ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS 
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Authorship

Editors of Onomastica strongly encourage all contributing authors and co-authors to carefully consider the design of the authorship credit before writing a contribution and before submitting it to the journal. Please take the following remarks into consideration.

Authorship credit should comprise only and all persons who have substantially contributed to the conception, design, and execution of the reported research and/or to writing and editing the submitted text. In the case when the authorship credit comprises more than one author co-authors are strongly encouraged do clearly define their individual contributions by listing the performed tasks resulting in the submitted paper. All persons listed in the authorship credit share the responsibility for the submitted paper and for the findings discussed in it. In order to prevent any authorship disputes we kindly encourage all contributing authors to acquaint themselves with THIS COPE REPORT before preparing and submitting their paper or other contribution.

The contribution is to be submitted to the journal Onomastica by the corresponding author (the sole author of a contribution or one co-author entitled to represent all co-authors of a contribution in contacts with the editors of the journal). The corresponding author is responsible for including in the authorship credit only and all persons eligible for the co-authorship. The corresponding author is obliged to obtain the written approval and agreement of all co-authors before he or she submits the final version of a contribution to the journal. The mentioned approval and agreement should concern not only the content of the submission itself but the authorship credit and acknowledgements as well.

Acknowledgements placed in a submitted contribution should comprise all persons who have participated in important aspects of the discussed research or paper preparation but whose contribution is insufficient to make them eligible for co-authorship. In the Acknowledgements all sources of funding must be disclosed as well.

Inappropriate co-authorship credits comprise, among others, the cases of "ghostwriting" and "guest authorship". "Ghostwriting" is a case when the authorship credit does not comprise all persons eligible for co-authorship or when the acknowledgements do not mention all persons eligible for being listed there. "Guest authorship" is a case when the authorship credit comprises a person or persons who are not eligible for authorship. The corresponding author is responsible for preventing "ghostwriting" and "guest authorship".

Changes in authorship of the submitted contribution require a written consent of all persons remaining in, added to or removed from the authorship credit. These consent must be expressed individually by all these persons directly to the Editor-in-Chief. In the case of any proposed addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors of an already submitted contribution the request is to be sent by the corresponding author directly to the Editor-in-chief. The corresponding author is obliged to provide a clear explanation and justification for such changes in authorship and arrange an effective communication between all persons required to confirm the changes and the Editor-in-chief. Shall any dispute concerning the authorship arise between the persons meant to remain, be added or removed from the authorship credit and shall no agreement be reached by these persons, they are obliged to turn to their parent institutions to settle the issue. In no case are the editors of Onomastica obliged to adjudicate on such authorship disagreements. Shall the issue of changes in authorship be not agreed on properly, the submitted paper cannot be published. Shall an amendment to the authorship credit of an already published paper prove to be necessary, this will be done by means of a correction article. Please note that changes in authorship may be made only on exceptional basis and the corresponding authors are asked to design the authorship credits carefully and with consent of all co-authors.

Originality and plagiarism

Authors submitting their contributions to the journal Onomastica are obliged to ensure that their work is entirely original. If ideas, research, data, works, publications or other intellectual property of others are used in the contribution submitted to the journal, they must be properly cited or quoted so that no impression may arise that these are the original and own work of the authors of the submitted contribution. The references to the used work of others must be clear and in no way misleading. Shall any unpublished information or findings be acquired by the authors from the others, they may be used or reported in the contribution submitted to the journal Onomastica only with the written consent of the source. Among others the following cases are regarded as plagiarism as well: copying others’ wordings verbatim or paraphrasing others’ ideas without attribution, using others’ research or data as if they were conducted and collected originally by the submitting author(s). All instances and forms of plagiarism and using others’ work without proper attribution is unacceptable. Shall any doubt about the originality of the submitted contribution or about the appropriate attribution arise, the editors will contact the corresponding author and ask for explanations. Shall the corresponding author and later on any of the co-authors provide no satisfactory explanation or not response at all, the publication procedure will be suspended and both author’s or authors’ institution and potential victim of the plagiarism may be contacted by the editors of the journal Onomastica.

Redundant or concurrent submissions

In most cases it is not acceptable to publish more than one contribution based essentially on the same research or on the same data or presenting essentially the same findings. It is unethical and unacceptable to submit the same contribution to two or more journals at the same time so that the editorial assessment and peer revision procedures are performed concurrently. If the newly submitted contribution provides a discussion of a substantially improved or extended research or if the changed methodology results in improved findings concerning the previously used data, the reference to the previous publication must be made in a clear way.

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest occurs when personal, professional, financial or any other relationship between an author (or any of co-authors), author’s or authors’ institution(s), editor or reviewer may in any way inappropriately influence or bias their work, actions, judgements or findings. All authors and reviewers are obliged to disclose in their submission or review any such personal, professional, institutional, financial and any other relationships that may influence their behaviour or judgements.

Confidentiality

If unpublished ideas, research, data, works, texts or other intellectual property of others were obtained due to any confidential services (such as peer revision or evaluation of grant application), they may not be used in contributions submitted to Onomastica without the written permission of their authors.

Errors in submitted or published works

Shall the author discover any important errors or inaccuracies in their own submitted or published work, he or she is obliged to inform the Editor-in-chief promptly and to cooperate with the editors of Onomastica on the correction or retraction of the submitted or published contribution. Minor amendments to the published contributions may be made in form of a comment added to the online version of the published contribution. In the case of essential and substantial corrections a separate correction article will be published.

Complaints process

If you have any concerns or would like to appeal of an editorial decision or file a complaint, please contact the Director of the Institute of Polish Language (ijp@ijp.pan.pl) who will pass your appeal or complaint to the Scientific Council of the Institute of Polish Language which supervises the Journal Onomastica.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR PEER REVIEWERS
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Double-blind peer-review

The journal Onomastica uses the double-blind peer-review process. The authorship of the reviewed contributions is not disclosed to the reviewers and the reviewed submissions are anonymized properly. The reviewer must not take any actions in order to discover the authors of the reviewed submission. Shall any assumptions arise in the reviewer about the possible authorship of the reviewed submission which may influence the reviewer’s actions or judgements, the reviewer is obliged to report the possible conflict of interest to the Editor-in-chief.

Conflict of interest

Before agreeing to review a manuscript the reviewer must disclose any potential conflict of interest. A conflict of interest occurs when personal, professional, financial or any other relationship between an author (or any of co-authors), author’s or authors’ institution(s), editor or reviewer may in any way inappropriately influence or bias their work, actions, judgements or findings. All reviewers are required to disclose any such personal, professional, institutional, financial and any other relationships that may in any way influence their actions or judgements.

Unbiased assessment

All reviewers are obliged to provide unbiased assessment of the reviewed contributions. The reviewer’s judgement must be based solely on the scientific and ethical quality of the reviewed work and not on the gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, race, professional or academic position, affiliation or political views of the author(s).

Confidentiality

All reviewers are obliged to keep the ideas, data, findings and any other content obtained in the per review process strictly confidential and must not use them in their work, research or publication or redistribute or share them in any way without the written consent of the authors of the reviewed contributions. Reviewers are obliged to keep the review process itself strictly confidential as well. The complete list of reviewers of the journal Onomastica is made available on the journal website and is updated after every new volume is issued.

Alertness to scientific and ethical issues

If a reviewer has any concerns about the scientific or ethical quality of the reviewed contribution, he or she is obliged to report them to the editors of Onomastica. The reviewer should draw the editor’s attention to any possible substantial or major similarities between the content, findings or wording of the reviewed contribution and any other published or submitted works he or she is aware of. All such ethical concerns reported by the reviewer to the editors should be reinforced with relevant citations.

Proper criticism

Peer review process is aimed at improvement of the submitted contributions and at ensuring the highest scientific and ethical quality of the journal Onomastica. The reviewer’s critical statements must be focused on the reviewed contribution and not on the author. The reviewer’s opinions must be clearly supported with arguments. If any bibliographic amendments are suggested by the reviewer, they must be accompanied with precise bibliographic data. The reviewer should suggest adding any extra quotations or citations to the reviewed submission only if there is a genuine scientific reason for this. The reviewer should avoid recommending additional citations he or she may in any way profit from (e.g. by increasing his/her own citations count or citation count of his/her collaborators or institution).

DUTIES OF EDITORS
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Scientific and ethical standards of the journal Onomastica

The primary duty of the editors of Onomastica is to maintain the highest scientific and ethical standards of the journal. The editors should ensure that the selected and published contributions fit into the aims and scope of the journal, meet the highest scientific and ethical standards and provide notable and novel contributions to the study of proper names.

Preliminary selection and publication decisions

The editors are responsible for the preliminary selection of the submissions that are to be sent to the external peer reviewers and for the final publication decisions that take into consideration the assessments by the reviewers. The editors may refuse to pass a submission to the external reviewers if they consider it to be inappropriate for the journal Onomastica. All decisions are to be made by the editors in a completely unbiased way, i.e. the editorial judgement must be based solely on the scientific and ethical quality of the reviewed work and not on the gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, race, professional or academic position, affiliation or political views of the author(s). All editorial decisions must be made in a timely manner.

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest occurs when personal, professional, financial or any other relationship between an author (or any of co-authors), author’s or authors’ institution(s), editor or reviewer may in any way inappropriately influence or bias their work, actions, judgements or findings. Editors are obliged to disclose any such personal, professional, institutional, financial and any other relationships that may influence their behaviour or judgements.

Confidentiality

Onomastica editors are obliged to keep the whole decision and revision process strictly confidential. The submitted contributions may be neither shared outside the revision and editorial assessment procedure nor used by the editors in their own work, research or publications without the written consent of the authors of the contributions. Editors must protect the identities of the reviewers of specific contributions and the confidentiality of all communications with them. The complete and collective list of reviewers of the journal Onomastica is made available on the journal website and is updated after every new volume is issued.

Peer-review process

Editors are responsible for arranging for an efficient, timely, fair, and unbiased peer review process. The selection of peer reviewers by the editors must be based solely on the reviewers’ ethical quality and expertise in the relevant field and in no way on their gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, race, professional or academic position, affiliation or political views. The editors should effectively communicate and collaborate with the authors and the reviewers and carefully investigate any issues concerning the scientific and ethical quality of the submitted or published contributions. The editors should take all possible and reasonable actions in order to prevent any unethical behaviour.

Editors’ own contributions

In the case of contributions submitted by the members of the Editorial Team or the Editorial Board or their relatives, family members or collaborators, when any possibility of a potential conflict of interest exists, the involved member(s) of the Editorial Team or the Editorial Board must be excluded from the participation in the selection and peer review processes of the relevant contribution. In the case of contribution submissions made by the Editor-in-chief all the editorial duties are performed by other member(s) of the Editorial Team or the Editorial Board.

COPE standards

The editors of the journal Onomastica follow the COPE Code of Conduct. In any cases of suspected misconduct committed by the author the editors act according to the COPE flowcharts.