Publication Ethics
The editorial board of the journal maintains a certain level of requirements in the selection and acceptance of articles submitted to the editorial staff. These rules are determined by the scientific direction of the journal and the standards of quality of scientific works and their presentation, accepted in the scientific community.
The editorial calls for adherence to the principles of the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publications developed by the Committee on Ethics of Scientific Publications (COPE).
Ethical Obligations of Journal Editors
The editor should review all manuscripts submitted to the publication without prejudice, evaluating each manuscript properly, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or the position or place of work of the author (s).
Information is not allowed to be published if there is sufficient reason to believe that it is plagiarism.
All materials submitted for publication are carefully selected and reviewed. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the article or to return it for further revision. The author is obliged to revise the article according to the comments of the reviewers or editorial board.
The decision of the editor to accept the article for publication is based on such characteristics of the article as the importance of results, originality, quality of presentation of the material and the correspondence of the journal profile. Manuscripts may be rejected without review if the editor believes that they do not fit the journal's profile. In making such decisions, the editor may consult with members of the editorial board or reviewers.
Ethical obligations of authors
Authors should ensure that they have written completely original articles, and that if the authors have used the work or words of others, then it has been properly framed in quotation marks or quotes.
Submitting an identical article in more than one journal is considered unethical and unacceptable.
The article should be structured, contain enough links and be designed as required.
Unfair or deliberately inaccurate statements in the article constitute unethical conduct and are inadmissible.
The author who corresponds with the editorial board must ensure that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the article and have agreed to its publication.
The authors of the articles bear full responsibility for the content of the articles and for the very fact of their publication. The editorial board does not bear any responsibility to the authors for the possible damage caused by the publication of the article. The editorial board has the right to remove an article if it is found out that in the course of publication the article violated someone's rights or generally accepted norms of scientific ethics. The editorial board informs the author of the fact of removal of the article.
Ethical obligations of reviewers
The editorial staff adheres to double-blind peer review to ensure that the manuscripts are evaluated objectively
Since the review of manuscripts is an essential step in the process of publication and, therefore, in the implementation of the scientific method as such, each scientist is obliged to do some work on the review.
If the selected reviewer is not sure that his or her qualification is relevant to the level of research presented in the manuscript, he must return the manuscript immediately.
The reviewer should objectively evaluate the quality of the manuscript, the experimental and theoretical work presented, its interpretation and presentation, and the extent to which the work meets high scientific and literary standards. The reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the authors.
Reviewers should adequately explain and reason their opinions so that editors and authors can understand what their comments are based on. Any statement that an observation, conclusion, or argument has already been published must be accompanied by a reference.
The reviewer should draw the editor's attention to any significant similarity between this manuscript and any published article or any manuscript submitted to another journal at the same time.
Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in this manuscript unless the author agrees.
- All manuscripts are initially reviewed by editors to evaluate their relevance to the subject matter and requirements of the journal.
- The submitted manuscripts are sent to the reviewer (one of the members of the editorial board, a specialist in the relevant field). The manuscript is subjected to double-blind peer review: neither authors nor reviewers know each other.
The review procedure is focused on the most objective evaluation of the content of the scientific article, determining its compliance with the requirements of the journal and provides a comprehensive analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the article.
The reviewer concludes that it is advisable to publish the article, indicating the main shortcomings of the article (if any), as well as the conclusion about the possibility of publication: "recommended", "recommended with correction of these shortcomings" or "not recommended".
The most common reasons for refusing to publish an article are:
– bad or wrong structured publication;
– lack of scientific novelty;
– the article does not have enough actual references to literary sources;
– the article contains theories, concepts, or conclusions that are not fully supported by the data, arguments, or information;
– the article has poor language quality.
- The decision is forwarded to the author (s). Articles to be revised are sent to the author (s) along with a review text that contains specific guidelines for revising the article.
- The revised version of the article is sent for re-review. In case of negative result, the article is rejected and is not subject to further review.
The editorial board does not enter into discussions with the authors of the rejected articles.
General duties and responsibilities of the Publisher
Publishing House "Helvetica" and the society on behalf of which it publishes shall ensure compliance with the standards outlined above. To this end, the relationship between publisher, editor and other parties should be clearly defined.
- Foster freedom of expression.
- Supervise the peer-review process.
- Protect intellectual property and copyright.
- Respect privacy on research participants, authors, reviewers.
- Monitor submitted material to identify plagiarism, fraudulent data and overlapping content.
- Guarantee respect for the special requirements for human and animal research.
- Monitor transparency and integrity (e.g., conflicts of interest, research funding, authorship/contributorship)
- Publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
- Prevent business needs compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
- Prosecute any form of misconduct in accordance with international guidelines (flowcharts of the COPE’s code of conduct).
- Make sure that all actors in the process work effectively towards the achievement of timely publication.
Sponsors
It is published at the expense of the authors.
Plagiarism
All scientific articles submitted to the editorial office are subjected to a plagiarism test by special software StrikePlagiarism.com by Plagiat.pl. We protect the rights of authors/co-authors and investigate statements about plagiarism or misuse of the published articles. If a plagiarism is detected after publication, the journal may post the correction or recall the article.
Retraction Policy
The Editorial Board follows retraction policy to warn readers about self-plagiarism (authors submit the same data in several journals), academic plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification, disguise the conflicts of interests, which would affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use. The retraction of the scientific article is the mechanism of correcting published data and alerting readers about articles with serious gaps or invalid content, incl. unreliable one. The publication of such data may be accidental or intentional misconduct.
The retraction’s goal is to inform readers about the article which contains unreliable data.
Based on the Recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journal staff is guided by the below policy of retraction of previously published articles.
Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
it contains material or data without authorization for use;
the research findings have previously been published;
the article has serious errors (e.g., the misinterpretation of research findings) which call into question scientific value;
authorship is invalid (the inclusion of persons who do not meet the authorship criteria, or no one is worth being the author);
the author(s) failed to disclose a conflict of interests (as well as other violations of publication ethics);
the article was republished with the consent of the author(s);
there are other violations of ethics.
Grounds for initiating article retraction:
the author’s request to retract the article;
the request of the third parties (e.g., participants in the conflict of interests) who have evidence of the violations of academic ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;
the editorial board has found ethics violations by the article’s author.
The Academic Integrity Commission of National University of Water and Environmental Engineering decides about article retraction by relying on the decision of the Editorial Board.
Information on article retraction is available on the journal’s web-site.
The surname(s) of the author(s) and article title are kept in the contents of the relevant issue on the journal’s web-site, but reasons for retractions are specified.
The decision reasoning article retraction is sent to the author (s).
Statement on the Use of Generative AI (GenAI)
The journal Rehabilitation and Recreation recognizes the growing role of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, Bard, or Claude, in academic research and scholarly writing. We support the responsible and transparent use of such tools in accordance with international ethical standards and publishing guidelines.
GenAI tools cannot be listed as authors. Only human researchers can take responsibility for the integrity, originality, and accuracy of a submitted manuscript. Authors are fully accountable for all content, including any material generated with the help of AI tools.
GenAI may be used to support language editing, improve clarity, or assist in literature reviews. However, its use must not replace critical thinking, data interpretation, or scientific reasoning, which are the foundations of scholarly research.
If GenAI tools were used at any stage of manuscript preparation, authors must explicitly disclose this in the “Acknowledgments” or a dedicated section of the manuscript. A sample disclosure:
"Portions of this manuscript were supported by the use of generative AI tools to assist with language editing and text refinement. All content was reviewed and verified by the authors."
Authors must not use GenAI to generate, fabricate, or alter data, references, or findings. Submissions found to rely on AI-generated data without verification or transparency will be rejected or retracted.
The editorial board follows COPE’s guidance on AI use in research publishing and reserves the right to request original data or explanations from authors concerning their use of GenAI. Misuse of AI tools will be treated as a potential breach of research ethics.
