Journal Policies

Archiving Policy

Publishing House “Virtus Interpress” understands and supports concerns of our stakeholders with regard the need for preservation and access to scholarly research as publishing moves into the online era. Our policy addresses this question of archiving directly to reach the best compromise for all interested parties.

Publishing House “Virtus Interpress” is committed to the archiving and the long-term preservation of and access to the scholarly research information published in our journals and other publications.

For this purpose, first of all, we use services of Portico which is among the largest community-supported digital archives in the world. Working with libraries and publishers, Portico preserves e-journals, e-books, and other electronic scholarly content to ensure researchers and students will have access to it in the future.

Secondly, the publishing house will act as an archive for all electronic information published by in our journals. There are several sources of information storage and archiving. First of all, information is stored and available on the web page of the publishing house. Secondly, information is achieved and continuously updated on the hard drives of our offices computers and well as on the separate drives that are stored outside offices premises in order to be preserved in case of emergency. Moreover, the information is stored on several encrypted cloud storage facilities to guarantee their safe archiving. Updates of the archives are being made with defined periods of time regularly.

If the publication of any of our journals is terminated, Virtus Interpress will continue to preserve the journal content for the long term and will charge an appropriate access fee to consumers. In the case that Virtus Interpress should decide to discontinue its activity as a publisher, we will make our best effort to make arrangements to transmit the electronic publication archive for long-term preservation to a trusted third party acceptable to our network.

Self-archiving

By publishing with “Virtus Interpress” the authors keep the rights of self-archiving. Below you may find the main rules and recommendations with regard to the self-archiving policy of “Virtus Interpress” journals:

• For gold (immediate) open access option

There is no embargo on the archiving of articles published under the open access category. Authors can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher’s version/PDF on their personal websites, their institution’s repositories or any non-commercial repository for personal use, internal institutional use or for permitted scholarly posting.

The link to the original source of publication should be provided by inserting the link to the published paper on the webpage of the journal.

• For subscription-based option

Under this option Virtus Interpress reserves (holds for its own use) all the rights provided by copyright law regarding all non-OA articles. In a case if there is a transformative agreement between the university and the Publisher of the journal, the authors can request from Editorial Office of the journal for uploading a copy of the manuscript on their personal websites, their institution’s repositories or any non-commercial repository for personal use, internal institutional use or for permitted scholarly posting. In any case, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of publication and a link should be inserted to the published article on the journal’s website.

Licensing and Copyright Policy

• For gold (immediate) open access option

Published articles under OA option are instantly accessible for free to readers anywhere across the globe on our website, maximizing the visibility of authors’ publications. Articles are also free to download, print and share online, provided the terms of the Open Access license below are followed.

Virtus Interpress Open Access articles fully meet the requirements of funding bodies or academic institutions.

Since January 25, 2019 all Open Access articles published by Virtus Interpress are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

The user licenses define how readers and the general public can use the article without needing further permissions. This one is the most accommodating of licenses offered by Creative Commons. It allows users to copy, to create extracts, abstracts and new works from the Article, to alter and revise the Article, and to make commercial use of the Article, provided the user gives appropriate credit (with a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI), provides a link to the license, indicates if changes were made and the licensor is not represented as endorsing the use made of the work. In other words, this license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.

Please note that all the Virtus Interpress Open Access articles published before January 25, 2019 are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

In the way of such change of providing CC BY 4.0 (the most accommodating of licenses offered) instead of CC BY-NC 4.0, we address respect to our network and provide an opportunity to our authors to disseminate their research completely freely.

Copyright on any Virtus Interpress Open Access article is retained by the author(s) without restrictions. Authors grant Virtus Interpress, an exclusive unlimited license to publish the article under a Creative Commons license and identify Virtus Interpress as the original publisher. Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as well.

For copyright issues connected to self-archiving please see the Self-Archiving policy.

Virtus Interpress is committed to serving the needs of authors, funders, institutions, and other stakeholders and can use alternative Creative Commons licenses on request. Send queries to info[at]virtusinterpress.org.

• For subscription-based option

Under this option Virtus Interpress reserves (holds for its own use) all the rights provided by copyright law regarding all non-OA articles.

Any republication, translation, systematic copying, distribution, or multiple reproductions of Virtus Interpress published and copyrighted material is not permitted.

It can be allowed for those articles which are subject of the transformative agreements of the Universities and the Publisher of the journal to post and update the articles on a free-access e-print server using files prepared and formatted by the author. Any such posting made or updated after acceptance of the article for publication by Virtus Interpress should include a link to the online Virtus Interpress platform with journal article abstract. In all cases, the appropriate bibliographic citation and notice of the Virtus Interpress copyright credit must be included.
In all the other cases, the author has to ask official permission from the Editor of the journal, in which the article has been published.

Special issue policy

Special Issues are collections of papers centered around a subject of special interest and are organized and led by subject experts who take on the role of Guest Editor of the Special Issue. All submissions follow the same peer review process as regular papers. Special Issue articles must not consist of overviews of the authors’ previously published work e.g. peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, official reports etc. The journal special issue policy can be found here.

Waiver policy

After receipt of the APC payment instructions, the author should apply to his/her institution for the funds to cover the cost of publication. If the author’s institution is unable to cover the cost of publication, the author can submit an APC waiver/discount request application to the administrative personnel. The administrative personnel will consider each application individually and make a decision on waiver depending on all relevant factors.

Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent and which may influence the judgment of author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies and company support for staff. The authors, reviewers and editors should consult Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) GUIDELINES ON GOOD PUBLICATION PRACTICE how to act once the conflict of interest is suspected.

Research Publication ethics

The authors should follow the international standards of responsible research publication promoted by Committee on Publication Ethics.

Identification and prevention of research misconduct

Publishing house “Virtus Interpress” and editorial team of the journal take necessary steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.

The papers submitted to the journal are checked with the Crossref Similarity Check Service to ensure their originality.

Peer reviewers and editorial staff ensure that no research misconduct was involved in writing the paper.

In the event that a journal’s publisher or editorial team are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal – we follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations. When sharing of information among Editors-in-Chief regarding possible misconduct, Editors-in-Chief of our journal refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines.

Ensuring research and publication integrity requires institutions and journals to cooperate with each other on all aspects of research and publication integrity. Our journal cooperates in this context with institutions referring to the guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) “Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases". Also, we refer to CSE’s White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications with regard to section 3 of this document: Identification of Research Misconduct and Guidelines for Action.

Policy on plagiarism

In 1999, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)5,6 defined plagiarism as “Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ published and unpublished ideas including research grant applications to submission under new authorship of a complex paper, sometimes in a different language. It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing or publication; it applies to print and electronic versions.”

Authors, who submit their papers to the Journal automatically agree that their manuscripts will be checked for plagiarism with the Crossref Similarity Check Powered by to ensure originality of their submissions.

Guidelines for reviewers, editors and authors in a case of plagiarism detection are issued by COPE below
https://publicationethics.org/files/plagiarism-submitted-manuscript-cope-flowchart.pdf

Retraction and Correction Policy

To recognize the issues of possible fraud and misconduct during the publishing process Virtus Interpress realizes the strict policy concerning paper correction and retraction.

In pursuit of maintaining high scientific and publication standards, we approve the transparent editorial policy with regard to retractions and corrections.
Virtus Interpress standards on retractions and corrections are based on publication guidelines and research ethics. The main issues of our policy are presented in the following rules:

Retractions

Retraction is a mechanism for correcting the literature and alerting readers to publications that contain such seriously flawed or erroneous data that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon. Unreliable data may result from honest error or from research misconduct.

Retractions are also used to alert readers to cases of redundant publication (i.e. when authors present the same data in several publications), plagiarism, and failure to disclose a major competing interest likely to influence interpretations or recommendations.

If retraction of the paper is necessary, then we adhere to Retractions Guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Corrections

Any revisions in the paper are to be made after the review (taking into account recommendations of the reviewer and editor) and before paper acceptance.

After the typesetting stage the corresponding author of the paper receives the layout of the Journal issue with the accepted paper to check before publication. It is a duty of the corresponding author to accumulate comments of all coauthors (if any) and to provide them to the editorial team in one message withing two weeks. Any small corrections (e.g. typos, punctuation) can be accommodated on this stage. If there are no comments or corrections, corresponding author should confirm that the paper will be published in the form received from the editorial team.

The corresponding author can address a request to the journal Managing Editor to change the authorship of the paper (adding a new author, in particular) before the paper is accepted by the journal Editor-in-Chief (when submitting the revised paper).

The author can`t make any corrections to the paper after the final publication on the web page of the Journal. Every unusual situation can be separately discussed with Editor-in-Chief after official query.

The authors should study guidelines about post publication discussions and corrections issued by COPE

DOI assignment

Virtus Interpress publishing house has signed an agreement with CrossRef and became a member of PILA (Publishers International Linking Association). PILA is a non-profit association of more than 5,000 publishers, universities, scientific societies and other publishers of scientific materials. The aim of the organization is development and introduction of technological and other citation standards, as well as the development of other related publishing technology. In order to implement its tasks PILA acts as a DOI Registration Agency.

Therefore, we established the procedure of consistent processing of all the articles published in all the journals, from the moment of their initiation, and assignment of DOIs to each of them. All the articles that will be published in the future will also receive DOI. Financial obligations associated with the DOI assignment are covered by Virtus Interpress and do not have an effect on the financial part of the relationship with the authors.

So, the papers will be referenced properly and any changes will not affect the accessibility of your paper. We are keeping pace with modern trends in the scholarly publishing industry in order to help authors and potential readers to identify their article among other scholarly papers of a global community.

Complaints

For complaints or recommendations please contact the editor of the journal.

Protection of the authors’ privacy

In the journal, we indicate only the postal address of the corresponding author. It is our policy to protect authors from illicit and spam e-mails. Contact e-mail of the authors can be obtained from the editorial office with the previous agreement of the author.

Complaints policy

The process of problem and solution in research and publication is valid for issues about the policies, procedures or actions of Corporate Governance and Sustainability Review. We welcome complaints as they provide an opportunity to improve our journals and its content constructively.

CRITERIA OF A COMPLAINT

Our definition of a complaint is as follows:

The issue indicates the complainer’s expression of dissatisfaction
The issue relates to any kind of failure of process like an impolite or delayed response or some kind of mistake
The issue is within the responsibility lines of Corporate Governance and Sustainability Review

Virtus Interpress holds awareness of the following complaints:
Authorship complaints
Plagiarism issues
Duplicate, multiple publication
Simultaneous submission
Misappropriation of Research results
Allegations of research errors and fraud
Violations of Research standards
Undisclosed conflicts of interest
Reviewer bias or acts of harm out of competition by reviewers

HOW WE HANDLE COMPLAINTS

A complaint is investigated by the Journal, if the received complaint bears an issue of copyright or property rights, or contains material inaccuracies or otherwise unlawful materials.
The involved parties may be requested to substantiate their claims during the investigation.
A faithful decision will be made about the removal of the allegedly wrongful material.
In case of no removal of the material, the decision must represent the Journal’s belief that a complaint with no foundation may face a legal defense or exemption, like a fair use in copyright infringement or truthfulness of statement in the case of libel.
All the investigations and decisions are to be documented by the Journal.
We strive to make sure that the content of the Journal possesses exemplary quality and is entirely free from overlooked mistakes and errors.
However, we also recognize the fact that mistakes are bound to happen occasionally.

EDITORIAL COMPLAINTS POLICY

The Editors and staff at Virtus Interpress strive to set matters right as soon as possible, offering quick responses. The complaints are investigated without any victim-blaming, in the most appropriate ways to better the system and prevent the frequent mistakes.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

We strive to address all complaints as quickly as possible. We believe that the intensity of problem can be reduced by acknowledging them at the right time. As a matter of fact, all the substantial errors and complaints are directly referred to the Editors.

MAKING A COMPLAINT

The procedure given below may be taken as a fair guideline by the complainer as well as those complained about.
All the complaints will be acknowledged quickly within three days via email.
We try to provide a definite response after the investigation within two weeks. However, in case this becomes an uncertainty, we will provide an interim response within the same period of time. Such responses will be provided until the final resolution of the complaint.
In case the complainant still remains dissatisfied regarding the issue, the complaint will be referred to the Editor whose decision would be considered final.

CONTACTING US

Any complaints can be issued to the following email – info@virtusinterpress.org or to the Co-Editor - alex_kostyuk[at]virtusinterpress.org