Editorial policies
This is an open access quarterly journal.
The journal accepts only manuscripts that follow the international standards of reporting research, available at https://www.equator-network.org/, and comply with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), as well as the principles of the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki.
Original papers, reviews, research letters, and editorial material (the latter by invitation only) should be submitted electronically via the journal’s Editorial System. Author(s) declare that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere or is not being considered for publication elsewhere. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript will be screened for plagiarism. Editors initially verify the manuscript and decide to review it, send it back for adjustment, or reject it. Editors are allowed to make a desk rejection. Editors send the anonymous version of the manuscript (if it was not rejected at the previous stage) to two (2) or more expert reviewers in the field. After receiving reviews, Editors decide to accept the manuscript, send it back to Author(s) for corrections, or to reject it. Editors are allowed to reject the manuscript even based on a single negative review. Author(s) receive the anonymous version of the review. When the manuscript is returned to the corresponding Author for revision, it should be returned to the Editorial Office within 14 days; otherwise it may be considered withdrawn. Editors reserve the right to reject a manuscript in case the revision is not submitted within 2 months since the decision. Editors send the manuscript for verification by a web-based plagiarism program. All the detected cases of scientific misconduct will be exposed, including notification of relevant institutions.
The manuscript is initially accepted for publication and the corresponding Author receives an email with a link to the License Agreement Creative Commons. Attribution 3.0 Poland (CC BY 3.0 PL). Each Author is required to fill it in, scan and the corresponding Author shall upload the scanned Agreements to the Editorial System. The manuscript will not be published unless we receive the License Agreement from all Authors. At this stage, before the final acceptance of the article for publication, the required payment must be settled. Once the article processing charge (APC) has been paid, Authors are not entitled to a refund, and are not allowed to suspend or withdraw the article from the journal.
Editors reserve the right to decide upon the order of publication of the accepted manuscripts without taking into consideration the date of final acceptance, which means that some articles might take priority over others.
Our journal allows Authors to hold the copyright without restrictions. Authors have the right to withdraw the manuscript at any time prior to its publication.
The manuscript is linguistically and/or technically verified and corrected by Editors if such an option was chosen by Author when submitting the manuscript, or later – after the initial acceptance of the manuscript. If Authors decide to prepare the manuscript for publication on their own, they still need to comply with the high standards of the journal. Otherwise, the manuscript may be rejected even at this final stage. Authors receive the galley proof of the manuscript, which should be sent back to the Editorial Office within 3 working days; otherwise the publication may be withdrawn or published without Authors' corrections. Changes to the galley proof may not exceed 3% of the manuscript volume, unless they have been consulted with Publisher. The manuscript is published. The full version of the manuscript is available on the journal's website. The assigned DOI (digital object identifier) is activated. The article becomes accessible also via medical databases.
Changes to authorship following the online publication of the manuscript are not permitted.
Authors are allowed to use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process before submission. However, these tools may only be employed to improve the language and readability of the paper, with appropriate disclosure. AI tools should be applied with human oversight and control, and Authors should carefully review and edit the results, as AI can generate output that is incorrect, incomplete or biased. Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed as an author or co-author. Authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.
The AI prompt used in the production of the work, as well as the AI tool and its version should be disclosed in the Material and methods section. Please note that the Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the accuracy of the work and should carefully review their manuscript to prevent any bias that may be introduced by AI. It is the responsibility of the Authors to ensure that all sources are appropriately cited and that there is no plagiarism. Editors may decline to move forward with manuscripts that use AI inappropriately.
Authors who use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies as aids in the writing of the manuscript must include this information in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript. Moreover, they must disclose the use of AI technologies by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the manuscript body (main text) file. The statement should be placed in a new section entitled “AI usage in the writing process”, following the format below:
During the preparation of this work, the Author(s) used [TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the Author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.
The use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts is not permitted. This may include enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing a specific feature within an image or figure. Adjustments of brightness, contrast or color balance are acceptable as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Image forensics tools or specialized software might be applied to submitted manuscripts to identify suspected image irregularities.
The only exception is if the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies is part of the research design or research methods. This could include, for example, AI-assisted imaging approaches to generate or interpret the underlying research data, as is the case in the field of biomedical imaging. In such instances, the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be described in a reproducible manner in the Material and methods section. This should include an explanation of how the AI technologies were used in the image creation or alteration process, as well as the name, version and manufacturer of the AI model or tool. Authors should adhere to the AI software’s specific usage policies and ensure correct content attribution. Where applicable, Authors may be asked to provide pre-AI-adjusted versions and/or the composite raw versions of the images used to create the final submitted versions, for editorial assessment.