Editorial team of Yearbook of the Polish Western Territories spares not effort to maintain high ethical standards in publishing practice and uses all means possible to prevent abuses and author’s negligence. Editorial team of the periodical fully observes the rules presented below. Their goal is to ensure correct, prompt and fair publishing of scientific texts.

The rules of reviewing scientific articles and source studies accepted by editorial team are in conformity with recommendations of Ministry of Science and Higher Education concerning observance of the rules of ethics and good customs in science, of which goal is to guarantee fairness of publishing process and unreliability of the authors and reviewers.

In the event of revealing misuse or unreliability of the authors or reviewers, the editorial team of Yearbook of the Polish Western Territories acts in accordance with the rules of publishing ethics and applies procedures included in diagrams of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

A code of ethics for authors

A decision of Editorial team about acceptance or rejection of a text sent for publication depends entirely on its substantive value, originality and clarity, as well as on connection with subject of Yearbook of the Polish Western Territories. The articles can be published after acceptance by the authors of licence Creative Commons – Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

The authors are obliged to guarantee full originality of texts. They may not, in any part, be a plagiarism or contain false data. The authors may not also submit for publication texts, which were published earlier. The authors are obliged to disclose any financial or personal connections with people or organizations that would have improper impact on their work. All sources of funding or participation of institutions, including research institutions must also be mentioned. The texts submitted for publication must contain data of all authors, that is, people having creative contribution to texts and should not contain data of people who did not contribute to their creation. All mentioned people must accept publication of the text and take responsibility for a text. In case of works written by more than one author, on behalf of the authors, the main author contacts with editorial team and he/she is obliged to inform other authors about all decisions concerning the text.

A code of ethics for editorial team

Editorial team of Yearbook of the Polish Western Territories initially qualifies materials for publication and makes decisions about sending them to review process or rejecting. It is tantamount to author’s consent to reviewing procedure. The surnames of reviewers will remain anonymous. A decision about acceptance for printing or rejection of a text may not be affected in any way by potential conflict of interests of both sides. The editorial team is obliged to:

• obey the rules of the periodical concerning copyright and plagiarism,
• assess texts only in terms of their scientific value, regardless of race, nationality, faith, sex and sexual orientation of the authors,
• investigate any unethical publishing actions, even if they will be revealed many years after publication.

A code of ethics for reviewers

The reviewers should not be involved in the reviewing process, which may cause conflict of interests resulting from cooperation or any other mutual relations with the authors. The reviewers are obliged to be objective and refrain from personal criticism. The reviewers should always justify their assessment, presenting their own argumentation. The reviewers are obliged to preserve confidentiality in terms of works entrusted them and not to use fragments of works or statements contained in these works.