Publication Ethics

A downloadable file of our journal's Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement is available HERE

The entries below have been adapted from COPE Guidelines on Good Publication Practice and Elsevier Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK)

Journal’s policy on authorship and contributorship

All authors and contributors must declare their roles and responsibilities when submitting the paper. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will follow the guidelines from COPE to manage any dispute related to authorship and contributorship.

Authorship confers credit for the work that the authors have done and implies responsibility and accountability for published work.  Authors listed in an article must meet the following criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. 

    i. Author’s roles and responsibilities

In addition to the above criteria, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. Non-author contributors should be acknowledged.

It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institution(s) where the work was performed, not the journal editor, should be asked to investigate.

    ii. Roles of Corresponding Author

The roles of the corresponding author include:

1. Taking primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process.
2. Ensuring that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors.
3. Being available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way.
4. Being available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the editors may send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

    iii. Removal or addition of an Author

If authors request the removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or publication, editors of CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will seek an explanation and signed statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author to be removed or added.

   iv. Non-Author Contributors

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities are the acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group; writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, translation, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship will be acknowledged individually, and their contributions should be specified (e.g., “served as scientific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “collected data,” “participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript”,” translated the text into English”, etc.).

Journal’s policy on handling complaints and appeals

CULTURAL INTERTEXTS follows the COPE guidelines in relation to complaints and appeals. If you wish to make an appeal about an editorial decision or make a complaint, you should contact the editorial office.

The following information is necessary when submitting a complaint: names, email, affiliation, and title of manuscript). All complaints must be within the realm of CULTURAL INTERTEXTS Editorial Office’s remit (content, policies or processes of the journal). We will not consider complaints with regards to the disagreement with the final decision by the editorial team. An appeal will only be considered under highly specific circumstances.

We will acknowledge all complaints within five working days and an investigation will be carried out. The duration of resolving complaints will depend on their severity. However, we will provide interim communications and updates.

Journal’s policy on plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as ‘using someone else’s ideas, words, data, or other material produced by them without acknowledgement’. Plagiarism can occur with respect to all types of sources and media, including:

• text, illustrations, musical quotations, computer code, etc.;

• material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts or other media;

• published and unpublished material, including lectures, presentations and grey literature.

We do not tolerate plagiarism in our publication, and we reserve the right to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, we will follow our guidance outlined in the Retractions, Corrections and Expressions of Concern section. We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of plagiarism, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing cultural.intertexts@gmail.com

Journal’s policy on peer-review

Peer reviewers are external experts chosen by editors to provide written opinions, with the aim of improving the study. To avoid any potential bias, CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will not reveal the identity and affiliation of the author(s) to reviewers.

The duty of confidentiality in the assessment of a manuscript must be maintained by reviewers, and this extends to reviewers’ colleagues who may be asked (with the editor’s permission) to give opinions on specific sections.

The submitted manuscript should not be retained or copied. Reviewers and editors should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations unless they have the authors’ permission.

Reviewers should provide speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased and justifiable reports. If reviewers suspect misconduct, they should inform the editor.

Journal’s policy on conflicts of interest / competing interests

“A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.”

All authors submitting a manuscript must declare a conflict of interest. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will follow the guidelines from COPE to manage any issues related to conflict of interest.

    i) Financial competing interests

Authors must reveal any conflict with a relevant disclosure statement in the text of their article.

• Financial interests or arrangements with a company whose product was used in a study or is referred to in a manuscript,
• Any financial interests of arrangement with a competing company,
• Any direct payment to an author(s) from any source for the purpose of writing the manuscript, and
• Any other financial connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organisation(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. Authors may be asked to provide additional details about their interest. Depending on the details, the article may be prevented from publication. If the manuscript is published, such information must be communicated in a note following the text, before the references.

If there is no disclosure, the author(s) should include the following statement: “No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.”

    ii) Non-financial competing interests

• All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider and disclose their relationships and activities when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication.
• When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format, they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. 
• Reviewers will be asked at the time they are invited to critique a manuscript if they have relationships or activities that could complicate their review in the reviewer form. Reviewers must disclose to editors any relationships or activities that could bias their opinions of the manuscript and should withdraw themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.
• Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts will need to recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have relationships or activities that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their relationships or activities (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which an interest that poses a potential conflict exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should regularly publish their own disclosure statements and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.

Funding

Authors are to ensure that all funding sources are clearly stated in their manuscript.

Journal’s policy on overlapping publications

1. Preprints

Preprints are defined as an author’s version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server; preprints may be posted at any time during the peer review process. Posting a preprint is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardise consideration of publication in CULTURAL INTERTEXTS journal.

Our policy on posting and citation of preprints is summarised below.

Authors should disclose details of preprint posting, including DOI, the URL link and a statement of the disclaimer that the previous work is ‘not peer reviewed in the Manuscript Submission Form, upon submission of the manuscript to CULTURAL INTERTEXTS journal. Once the preprint is published, it is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.

2. Conference proceedings, letter to the editors, reports and other similar work published

Publishing work in conference proceedings, letters to the editors, reports and other similar work are common in some research communities. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will gladly consider these submissions. However, authors must provide details (title, name and date of the conference, where the conference is being held, and the URL link if possible) of the conference proceedings paper, letters to the editors, reports and other similar work published upon submission. Authors must obtain all necessary permissions to re-use previously published material and attribute it appropriately.

Journal’s policy on post-publication discussions and corrections

Although all articles undergo rigorous peer review and production stages, honest errors may still be present in the published content. When detected, these errors must be corrected.

    i) Correction

Pervasive errors may result in extensive inaccuracies throughout an article. If such errors do not change the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions of the article, CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will take the following actions:

1. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will publish a correction notice as soon as possible detailing changes from and citing the original publication; the correction will be on an electronic or numbered print page that is included in an electronic or a print Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing.
2. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made.
3. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will archive all prior versions of the article. This archive can be either directly accessible to readers or can be made available to the reader on request.
4. Previous electronic versions will be prominently noted that there are more recent versions of the article.
5. CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will ensure that the citation will be to the most recent version.

    ii) Retraction

If errors are serious enough to invalidate a paper’s results and conclusions, a retraction may be required.

The decision to issue a retraction for an article will be made in accordance with COPE guidelines and will involve an investigation by CULTURAL INTERTEXTS editorial staff in collaboration with the editor. Authors and institutions may request a retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the criteria for retraction.

• It has clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of a major error (e.g, miscalculation or experimental error) or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation)
• It constitutes plagiarism
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorisation for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy)
• It reports unethical research
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.

Where the decision has been taken to retract an article, CULTURAL INTERTEXTS will:

• Add a “retracted” watermark to the published version of the article.
• Issue a retraction statement stating the ‘title’, who is retracting the article and the reason for retraction.
• Paginate and make available the retraction statement in the online issue of the journal.

However, retraction with republication (also referred to as “replacement”) will be considered by CULTURAL INTERTEXTS in cases where an honest error (e.g., a misclassification or miscalculation) leads to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions. If the error is judged to be unintentional, the underlying science appears valid, and the changed version of the paper survives further review and editorial scrutiny, then retraction with the republication of the changed paper, with an explanation, allows full correction of the scientific literature.

    iii) Editorial Expressions of Concern

In some cases, an Expression of Concern notice may be considered to raise awareness of a possible problem in an article. Here are some scenarios when an Expression of Concern will be issued:

• There is inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
• There is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
• There is an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
• There is an investigation underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.
•  

The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to and will state the reasons for the concern. If more evidence becomes available the expression of concern could be replaced by a retraction notice or an exonerating statement, depending on the outcome.

Journal’s policy on intellectual property

CULTURAL INTERTEXTS is an open-access journal where our published materials are under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Under this license, readers of CULTURAL INTERTEXTS are free to adapt and share the published materials for non-commercial purposes, provided that CULTURAL INTERTEXTS is duly accredited and cited.

Authors are required to obtain written permission from the copyright holders for any copyrighted material used in the study. Additionally, the original source must be properly cited.

Authors and co-authors will have to confirm that:

• The contribution is their own work
• All individuals identified as contributors have actually contributed to the article
• All individuals who contributed are listed
• The contribution is submitted only to the specified journal and has not been published before
• They have obtained written permission from the copyright owners to reproduce any material owned by third parties, and they have included appropriate acknowledgement within the text of their contribution
• That the contribution contains no libelous or unlawful statements, does not infringe upon the rights or the privacy of others, and does not contain any material or instructions that might cause harm or injury.

Journal’s policy on Archiving

CULTURAL INTERTEXTS is currently electronically archived in DOAJ, Index Copernicus, CEEOL, Open Aire, and in print at the National Library of Romania.

Journal’s policy on data sharing and reproducibility

Cultural Intertexts acknowledges the archive of data makes available to the higher education community, a repertoire of resources for data replication and scientific progress as well as enabling results validation for papers submitted to Cultural Intertexts.

Authors are encouraged to deposit their data for the submitted papers in a suitable public repository via a valid link for archive and validation purposes. This repository should be open access and enjoy guaranteed preservation. This statement can be published in their paper and shared data should be cited.

Authors are to take care in ensuring that the data archived should be replicable both in results and analysis to support the stated conclusion in the submitted paper. Authors should also ensure that the data shared neither violate the protection of human subjects/rights nor invoke privacy/legal concerns.

Journal’s policy on ethical oversight

The policy of the journal concerning the oversight on how the ethical principles are observed is built on mutual trust of the publication process participants and hope for compulsory observance of all the publication ethics principles.

We focus on the СОРE definition, of Ethical oversight, namely “Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and of business/marketing practices”. Based on this definition, the editorial staff of the journals works under the issue of observing ethical principles.

The journal will be bound to consider the appeals from the Ethics and Oversight Committee for professional and scientific activity concerning the non-observance of the ethical principles by our authors. We are also ready to consider other appeals in case they are substantiated and not anonymous.