Journal Epohi

Ethics in Research and Publication

Focus and scope of the Journal

Published by the Faculty of History of St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo (UVT), Bulgaria, Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal which aims at furthering the development of research in history, geography and other related areas of the humanities as well as at providing a forum for the discussion of educational issues in theсе areas.

The journal encourages dialogue and the engendering and sharing of new ideas and seminal research results among UVT faculty members but is also open to the wider academic community of scholars and university lecturers at the national and international level.

The journal is published twice a year. It accepts original academic articles reflecting the interests and achievements of UVT faculty members as well as contributions by other scholars addressing important theoretical and empirical problems in the above-mentioned areas of research. The journal also publishes texts on the methodology of teachinghistory and other subjects in the humanities at university level. Pedagogically oriented articles should focus on the areas of instruction supported by UVT’s Faculty of History.

As already stated, the journal is open to the wider national and international academic community and accepts articles by Bulgarian and foreign scholars based at other institutions, provided they conform to its overall thematic orientation and are not at variance with the main principles of its editorial policy.

The journal demonstrates its commitment to openness by publishing articles in Bulgarian, English, French, German and Russian.

The journal’s main objective is to contribute to the development of scholarship in the areas specified above. At the same time, it advocates certain fundamental ethical principles of research and publication. The Editorial Board is committed to a clearly defined policy of fair and equal treatment of all parties involved in the journal’s publication and circulation: authors, reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board, and the publisher.

The core ethical principles and rules by which all parties should abide are the following:

High standards of professional conduct: due recognition of data, research results, methodology, procedures and rules of publication;
Impartiality and objectivity in the analysis and interpretation of data;
Non-acceptance of data falsification, fabrication and manipulation; rejection of results based on data falsification, fabrication and manipulation;
Responsible attitude to evaluation and publishing: all submitted materials should contribute to the development of scholarship and teaching and not merely serve to increase the author‘s list of publications;
Evaluation should be based on considerations of merit, exclusive of personal, ideological and professional bias;
Respect of intellectual property rights, recognition of copyright laws and intolerance of all forms of plagiarism (including cases of poor referencing: the use of ideas, research results, etc., without due acknowledgement of their authorship and source);
Independence of financial and other external interests;
Confidentiality and protection of personal, institutional and other kinds of information in accordance with current laws and directives of data protection;
Intolerance of conflicts of interest affecting evaluation and publication, and resulting in a lack of objectivity, malicious misinterpretation and personal and professional bias;
Non-acceptance of materials which violate the requirements of academic integrity, impartiality and proper language norms;
All submissions to Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

The above principles and rules of ethical conduct have been adopted by the Editorial Board. They retain their validity in all situations and must be observed by all parties involved in the journal’s publication and circulation.

The publisher takes the responsibility to promote these guidelines to all persons, involved in creating and producing all the scientific journals and other publications, issued by Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal. The guidelines are to be endorsed by editors, reviewers and authors as part of our common efforts to provide objective and valuable information to all who are interested in reading and gathering knowledge from it. In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation. If necessary, this includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or - in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining own digital archive. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

The editors of Epohi accept and evaluate manuscripts on the basis of their academic value (originality, clarity, actuality, relevance) with no regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, political or religious philosophy, social or institutional affiliation. All decisions for editing or publishing texts are taken by the journal team without other party influence. The Editor-in-Chief has the authority over the journal content and timing of publication.

The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers - experts in the respective field. The decision for publication is based on the manuscript importance and value, reviewers’ comments and recommendations and conformity with the journal requirements and guidelines.

The editors should always consider the interests of the authors and the readers when working on publication improvement or making corrections when needed.

Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the people, directly involved in the evaluation and publication process - corresponding author, reviewers or the publisher.

Editors and editorial board members will not use or provide to third parties unpublished information of a manuscript without the authors’ written consent. Information, obtained as a result of handling the manuscript is seen as confidential and will not be used in someone’s personal favor. Editors declare that will not participate in process of considering manuscripts that may result in conflicts of interest – including but not only on competitive, collaborative base, or other relationships/connections with author or connected institution. In such case the affected editor will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Editors will react on eventual misconduct with no matter a paper is published or unpublished, and will take the necessary responsive measures if necessary - correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant

Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (on exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation. Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted. Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript should immediately declare their conflicts of interest to the editors so that alternative reviewers can be contacted. Peer review (double-blind) is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and a milestone of scientific endeavor. Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors and notify the editors – also of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript of which they have personal knowledge. Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

All submitted manuscripts should be original research works that have not been published or submitted for review in other journals. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable. Only persons who made significant contributions to the conception, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study, drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content, or are involved in submitting the final version of the paper and its submission for publication, should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content. Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and they have appropriately cited all used work and/or words of other authors. Plagiarism in all its forms is seen as unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should also disclose any conflicts of interest (including financial) that might influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Authors should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and respond promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and copyright permissions. Authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal when asked to. If authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct or retract the paper. If a third party reports that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable.

Authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals after publication – with respect to the proprietary legal rights and data authorship

Copyright
No-one else is permitted to use or reproduce someone else’s work in any way without the expressed permission of the creator or their representative. This applies to any reproduction of a work, whether found in print or online.

Assignation of rights
The authors publishing in Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal are asked to assign non-exclusive rights to the publisher, since Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal is an open access journal. The author is allowed to disseminate their work on other platforms, but are restricted from simultaneous publication with another publisher for a period of 1 years, especially if it is a new publication. The Epohi [Epochs] Scholarly Journal has got license type: CC BY-NC-ND /Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

Code of Ethics

Volume 32 Issue 2