MenuPublishing ethics
The academic journal Acta Missiologica is published biannually in electronic form in the English language. Its guidelines for publication ethics as well cooperation with editors, authors, and reviewers follow the principles of transparency, independence, correctness, and professionalism. It complies with the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK) rules and is obliged to follow all Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles.
A two-stage peer-review process is only open to those manuscripts that are of adequate quality and comply with the mission and requirements of Acta Missiologica.
Submission and publication of a manuscript in Acta Missiologica does not oblige its authors to pay any fees, including fees related to the processing and publication of the manuscript. At the same time, the academic journal does not provide authors with any remuneration for the publication of their articles. The journal follows a not-for-profit policy; it pursues no income from advertisements or subscription fees.
The journal’s publication ethics include the following:
The publisher's obligations
the role and responsibility of the publisher is to define the relationship between the publisher, the editors and other parties; respect personal privacy and data protection rights (in relation to the authors, reviewers and other parties), protect intellectual property and copyright, and promote independence of the editors;
the publisher, in collaboration with the editors, must outline publication strategies and try to implement these strategies, in particular with regard to: editorial independence, the ethics of theoretical and empirical research (in the area of the empirical research: including non-disclosure of data confidentiality, informed content of the respondents, and other ethical requirements of social research), authorship, transparency and integrity (conflicts of interest, research funding, research information standards), the review process, appeals and complaints: the publishers, authors and reviewers may make official appeals and complaints: in case such appeals and complaint occur, the publisher, editors, reviewers, and authors shall proceed in the same way as when authors make an appeal against the editor's decision (see editor's responsibilities). If you notice any breaches in the principles of publication ethics or if you have any other complaints, remarks, comments, do not hesitate to contact us at any time via a confidential email addressed to our editor-in-chief: actamissiologica/support/editor-in-chief@gmail.com. We will thoroughly review all your complaints, comments and remarks in collaboration with the independent members of the Scientific as well as Editorial Board, the publisher as well as other independent relevant academic authorities, and we will provide you with an official statement along with possible solutions. In the event you express your dissatisfaction, we will take further steps in accordance with the COPE principles.
We will thoroughly review your suggestion and inform you of possible solutions.
In collaboration with the editors, the publisher is obliged to: communicate about the Journal's strategies, review and edit the Journal's strategies on a regular basis, promote the integrity of research results, publish corrections, explanations, notices, and publish the contents of the Journal in accordance with the publication dates.
The obligations of the editors
The editors are obliged to do their utmost to satisfy the needs of the authors and readers, continuously improve the quality of the Journal, provide quality material for the publishing purposes, and promote the freedom of expression;
The editors are obliged to protect the confidentiality of all materials delivered to the Journal and all correspondence between reviewers and authors. The unpublished material shall not be used in an editor's own research or otherwise for the benefit of the editor or publisher. The unpublished material shall be returned to the author.
The editors are fully responsible and have the right to accept/reject an article based on objective scientific criteria (e.g. originality, importance, comprehensibility, etc.);
The editors have to accept the author's right to appeal against their decision;
In compliance with the principles of transparency, the author may make an appeal in an official manner to actamissiologica.support@actamissiologica.com, where it will be examined by the independent members of the Scientific and Editorial Board, by the publisher as well as other independent relevant academic authorities. After examination of the appeal, the author will receive an official response and possible solutions. If the author is not satisfied with the appeal, the publisher of the Journal, after having consulted the Scientific Board, will take further steps in compliance with the COPE principles.
The editors shall not have a conflict of interest against the articles that they accept/reject;
The editors must announce the deadlines for submission of the articles, the description of the review process, and keep the authors informed about all the procedures and details that are expected from them (including instructions related to the criteria regarding authorship);
The editors have to believe that their decisions are right, if they decide to accept the articles;
The editors shall not change their decisions on the acceptance of the articles without a serious reason; new editors shall not change previously made decisions on the acceptance of articles without a serious reason;
The editors promote the publishing of the corrections and modifications of the articles in the event errors or inaccuracies occur;
With regard to the reviewers and the review process, the editors are required to: provide information about and instructions related to the reviewing process, require the elimination of all signs of conflict of interest from reviewers, and protect the privacy of reviewers;
With regard to the members of the Scientific and Editorial Board, its new members, as well as with regard to the new editors, are obliged to: provide the new members with instructions including everything that is expected from them; inform the members about the current strategies and progress of the Journal.
Authorship and authors’ obligations
All parties involved in the creating and publishing of the contributions must be acknowledged as authors. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship must be acknowledged in the Acknowledgement section, under the author's bio information. These persons include, for instance, those persons who provided purely technical assistance or the department or institute that provided general support. The acknowledgement does not apply to translation and proofreading services. All authors are obliged to contribute to the writing of the article. If the article has multiple authors, they must upon submission prove in writing and provide relevant and credible evidence of their responsibility for the part of the article they authored.
All authors are obliged to actively participate in the relevant theoretical and empirical research, take part in the peer-review process and contribute to the additional revisions of the article as requested by the peer-review. As part of this process, they are obliged to provide true and relevant data and comply with ethical principles in their theoretical and empirical research.
The authors and co-authors are asked to provide their names, academic degrees and titles, affiliation to universities or research institutions, and their contact details, including their current e-mail address. Furthermore, the identification must be included of the main author and the co-authors, based on the relevant scholarly or professional contributions of all involved authors, regardless of their academic seniority. This information must concur with the information on the manuscript.
The authors are obliged to indicate the source of funding for their research. Information about funding through APVV, VEGA, and KEGA projects in Slovakia or similar grant projects in the Czech Republic must be indicated in the respective footnote next to the article's title. If the research funding is provided by another institution or individual, the authors are obliged to provide more detailed information about the institution or individual in this section.
Submission process; copyrights
As part of the manuscript submission process, the author will be asked by the journal editors through an official request form, the Manuscript Hand-over Protocol, to guarantee that he/she is submitting an original article for which he/she owns publication rights as well as any other relevant copyrights for the work not owned by him/her but directly related to the submitted manuscript. These copyrights concern, for example, the owners of the copyrights for the illustrations, charts, images or lengthy quotations used in the manuscript and which have been previously published elsewhere. Moreover, the author is obliged to guarantee in this form that Acta Missiologica is the first academic journal the manuscript has been submitted to and that the manuscript has not appeared as a contribution or publication elsewhere (either in print or online). In addition, the author is hereby obliged to guarantee that he/she has or, if necessary, can provide proof of ownership and originality of his/her manuscript and submit all necessary permissions for its reproduction and/or any other copyrights related therewith. From the time of its submission to Acta Missiologica until the delivery to the author of the peer-review results, the manuscript must not be considered for publication in another journal, edited volume, publication, etc. (either in print or electronic form).
Licensing agreement
If the manuscript is accepted for publication, Acta Missiologica will ask the author as the copyrights owner for his/her official consent to publish the manuscript. This is done by way of a licensing agreement that guarantees the author the copyrights for his/her article, while providing Acta Missiologica with the exclusive right and license to publish the full-text version of this article pursuant to the copyrights. Through this licensing agreement the author also grants Acta Missiologica the right to include his/her article in electronic academic journal databases in which Acta Missiologica is indexed as well as to publish the article on the journal’s website https://www.actamissiologica.com
Furthermore, the licensing agreement forbids the author from publishing the results of the theoretical and empirical research (related to the published article) in other journals and requires that the use of any part of the article published in Acta Missiologica for another publication (either in print or electronic form) is only allowed with Acta Missiologica's consent.
Conflicts of interests and their solutions
The code of conduct violations may relate to the authors, editors, publishers and also reviewers. Potential conflicts of interest should be announced by all parties as soon as possible, including regarding the following areas:
employment, consultations, stock ownership, compensation, paid professional testimonials, patent applications/registrations and grants or other funds, multiple submissions of articles, copyright disputes, mishandling of employees/colleagues, mishandling of illustrations – pictures that are part of the author's article; plagiarism and false information and data falsification.
The editors should report all editorial conflicts of interest to the publisher in an official manner – in writing prior to their appointment and in an updated form if new conflicts occur. In the event new conflicts of interest arise, the editors shall not decide on articles related to the professional and personal interests of the editors. The articles that are similarly focused must be subject to all current Journal procedures, and must be treated independently of the author/publisher concerned and their research groups. The editors and publishers are not allowed to abuse their position in order to affect the Journal's metrics in any way. Moreover, they shall not in any way manipulate colleagues/employees of the institution who are issuing the Journal, nor may they manipulate the authors in exchange for increasing the Journal's metrics or for their own research interests, or in exchange for increasing citation count. If the author decides to use citations of the Journal's editors or publishers in the article that he submits to the reviewing process, these citations must be relevantly supported and used independently of the editor. The editors are also not allowed to manipulate the author's illustrations and tables. The publisher, editors, or reviewers shall not have any conflicts of interest against any author – each author shall have a legitimate opportunity to participate in the process of article evaluation and publication.
The conflicts of interest of the author may involve concurrent submission of the article to multiple journals, copyright disputes, consultation and cooperation with the institution issuing or reviewing the Journal. Prior to submitting an article, the author is obliged to inform the editors about all potential conflicts of interests. Therefore, the authors shall also sign a non-conflict of interest statement. In the case of authorship, the author has to be aware of the fact that he is obliged to state all authors that have in any way contributed to the writing of the article; the failure to list them is considered unacceptable. The authors are obliged to define the primary authorship, relations among authors and other matters related to the authorship and publication of their article. Authorship identification must be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status or position. In order to prevent particular authorship disputes whilst maintaining the principles of transparency for as long as possible, the authors will, during the process of article submission, be asked to confirm their identification as well as responsibility for the relevant part of the article (see Authorship and Authors' Responsibilities). If any additional change to the list of authors is conducted, all authors will need to authorize and substantiate this change in a relevant manner.
The reviewers shall assess the manuscripts objectively and impartially, regardless of the attitudes and opinions of the reviewers related to the specific article. The manuscript assessments also take place without any open or hidden discriminatory tendencies relating to the author. Moreover, within the assessments, the reviewers shall not recommend their own works in order to increase their own citation count. The editors are obliged to detect all of these conflicts of interest, as well as other potential conflicts, in a timely manner and, subsequently, to propose possible solutions to prevent their impact on the process of reviewing, assessing, and publishing the article. The Journal applies the Elsevier company's policy regarding the publishing of potential conflicts of interest by authors, reviewers, editors and publishers.
Recognizing plagiarism
The academic Journal Acta Missiologica deals with copyright and its breach, plagiarism, and other issues that occur when publishing serious articles. It seeks to protect the rights of authors, as well as its own reputation and good name – and always thoroughly examines all incentives for reassessment of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. If the article is proven to contain features of plagiarism, or its content proves to be protected by the copyright of a third party and was used without permission, or if the stated information for publication purposes are not sufficient, or if the authorship is disputed, the Journal reserves the right to refuse any further publication by the author, including the author's article, as well as the right to further investigate the article in question by the publisher, independent members of the Scientific and Editorial Board, other independent relevant academic authorities and other relevant academic authorities. In order to detect plagiarism, the articles are checked by DupliChecker https://www.duplichecker.com/
In case of any questions regarding the specific requirements of the publication's ethics guidelines and related inquiries, do not hesitate to contact our editorial team at: actamissiologica.support.editors.team@actamissiologica.com
Since 2020, the journal has been sending a specialized bulletin to potential authors, reviewers and readers from the international scientific and expert public.
