Research ethics

Identity – Cultures – Languages, yearbook of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar, is a scientific publication that publishes papers from the annual international scientific conference of the same name, held at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar. In order to enhance the quality of the yearbook, certain ethical guidelines have been established.

Publication Standards

All members of the Identity – Cultures – Languages yearbook: Editors, Editorial Board, Advisory Board, authors, peer-reviewers, and publishers, must adhere to the guidelines set by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) in publishing, which can be found at the following link: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines . If any form of unethical behavior is discovered (plagiarism, data manipulation and abuse, authorship changes, etc.), before the publication of the paper, the author will be notified, and the publication of the paper will be suspended.

If serious deficiencies in the paper or unethical conduct (plagiarism, theft, misuse of data, and similar misconduct) are discovered after the publication of the article, the Editorial Board may retract the paper, adhering to the guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/retraction-guidelines .

If, after the publication of an article, minor shortcomings in the work are discovered (such as literature citation, numbering of appendices, figures, tables, and similar), which do not significantly alter the research results, corrections may be made in the first subsequent issue of the yearbook.

All participants, including authors, reviewers, and members of the Editorial Board, must avoid conflicts of interest in any form. If the author of a paper is also a member of the Editorial Board, they are excluded from the peer-review process in order to ensure an impartial peer-review.

In the event of a conflict of interest, the Editorial Board will follow the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/discussion-document/handling-conflicts-interest .

Identity – Cultures – Languages yearbook is an open-access publication, and the papers can be used freely for personal or educational purposes with proper citing, in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED).

The copyright holder is the author, who retains their rights without limitations, while the publisher is granted the right of first publication. After the paper has been published in the yearbook, the author may publish it in other publications, provided that the original source of publication is clearly stated.

All submitted papers are evaluated impartially, and authors must respect the plurality of ideas and approaches. Any form of hate speech or discrimination must be excluded from the papers. Both authors and reviewers must avoid conflicts of interest in any form.

Author Responsibility

Authors must adhere to the ethical conduct in the preparation of their paper and ensure its originality. They take full responsibility for the views expressed in the paper. If any errors are identified, the author is obligated to report them to the Editors of the yearbook. If the paper has been published and errors are identified, corrections may be published in the next issue of the yearbook upon the author's request. Authors are required to properly cite and attribute sources of information used in their research. Once a paper is submitted, the author may not submit it to another yearbook or journal without prior approval from the Editors.

Reviewer Responsibility

After accepting to do the peer-review, reviewers are provided with the paper and the review form, and they must submit their peer-review within a month. Reviewers must be impartial and objective in evaluating the paper. They should endeavor to improve the quality of the manuscript with their assessment. If any form of unethical behavior is identified in the author's work, reviewers are obliged to report it to the Editors. The paper submitted to the reviewer represents confidential information, and the reviewer must not disclose it to anyone or use it for personal research during the peer-review process. If desired, the reviewer may request to see the author's corrections to the paper. Reviewers are required to decline a peer-review assignment in the event of a conflict of interest that may affect their impartiality. In the case of differing reviewer assessments, a third peer-review may be requested.