2. Responsibility of an Editor-in-Chief of a Scientific Journal and Proceedings of a Scientific Conference

  1. An editor-in-chief is responsible for the following:
    • ensuring that the publishing process of a journal/conference proceedings has clearly defined core ethical principles - guidelines for publication submission, requirements for manuscript content and authorship, description of the peer review process, appropriate ethical guidelines and the principle of conflict-of-interest declaration,
    • assuring that information on the core principles of publication ethics is made available to authors,
    • preventing self-plagiarism, plagiarism (5-15% is the acceptable limit), duplicate publication, research fragmentation and ensuring that authors are correctly credited in the work of the editorial board,
    • compliance with the basic principles and norms of publishing ethics set out in the Code of Ethics for Scientists (2.9-2.14) of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, the guidelines of the International Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the RTA Regulations on Academic Integrity, and the RTA Scientific Journals Publication Policy.
    • declaring conflicts-of-interest between authors, an editor-in-chief and reviewers.
  2. An editor-in-chief must be impartial and honest. The assessment of the submitted publication and the decision to publish it must not be influenced by personal reasons (professional, political, religious, ideological, gender, etc. convictions), possible financial and non-financial conflicts-of-interest must be assessed and declared, and the peer review of the publication must be refused if it cannot be carried out for objective reasons.
  3. An editor-in-chief may decide not to publish a paper on the basis of a declaration of conflict-of-interest submitted by an author, reviewer or editor-in-chief, or if a paper does not comply with the Guidelines.
  4. If the editorial board of a journal receives a complaint or submission of an ethical violation, an editor-in-chief should take the steps outlined in the Guidelines and investigate all complaints, even if the publication has been accepted for publishing. An editor-in-chief should retain all documentation related to complaints.