Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement – Demografie

The owner of the Demografie journal is the Czech Statistical Office. The Editorial Board is consisting of independent members of high professional prestige in the field of demography and related disciplines both from the Czech Republic and abroad.
The prevention of publication malpractice and ethics belongs to the most important priorities and responsibilities of the Editorial Board of the Demografie journal. Any kind of unethical behaviour is not acceptable. The below mentioned principles are binding for all parties participating in the publication of Demografie, Review for Population Research.

1. Authorship and author's responsibilities
- Authors are obliged to state the list of references and information on financial support;
- no plagiarism and no unreliable data are acceptable;
- authors should not submit the same contribution to more than one journal concurrently and must ensure that the contribution has not been issued elsewhere (otherwise acknowledgements about newly reworked, adapted, and completed paper should be added);
- authors are responsible for appropriate citing in case of using previously published materials (citing all sources of data used in the research article and publications that have been influential);
- authors are obliged to participate in a peer review process;
- authors are responsible for stating all co-authors who have significantly contributed to the research and ensure that co-authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the contribution and their inclusion of names as co-authors;
- authors guarantee that all data in their article (paper) are real and authentic;
- all authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of errors;
- authors are enabled to appeal against the Editorial Board's decisions. Unresolved problems are discussed following the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart (A Code of Conduct and guidelines can be found here: http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

2. Peer reviews and reviewers' responsibilities
- Peer review process is carried out with respect to the “double-blind principle”;
- reviewers' judgments should be objective;
- reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders;
- reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited;
- reviewed articles (papers) should be treated confidentially.

3. Editorial responsibilities
- Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article (paper) for the review process and in case of a successful review process decide about the publication of the paper;
- only contributions of informative or data character may be published without review process;
- the Editorial Board has the right to decide about publication of the article (paper), the decision should be based only on the paper´s importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the remit of the journal;
- editors secure prevention of any conflicts of interest between the staff, authors, reviewers, and board members;
- editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles (papers) they reject/accept;
- editors pursue suspected misconducts and adopt appropriate decisions if necessary;
- the Editorial Board only accept a paper when reasonably certain of its appropriate scientific value;
- the Editorial Board monitors and safeguards publishing ethics;
- editors should ensure that contributions to be published conform to internationally accepted ethical guidelines and integrity of the academic record;
- editors should protect the confidentiality of individual data;
- editors should publish guidance to reviewers and update it if necessary;
- when errors are found in an article (paper), editors ensure publication of correction or retraction;
- anonymity of reviewers is strictly preserved.

4. Publishing ethics issues
- Ensuring that contributions to be published conform to internationally accepted ethical guidelines and integrity of the academic record;
- preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
- willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed;
- pursuing suspected misconducts and adopting appropriate decisions if necessary.
 

Principles of reviewing and approving papers for publication in the Demografie journal
These principles extend the general rules stated in point 2 above.
- Papers delivered to the editorial office are included in a review process provided that they comply with formal requirements (see instructions in “For Authors”) and fit with the remit of the Demografie journal.
- Contributions of only informative or data character are not reviewed; staff of the editorial office negotiate them directly with the authors.
- Chair of the Editorial Board, having consulted it with other members of the Editorial Board, decides whether a paper will be peer reviewed.
- Reviewers are selected by the staff of the editorial office or, as the case may be, they consult the selection with the Editorial Board or members thereof.
- A reviewer is not a member of a workplace of any of the reviewed paper's authors and, as regards the topic of the paper, must not be in a conflict of interest with the authors or entities funding the research the paper deals with.
- Reviewers are obliged to notify immediately if they disagree with their appointment or to inform that they cannot meet the deadline for sending the review so that the paper can be sent to another reviewer, as the case may be.
- The staff of the editorial office send papers to members of the Editorial Board 10 days prior to the meeting of the Editorial Board at the latest.
- Members of the Editorial Board will send their opinions 3 days before the meeting of the Editorial Board takes place at the latest.
- The Editorial Board express their opinions as to whether to publish the paper or not. When there is the same number of positive and negative opinions, it is the vote of the Chair of the Editorial Board, which is decisive. In exceptional cases, voting of members of the Editorial
Board can take place per rollam.
- The staff of the editorial office send the reviews and comments of the Editorial Board to the authors within 14 days after the meeting of the Editorial Board took place. They set a 10-day deadline for the authors to process required modifications and consider the comments.
- A guarantor of the article (paper) will check how the authors processed the comments and will (not) recommend publishing the paper to the editorial office.