The editorial board calls on all authors who intend to submit a manuscript for consideration to the journal “Business Ethics and Leadership”, to adhere to the principles of scientific transparency, honesty, thoroughness and excellence in research, transparency, respect for co-authors or research participants, etc.

The Editorial Board of the journal “Business Ethics and Leadership” adheres ethical and integrity standards of science and follows COPE principles. Before sending the manuscript to review, all papers are checked for originality. According to the Aims and Scope of the journal, authors must represent only own ideas and research results. When submitting their papers, authors agree that Managing Editors will screen the articles for originality.

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

The BEL journal uses two programs for checking the originality of submitted manuscripts. These are StrikePlagiarism.com and iThenticate.

The iThenticate tool, as a component of the powerful Similarity Check service initiated by the PILA publishers association and registered in CrossRef international scientific and research information register, is the most trusted plagiarism checker by the world’s top researchers, publishers, and scholars. Using iThenticate allows early detection of potential plagiarism before works are published.

The StrikePlagiarism.com system has been recognized by ENAI (European Network for Academic Integrity) as one of the best anti-plagiarism systems, being the most convenient for use by educational institutions, publishers and other organizations. Plagiat.pl operates in 20 countries (Poland, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Romania, the Philippines, Georgia, Bulgaria etc.).

Both programs provide the evaluating process with detailed reports. When checking the article for originality using these software, one can see the clear data: all similarities are marked with colour, there is a list of links to original sources, the percentage of plagiarism.

Plagiarism appears in different forms from copying word by word to rewriting. The following forms of plagiarism should be considered:

Literal copying – a form of plagiarism where authors copy the text of research word by word, without permission or acknowledgement of the source.

Substantial copying – a form of plagiarism where authors replicate substantial part of the manuscript without permission and confirmation of the source. Substantial part of the text includes quantity and the quality of the copied fragment. Quality is evaluated by relative value of copied text comparing to the whole text. When the author of the work copies the essence, the program will find plagiarism.

Paraphrasing – the most difficult form of plagiarism, type of copying without literal replicating.

Manuscripts should not contain plagiarism. The Editorial Board will reject the manuscripts if they contain any form of plagiarism. The presence of plagiarism in the article testifies the unethical and unprofessional behavior of the author (co-authors) and is likely to undermine the reputation of the author (co-authors) and the publisher.

The editorial board will reject manuscripts if they contain any form of plagiarism:

• Direct plagiarism. This is a verbatim transcription of a portion of someone’s work without attribution and without quotation marks. Turnitin also calls this cloning plagiarism;
• Copy (Ctrl+C). The work contains significant chunks of text from one source without modification and relevant references;
• Self-plagiarism (recycling). Material borrows liberally from his own previous works without proper references;
• Mosaic (patchwriting). This type of plagiarism occurs when an author borrows phrases from a source without quotation marks or finds synonyms in the author’s language while maintaining the same general structure and meaning of the original;
• Casual plagiarism occurs when an author neglects to cite his or her own sources, misquotes them, or inadvertently paraphrases a source using similar words, word groups, and/or sentence structure without citing the source;
• Remix. Paragraphs are taken from several sources, but fit to each other;
• Hybrid. The work combines proper references with copied parts of the text without reference;
• Mashup. The work mixes copied material from many resources;
• Links to non-existent sources (404 Error). The work includes references to non-existent sources or has inaccurate references;
• Aggregator. The work is properly referenced, but has almost no original contribution;
• Find-Replace. The main content of the source is preserved, and only keywords and phrases are replaced;
• Re-Tweet. The work is properly referenced but relies too heavily on the wording and/or structure of the original source.

Other types of research violations

In addition to plagiarism, there are a number of cases in which the action is recognized as research misconduct:

• manipulation of authorship or disregard for the role of other researchers in publications (incomplete or incorrect identification of the authors of the article, incorrect distribution of the author’s contribution and specification of the roles of authors, co-authors and other research participants);
• submission or publication of the same study in two journals, both at the same time and several years apart;
• over-publishing (known as “salami publishing”) refers to the practice of submitting parts of the same study to two or more journals, or having previously published research results without attribution, permission, or justification;
• manipulation of citations (excessive self-citation of authors; excessive citation of articles from the journal in which the author publishes a scientific article; excessive citation of the work of another author or journal, or so-called “honorary” citation, selective citation to improve one’s own performance or to please editors, reviewers or colleagues);
• falsification of data (manipulation of research data, violations in the process of setting the parameters of the setting of the equipment used in the process of conducting the research to obtain the desired result of the experiment, biased correction of data in the process of their processing, leveling of individual data in the process of the experiment, etc.);
• data fabrication (use of known implausible data in the research process, deliberate distortion of research results, use of unreliable information in the process of data collection or data processing. In addition, a form of data fabrication is the use of references to non-existent publications in the list of literary sources or distortion of the bibliographic description);
• reprinting significant portions of his early publications, including translations, without proper acknowledgment or citation of the original;
• concealment (silencing) of research results;
• enabling sponsors to compromise the independence of the research process or the reporting of results in such a way as to formulate or disseminate a biased view of the research;
• unjustified expansion of the research bibliography;
• maliciously accusing the researcher of committing a misdemeanor (crime) or other violations;
• distortion of scientific achievements;
• exaggeration of the importance and practical significance of the results;
• delaying or unnecessarily complicating the work of other researchers (sabotage);
• abuse of official position to encourage violation of research integrity;
• ignoring alleged violations of research integrity by other persons, or covering up a misdemeanor (crime) or other violations by institutions;
• creating or supporting journals that neglect research quality control (“predatory journals”).

Procedure for handling allegations of research misconduct

If ethical violations are detected in the process of submission, review or publication of the manuscript, the editorial board applies the following procedure:

• Informing all authors and/or reviewers about discovered facts of research violations, non-compliance with publication ethics and misconduct.
• Publication of an official notice with a detailed description of misconduct on the journal’s website.
• Termination of consideration and review of the manuscript (if it has not yet been published) or retraction of the article (if the facts of unethical behavior are discovered already after its publication).
• If the discovered facts of ethical violations on the part of the authors are significant, the editorial board reserves the right to inform about it the organizations where the authors work, the institutions that funded the research, or other research bodies.

In case of violation of the Research misconduct policy the following sanctions may be imposed:

1. Immediate rejection of the manuscript and other subsequent manuscripts submitted by the author(s) to any journal co-founded by Sumy State University.
2. Prohibition on submission of manuscripts for consideration within 1–2 years.
3. Prohibition on holding the position of editor and performing reviewer duties of any journal co-founded by Sumy State University.