The Medical Law Review applies COPE guidelines in the field of publication ethics.

Their full content can be found here: https://publicationethics.org/files/cope-publication-ethics-flowcharts-full-set.pdf

Only original, previously unpublished works are accepted for publication. Articles should be sent for publication after obtaining the consent of all authors who contributed to the work. Persons submitting works should make sure that all people who contributed to the creation of the article are indicated as co-authors.

Authors are obliged to provide information about the sources of financing for the publication, such as national grants.

All articles published in the Medical Law Review are subject to double-blind review. The editors of the journal appoint as reviewers persons who are not in a direct reporting relationship with the authors of the articles or in any other direct formal or informal relationship.

The Medical Law Review takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other violations of publication practices very seriously and documents all instances of scientific misconduct. In an effort to protect the rights of our authors, complaints of plagiarism or misuse of published articles are always investigated.

The magazine opposes the practices of "ghostwriting" and "guest authorship". All detected cases will be disclosed and the relevant entities will be notified of the situation.

 

Authorship and obligations of authors

1. The author of the article is a person who:

• made a significant contribution to the concept or design of the work, or obtained, analyzed or interpreted data used in the work; and
• prepared a preliminary draft of the article or critically assessed it in terms of content; and
• approved the final version for publication; and
• took responsibility for all aspects of the work, ensuring that all issues relating to the care and integrity of each part of the work were investigated and clarified.

2. The corresponding author is a person responsible for the entire publication sent for printing, who receives and responds to reviewers' comments.
3. If the work is prepared by several authors, each of them is obliged to submit a declaration of contribution to its creation and their separate consent is required to submit the work for publication in the journal. Information about the nature of the contribution of each author should be provided.
4. The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors are listed as co-authors of the article, that there are no inappropriate persons among them, and that all of them have seen and approved the final version of the article and agreed to its publication.
5. The obligations of authors include in particular:

• presenting research results in a competent, credible, honest and beyond doubt manner;
• preparation of the text based on the latest literature on the subject, key to the presented research problem;
• ethical conduct of research in accordance with COPE guidelines in this area (https://publicationethics.org/node/19891);
• publication of an original scientific work that has not yet been submitted for publication in another journal or publishing house;
• refraining from submitting the same text in parallel to another publication;
• refraining from multiple, unnecessary or simultaneous publication of the same text;
• providing an appropriate footnote to a given fragment whenever the text refers to statements, research results or data developed by other authors;
• obtaining the express written consent of a third party whenever information obtained in conversation or correspondence with such third parties is referred to in the text;
• providing information on sources of research financing.

6. Before submitting a text, you must submit a declaration that there is no risk of violating the ethics of publishing related to authorship, referred to as ghostwriting and authorship (guest author). Ghostwriting means a situation when a person who significantly contributed to the creation of a publication was not disclosed as its author or, in the case of a contribution of a strictly technical nature that does not qualify such a person to be an author, his or her contribution was not described in the publication. Guest authorship is the opposite situation, in which a person is mentioned in the publication as the author, although his contribution to the creation of the text is insufficient or missing.
7. If more than one person participated in the creation of the text and the preceding research, any changes to the authorship information, in accordance with the COPE guidelines, require the written consent of all authors. Each of them should express such consent separately in an electronic letter addressed directly to the editor-in-chief of the journal. The obligation to provide a clearly defined reason for the proposed change and to coordinate interactions between the authors and the editor-in-chief rests with the corresponding author.
8. If the authors fail to reach an agreement regarding the authorship of the work, they should appeal to the authorities of the native entities, which are responsible for making the final decision. The Publisher does not undertake to mediate in such disputes.
9. If the described procedure concerns an already published article, the authorship information is changed by publishing an editorial note in the next issue of the journal.

Intellectual property and licensing

1. The author declares that the work is an original work and does not infringe any
   personal or property rights of third parties. In particular, the work does not constitute plagiarism, understood as unlawful attribution of the authorship of all or part of another person's work, or intentional misleading as to the authorship of the work, or self-plagiarism , understood as re-publishing fragments of one's own, previously disseminated works or parts thereof as new works, without attribution information about this.
2. The authors of articles accepted for publication in the journal retain the copyright to the works.
3. The publisher retains the copyright to the content of the magazine's website.
4. The author concludes a publication agreement, according to which he grants the publisher a non-exclusive and royalty-free license to use the work without territorial restrictions and for an indefinite period of time in the following fields of exploitation:

• producing copies of the work using a specific technique, including printing and digital techniques;
• placing on the market, lending or renting the original or copies of works;
• public display and reproduction, as well as making the works publicly available in such a way that everyone can have access to them at a place and time of their choosing;
• inclusion of the work in a collective work;
• entering the work and the work's metadata in electronic form onto electronic platforms;
• distributing the work in electronic form on the Internet, Intranet, Extranet or other network, in collective work or independently;
• the work is made available in accordance with the Attribution - No Derivative Works 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license template as available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.pl or another language version of this license or any later version of this license published by the Creative Commons organization ;
• making works publicly available in such a way that everyone can have access to them at a place and time of their choosing.

5. The publisher has the right to make any necessary changes to the work resulting from the editorial work.
6. The journal provides free access to all published texts in accordance with the principle that freely available research increases and accelerates the global development of science and the exchange of knowledge.
7. All works are permanently archived on the magazine's website in the version in which they were published.
8. The journal does not charge authors any fees related to the procedure of sending and editing texts. There are also no fees for processing items after acceptance.

The peer review process

1. All articles published in the journal are subject to a double-blind review (the principle of mutual anonymity of the reviewer and the author of the article is maintained).
2. Reviewers are asked to complete their reviews using a standardized review form. The form contains the necessary guidelines on what elements the review should include.
3. The review must include the reviewer's clear conclusion regarding the conditions for accepting the article for publication or rejecting it. The review should be prepared with due care and include a comprehensive assessment of the reviewed text. Reviews that clearly do not meet the substantive and formal requirements of a scientific review will not be taken into account, including reviews dominated by unjustified critical opinions or unjustified praise, devoid of a logical connection between the content and the conclusion.
4. The time allocated for preparing a scientific review is generally approximately 2 weeks, counted from the moment the editor sends a request for a review. Please note that this time may be extended due to unforeseen circumstances.
5. Each review is prepared by one reviewer. The editors appoint as reviewers persons selected from among specialists in a given field, who are not in a direct reporting relationship with the authors of the articles or in any other direct formal or informal relationship. Reviewers are selected by editors randomly assigned to a given text, taking into account the scientific interests of potential reviewers, i.e. experts in the field of law, ethics, medicine, natural and social sciences.
6. The author may submit a well-justified request to exclude a given expert from participating in the review process (including in the case of a conflict of interests). The validity of such a request will be verified each time by the Editorial Board.
7. The editors decide to publish the text based on two independent reviews. In the event of conflicting assessments, the editorial office may, in consultation with the Editorial Board of the journal, appoint a third reviewer, whose opinion will be decisive. The final decision on whether or not to accept the article for printing is made during a vote by the Editorial Board.
8. The content of the reviews is made available to the authors while maintaining the necessary confidentiality standards.
9. If the reviewer has reasonable suspicion that the author has violated his obligations, he is obliged to notify the editor-in-chief of the journal.

 

Suspected breach of obligations owed to authors

 

1. The editor-in-chief of the journal is the contact person in case of suspicion that the author of the publication has violated his obligations. Any person may contact the editor-in-chief if he or she can prove that the author of the publication has violated his or her obligations.
2. If it is probable that the author of the publication has committed a breach of his/her obligations (in particular by demonstrating significant similarity or partial overlap of the reviewed work with any other work published and known to the author or by substantiating plagiarism), the editorial office will ask him/her to clarifications and then - if necessary - take appropriate steps provided for in the COPE guidelines. At a later stage of the proceedings, this may mean in particular (but not only) notifying the authorities of the author's scientific unit, rejection of a given article, as well as a refusal to publish in the journal any texts written by a person acting reprehensibly.
3. The Editorial Board is the body competent to consider notifications regarding cases of infringement by authors of their obligations. Decisions will be made by an absolute majority of votes in the form of circular voting. Circulation voting is coordinated by the editor-in-chief or editorial secretary and is carried out in compliance with the necessary confidentiality standards.

Appeals, complaints and cases of conflict of interest

1. Complaints regarding improper conduct of editors and reviewers (in particular breaches of confidentiality, incorrect use of classified information, failure to disclose conflicts of interest) and appeals against the decisions of editors/reviewers (both substantive and administrative) will be addressed directly to the editor-in-chief of the journal.
2. The possibility of a conflict of interest between authors and editors or reviewers should be disclosed by the editor, reviewer or author, who will be informed about it immediately after receiving the article. The conflict of interest is understood as professional dependence (professional subordination), direct scientific cooperation (in the last two years preceding the year of preparation of the review) and direct personal relationships (relationship up to the second degree, marriage) between the author and the editor or reviewer of the text.
3. Complaints regarding improper conduct of editors and reviewers will be considered by the editor-in-chief of the journal, who will take steps to clarify all circumstances of the violation alleged in the complaint.
4. The Editorial Board (excluding the editor whose decision is appealed against) will draw consequences adequate to the scale of the violation in the event of improper conduct of editors and reviewers (including in the form of a warning, reprimand, exclusion from participation in any further activities concerning the complainant, suspension of membership rights editorial office or exclusion from the editorial office). Decisions will be made by an absolute majority of votes in the form of circular voting. The circulation votes are coordinated by the editor-in-chief or the editorial secretary.
5. If a conflict of interest is disclosed after the text has been published in the journal, the Editorial Board will take appropriate steps to explain the impact of the conflict of interest on the publication process. If the impact of a conflict of interest on the publication process is identified, the Editorial Board will decide to withdraw the text or include an appropriate editorial note in the next issue of the journal.
6. Appeals against the decisions of editors/reviewers will be considered by the Editorial Board (excluding the editor whose decision is appealed against). Decisions will be made by an absolute majority of votes in the form of circular voting. The circulation votes are coordinated by the editor-in-chief or the editorial secretary.

Correction and response to the text

 

1. The journal is open to discussion about published texts through the text response institution. Replies should be sent to the editorial office's e-mail address or via the electronic form intended for submitting texts for publication. Replies to the text are published in the journal on the general principles applicable to the publication of all submitted works.
2. It is possible to make corrections or withdraw the text after its publication if the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in his own published work.
3. The correction is made in the form of an editorial note or errata published in the next issue of the journal.
4. Information about the withdrawal of the text takes the form of an editorial note published in the next issue of the journal and includes the reasons for withdrawing the article.

 

Journal financing and journal management

1. The journal is financed by the Medical University of Warsaw.
2. The journal is co-financed by funds from the Medical University of Warsaw.
3. New members of the editorial board are selected by the editor-in-chief of the journal in consultation with the members of the Editorial Board from among the people proposed by the Board.
4. Before joining the editorial office, each new member undergoes training on the procedures regulating the functioning of the editorial office and the publication process. The training is conducted by the editorial secretary or editor-in-chief of the magazine, either on-site or remotely. The training includes, in particular, familiarizing a new member of the editorial staff with procedures designed to ensure the exclusion of conflicts of interest and guarantee confidentiality.