Code of Conduct

The journal follows a code of conduct prepared in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Duties of Authors:

1. Only texts based on the results of original and authentic scholarly research can be submitted for publication in the journal.
2. Authors must refrain from submitting texts that are undergoing review for another journal, to be simultaneously published in Zapiski Historyczne, and from simultaneously submitting texts that are under review for Zapiski Historyczne to other journals (duplicate submission). Authors must also refrain from submitting texts which have already been published in another journal or in another form for publication in Zapiski Historyczne, as well as from publishing texts which have already been published in Zapiski Historyczne, in another journal or in another form (duplicate publication).
3. In the case of a larger number of authors – listing all the authors and co-authors and indicating their contributions.
4. Indicating all sources of funding for the research and all institutions that provided it with support.
5. Disclosing information about any potential conflict of interest that may arise in the process of reviewing and editing the submitted texts.
6. Obtaining permission for the publication of all copyrighted items that have been attached to the text (e.g. illustrations and photos).
7. Promptly informing the editorial staff of any errors and inaccuracies spotted in the text.
8. Preparing the text for publication in a manner that enables verification of the statements contained therein and providing it with metadata, footnotes and a bibliography prepared in accordance with the editorial guidelines. All sources of information used by the author must be properly cited.
9. Unethical publication practices, especially plagiarism, non-disclosure of authorship or co-authorship (ghostwriting), unjustified attributing authorship to third parties (guest authorship) and unauthorized use of other people’s research, will cause the article to be rejected.

Duties of Editors:

1. Deciding on the publication or rejection of the submitted texts based solely on their scholarly value and compliance with the profile of the journal.
2. Subjecting the submitted texts, after their initial assessment by the editorial staff, to a double-blind peer review.
3. Respecting confidentiality of the information related to editorial work and providing it, if needed, only to the authors, reviewers and other members of the editorial staff.
4. Promptly informing of a possible conflict of interest and withdrawing from the process of editing a given text if such a conflict is found.
5. Overseeing authors’ compliance with the journal’s code of conduct and publication ethics, as well as supporting authors in preparing their texts for publication.

Duties of Reviewers:

1. Assessing the text in order to help the editors decide whether or not to accept it for publication and to help the author to improve the quality of the text.
2. Preparing the review in such a way that it contains only objective and substantive comments, formulated in a comprehensive and unambiguous manner.
3. Respecting the rules of confidentiality, not disclosing the prepared reviews and submitting them only to the members of the editorial staff of the journal.
4. Reporting to the editorial staff the possibility of a conflict of interest that may result from reviewing a given text.
5. Immediately informing the editorial staff of all noticed violations of publication ethics, such as plagiarism, ghostwriting and guest authorship.
6. Reviewers are not allowed to use the reviewed texts, either in their entirety or in excerpts, for their own purposes.

Post-publication discussion and retraction

The Editorial Committee of Zapiski Historyczne encourages scholarly debate on the articles published in the journal and on the research findings they present. Where appropriate, the Editorial Committee permits the publication in Zapiski Historyczne of texts offering alternative interpretations of previously published data or providing relevant additions or corrections. Such contributions, which discuss or amend earlier articles, may take the form of discussion articles or letters to the editor.

In cases where major errors in published research or serious breaches of research and academic publishing ethics have been identified, and in accordance with COPE guidelines, the Editorial Committee may decide to retract a published text. In such instances, the text is clearly marked with an appropriate retraction notice attached to its digital version. Texts published in Zapiski Historyczne may be retracted due to, among other reasons, deliberate manipulation of research data, plagiarism or other infringements of intellectual property, ghost-writing, guest authorship, the use – whether in full or in part – of texts previously published elsewhere without proper attribution and permission from the journal, and undisclosed conflicts of interest that may compromise the peer-review process.