Rules of good academic practice

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The academic research work rests on the principles valid in all countries and in all scientific disciplines. As the rules of good academic practice are the foundation of research, in accordance with that, the respect of these same principles is the binding precondition of the publication of papers in the journal Istraživanja. The said rules of good academic practice are the following:

- academic honesty in scientific work, both to oneself and to others, because dishonesty is the exact opposite of the essence of academic work;

- systemic skepticism, i.e. constant readiness to doubt, even one’s own hypotheses and results;

- readiness to accept criticism of other colleagues;

- an objective view of the contribution of other academics;

- the author of an original paper must be proven to be anexpert competent in the field that he/she is researching;

- the authors of an original academic paper are considered to be only the ones who have made a significant contribution to the writing of the paper and in the research that preceded. In accordance with that, all the authors of a certain paper are fully responsible for the content. Every participation in the research which does not represent authorship should be accordingly mentioned because the so-called “honorary authorship” is absolutely unacceptable;

- academic papers must be written in accordance with the international practice with respect to originality and authorship. For that reason the paper which is an original academic contribution:

  1. must offer new original knowledge which is the result of one’s own research conducted by a scientific method;
  2. must have research results that fully correspond to the conducted research and offer a critical view of the research problem or field;
  3. must not have any forged, made up or plagiarized data, results, ideas or procedures;
  4. must support new original knowledge with evidence and describe it fully and clearly;
  5. must objectively estimate the academic contribution of other authors and offer correct and full references relevant for the topic of the research;
  6. should repeat the previously published conclusions only to the extent to which it is necessary for the understanding of the context of the topic of the research;
  7. must not publish the results of the previously published research;
  8. must respect other authors’ rights;

- the reviewers must respect the rules of confidentiality, must reveal a possible conflict of interest, and must objectively assess the manuscript sent to them.