POLICIES, ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

 

The International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture (LLC) is committed to upholding the highest editorial standards of publication ethics and best practice. The journal and publisher take all possible measures against any publication malpractices, and adhere to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its Core Practices, and procedures for investigating publication ethics.

All authors submitting their works to the LLC for publication attest that the submitted manuscripts represent original works and that the authors’ contributions have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works. The authors acknowledge that they have disclosed all and any actual or potential conflicts of interests with their work or partial benefits associated with it. In the same manner, LLC is committed to objective and fair peer-review of the works submitted for publication, and focuses on preventing any actual or potential conflicts of interests between the editorial and review teams and the reviewed material.

Ethical Policies

LLC adheres to the following COPE flowcharts to investigate concerns around intellectual property:

Systematic manipulation of the publication process
Suspected plagiarism in a submitted manuscript
What to do if you suspect image manipulation in a published article
Suspected redundant publication in a published manuscript

 

The journal is vigilant in upholding the ethical standards of research conduct and publishing, and will take appropriate actions on forms of misconduct such as (but not limited to):

Authorship: submitting multi-author drafts without the consent of all authors, improper attribution of author credits such as exclusion of contributing authors or inclusion of authors making insufficient contribution.
Data fabrication and falsification –  manipulative, deceptive or willful suppression and/or  misrepresentation of data, or omission of confounding or contradictory data.

Plagiarism and misuse of intellectual property –  using expressions, language, ideas, and/or thoughts of existing or previously published research and materials without appropriate reference to the original source, and willful misrepresentation of others work as one’s own original work.
Non-compliance with common research practices – failure to comply with established, accepted and ethical practices in the design and performance of methodological research processes; manipulating procedures or outcomes to obtain pre-determined or desired results, willful use of inappropriate statistical or analytical methods to distort or misrepresent results and the improper reporting of data.
Non-conformity to research guidelines – all research must conform to appropriate institutional, national, and recognized guidelines, standards and laws, and the journal will not tolerate violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, drugs, biological or chemical materials.

 

Suspected cases of misconduct should be reported to the LLC Ethics Committee. All cases will be taken seriously and dealt with in strict confidence. LLC adheres to the guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to handle allegations. Concerns of any form of publication misconduct, as described here or in other standards and guidelines, such as authorship issues, plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, citation manipulation, figure manipulation, or any other forms of misconduct, should be reported to the Journal Editorial Office immediately at [email protected]. Any studies involving the participation of human subjects, vulnerable population, and/or animal subjects must be in accordance with the WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and its amendments  and  the European Commission (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation) document titled “Ethics for Researchers Facilitating Research Excellence in FP7”

 

LLC Ethics Committee

This committee includes the Managing Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, and one other editor and is chaired by the Managing Editor. Its primary role is to cope with the complaints received by the editorial office. Within 7 days of a complaint, LLC Managing Editor forwards the complaint to all the committee members and other interested parties. The committee members discuss the validity of the complaint and express their opinion within two (2) weeks of its reception. If necessary, the Managing Editor includes LLC reviewers in the process to obtain their opinion. Opinions from the advisory editors may also be required. Within four (4) weeks from the reception, final decision on the complaint will be made and sent to the parties. This timeframe might be prolonged in specific cases.

Corrections and Retractions

LLC publishes corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern as appropriately and quickly as possible, following the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable. LLC will issue a notice of correction to document and correct substantial errors that appear in online articles when these errors significantly affect the content or understanding of the work reported (e.g., error in data presentation or analysis) or when the error affects the metadata of the publication (e.g., misspelling of an author’s name). In these cases, LLC will publish a correction linked to the original article. Very rare cases require correction of the article itself and online re-post. If that course is taken, a correction notice is also created to document the changes to the original article. Authors who wish to alert LLC to a situation where a correction may be warranted are requested to contact us with the relevant details (journal, full citation of the article, and description of the error) at [email protected] .

 

Authorship

Authors are required to refer to the full submission guidelines described in our Submission pages. LLC requires all named authors to have contributed to an article in at least one of the following ways:

• made substantial contributions to the design of the work, or the analysis or interpretation of data;
• made substantial contribution to the written draft as submitted, and agreed to the final submitted version, or made substantial contribution to revising it;
• agree to be accountable for all aspects of accuracy or integrity of the work, and are willing and able to answer questions related to any part of the work.

Conflicts of Interests

The International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture requests authors to provide a conflict of interest statement for each author, to warrant absence of such conflicts. All authors must declare funding sources, whether or not a study was funded, and the role of funders in any aspects of the work (e.g. research design, data analysis, writing of the submitted work or influence over publication decisions). All reviewers are required to declare any conflicts of interests prior to agreeing to review a manuscript. All members of the LLC Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest prior to joining the Board.

Editorial Board

The LLC Editorial Office consists of an Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors and a Managing Editor. The Editorial Committee consists of the LLC reviewers. This editorial office operates as the governing body of the journal, to make decisions on the editorial scope, or direction of the journal, and to make collaborative decisions about any developments. All members of the LLC Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest prior to joining the Board. Each LLC Editorial Board members has its own profile which is publicly available on the website (editorial board section). The profile consists of the domain of expertise, number of reviews conducted for LLC and date of joining the editorial board. Members of the editorial office are allowed to submit their papers to LLC. Submissions will be assigned to at least two reviewers. The submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the peer-review process. Submissions from members of the LLC editorial board are handled as regular submissions without special treatment. All editorial board members are informed that all necessary information regarding the progress of the peer review can be obtained from the editorial office only. Editors and reviewers should not communicate directly with the authors/reviewers and that is especially important if a member of the editorial board is among the authors. Their affiliation with the journal has to be disclosed in the manuscript ethical statements. The reviewers of these manuscripts will be also notified not to provide any special treatment during the peer review process.

Peer-Review Process

LLC is a peer-reviewed journal and all the papers submitted undergo a double-blind peer-review process. The latter means that the identity of the reviewers and of the authors are not reciprocally known. The journal also supports open reviewing and gives authors and reviewers the option to make their names and reports publicly available alongside the published paper.  All papers undergo initial screening by the members of the Editorial Office. Every single paper submitted to the LLC undergoes a rigorous peer-review procedure by at least two LLC reviewers. In order to review a paper, all reviewers warrant that they have no conflicts of interests in reviewing, can provide unbiased opinions on the scientific soundness of the work, and will treat their review and contents of the article with utmost confidentiality. The International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture encourages all reviewers to be aware of the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). LLC goal as a journal is to enhance and improve research standards around the world, and part of LLC’s mission is to ensure that our reviewing community is equipped with the most recent knowledge and processes to spot potential publication ethical concerns and understand how to report and deal with them. To aid out educational goals, LLC encourages peer reviewers and journal editors, to participate in the free Introduction to Publication Ethics eLearning module offered by COPE. The journal always strives to perform a fast and efficient review process for every paper, but cannot guarantee a specific time in which a decision can be made. The journal does not favor decisions based on author-suggested reviewers, to minimize conflicts of interests. The journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance under any circumstances.

Archiving

As of April 2018, LLC uses Portico as an archiving solution. Portico is among the largest community-supported digital archives in the world. Working with libraries and publishers, they preserve e-journals, e-books, and other electronic scholarly content to ensure researchers and students will have access to it in the future.

Ownership and Management

The International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture is published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI with offices in Spain and Macedonia. Full details and contact of the publisher can be found at: https://euinstitute.net/

 

Advertising Policy

LLC does not accept paid advertising on its website or journals. Article-processing charges support LLC. LLC Editorial Office may, from time to time, use the website to provide notification of programs and conferences sponsored by either the ESI or LLC.

 

Community Adherence

Inclusiveness – A global journal community with authors, editors, and reviewers at every career stage hailing from 49 countries around the world.

Scope – LLC publishes in linguistics, literature and culture sciences.

 

Publication

Review – With LLC authors and reviewers choose the level of openness of the peer review process. LLC encourages reviewers to reveal their names and publish review reports alongside the final article.

Low Publication Fee – Since its foundation in 2014 LLC has set and maintained the lowest possible level of publication fee. With this policy, LLC supports researchers, especially those from developing countries, to publish their papers with decency.

Best Practices – The European Scientific Institute, ESI is a signatory of DORA (The Declaration on Research Assessment, SDG Publisher Compact (UN Initiative), and the Initiative for Open Citations.

Agility – LLC is committed to a prompt, respectful, and thorough peer review of all submitted manuscripts.