Ghostwriting, guest authorship and plagiarism

In order to guarantee the scientific quality of the journal, Forum Scientiae Oeconomia has developed procedures with the aim of dealing with problems related to ghostwriting, guest authorship, and plagiarism. We consider scientific malpractice to be a significant breach of scientific ethics, as not only may it concern a breach of intellectual property rights and a sign of bad science, but it may also reduce trust in science, which can have serious negative consequences not only for trust in the scientific community, but also for socio-economic development.

Ghostwriting - the contribution of the co-author(s) to the article is not mentioned.

Guest authorship (honorary authorship) - a person is identified as co-author despite not having contributed to the article.

The authors should mention the contribution of others to the development of ideas. This also concerns informal conversations, where someone else comes up with an original idea. This person should obtain credit for this from the author(s).

Plagiarism – this phenomenon is interpreted as a case when resources are not given and/or when the thoughts of other authors are not properly paraphrased. The authors should make clear when thoughts are their own, but also give credit to the authors whose work created the basis for developing their thoughts.

The resources should be given in such a way that the reader can easily find the original source, while being able to verify data (when used).

Autoplagiarism – this phenomenon is interpreted as a case when the article contains more than 10% of text already published by the same author somewhere else. When using and paraphrasing one’s own work, the resource also should be identified. In special cases, publishing a translation of an article or a reprint of an article is allowed, under the condition that the original source is clearly mentioned in the first footnote. This is allowed when FSO considers it worthwhile to make the article available to the wider public.

Improper or unsound scientific practice, based on the decisions of reviewers, the editor or the editorial board, may lead to the following consequences:

• Exclusion from publication of the article in question in FSO.
• Depending on the seriousness of the improper practice, the author may be excluded from future publication in FSO, while the employer of the author and other institutions and journals will be informed.

In the case of more than one author, all authors are held responsible. The reason is that FSO assumes that co-authorship is based on strong cooperation between the authors, as well as peer review of co-authors regarding the individual contributions.