Publication Ethic

To meet ethical and scientific editorial standards and to counteract unfair practices, the IB PAS Publishing House established binding rules for editors, authors and reviewers (following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE).

Editors' Responsibilities

To meet ethical and scientific editorial standards and to counteract unfair practices, the IB PAS Publishing House established binding rules for editors, authors and reviewers (following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE).

Editors' Responsibilities

Editors are obliged to:

• sent manuscripts to reviewers;
• ensure that the peer review process is timely;
• remain objective and evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors;
• inform promptly the authors about the acceptance of the submitted manuscript and whether it requires revision (information about necessary corrections, changes etc.), or about its rejection, without violating the authors' dignity.

Responsibilities of Authors

Authors of papers submitted to the Plant and Fungal Systematics must:

• remember that authorship is limited to those who have made a substantial contribution to a study (conception, design, acquisition, analysis, interpretation of data, drafting and revising the article), while other persons who have participated in such aspects of the research as organization of and assistance at field work, data collection, or verification of the text should be recognized in the acknowledgement section with a mention about their contribution;
• ensure that they have written an entirely original work, declaring that the submitted article is not someone else's work (as a whole, or in part) and that it has not been copied from previous work by the author(s), i.e. it was not published elsewhere as a whole, or partially;
• declare that presented data are genuine and were collected and processed in accordance with the described methods of research and that the presented results are objective;
• list the institutional affiliation of the main author and co-authors;
• when after the publication of the work, significant errors are discovered in their published article, the author(s) is(are) requested to inform promptly the Editors about this fact, so as the errors could be corrected, or errata to the article published.

In addition, the author(s) should provide information about research funding and contribution of scientific-research institutes, or other entities to research execution. The list of authors should be ordered according to their contribution to the work (conception, design, data processing and interpretation).

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers are obliged to:

• consider whether they can perform a review on time and if they are not sure about it, or for other reasons (e.g. close family relations with one of the authors), to notify the Editors immediately about their decline to the request to review;
• complete a review in a timely manner and submit it promptly to the Editors;
• judge the quality of a paper in a truly objective manner; comments and conclusions should be based solely on the paper's scientific merit;
• make their comments to the manuscript in a clear and constructive manner.

Both Editors and Reviewers must keep to the principle of confidentiality: any manuscript submitted, or received for review must be treated as a confidential document. Information about the article must not be shared with anyone, except the author(s), reviewers, potential reviewers, and Editors. It is forbidden to use, or share information about, or discuss with anyone the contents of the publication without permission from the author(s).
Each article is checked for plagiarism. If plagiarism, or scientific inaccuracy is discovered in the submitted manuscript at any stage of editorial process, the Editors immediately deal with the issue and if it is justified, decide to exclude the manuscript from further processing.

Post-publication changes to articles in Acta Palaeobotanica

Occasionally, it may be necessary to make changes to the final version of a manuscript after publication. Any changes will be made after careful consideration by the Editor-in-Chief to ensure that any necessary changes are made following COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines).
Two types of post-publication article corrections are intended: erratum and retraction.

An erratum may be published when errors affect the main content or understanding of the article, or to correct an error or omission that affects key aspects of the publication's metadata (e.g., author name, competing interests, funding, taxonomic nomenclature or data availability statement).
In the case of an erratum, a PDF of the correction will be published separately (with unic DOI number) and linked to the online version of the original article, so that readers and other users/systems may reference the correction.

However, if serious errors are detected, a retraction will be published.
Editor-in-Chief may consider a retraction of publication if:

• hey have clear evidence that the results are unreliable, either as a result of a serious error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), fabrication (e.g., data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation);
• constitutes plagiarism;
• results have been previously published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish or justification (e.g., cases of redundant publication);
• contains materials or data without permission for their use;
• copyright has been infringed or there is another serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy);
• contains information about obtained in violation of ethical standards;
• was published solely based on a compromised or manipulated peer review process;
• the author(s) did not disclose a serious competing interest (conflict of interest) that, in the opinion of the editor, could unduly affect the interpretation of the work or the recommendations of the editors and reviewers.

Retractions can be used to alert readers to instances of unnecessary publication, plagiarism, peer-reviewed manipulation, reuse of material or data without authorization, copyright or other legal violations (e.g., defamation, privacy, illegality), unethical research, and/or failure to disclose major competing interests that would unduly influence interpretations or recommendations.
If only a small portion of an article contains incorrect data or content, a corrigendum may be the best solution. Similarly, if only a small part of an article (e.g., a few sentences in a discussion) is plagiarized, Editor-in-Chief may consider a correction (noting that the text was used without proper acknowledgement or citation of the source) rather than retracting the entire article, which may contain reliable, original data.
If an article has been published in more than one journal (online or print) at the same time, priority should be determined by the publication dates or the dates on which the authors signed a publication license or copyright transfer agreement.

The retraction notification will:

• be linked to the withdrawn article wherever possible (i.e., in all versions);
• identify the retracted article;
• be identified as a retraction (i.e., distinguishable from other types of corrections or comments);
• be published promptly;
• be freely available to all readers;
• identify who is retracting the article;
• include the reasons for the retraction of an article;
• be objective and based on facts.

If possible, the Editor-in-Chief will always try to negotiate with the authors and try to agree on a form of wording that is acceptable to all parties. However, if negotiations are ineffective or prolonged, the Editor-in-Chief may publish a retraction even if no consensus has been reached. Because the responsibility for the content of the journal rests with the Editor-in-Chief, he always makes the final decision on retraction.
If conclusive evidence regarding the credibility of the publication cannot be obtained or is not be obtained for a significant period of time, it may not be appropriate to retract the publication, but the Editor-in-Chief may consider publishing an expression of concern.