Journal Policy

Our periodical is diamond open access journal. All of its content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles published in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. The journal does not charge fees for article processing or submission. Articles published in the journal are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.

Ethics Statement

We follow guidance from the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) in our pursuit to support the ethical publishing principles. Its guidelines are applied to the journal editors, authors, and peer-reviewers. The journal will follow the COPE flowcharts regarding any potential acts of misconduct.

Ethical policy for authors

Authors should observe high standards concerning the Ethical policy for the authors of the journal as set out by the COPE. Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and shall be dealt with by adhering to the COPE guidelines.

Authors should present an accurate account of the performed work. Details and references must be sufficient enough to permit others to replicate the work. Research results should be interpreted correctly so that to avoid damage to the trust in the journal.

Authors are responsible for assuring that data, results, quotes, citations, images and/or other materials in the manuscript are cited accordingly, and not fabricated or manipulated. Proper acknowledgement of the work(s) of others must always be given.

The journal publishes only original works which have neither been published elsewhere nor are under review elsewhere. Exceptions are granted only for new works which expand previous publications. Authors are required to provide information on the reuse of the material. Unethical publishing behaviour extends to the cases when a single study is deliberately split up into several parts with the objective to increase the number of published works.

Significant contribution must have been made by each and every researcher included in the list of the authors in preparing the manuscript; authors share collective responsibility and accountability for the results. Anyone who has made a significant contribution must be included in the list of the authors. After acceptance of a manuscript, changes of authorship or the order of the authors are no longer possible.

We ask authors to provide information about financial support for the research or paper in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the paper. If the funding source(s) had no involvement, then this should be stated.

Research ethic

Authors must gain all types of necessary consent from the human participants prior to submitting the paper to empower the journal to use any related data as a way to ensure and maintain their right to privacy.

The journal expects authors to implement transparency of any data and any other related materials associated with the submitted paper. Authors must provide records of evidence to ensure that others were within reasonable position to replicate the research or to check its validity. We encourage authors to deposit data in the repository and kindly ask to provide a persistent identifier to the archived data set landing page.

We expect authors to use inclusive language. The content of the paper should not contain anything what could show that some people are superior to others on the grounds of any aspects of culture, race, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, age and/or ethnicity. Writing should be free from any forms of bias; whenever possible, authors should employ gender neutrality in text. In the coding terminology, it is recommended to avoid offensive or exclusionary terms.

Conflict of interest policy

When issues outside the research could affect the objectivity of the submitted paper or its evaluation, conflicts of interest occur. We ask our authors to declare possible conflict(s) of interest along with the submitted paper so that we could decide whether or not these conflicts may have exerted any influence and could consequently make informed decisions. Conflicts include affiliations (being related in any kind of affiliation with the organisation interested in the particular outcome of the work); financial (benefits or services received or expected to be received by authors in connection with the object of the work or by an organisation interested in the result of the work); personal relationship (close personal ties) and similar.

An author, by virtue of submitting a work, must declare any potential conflict of interests in the section Comments for the Editor. In this statement, all potential interests must be explained by elaborating why a conflict of interest may have been involved. The authors must indicate any former, current and/or potential future benefits as well as any other payments, goods, perks or services that could have affected the work. All the presently listed aspects, whether or not they actually caused a conflict of interest, must be properly and honestly specified in the recognitions section.

On our behalf, we assure that, in most cases, honest declaration of interests will not stop work from being forwarded to review and subsequently published.

If you have any doubts in relation to potential conflicts of interest, you are kindly invited to discuss the issue(s) with the editor-in-chief. If a conflict of interest is revealed during the peer-review stage, the journal may initiate rejection. If the paper has already been published, the retraction/withdrawal process may be initiated.

The journal follows a policy of the editors and reviewers not being involved in any kind of interaction with a submitted paper when they co-authored recently with the author(s), received or are likely to receive possible financial reward related with the subject of the work, are or recently were in some form of relationship such as marriage, parentage, other family/relationship bonds, recent work/cooperation on the same project with the author, when they are close/direct competitors or have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors. The editor-in-chief of the journal is responsible for evaluation whether a certain specific situation is deemed to be recent enough in order to ensure maximum integrity and transparency of the publishing process.

Privacy statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose(s) or to any other party.

Copyright notice

By submitting the manuscript of a research paper to a journal published by Vilnius University Press, the corresponding author inherently certifies that he/she has been fully and explicitly authorised by his/her co-authors to enter into these arrangements and he/she guarantees and warrants, on behalf of himself/herself and all of his/her co-authors that:

1. He/she has the full power to enter into this Agreement and to make the grants contained herein. He/she/they is/are the sole author(s) of the paper and has/have full authority to enter into this agreement and to grant the appropriate rights to Vilnius University Press without breach of any other obligation.
2. The paper is original and does not infringe any copyright, nor does it violate any other right(s) of any third parties.
3. The paper contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or confidence or commitment given to secrecy.
4. The authors agree to the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 agreement under which the paper in the Journal is licensed, and grant Vilnius University Press their permission to publish the previously unpublished and original manuscript, the abstract forming part thereof, all associated supplemental material, and the subsequent errata (if necessary) in the Journal under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-4.0). The author keeps the copyright and the publishing rights.
5. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published paper’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
6. Anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material published in the paper in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material published in the paper) for any purposes, even commercially.

Preprint Posting

The journal accepts the submission of manuscripts that have previously been posted on a non-profit preprint server. The author(s) should notify the journal of any preprint related to manuscript submission. A preprint archive is not seen as overlap between publications when the version of record is recognisable.

Publishing malpractice policy

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, shall take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the paper in question. It includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in most severe cases, complete retraction of the affected work.

We explicitly do not support substantial overlap between publications or ‘self-plagiarism’. Exceptions can be made by the editor-in-chief if s/he sees that the submitted paper can contribute to the academic discourse, that there is no restriction from other publishers in relation with the publication, and that proper reference to the original source is provided.

We expect that the papers we have received have not been submitted in any other journal or book, with exceptions being given only for preprints.

Our editors work in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines while considering retraction or correction of the published paper.

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. Retraction is not initiated for minor corrections such as language or minor spelling issues. Retraction is initiated when the journal has obtained information that certain article findings or conclusions are false or that the content is/has been plagiarised. Any related actions will be carried out in line with the COPE’s Retraction Guidelines.

When any suspicions of overlap between publications or ‘self-plagiarism’ have been raised, we expect our stakeholders to contact us via email info@leidykla.vu.lt.

Similarity check procedure

The editorial board actively engages in efforts to prevent scholarly as well as professional plagiarism, and the journal undertakes the Similarity Check procedure before the peer-review process. The journal uses Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate to check for duplication and attribution in the submitted manuscripts. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism shall be rejected.

If plagiarism is discovered after publication, we will follow our guidance outlined in the Publishing malpractice policy.

We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise and share any suspicions of plagiarism by emailing info@leidykla.vu.lt.

Archiving

As a publisher in scholarly research, Vilnius University Press recognizes the roles of both librarian and publisher as custodian of scholarly content, and is committed to the preservation of the scholarship in its research for generations to come. We see digital preservation as the set of processes and activities that ensure information which now exists in digital formats is backed up and distributed to guarantee continued access for the long term.

Our preservation policy includes the following measures:

• All of our electronic content (website, manuscripts, etc.) is stored on several different servers. Content on one server which is owned by Vilnius University, located in Vilnius, is online and accessible to the readers. The copy of the same content is kept as a backup on other separate hardware. In case of failure of one server, copy from other server can be made online and website expected to be accessible within less than 24 hours.
• The electronic versions of all articles also is stored at Lithuanian Academic Electronic Library (eLABa), as a national aggregated open access (OA) repository (https://www.elaba.lt).
• As electronic backup and archival preservation we are using an archival arrangement with PKP Preservation Network.
• Authors may archive all versions of the manuscript and the final published version of their articles in personal, institutional or other repositories without embargo.
• We intend and expect to continue to publish our journals for a long time. If, due to some rare, unfortunate circumstances, we are forced to stop publishing the journal, the manuscripts published in the journal will be kept online and accessible to the readers for at least 10 more years. When required under specific conditions, such as discontinuation of the collection or catastrophic failure of the website, the content will be accessible through PKP Preservation Network or Lithuanian Academic Electronic Library eLABa.