Policy

Open Access

InAct is published under a Libre Open Access model. This model of scholarly communication ensures free, immediate and online access to academic articles for all users without restriction. It allows for unrestricted reading, downloading, copying, sharing, storing, printing, searching and hyperlinking, in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives).

The CC BY-NC-ND 4.0/International license is a publicly available legal framework that defines the permitted scope of use of a Work.

Under this licence, any individual may:

• Share – reproduce and distribute the Work in any medium or format,
• Include the Work in a collective publication (e.g. as part of a compendium),

provided the following conditions are met:

• Attribution – the original work must be properly cited, including the title, author, source (InAct) and the licence used (with a link to the full text of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence conditions),
• NonCommercial use only – the work may not be used for commercial purposes,
• NoDerivatives – any edited, supplemented or otherwise modified version of the Work may not be redistributed.

The full text of the licence terms is available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.en

Editing Services

Authors are responsible for ensuring the quality and accuracy of the language in their submissions.

Data Sharing Policy

The journal encourages authors to make the data underlying their research publicly available where possible. Sharing data promotes transparency, reproducibility, and the wider dissemination of knowledge.

Authors should deposit their data in appropriate, recognised repositories and provide a clear data availability statement within their submission. Where data cannot be shared due to ethical, legal, or confidentiality constraints, authors must clearly state the reasons.

Any shared data should be properly documented to ensure that it can be understood and reused by other researchers. Authors remain responsible for ensuring that data sharing complies with relevant regulations, including data protection and privacy requirements.

Publication Charges and Remuneration

No fees are charged for the submission, processing, or publication of manuscripts. Authors do not receive any remuneration for publishing.

Securing licensing rights for images used in a manuscript, translations into a foreign language, and other requirements necessary for publication are handled in agreement with the editorial team. These responsibilities rest primarily with the author.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Research Ethics

All submissions must adhere to recognised ethical standards in research and publication. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work complies with relevant institutional and national regulations. Research involving human participants, animals, or sensitive data must have received appropriate ethical approval prior to the study being conducted. Informed consent must be obtained where applicable, and participants’ rights, dignity, and privacy must always be respected.

Authors must ensure the accuracy, integrity, originality, and transparency of their work. Any significant use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research, writing, editing, translation, data analysis, or preparation of a manuscript must be clearly disclosed. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and authors remain fully responsible for the content of their submissions.

Plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, undisclosed AI-generated content presented as original scholarship, and other forms of academic misconduct are strictly prohibited.

Publication and Authorship

Editing and publication of the journal InAct follows established principles of academic ethics.

• Articles previously published elsewhere are not accepted for publication.
• Plagiarism, i.e. wrong appropriation of somebody else’s text, research methodology, ideas, or results, or presentation of empiric data that has already been introduced into scholarly circulation as new and freshly discovered, or purposeful neglect of proper references is prohibited.
• Authors retain copyright to their work while granting InAct the right to publish and distribute it under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.
• In case of special circumstances causing termination of the journal’s publication, the archive of the former issues is to be preserved and freely available on the Institute’s website.
• Publication of articles in the journal is free of charge. Authors are not entitled for any financial remuneration for their contributions.

Author Responsibilities

• Manuscripts submitted for publication must meet the requirements of research publications and follow the editing principles specified in the Author Guidelines.
• All authors listed on a paper must have made substantive contributions to the research and writing of the paper.
• Authors must make sure that all data cited in the article are, to the best of their knowledge, real, accurate, and authentic.
• Authors must make sure that all sources of financial support for research connected to a paper are acknowledged on publication.
• Authors are required to take into account the reviewers’ comments regarding soundness of their statements and conclusions, the level of analysis, and other motivated reviewers’ opinions, and correct the indicated mistakes.

Peer Review and Reviewer Responsibilities

Research articles submitted for publication in InAct are reviewed using peer review method by at least two anonymous reviewers, selected by the Editorial Board from the specialists in the corresponding field. If the reviewers present contrary opinions regarding suitability of the article for publication, the Editorial Board appoints a third reviewer, and after receiving their conclusions, makes the final decision.

The process of reviewing is double-blind, i.e. the reviewers are not aware of the authors’ identity, and vice versa.

• The reviewers must disclose to the special editor or the Editorial Board any potential conflicts of interest regarding the manuscripts they are asked to referee, including concerns related to funding or their personal objections to the material in question.
• Reviewers must alert the Editorial Board to any similar or related work already published, which is not cited in the paper in question.
• Reviewers should treat manuscripts under review as confidential materials. They must not discuss, distribute, or in any way retain copies of manuscripts reviewed.

Editorial Responsibilities

• Editorial Board has final authority to accept or reject a submission.
• Editors are responsible for recognizing any potential conflict of interest with regard to a submission and should take appropriate action to ensure that these conflicts do not affect a submission’s acceptance or rejection.
• Editorial Board has to ensure an appropriate level of peer-reviewing and make unbiased decisions with no regard of possible inequity on the part of the reviewers, connected to the author’s gender, sexual orientation, religion, political views, and ethnic / geographical background.
• Acceptance of a paper for publication implies confidence in and certainty (to the greatest extent possible) of the validity of the research contained therein.
• If a material error is discovered in a published paper, the Editorial Board has to ensure that a correction, retraction, or apology, as appropriate and feasible, is published promptly.

Identification of Unethical Behaviour

Misconduct and unethical behaviour may be identified and brought to the attention of the editor and publisher at any time, by anyone. Misconduct and unethical behaviour may include, but need not be limited to, examples as outlined above.

Whoever informs the editor or publisher of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence in order for an investigation to be initiated. All allegations should be taken seriously and treated in the same way, until a successful decision or conclusion is reached.

Investigation Procedures

• Minor misconduct might be dealt with without the wider consultation with author given the chance to respond to any allegations.
• In case of serious misconduct, the editor, in consultation with the publisher or Consortium as appropriate, should make the decision whether or not to involve the employers, either by examining the available evidence themselves or by further consultation with a limited number of experts.

Outcomes

• In case of misconduct, the author or reviewer should be informed where there appears to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards.
• The author or reviewer could be given a more strongly worded letter as a warning to future behaviour.
• A formal notice detailing the misconduct could be published.
• A formal letter could be given to the head of the author’s or reviewer’s department or funding agency.
• Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, in conjunction with informing the head of the author or reviewer’s department, Abstracting & Indexing services and the readership of the publication.
• The case could be reported to a professional organisation or higher authority for further investigation and action.