Publishing Ethics and Malpractice Statement

All involved in the design and publication of the journal are committed to ensuring the highest ethical standards of publishing in the journal. The ethical guidelines of publication and the Statement of Abuse were summarised according to the principles of cope – Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/).

Manuscripts submitted for publication must contain statemnet that all human studies have been reviewed by the appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. It must be clear that all persons gave informed consent before their inclusion in the study.

All manuscripts that report the use of laboratory animals have to include the statement that all studies were cinducted in accordance with the EU Directive 2010/63/EU and according to review of appropriate ethical committees for testing animals.

Responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief and Editors. The Editor-in-Chief and Editors make decisions as to whether the article submitted for publication is appropriate for publishing. Editorial staff always acts impartially and judge articles solely by their content. In accordance with the policies of the publisher it responds in reasonable deadlines and acts if the submitted contribution or published article is accused of disregarding ethics in the publishing or if ethics are violated. Communication with the author regarding complaints must be recorded and documented.

Responsibilities of the Author. The author must provide assurance that they submitted entirely original work and confirmation that their contribution has not been previously published, accepted or considered for publication elsewhere; the author must correctly and appropriately cite all used sources in the prescribed citation style; the author must arrange consents from copyright holders for publication of material; the contribution must be written in such a way that it assures repeatability of research and the declaration of any potential conflict of interests (e.g. donations, employment, counseling, fee, patent applications/registrations and other), which could affect results or explanation of the research presented in the contribution.

Responsibilities of the Reviewer. The reviewer informs the editor if the content of the submitted contribution does not encompass his/her field of work; the reviewer treats the received contributions as confidential and does not forward their content to anyone else; the reviewer provides his/her opinion objectively with clear justification; the reviewer completes the review procedure professionally in a prescribed deadline; the reviewer warns about an already published work from the submitted contribution which the authors did not take into account or did not state.

Responsibility of the Publisher. The publisher assures that all stakeholders in the process of scientific communication respect the above stated principles and standards; 

Procedures for the Treatment of Unethical Acting

Anyone may at any time inform the editors/or editorial board of deviation from the Code of Ethical Conduct of the University of Maribor.

Limitation of Responsibility

Neither the editors nor editorial staff are responsible for the expressed content of published contributions in the journal. All conclusions, opinions and data published in the contribution are solely the work of the author and not of the publisher or editorial staff. The publisher and editors do not accept any criminal responsibility for any mistakes that are made in such a way.

All submitted contributions are checked with CSD software – Content Similarity Detector of the manufacturer University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and with iThenticate to determine whether there are overlaps or similar texts in previously published articles.

Contributions undergo double-blind peer review which is completed by at least two professionals from the research field of the publication who are chosen by the Editor-in-Chief (reviewers can be selected based on the decision of the Editor-in-Chief and members of the editorial board). The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision on publication on the basis of the reviewers’ suggestions.