Policies, Ethics and Malpractice Statement


The European Journal of Educational Sciences (EJES) 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 EJES for publication attest that the submitted works represent an original work, 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 interest with their work or partial benefits associated with it. In the same manner, the EJES is committed to objective and fair peer-review of the submitted works for publication, and it focuses on preventing any actual or potential conflict of interests between the editorial and review personnel and the reviewed material.

Ethical policies

EJES follows 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 wilful suppression and/or misrepresentation of data, or omission of confounding or contradictory data.
Plagiarism and misuse of intellectual property: using the expression, language, ideas, and/or thoughts of existing or previously published research and materials without appropriate reference to the original source, and wilful 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, the wilful 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 recognised 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 EJES Ethics Committee. All cases will be taken seriously and dealt with in strict confidence. EJES 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 which involves 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”

EJES Ethics Committee

This committee is consisted of the EJES Managing Editor, Editor-in-Chief, and associate editor. It 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 reception, the EJES Managing Editor shall forward the complaint to all the committee members and other interested parties.
The committee members shall discuss the validity of the complaint and express their opinion within two (2) weeks of its reception.

If necessary, the Managing Editor will include EJES reviewers in the process to obtain their opinion. Opinions from 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

EJES publishes corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern as appropriately and quickly as possible. We follow the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable.

EJES 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 publication’s metadata (e.g., misspelling of an author’s name). In these cases, EJES will publish a correction linked to the original article.

In very rare cases, we may choose to correct the article itself and re-post it online. If that course is taken, a correction notice will also be created to document the changes to the original article.

Authors who wish to alert EJES 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

EJES 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;
  • Can agree to be accountable for all aspects of accuracy or integrity of the work, and will be willing and able to answer questions related any part of the work.

Authors should refer to the full submission guidelines described in our Submission pages.

Conflicts of Interest

The European Journal of Educational Sciences requests authors provide a conflict of interest statement for each author, to warrant no such conflicts exist.

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 interest prior to agreeing to review a manuscript.

All members of the EJES Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest prior to joining the Board.

Editorial Board

The EJES Editorial Office consists of an Editor in Chief, Associate Editor, Managing Editor and Academic Editor.

The Editorial Committee consists of the EJES 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 EJES Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest prior to joining the Board.

Each EJES reviewer 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 EJES and date of joining the editorial board.

Peer-review process

EJES is a peer-reviewed journal and all the papers submitted undergo a single-blind peer-review process. The latter means that reviewers know the identity of the authors, but authors do not necessarily know the reviewer’s identity. 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 EJES undergoes a rigorous peer-review procedure by at least two EJES reviewers.

The journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance under any circumstances.

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 favour decisions based on author-suggested reviewers, to minimise conflicts of interest.

In order to review a paper, all reviewers warrant that they have no conflict of interest 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 European Journal of Educational Sciences encourages all our reviewers to be aware of the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Our goal as a journal is to enhance and improve research standards around the world, and part of our 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, we encourage peer reviewers and journal editors, to participate in the free Introduction to Publication Ethics eLearning module offered by COPE.

EJES acceptance rate: 2020 = 49%, 2021 = 40%, 2022 = 54%, 2023 = 36%.

Archiving

As of April 2018, EJES 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.

Moreover, along the online content, every EJES edition appears in print version. It also represents a preservation solution. Many hard copies have already been disseminated to Universities and individuals around the world.

Advertising Policy

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

Ownership and management

European Scientific Journal 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/

Community Adherence

  • Inclusiveness

A global journal community with authors, editors, and reviewers at every career stage hailing from Europe and 59 countries around the world.

  • Scope

We publish in educational sciences.

  • Open Review

With EJES the authors and reviewers choose the level of openness of the peer review process. We encourage reviewers to reveal their names and publish review reports alongside the final article.

  • Low Publication Fee

Since its foundation in 2014 EJES has set and maintained the lowest possible level of publication fee. With this policy, EJES 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

We are committed to a prompt, respectful, and thorough peer review of all submitted manuscripts.

Submission from EJES editors and reviewers :

Submissions from members of the EJES editorial board and reviewers will be handled as regular submissions without special treatment. All editorial board members have been 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.

Members of the editorial office are allowed to submit their papers to EJES. Submissions will be assigned to at least two reviewers. The submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the peer-review process. 

Their affiliation with the journal has to be disclosed in the manuscript`s ethical statements. The reviewers of these manuscripts will be also notified not to provide any special treatment during the peer review process.