Journal Ethics
Eastern European Business and Economics Journal is committed to integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, and responsible scholarly communication throughout the publication process.
Ethical Framework
The journal’s editorial practices are informed by widely recognized principles of publication ethics, including guidance developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Reference to COPE guidance does not by itself imply that the journal is a COPE member.
All authors, editors, reviewers, and other participants in the publication process are expected to act honestly, disclose relevant interests, protect confidential material, respect intellectual property, and cooperate in the investigation and correction of the scholarly record.
Integrity
Research and reporting must be honest, accurate, traceable, and free from fabrication, falsification, and deceptive manipulation.
Fairness
Manuscripts are assessed on scholarly merit and relevance without unlawful discrimination or inappropriate external influence.
Confidentiality
Submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities, correspondence, and unpublished data must be protected and used only for editorial purposes.
Accountability
The journal will investigate credible concerns and correct, clarify, or retract published material when necessary.
Duties of Authors
- Originality: Authors must submit original work and properly quote, paraphrase, and cite all material derived from other sources.
- Accuracy: Data, methods, analyses, results, and references must be presented accurately. Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, and misleading reporting are prohibited.
- Exclusive submission: A manuscript must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time. Substantially identical work must not be published repeatedly without transparent justification and permission.
- Authorship: Every listed author must have made a substantial scholarly contribution, approved the submitted version, accepted accountability for the work, and consented to submission. Guest, gift, honorary, and ghost authorship are unacceptable.
- Acknowledgements: Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission. Sources of funding and material or institutional support must be disclosed.
- Conflicts of interest: Authors must disclose financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived to influence the research.
- Permissions: Authors are responsible for securing permission to reproduce copyrighted figures, tables, datasets, instruments, or extensive text owned by third parties.
- Post-publication cooperation: Authors must promptly notify the journal of material errors and cooperate with corrections, expressions of concern, investigations, or retractions.
Duties of Editors
- Make decisions on academic merit, originality, methodological quality, relevance, and ethical compliance.
- Protect the confidentiality of manuscripts and personal information.
- Select qualified and independent reviewers and avoid inappropriate reviewer selection.
- Declare conflicts of interest and delegate handling when impartiality could be compromised.
- Avoid using unpublished information for personal advantage or unrelated research.
- Evaluate submissions from editorial board members through an independent process.
- Respond consistently to allegations of misconduct and protect the integrity of the scholarly record.
Duties of Reviewers
- Accept review only when they possess appropriate expertise and can meet the requested deadline.
- Treat the manuscript and review correspondence as confidential.
- Provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and respectful comments.
- Identify important uncited work and report suspected plagiarism, duplication, manipulation, or ethical problems.
- Disclose conflicts of interest and decline the review when impartiality is doubtful.
- Never appropriate unpublished ideas, data, methods, or text obtained through peer review.
- Do not upload confidential manuscripts to external AI systems without explicit editorial authorization and adequate privacy safeguards.
Peer Review and Confidentiality
Submissions may undergo initial editorial screening for scope, originality, presentation, methodological adequacy, and ethical compliance before external review. The final decision remains the responsibility of the authorized editor and is not determined solely by reviewer recommendations.
Editors and reviewers must not disclose, distribute, quote, reproduce, or use submitted material outside the evaluation process. Any suspected identity exposure, confidentiality breach, or manipulation of peer review should be reported immediately to the editorial office.
Research and Publication Misconduct
The following practices may result in rejection, correction, retraction, notification of relevant institutions, or other proportionate action.
Plagiarism
Using another person’s words, ideas, images, data, or results without clear attribution, including inappropriate paraphrasing.
Duplicate Publication
Publishing or submitting substantially the same work more than once without transparent disclosure and legitimate justification.
Data Manipulation
Fabricating, falsifying, omitting, altering, or selectively presenting data or images in a manner that misrepresents the research.
Authorship Abuse
Guest, gift, honorary, purchased, coerced, or ghost authorship and unauthorized changes to the author list.
Citation Manipulation
Coercive, irrelevant, excessive, or coordinated citation practices designed primarily to influence citation indicators.
Peer-Review Manipulation
False reviewer identities, fabricated reports, undisclosed review rings, compromised accounts, or interference with independent evaluation.
Human Participants and Personal Data
Research involving people, identifiable personal information, surveys, interviews, or sensitive records must comply with applicable law and institutional requirements. Authors should obtain ethics approval or exemption where required, secure informed consent when applicable, protect privacy, minimize harm, and state the relevant procedures in the manuscript.
Data Availability and Reproducibility
Authors should preserve research records and provide sufficient methodological detail to support verification. When legally, ethically, and contractually possible, authors are encouraged to make supporting data, code, instruments, and materials available or explain justified access restrictions.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
AI tools cannot be credited as authors because they cannot assume responsibility, provide consent, or manage conflicts of interest. Authors remain fully accountable for accuracy, originality, citations, confidentiality, and rights compliance. Material use of generative AI in writing, analysis, coding, image creation, or research procedures must be transparently disclosed, including the tool and purpose, except for routine spelling or grammar assistance.
Conflicts of Interest and Funding
Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose interests that could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, their judgement. Relevant interests may be financial, professional, institutional, academic, political, ideological, or personal.
Authors must identify all funding sources and, where relevant, describe the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions. The absence of a conflict or external funding should also be declared.
Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern
When a published article contains an error that does not invalidate its principal findings, the journal may publish a correction. When findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct, publication is redundant without appropriate disclosure, research is unethical, or legal rights are seriously infringed, the article may be retracted.
An expression of concern may be issued when credible concerns require investigation but the available evidence is inconclusive or an investigation cannot be completed promptly. Notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain permanently accessible, and be linked to the publication wherever technically possible.
Complaints, Appeals and Allegations
- A complaint or appeal should identify the manuscript or article and provide a clear explanation supported by relevant evidence.
- The journal will acknowledge the concern and conduct an impartial review by an editor who is not involved in the disputed matter whenever practicable.
- The journal may request information from authors, reviewers, editors, institutions, funders, or other relevant parties.
- Individuals against whom allegations are made should be given an appropriate opportunity to respond, subject to confidentiality and legal constraints.
- The outcome may include confirmation of the original decision, reconsideration, correction, editorial notice, rejection, retraction, or referral to an appropriate institution.
Report an Ethical Concern
Concerns should be submitted in good faith and supported by specific information or evidence. Personal data and confidential records should be shared only when necessary and through an appropriate secure method.