditions for accepting the article for publication or rejecting it. The review should be prepared with due diligence and provide a comprehensive evaluation of the text under review. Reviews that clearly fail to meet the substantive and formal requirements of a scholarly review will not be taken into account, including reviews dominated by unsubstantiated critical opinions or unsubstantiated praise, lacking a logical connection between content and conclusion.
- The time allotted for preparing a scholarly review is essentially about 2 weeks from the moment the editor sends the request for a review. It is stipulated that this period may be extended due to unforeseen circumstances.
- Each review is prepared by a single reviewer. The editors appoint as reviewers specialists in the relevant field who are not in a direct relationship of professional subordination with the authors of the articles, nor in any other direct formal or informal relationship. Reviewers are selected by editors randomly assigned to a given text, taking into account the scientific interests of potential reviewers, i.e., experts in law, ethics, medicine, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.
- An author may submit a well-justified request to exclude a given expert from participating in the review process (e.g., in the case of a conflict of interest). The validity of such a request will be verified in each case by the Editorial Board.
- The editors decide on the publication of a text on the basis of two independent reviews. In the case of conflicting assessments, the editors may, in consultation with the journal’s Editorial Board, appoint a third reviewer whose opinion will be decisive. The final decision on whether to accept or reject an article is made during a vote of the Editorial Board.
- The content of the reviews is made available to authors while maintaining the necessary standards of confidentiality.
- If a reviewer has a reasonable suspicion that an author has breached their obligations, the reviewer is obliged to notify the editor-in-chief of the journal.
Suspected Breaches of Authors’ Obligations - The editor-in-chief of the journal is the contact person in situations where there is suspicion that an author has breached their obligations. Any person may contact the editor-in-chief if they can make it plausible that an author has breached their obligations.
- If it is made plausible that an author has breached their obligations (in particular by demonstrating significant similarity to, or partial overlap of, the reviewed work with any other published work known to the author, or by making plagiarism plausible), the editors will ask the author for an explanation and then—if necessary—take appropriate steps as provided for in the COPE guidelines. At a later stage, this may include (but is not limited to) notifying the author’s academic institution, rejecting the article, and refusing to publish any texts by a person who has acted improperly.
- The Editorial Board is the body competent to consider notifications regarding cases of breaches by authors of their obligations. Decisions will be taken by an absolute majority of votes in a circular (remote) vote. Circular voting is coordinated by the editor-in-chief or the editorial secretary and is conducted with the necessary standards of confidentiality.
Appeals, Complaints, and Conflicts of Interest - Complaints regarding improper conduct by editors and reviewers (in particular breaches of confidentiality, improper use of non-public information, failure to disclose conflicts of interest) and appeals against editors’/reviewers’ decisions (both substantive and administrative) will be directed to the editor-in-chief of the journal.
- The possibility of a conflict of interest between authors and editors or reviewers should be disclosed by the editor, reviewer, or author who becomes aware of it, immediately upon submission of the article. A conflict of interest is understood as a relationship of professional subordination, direct scholarly collaboration (within the last two years preceding the year the review is prepared), and direct personal relationships (kinship up to the second degree, marriage) between the author and the editor or reviewer of the text.
- Complaints regarding improper conduct by editors and reviewers will be examined by the editor-in-chief of the journal, who will take steps to clarify all the circumstances of the alleged breach raised in the complaint.
- The Editorial Board (excluding the editor whose decision is being appealed) will impose consequences appropriate to the scale of the breach in the case of improper conduct by editors and reviewers (including warnings, reprimands, exclusion from any further actions concerning the complainant, suspension of editorial membership rights, or removal from the editorial team). Decisions will be taken by an absolute majority of votes in a circular (remote) vote. Circular voting is coordinated by the editor-in-chief or the editorial secretary.
- In the event that a conflict of interest is revealed after publication in the journal, the Editorial Board will take appropriate steps to clarify the effect of the conflict of interest on the publication process. If an impact on the publication process is identified, the Editorial Board will decide to retract the text or publish an appropriate editorial note in the next issue of the journal.
- Appeals against editors’/reviewers’ decisions will be considered by the Editorial Board (excluding the editor whose decision is being appealed). Decisions will be taken by an absolute majority of votes in a circular (remote) vote. Circular voting is coordinated by the editor-in-chief or the editorial secretary.
Corrections and Responses to Published Texts - The journal is open to discussion of published texts through the mechanism of responses to texts. Responses should be sent to the editorial email address or via the electronic form intended for submitting texts for publication. The publication of a response to a text in the journal follows the general rules applicable to all submitted works.
- It is possible to introduce a correction or retract a text after publication if the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work.
- A correction is made in the form of an editorial note or erratum published in the next issue of the journal.
- Notice of retraction takes the form of an editorial note published in the next issue of the journal and includes the reasons for the retraction.
Journal Funding and Management - The journal operates on funding from the Medical University of Warsaw.
- The journal is co-funded with resources from the Medical University of Warsaw.
- New members of the editorial team are selected by the editor-in-chief of the journal in consultation with members of the Editorial Board from among candidates proposed by the Board.
- Before joining the editorial team, every new member undergoes training on the procedures governing the functioning of the editorial office and the publication process. The training is conducted by the editorial secretary or the editor-in-chief, in person or remotely. The training includes, in particular, familiarizing the new member with procedures designed to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure confidentiality.
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