Ethics Policy

Introduction

The journal Acta Informatica Pragensia undertakes to observe and oversee the publication ethics and quality of published articles. Therefore, the authors, reviewers, and members of the Editorial Board are expected to obey the standards of ethical behaviour.

In works involving humans and published so far, an emphasis was placed on the complete anonymity of study participants. In connection with the increasing number of manuscripts and published articles where patients are involved in the research, two new items (Institutional Review Board Statement and Informed Consent Statement) have been added to the Additional Information and Declarations section, which will be presented for each published article where humans or animals are involved in the research (with effect from September 2022). All items of the Additional Information and Declarations section can be found in the Submission Guidelines.

The Editorial Board members and reviewers are doing their best to follow the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in all editorial procedures. We strongly recommend to all potential authors, before submitting the text for peer review, to visit the COPE website and get acquainted with the internationally acknowledged rules and best practices.

We also recommend reading the following COPE guidelines (for editors, reviewers, and authors):

Authors' Duties and Responsibilities

Instructions on how to prepare a submission and complete all information related to the research can be found in the Submission Guidelines. By submitting their manuscript to Acta Informatica Pragensia, the authors confirm that it is their original work. The authors are not allowed to submit their manuscript for consideration when it is subject to assessment in another journal, or vice versa to send to another periodical the manuscript which is being assessed at a given moment by Acta Informatica Pragensia.

The corresponding author responsible for the submission must ensure the consent of all co-authors of the work (if there are more authors) with its final wording for initial submission, revisions and publication.
Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works. All other works used must be appropriately cited. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
Authors may be asked to provide raw data for peer review (if relevant). Authors should retain data used in their research for a reasonable period of time after publication or publish them in an open repository (a link to these data should be provided in the article).
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Authors should provide their ORCID if they have one.
It is an obligation for authors to comment on the following items in the Additional Information and Declarations section if applicable to their research (see Submission Guidelines): Acknowledgments, Funding, Conflict of Interests, Author Contributions, Institutional Review Board Statement, Informed Consent Statement, Data Availability.
If the research design allows it, the authors should ensure the complete anonymity of humans involved in their research.
Authors are obliged to participate in the peer-review process, responding promptly and politely to all reviewers' comments. If the authors agree to make changes, they must provide the corrections on time. A detailed explanation must be provided if the authors do not agree with the reviewers' recommendations or other remarks.
When an author discovers a fundamental error or inaccuracy in his or her own published article, the author must promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief of Acta Informatica Pragensia and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the article.
Authors accept the publishing rights to use the paper transferred to the publisher (according to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License).

Editors' and Editorial Board Members' Duties and Responsibilities

Editors who cooperate on the peer review process of a particular manuscript undertake to ensure objective evaluation of the manuscript solely based on its academic qualities without regard to authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy. The Managing Editor removes any identification of the authorship before the manuscript is submitted for a peer review process. All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism by iThenticate (for manuscripts in English) or Odevzdej (for manuscripts in Czech and Slovak). The Editor-in-Chief or the Associate Editor can refuse the manuscript without the review process due to inappropriate quality of the manuscript, a different focus or violation of legal requirements (i.e., plagiarism, breach of copyright). It is obligatory to observe the anonymous evaluation of the manuscript by the reviewers, as well as the anonymity of the reviewers.

An Academic Editor is assigned to each manuscript – an expert on the issue usually selected from the Editorial Board to avoid conflicts of interest. The Academic Editor decides on the manuscript's acceptance/revision/rejection based on referee reports received from independent reviewers. The Academic Editor may confer with other members of the Editorial Board and/or the Special Issue Editor(s) in making this decision. The Academic Editor who managed the review process and is responsible for accepting the article for publication is listed on the first page and in the Editorial Record section of the published article.

Editors have a duty to act if there is a suspicion of misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is revealed.
Editors promise a prompt response to complaints.
Editors communicate politely with the corresponding author about his or her manuscript.
Editors preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
Editors reserve the right to make minor amendments to the text or return it to the authors for further revision.
The members of the Editorial Board and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher.
If a member of the Editorial Board is also the author of a manuscript submitted to Acta Informatica Pragensia, the assigned Academic Editor must be from a different university than this Editorial Board member.

Reviewers' Duties and Responsibilities

Reviewers are always selected with adequate diligence based on their qualification and/or academic research history. If the selected reviewer does not feel competent to assess the quality of the manuscript or is aware that he or she will not be able to express an opinion within a specified timeframe, he or she must immediately inform the Academic Editor and resign from the review procedure.

Reviews should be conducted objectively, and reviewers express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Reviewers do not evaluate manuscripts if they have a conflict of interest resulting from a competitive, collaborative or other relationship with some of the authors of the assessed manuscript.
Reviewers must not use any part of the material obtained in peer review for their own research or publication.
Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and treated as confidential information by reviewers.
Reviewers must not attempt to look for or contact the potential authors of the papers suggested for review.
Reviewers must not use generative artificial intelligence tools to generate reviews of articles.

Policy for Artificial Intelligence Generated Text or Other Media

The journal Acta Informatica Pragensia understands the value of large language models and generative artificial intelligence (AI) as tools that can help authors prepare part of their manuscript. But these AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) have limitations and are unable to replicate human creative and critical thinking. Therefore, it is always necessary to verify the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of the content and any citations generated by AI tools and correct any errors or inconsistencies. The use of AI tools is understood similarly to any other software tool (e.g., software for calculations in quantitative research). Human authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts, even those parts generated by an AI tool.

The use of AI tools must be transparently mentioned in the Methods section (or similar section) of the manuscript, where it must be clearly stated how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. The use of AI tools in a manuscript must also be disclosed in the Additional Information and Declarations section (Statement on the Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools; see Submission Guidelines) of any manuscript submitted to Acta Informatica Pragensia.

In accordance with the COPE recommendation, the AI tools do not meet the authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts or articles.

Cooperating with Publisher on Ethics Issues

The publisher cooperates with the Editor-in-Chief on the following issues:

Editorial Board independence;
Research ethics;
Authorship;
Transparency and integrity, for example, conflicts of interest, research funding, reporting standards. Assistance is provided to parties (institutions, grant funders, governing bodies) responsible for the investigation of suspected research and publication misconduct, and where possible, resolution of these cases is facilitated;
Appeals and complaints.

Correction Policy

The publisher of Acta Informatica Pragensia replaces original articles with corrected versions in order to avoid misunderstandings and to provide the reader with the most recent version of the published article. Information about any correction will be listed on the title page of the corrected version of the article.

Retraction Policy

Journal editors should consider retracting a publication if:

they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error);
the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication);
it constitutes plagiarism; and/or
it reports on unethical research.

Retracted articles cannot be removed from electronic archives; this is why their retracted status is indicated as clearly as possible on the journal website.

Conference Papers Policy

The existence of a conference paper in a conference book of proceedings or the presentation of a paper at a conference does not disqualify the paper from being considered for publication. The Acta Informatica Pragensia is open for conference-based articles which significantly extend the conference paper and provide new information, knowledge and findings. A maximum 30% similarity with the original conference paper in the submitted article is expected if the conference paper has been published in a conference book of proceedings.

When submitting, authors must state explicitly that it is an extended conference paper. Authors must state in the Introduction section of the manuscript that this is an extended article based on a paper presented and/or published at a particular conference and add a reference to the conference paper.

Examples of Most Frequent Ethical Misconduct

Improper paraphrasing of another person's work is where more than one sentence within a paragraph or section of text has been changed or sentences have been rearranged without appropriate attribution. Significant improper paraphrasing (more than 10% of a work) without appropriate attribution is treated as seriously as verbatim copying.
Re-use of elements of another person's work, for example, a figure, table or paragraph without acknowledgement, references or the use of quotation marks.
Verbatim copying of more than 10% (or a significant passage or section of text) of another person's work without acknowledgement, references or the use of quotation marks.