Ethical Code

1. PEER REVIEW AND PEER REVIEW PROCESS

1.1.Peer reviewers

(1) Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two anonymous reviewers.

(2) Reviewers act independently of each other and their identity is unknown to each other.

(3) Reviewers are selected according to the criterion of possessing relevant knowledge for the evaluation of a particular manuscript.

1.2. Peer review aim and process

(1) Peer review has the aim of assisting the Editorial Board in making editorial decisions about the acceptance of an article, as well as improving the quality of the manuscript through communication with the Editorial Board, the authors and the other reviewers.

(2) The Editorial Board must ensure quality control of the review.

(3) The Editorial Board makes an initial assessment of the suitability of the manuscript for publication, considering its form and thematic scope.

(4) The review process lasts normally four weeks. Exceptionally, it can last longer.

(5) During the review process, the Editorial Board may require authors to provide additional information, including raw data if they are necessary for the evaluation of the manuscript. The Editorial Board and reviewers are obliged not to disclose any confidential information and not to use it for purposes other than review and publication procedures.

(6) If the reviewers' decisions are contradictory one to the other, the Editorial Board shall decide on the publication of a manuscript. It can also make a decision to include an additional reviewer in the review process.

2. OPEN ACCESS POLICY

(1) Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy is published according to the so-called Open Access policy.

The published works are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). This means that all of its content is available to users free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, and create HTML links to them, without the obligation to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

(2) The right to use the content without written consent does not release users from the obligation to cite the content of the journal in the manner described under Licensing.

(3) Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy do not charge publication costs to authors or third parties. Both manuscript submission and editing services and article publishing services are free of charge. There are no hidden costs.

3. RESPONSIBILITY

3.1. Author’s responsibility

(1) By submitting a manuscript, the authors guarantee that it represents their original work. Preference is given to articles that have not been previously published and are not considered for publication elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals concurrently is a violation of ethical standards, which excludes it from further consideration for publication in the journal Eudaimonia. With the appropriate approval of the original publisher and based on the decision of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board, an article already published elsewhere may be reprinted in the journal Eudaimonia.

(2) The authors are responsible for the entire content of their manuscripts. The manuscript must not contain unlawful claims or violate the rights of others.

(3) Authors must ensure their author team mentioned in the manuscript includes all those individuals who have significantly contributed to the content of the manuscript. If others have participated in certain aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or a special note.

(4) If the submitted manuscript is the result of the work within a research project or has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (regardless of the title), the author must provide detailed information in a footnote.

(5) Authors must appropriately cite the sources that have significantly influenced their research and manuscripts. Parts of the manuscript, including text, equations, figures or tables which are verbatim taken from other works must be marked with a special note, such as quotation marks with a precise indication of their location in the original document (page number), or if more extensive, given in a separate paragraph

(6) Full references to all citations in the text must be given in a separate section (References) uniformly, in accordance with the citation style used by the journal. The “References” section lists only the cited and quoted sources, and not the ones used in the preparation of the manuscript.

(7) If the authors discover an important error in their work after its publication, they must inform without delay and cooperate with the Editorial Board in withdrawing or correcting the work.

(8) Authors must inform the Editorial Board whether they are in financial or any other conflict of interest that could affect the presented results or their interpretation.

3.2. Reviewer’s responsibility

(1) Reviewers must submit to the editor an assessment of the scientific relevance of the manuscript in a professional, well-argued, impartial manner and within the set deadlines.

(2) The reviewer must not accept reviewing papers outside the field for which he is considered fully competent.

(3) Reviewers evaluate manuscripts in relation to the compliance of the content with the profile of the journal, the importance and usefulness of the topic, the adequacy of the applied methods, the scientific relevance of the information contained, the presentation style and the text. The review has a standard format that includes assessments of individual aspects of the work, a general assessment of the manuscript and a concluding recommendation.

(4) Reviewers must alert the editors of the journal if they have reasonable suspicion or knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors.

(5) Reviewers should refer to relevant sources that are not taken into account in the paper. They may recommend citing certain references, but may not require citation of papers published in the journal Eudaimonia - Journal of Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy or their own papers, if there is no justification for this.

(6) The reviewer must not be in a conflict of interest with the authors or the funders of research. If there is a reasonable suspicion of a conflict of interest, the reviewer must inform the Editorial Board without delay.

(7) Manuscripts sent to the reviewer shall be deemed confidential documents. Reviewers must not use materials from the manuscripts for personal purposes without the of the authors’ express written permission.

3.3. Responsibility of the Editorial Board

(1) The final decision on which manuscript will be published in the journal is made by the Editorial Board. Decisions are made solely on the basis of the merit of the manuscript and must be free from racial, gender/sexual, religious, ethnic, political and other unjustified prejudices. When deciding, the Editorial Board is guided by the editorial policy, taking into account the legal regulations related to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

(2) The Editorial Board must take all reasonable measures to ensure that authors and reviewers remain anonymous during and after the review process.

(3) The Editorial Board must assist reviewers by providing them with additional information about the manuscript.

(4) The members of the Editorial Board, including the Editor-in-Chief, must not have a conflict of interest regarding the manuscripts they are considering. Members considered or presumed to be in a conflict of interest do not participate in the decision-making process for a particular manuscript.

(5) Manuscripts shall be kept as confidential material. The information and ideas contained in the manuscripts may not be used for personal purposes without the author’s express written permission.

4. ETHICAL STANDARDS

(1) Anyone may inform the Editor-in-Chief and/or Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary credible information/evidence to start an investigation. The procedure is as follows:

- Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation;

- During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in the process;

- The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them;

- If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

(2) Minor misconduct (with no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal, for example, when it comes to misunderstanding or wrong application of publishing standards) will be dealt directly with authors and reviewers without involving any other parties. Outcomes include:

- Sending a warning letter to authors and/or reviewers;

- Publishing correction of a paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list;

- Publishing an erratum, e.g. if the error was made by editorial staff;

- Other appropriate way.

(3) In the case of major misconduct the Editorial Board may adopt different measures:

- Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct;

- Informing officially the author’s/reviewer’s affiliating institution;

- The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy;

- A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period;

- Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

(4) The above actions may be taken separately or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the case relevant expert organizations, bodies, or individuals may be consulted.

(5) When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

5. PLAGIARISM PREVENTION

(1) Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy does not publish plagiarised papers. The Editorial Board has adopted the stance that plagiarism, where someone assumes another’s ideas, words, or other creative expression as one’s own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

(2) Plagiarism includes the following:

- Verbatim (word for word), or almost verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author’s work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks) in a way described under Authors’ responsibilities;

- Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else’s paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

(3) Any manuscript which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under Retraction policy.

(4) To prevent plagiarism, manuscripts are subject to verification using plagiarism prevention systems. The results are verified by the editorial board of the journal in accordance with the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). 

6. RETRACTION POLICY

(1) Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of a contribution.

(2) Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

(3) Retraction takes the form of a separate paper, which is shown in the table of contents of the journal number and editorially classified as Retraction or Withdrawal.

7. COPYRIGHT

(1) The authors retain the copyright of the published articles and give the publisher a non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be listed as its first publisher in case of further use of the article, and to distribute the article in all forms and media.

(2) Authors shall in case of republishing and/or new communication to the public of the work, including the making available to the public in an interactive way, acknowledge that it initially has been published in Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy.

8. LICENSING AND SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

(1) The article may be copied and distributed in all media and formats, revised, modified and upgraded for any purpose, including commercial, provided that its original authors are correctly cited, link to the original license provided and indicated whether the article was modified. Users are required to provide a full bibliographic description of the article published in this journal (authors, title, journal title, volume, number, pages), as well as its DOI. In the case of publication in the electronic form, they are also obliged to post an HTML link, both with the original article published in the Eudaimonia - Journal for Legal, Political and Social Theory and Philosophy and the license used.

(2) Authors are permitted to deposit author’s publisher’s version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author’s personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after publication, with full bibliographic information about paper published in this journal.

(3) The authors authorize the publisher to license their works on their behalf and for their account under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license.

9. DISCLAIMER

(1) The views expressed in published papers do not express the views of editors and Editorial Board. The authors are under legal and moral responsibility for the ideas presented in their works. The publisher will not be liable for any claims for damages.