Introduction
This Publishing Ethics and Malpractice Statement for Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) embodies our commitment to the highest standards of integrity in scientific publishing. The statement delineates the ethical responsibilities and duties of all parties involved in the publication process: the publisher, editors, peer reviewers, and authors. In adhering to these standards, the journal ensures a rigorous, fair, and transparent peer-review process, safeguarding the integrity of the academic record.
This Ethics and Malpractice Policy for Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) incorporates the key principles and practices set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The journal aligns itself with the following COPE resources and guidelines:
- COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
- COPE DOAJ OASPA WAME. Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
- COPE Council. Ethics toolkit for a successful editorial office: A COPE Guide
- COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document: Authorship
- COPE Council. COPE Discussion document: Diversity and inclusivity
- COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document: How should editors respond to plagiarism?
- COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases
- COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Editorial board participation
- COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Retraction Guidelines
- COPE Council. COPE Flowcharts and infographics — Plagiarism in a submitted manuscript
- COPE Council. COPE Flowcharts and infographics — How to recognise potential authorship problems
The journal strives to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in the selection of peer reviewers and editorial board members, reflecting COPE’s Diversity and Inclusivity Discussion Document. The editorial board actively seeks to involve experts from a variety of geographical regions, career stages, and institutional backgrounds. Special attention is given to ensuring gender balance and fair representation of minority groups in the editorial and review processes. These efforts aim to foster an inclusive scientific environment and broaden the spectrum of perspectives represented in the journal.
Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) also applies the Ethics Toolkit for a Successful Editorial Office, implementing internal policies and procedures for ethical publishing.
Publisher’s Responsibilities
The publisher upholds the autonomy of editorial decisions, ensuring a clear separation between commercial interests and editorial content. The publisher is responsible for overseeing the entire publishing process, committed to protecting intellectual property rights and ensuring the accessibility and preservation of published content. Additionally, the publisher supports the communication of corrections, retractions, and apologies as necessary, maintaining the integrity of the academic record. The publisher encourages collaboration and information sharing with other journals in cases of suspected misconduct, in accordance with COPE’s guidance on cooperation between journals.
Editors’ Responsibilities
The Editor-in-Chief bears full responsibility for all final decisions regarding the acceptance, rejection, or request for revision of submitted manuscripts. These decisions are based solely on the scientific merit of the work, its originality, and its relevance to the journal’s scope, without influence from external factors, including commercial considerations. The Editor-in-Chief oversees the proper conduct of the entire publishing process and ensures its compliance with ethical principles and high academic standards.
The Editor-in-Chief is also responsible for selecting appropriate reviewers and supervising the peer review process. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the Editor-in-Chief makes editorial decisions, ensuring the reliability, objectivity, and consistency of the evaluations. As part of this process, authors are given the opportunity to respond to reviewers’ comments and to implement the required revisions.
Editors collaborating with the editorial office provide organizational and substantive support to the publishing process, particularly in communication with authors and reviewers and in monitoring the progress of the peer review procedure. Their role is to ensure the efficiency of the process and to maintain the high quality of published content.
All editors are обязed to act impartially and without discrimination. Manuscripts are evaluated solely on their content, regardless of the authors’ personal characteristics, such as gender, origin, nationality, beliefs, or institutional affiliation. At every stage of the editorial process, confidentiality is strictly maintained—information regarding submitted manuscripts is not disclosed to third parties and may not be used for personal or professional purposes without the authors’ explicit consent.
A key responsibility of the editorial team is to prevent breaches of publication ethics and to resolve disputes among participants in the publishing process. All reports of potential misconduct are handled in a thorough, transparent, and consistent manner.
Each submitted manuscript is subject to an initial screening using text similarity detection tools (e.g., Similarity Check/Crossref, iThenticate). This procedure aims to identify plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other forms of inappropriate content use. Depending on the outcome of the analysis, the editorial office may request explanations from the authors, require revisions, reject the manuscript, or initiate further investigation.
The most common ethical violations include plagiarism, self-plagiarism, ghostwriting, guest authorship, citation manipulation, and the falsification or fabrication of data. In cases of justified suspicion, the editorial office takes appropriate actions, including contacting the authors and, when necessary, their affiliated institutions.
The journal follows the ethical standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In cases requiring additional analysis, the editorial office refers to COPE guidelines, flowcharts, and case studies to ensure that all issues are resolved in accordance with international best practices.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities
Reviewers play a key role in ensuring the integrity and credibility of the scholarly publishing process. They should treat all received manuscripts as confidential documents and must not use the information contained therein for personal or professional purposes prior to their official publication. In their work, reviewers should adhere to the principles of peer review ethics established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in particular those outlined in the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
The evaluation of a manuscript should be conducted impartially and based solely on its scientific merit, originality, and relevance to the field. Reviewers are expected to respect the intellectual independence of authors, and all comments should be objective, constructive, and focused on the content—personal or derogatory remarks are unacceptable.
Reviewers should avoid situations that may give rise to conflicts of interest. If such situations occur, they are required to inform the editorial office immediately and, if necessary, decline to review the manuscript. Any potential biases or relationships that could influence the evaluation should be disclosed.
A manuscript must not be shared with or discussed with third parties without the knowledge and consent of the editor, except in cases where specialist consultation is necessary; in such instances, prior approval from the editorial office is required.
Reviewers should prepare their reports in a clear, comprehensive, and well‑reasoned manner, particularly when recommending rejection or major revisions. If reviewers identify significant similarities with other published or submitted works, they are obliged to inform the editor.
Reviewers are also responsible for reporting any suspected breaches of publication ethics, including plagiarism, self-plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, inappropriate citation practices, and other actions that may undermine the integrity of research.
The journal adheres to the ethical standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In cases involving ethical concerns, the editorial office may refer to COPE guidelines, flowcharts, and case studies to ensure appropriate evaluation and resolution in line with international best practices.
Authors’ Responsibilities
Authors are expected to present a comprehensive and accurate account of their research, ensuring originality and proper citation of previous work. The submitted manuscript must contain detail and references to public sources of information sufficient for peers to replicate the work or verify its accuracy. Authors must cite and attribute publications influential in shaping the reported work and avoid using information obtained privately without explicit permission. The manuscript should not contain plagiarized material, falsified research data, or inappropriate fragmentation of research papers. Additionally, authors must inform the editor of related manuscripts under consideration elsewhere and avoid submitting the same research to multiple journals. Where applicable, authors should follow COPE’s Text Recycling Guidelines to avoid inappropriate reuse of their own published content. Authors must secure any and all necessary permissions for the use of copyrighted material and ensure ethical compliance in research involving humans or animals. The author’s contribution must be clearly described and the COPE guide How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers should be used to avoid or resolve authorship issues. When using generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT), their use must be disclosed in the methods section, and the generation of substantive content (e.g., results) is not allowed. Responsibility for all content rests with the authors.
Ethical Oversight and Handling of Unethical Publishing Behavior
The journal maintains ethical oversight throughout the publication process to uphold the standards expected in scientific publishing. In cases of unethical behavior, such as disputed authorship, research fraud, or plagiarism, the journal will investigate and act in accordance with COPE guidelines. Allegations of scientific misconduct or fraudulent publication will result in appropriate actions, including publication corrections, retractions, or article removal, with transparency in the resolution process. Such incidents will moreover be reported to the respective authorities, following the framework provided in COPE’s principles of transparency and best practice and COPE’s retraction guidelines.
In cases where there is uncertainty or dispute around authorship, the journal follows COPE’s document.
Open Access and Fees
Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) is an Open Access journal, offering increased visibility and impact for authors’ work. We do not charge any article processing charges or other publication fees. This approach aligns with our mission to disseminate cutting-edge research freely and widely.
Journal Policies on Data Sharing and Reproducibility
Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) encourages authors to share their data and methods used in their research in a responsible and ethical manner. Authors are encouraged to provide access to data that supports their research findings, where appropriate and feasible, in accordance with disciplinary norms and expectations. The journal supports the replication and reproducibility of research and encourages authors to be transparent about the reproducibility of their results.
Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
The journal provides a platform for post-publication discussion to facilitate scientific discourse.
Corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies may be published as needed to maintain the integrity of the academic record. Readers and authors are encouraged to engage in post-publication discussions to enhance the impact and accuracy of published research.
By adhering to these principles, Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) upholds the integrity of the academic record and asserts its commitment to the highest standards of publishing ethics, reflecting the professional and ethical behavior expected in the scholarly community.
Authorship
The journal recognizes as authors only those individuals who have contributed significantly to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The identification of authors at the head of the paper is essential, along with their respective affiliations. Any and all individuals who have made considerable but non-authorship contributions, such as technical assistance or financial support, should be listed in the acknowledgements. Importantly, the journal prohibits the attribution of authorship to individuals whose actual contributions were minimal or non-existent. The corresponding author is responsible for verifying and declaring that any others named as co-authors have seen the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.
No fictitious name may be given as an author or co-author. The corresponding author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts responsibility for having properly included all, and only, qualified co-authors.
Integrity of Submissions
Authors must declare that their articles are original, have not been published before, and are not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. The journal requires authors to submit a hand-signed declaration, asserting their ownership of full copyright to all components of the manuscript, including texts, tables, and graphics. Furthermore, authors are required to provide written details concerning the scope of contributions from each author, sources of funding, and any support received from research institutions, associations, or other entities.
It is inappropriate to submit manuscripts with an obvious commercial intent. Authors should reveal to the editors any potential conflict of interest, e.g., a consulting or financial interest in a company that might be affected by publication of the results contained in a manuscript. The authors should ensure that no contractual relations or proprietary considerations exist that might affect the publication of information in a submitted manuscript.
Key Principles Regarding the Use of Generative AI
These principles were developed with reference to COPE’s official position statement on the use of artificial intelligence tools in scientific publications (COPE Position Statement: Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools as authors).
- Using a generative artificial intelligence tool, such as ChatGPT or other Large Language Models (LLM), to generate any portion of an article is prohibited, including to generate abstracts or literature reviews. AI tools do not satisfy the criteria for authorship and cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. Responsibility for the submitted work, its interpretation and its accuracy, rests with the Author.
- Generating or reporting results and statistics using generative AI/LLM tools is not allowed due to concerns about the authenticity, integrity, and validity of the data obtained. However, using such tools to assist in analyzing a study is permitted, provided that the Methods section of the article (or a similar section) clearly specifies which tool was used, and how. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including any parts produced using AI tools, and are thus accountable for any breaches of publication ethics.
- Using a generative AI/LLM tool solely in order to improve the language and readability of an article is allowed, as this practice aligns with standard tools historically used for spelling and grammar correction. Note that this procedure processes existing material created by the Author, rather than generating entirely new content; meanwhile, the Author remains fully responsible for the submitted work.
- Submitting and publishing images created by artificial intelligence tools or large-scale generative models is not permitted.
Review process
The peer review process begins with an editorial screening (initial assessment) conducted by the Editor-in-Chief. At this stage, the manuscript is evaluated for its alignment with the journal’s scope, compliance with formal requirements, scientific quality, and adherence to publication ethics. In particular, the completeness of the submission, the structure of the article, methodological adequacy, and the originality of the content (including the use of plagiarism detection tools) are assessed. Manuscripts that do not meet the basic requirements may be rejected without external review (desk rejection).
Manuscripts that meet the criteria of the editorial screening are forwarded for external peer review. Each submission is evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with appropriate subject-matter expertise who are not affiliated with the authors’ institution. To ensure the quality and international character of the evaluation, reviewers are selected—whenever possible—from different academic institutions, including those outside the authors’ country.
The review process is conducted under a double-blind peer review model, meaning that neither the authors nor the reviewers are aware of each other’s identities. Reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality and to report any suspected ethical issues, such as plagiarism or self-plagiarism. The review process is conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Each reviewer provides one of the following recommendations:
- accept without revisions,
- accept with minor revisions (no further review required),
- accept with revisions requiring further evaluation,
- major revisions required and resubmission,
- reject the manuscript.
Reviewers are required to provide a detailed justification for their evaluation and to indicate any necessary revisions or additions prior to publication.
Reviewers’ comments and recommendations are communicated to the authors by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors are given the opportunity to respond to the feedback and to submit a revised version of the manuscript within a specified timeframe.
Upon receiving the revised manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief evaluates the implemented changes. Depending on the extent of the revisions, the manuscript may be sent for an additional round of review.
The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for selecting reviewers and overseeing the entire peer review process, ensuring its integrity, transparency, and compliance with publication ethics. Based on the reviewers’ reports and their own assessment, the Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of the manuscript.
Duration of the peer review process
The editorial office makes every effort to ensure that the review process is efficient and timely. The initial editorial screening typically takes up to 1–2 weeks from the date of submission. The external review process and the editorial decision generally take 6 to 12 weeks, depending on the subject of the manuscript, the availability of reviewers, and the number of required revision rounds.
The editorial office is committed to maintaining the high quality and consistency of published articles and to properly resolving any disputes among participants in the publishing process. All cases of research misconduct—including data fabrication or falsification, plagiarism, and copyright infringement—are treated with the utmost seriousness and, where justified, may be reported to the appropriate institutions responsible for research ethics.
Access and Copyright
All articles accepted for publication, along with their abstracts, are made available on the journal’s website, promoting broad accessibility and dissemination of research. We do not charge any article processing charges or other publication fees. This Open Access approach aligns with the journal’s commitment to sharing scientific knowledge and findings with a wider audience.
Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) provides immediate Open Access to its content under the Creative Commons BY-4.0 license. Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to make the submitted article available under the terms of the above-mentioned Creative Commons BY-4.0 license.
Authors must submit a declaration that they agree with these publication terms, and that the submitted manuscript is original, written by the stated author(s), has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author (or copyrights belonging jointly to the indicated co-authors) and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary permissions to use other sources have been obtained by the author(s).
Handling Allegations of Research Misconduct
Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) takes any and all allegations of research misconduct seriously. This includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication. Upon receiving an allegation, the journal follows COPE’s guidelines to investigate and resolve the issue. The journal is committed to taking reasonable steps to prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred. In cases where misconduct is confirmed, the journal will take appropriate actions, which may include retraction of the article, correction notices, or other measures as deemed necessary. When applicable, the journal refers to specific COPE cases that address ethical issues related to falsified references or unauthorized use of AI-generated content in submitted manuscripts. These cases provide guidance on how to evaluate suspicions of data manipulation or unacknowledged use of generative AI tools, and help ensure that appropriate editorial actions are taken in line with best publishing practices.
Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests
Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest or competing interests that could influence the interpretation of their manuscript. The journal requires a statement regarding conflicts of interest from all authors, to be published alongside the manuscript. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any potential conflicts of interest, and if necessary, recuse themselves from handling the manuscript.
Historical Publications
The journal recognizes the COPE position on older publications. If allegations arise regarding articles published prior to modern policies, we follow COPE’s recommendations for handling these matters responsibly.
By adhering to COPE’s internationally accepted standards and guidance, Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations (MINIB ) ensures that all stakeholders in the publication process — authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers — are held to the highest level of ethical accountability. The full policy document incorporates direct references and best practices from COPE’s extensive library of guidelines and case studies, which shape our daily editorial operations and publication standards.
For more details, readers, authors, and editorial members are encouraged to visit COPE’s website: https://publicationethics.org