PJOES Research Ethics and Malpractice Policy

The Polish Journal of Environmental Studies (PJOES) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity in research and publication. Authors, Reviewers, and Editors must adhere to the following ethical guidelines.

1. Authorship and Accountability
1.1 Authorship Criteria
Authorship credit must be based on substantial contributions to all three points below:
• Conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
• Final approval of the version to be published.

1.2 Ethical Issues in Authorship
• Exclusion of Contributors: Individuals who meet the criteria should not be excluded from authorship.
• Inclusion of Non-Contributors: Individuals who do not meet the criteria (e.g., those offering only technical help or general supervision) should be included only in the Acknowledgements section.
• Ghost, Guest, and Gift Authorship: These practices are strictly forbidden. All authors must have made a demonstrable intellectual contribution.

1.3 Author Responsibilities
• Data Access: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review. They should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted. PJOES uses plagiarism detection software.
• Multiple Submissions: Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

2. Research Data and Reporting Standards
2.1 Data Integrity and Fabrication
• Fabrication/Falsification: Data fabrication (making up data) and data falsification (manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing/omitting data) are forms of research misconduct and will result in rejection and sanctions.
• Hazardous Materials: If the work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

2.2 Ethical Oversight (Human and Animal Subjects)
• For all studies involving human participants or animals (including field studies of non-human species), authors must provide a statement in the manuscript confirming that the relevant institutional or national research ethics committee approved the experiments.
• The manuscript must state that the work complies with relevant institutional, national, or international guidelines (e.g., Declaration of Helsinki for human studies).
• In the case of animal studies, the relevant section (Materials and Methods) must confirm efforts were made to minimize suffering.

3. Conflicts of Interest (COI)
3.1 Disclosure
Authors must disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.

3.2 Funding Sources
All sources of financial support for the project must be disclosed in the Acknowledgements section, clearly listing the grant numbers and funding organizations.

4. Editorial and Reviewer Ethics
4.1 Reviewer Responsibilities
• Objectivity: Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, based on scientific merit, without personal criticism of the author.
• Confidentiality: Reviewers must treat all manuscripts as confidential documents. They must not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research.
• Disclosure: Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with the author or institution.

4.2 Editor Responsibilities
• Fair Play: Editors evaluate manuscripts purely on their scientific merit, intellectual content, and relevance to the journal's scope, without regard to the authors' race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.
• Confidentiality: The Editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and potential reviewers.

5. Handling of Misconduct
If evidence of plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or other ethical misconduct is brought to the Editor's attention, PJOES will follow the procedures established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This may involve publishing a correction, issuing a retraction, or formally notifying the authors' institutions.