All parties involved in the act of publishing should adhere to the following standards of ethics.

These ethic statements are based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, SAGE publishing policies, Humanities and Social Sciences Latvia.

 

The responsibilities of the editors

 

Publication decisions

The editor of JSPS is responsible for deciding which of the materials submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the editorial board and copyright norms. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play

The editor may at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content regardless affiliation and position, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious or political belief, citizenship, or disability of the authors.

Peer review

The journal is following the rules of independent blind peer review when information about the authors and the reviewers is not disclosed for any party.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose without a written consent of the author any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

 

The responsibilities of the reviewers

 

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interes

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. 

 

The responsibilities of the authors

 

The journal takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. The editors seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article (removing it from the journal); taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; banning the author from publication in the journal, or appropriate legal action. 

Originality

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. After publication of an article in the journal the author cannot reproduce this text as a whole or parts of it without an agreement of the editor. In case the agreement is reached, the author should acknowledge the first publication in all further versions and elaborations of the text.

Acknowledgement of sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Human subjects

If the work includes empirical data that have been received with involvement of certain people, organizations and communities, the author must make sure that this publication will not make harm to them.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.