I. General statements

1. Authors must become familiar with and adhere to publishing ethics regarding authorship, conflicts of interest, and material distribution to avoid simultaneously submitting the same material to many publications, plagiarism, data manipulation, and other offences.

2. Reviewers and editors must conduct unbiased professional reviews of papers while maintaining anonymity and upfront disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest.

II. General duties and responsibilities of the Editorial Board

1. The journal relies on the main standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

2. The Editorial Board is in control of determining the quality of the material published in a journal.

3. journal users are given technical and informational help throughout the publishing process.

4. Ensures the submissions' integrity and safety.

5. Ensures the confidentiality of content submitted to the journal throughout the editorial and publishing processes, considering the General Data Protection Regulation's requirements.

6. Considers the feedback and ideas reviewers, authors, and readers provide regarding ways to enhance the publication's work.

7. The Editorial Board assures prompt resolution of any issues and promptly replies to complaints regarding the journal's work.

8. The Editorial Board ensures a rigorous peer-review process involving at least two independent experts in the relevant field for each manuscript. Reviewers are selected based on their expertise and ability to assess the work objectively.

9. The Editorial Board closely monitors the journal's content to ensure it aligns with its stated aims and scope. Articles that fall outside the journal's scope or do not meet the expected standards of quality and relevance are rejected.

Cooperation with authors

1. The Editorial Board informs writers of the time required to receive materials and the dates that issues will be published and provides them with thorough information regarding the editorial and publishing process.

2. The writers are given a summary of the review process, and editors are required to explain any deviations from the process to the authors.

3. The editorial board determines the standards for material evaluation and chooses the reviewers for each paper.

4. The Editorial Board sends the authors the reviewers' in-depth remarks.

5. Relevance, originality, relevance to the scientific direction, and relevance to the journal's requirements are taken into consideration when the editor decides whether to accept or reject an article.

6. At the author's request, the manuscript may be removed from consideration and archived in the journal (with the consequent possibility of recovery in the queue). The author should contact the editor and ask them to do this.

Cooperation with reviewers

1. The Editorial Board gives reviewers thorough instructions on how to complete their tasks in the journal system.

2. The Editorial Board asks the reviewer to disclose any potential conflicts of interest before he agrees to review the material sent to him.

3. Reviewers are urged by the Editorial Board to report any instances of plagiarism.

4. The Editorial Board ensures that the review procedure is just, impartial, timely, and objective.

5. Enables reviewers to conduct their respective reviews in the most practical manner by adapting the review procedure to their needs (through the journal or via e-mail).

6. Confidentiality. Before publication, reviewers are not permitted to share the information included in the articles.

Cooperation with the editors

The Editorial Board is obliged:

1. Give new editors thorough guidance on how to use the journal system and publishing process features.

2. Regularly review the body of the editorial staff.

3. Inform the editorial team members regularly of new developments.

4. Give the editors specific instructions regarding their roles, authority, and responsibilities (supporting and promoting the journal).

5. The editorial team is periodically consulted, updated on changes to journal policies and technological advancements, and given suggestions for how the journal might operate.

6. Confidentiality. Before publication, editors are not permitted to reveal the material included in the manuscripts.

III. Status of the author

The individuals who have contributed to the scientific study described in the article should be identified in the list of authors. The order of authors should reflect the relative leadership and importance of the researchers' contributions to this scientific study rather than academic standing, rank, or seniority.

A researcher who has contributed to all subsequent stages of the article's development is the author of the manuscript:

- the concept for the study, the problem statement, and the study's goals;

- the creation of the manuscript's concept and design, as well as the gathering, analysis, and interpretation of data;

- writing the article or overseeing and correcting its critical scientific assessment;

- the final draft's acceptance for publishing.

Each author is responsible for the article's content. If the work was created by a group of scientists, the authors must include a list of the individuals who fit the aforementioned requirements and the name of the group.

A study's financial support or general management is not considered authorship.

IV. Conflict of interest

Conflicts of interest (CI) – are the things that make it difficult to be objective or that may be seen as interfering with the publication, presentation, and publication processes of the article.

The following categories—which are not exhaustive—divide a conflict of interest that may include either people or organizations:

Personal CI:

1. Personal ties to individuals involved in the provision or evaluation of manuscripts (writers, reviewers, editors, or members of the Editorial Board), include friends, family, present or former managers, and rivals;

2. Personal convictions (political, religious, ideological, etc.) about the manuscript's subject could obstruct the impartial publication process (in the submission stage, review, editorial decision-making, or publication).

Professional CI:

1. A coworker of the author who took part in or saw the study's conduct is the reviewer or editor.

2. Membership in groups that advocate for the author's causes.

Financial CI:

1. Research grants from various funding organizations: governmental, non-governmental, research or charitable institutions.

2. Applications for patents, whether actual or anticipated, including those from organizations the author mentions and from which he stands to gain.

3. Any fees, presents, or favours.

4. All parties involved in the paper, including the authors, editors, reviewers, and readers who offer feedback, should disclose any conflicts of interest.

5. The editors do not appeal to this reviewer if they believe circumstances could taint their ability to conduct an unbiased evaluation of the content.

6. The Editorial Board maintains the right to refuse to publish a paper if the author's declared conflict of interest jeopardizes the impartiality and veracity of the research assessment.

7. A manuscript may be rejected if the Editorial Board finds a conflict of interest not disclosed upon submission. The article can be amended or removed if an unreported conflict of interest is found after publication.

8. The journal has a clear policy for handling submissions from Editorial Board members to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Such submissions undergo the same rigorous peer-review process as other manuscripts, with decisions made by editors who are not involved in the work.

V. Access to and use of materials and data

The authors attest that the entirety of the information presented in the publication will be made available in the public domain and may be used by other researchers under the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), with the mandatory attribution of authorship.

Supporting information can also be posted in institutional repositories or on other internet resources, but you must include a link in the article. This information includes data sets, software programs, photographs, audio, and video that cover and enhance the study's content. Materials can be imported into the journal as "Other" when submitting the paper if the author cannot use this resource.

If the article discusses new open-source software, the writers should place it on a relevant resource and give a detailed explanation of the algorithms utilized.

Readers can contact the editors to contact the author further, test the data, and make corrections if there is any doubt about the veracity of the information supplied in the published article and the material cannot be accessed, making it impossible to check it.

If the article does not violate the confidentiality regulation relating to the anonymous questioning of subjects during research, the authors must immediately grant access to all data and materials presented in the article upon request.

VI. Correction and text addition

1. If modifications or explanations are required, the Editorial Board publishes a retraction and an apology.

2. The substance of articles can be improved by editors by clarifying the text and addressing minor errors, but the overall structure is not materially altered. Send an editor request to accomplish this.

VII. Manuscript submitted to several journals

When submitting, authors should attest that the work (or a modified version) has not already been submitted to another journal for review and publication. The editors will not consider such articles if such work has already been submitted to or published in another journal.

VIII. Intellectual property

1. The Editorial Board responds to signals regarding intellectual property concerns and is working to stop potential violations of Ukraine's intellectual property and copyright laws.

2. The journal's Editorial Board monitors the implementation of research findings following international guidelines and documents (eg, AERA and BERA for Educational Research).

IX. Plagiarism

1. The authors' responsibility is the accuracy of the data contained in the articles, as well as of the names, last names, and citations.

2. If plagiarism in their works is discovered, the writers are accountable for them.

3. The journal screens all submissions for potential plagiarism using plagiarism detection software. Articles that show significant overlap with previously published works without proper attribution are rejected.

4. In cases of proven plagiarism or other serious ethical misconduct in published articles, the journal will retract the article and issue a public statement explaining the reasons for the retraction.

X. AI assisting tools

At our journal, we recognize the growing use of AI-assisting tools in natural language processing and its potential implications for research ethics and authorship. Therefore, we require authors to disclose the use of any AI-assisting tools in their research, including but not limited to language models, predictive keyboards, and code assistants. This disclosure should include the scope and nature of their use, as well as any potential sources of plagiarism.

Regarding the use of AI-assisting tools, we distinguish between the following cases:

  • Assistance purely with the language of the paper: The use of tools that only assist with language, like Grammarly or spell checkers, does not need to be disclosed.
  • Short-form input assistance: Using predictive keyboards or tools like smart compose in Google Docs does not need to be disclosed.
  • Literature search: While AI-assisting tools may be used as search assistants, authors should read and discuss the identified literature, and the usual requirements for citation accuracy and thoroughness of literature reviews apply.
  • Low-novelty text: If AI-generated text describes widely known concepts, the authors should specify where it was used and ensure that it is accurate and accompanied by relevant and appropriate citations.
  • New ideas + new text: Using AI assistants to generate new ideas and new text is unacceptable. Most of the generated content may derive from existing work. Potential issues with such practice are related to originality, plagiarism, ownership, and authorship, whose consequences and impact are unclear.

Regardless of the cases above, the journal publishes original work from named human authors, and thus contributions from AI assistants can only be stated in the acknowledgements and/or by suitable references in the original research papers. We require that all authors and editors adhere to these guidelines. Their violation will lead to the removal of the published paper, which is similar to our procedures dealing with plagiarism.