Journal policies

Open Access Policy

The Journal of Public Governance is an open access publication. All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Full licence text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

No fees are charged for article submission or processing. A fee of 20 EUR per additional 1,800 characters applies for manuscripts exceeding 40,000 characters (payable upon acceptance).

Copyright

Copyright is retained by the Kraków University of Economics. Authors grant the publisher the right of first publication and non-exclusive publishing rights. Authors retain the right to use their published work without restriction.

Note: Articles published prior to 2022 are subject to a different copyright arrangement, whereby copyright is shared between the author and the publisher.

Self-Archiving Policy

Authors may archive versions of their work in repositories of their choice without embargo:

• Pre-print (pre-refereeing): any website
• Post-print (final draft post-refereeing): author's personal website, institutional repository, academic social networks
• Publisher's version (PDF): all locations listed above

All archived versions must acknowledge the publisher's copyright, provide a full citation with DOI, and include a copy of the licence.

Peer Review Policy

All submissions undergo double-blind peer review by a minimum of two independent reviewers. Authors receive reviewer feedback regardless of the editorial decision. The Editorial Board reserves the right to return submissions that do not comply with the Author Guidelines without external review.

Authorship and Malpractice Statement

Authors bear full responsibility for copyright compliance and all issues related to their submissions. Authors must obtain appropriate permissions to reproduce excerpts, charts, graphics, or other materials from other publications. For multi-authored papers, the submitting author must obtain consent from all co-authors.

Authors are obliged to provide complete information concerning sources of funding, contributions of research institutions, associations, and other entities (financial disclosure).

AI systems do not qualify for authorship. All authors must declare the use of AI tools in manuscript preparation (see AI Policy).

Publication Ethics

The Journal adheres to the principles established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Detailed guidelines are available in the COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Core principles:

• Articles must be original and must not infringe third-party rights
• Articles must disclose the contribution of all individual authors (affiliations and inputs)
• Articles must not display signs of ghost-writing (failure to disclose contributors)
• Articles must not display signs of guest authorship (crediting non-contributors)
• Articles must include complete financial disclosure

The Editors and Publisher document all forms of scientific misconduct. Confirmed cases will be reported to the author's institution and relevant authorities.

Ghostwriting and Guest Authorship

To prevent ghost-writing and guest authorship, the Editorial Board requires authors to disclose individual contributions to the work (concept, hypotheses, methods, protocols, writing, etc.). The corresponding author bears overall responsibility for the manuscript.

Ghost-writing and guest authorship constitute scientific misconduct. Confirmed cases will be reported to relevant bodies, including employing institutions, academic associations, and editorial organisations.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

JoPG uses the Crossref Similarity Check system with iThenticate to screen all submissions for potential plagiarism. See: www.ithenticate.com/about

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy

For Authors: Authors must declare any use of AI tools in manuscript preparation. A separate AI Declaration Statement must be included upon submission and will appear in the published article. The Statement must specify: tool name and version, purpose of use, and extent of author oversight.

AI use in the research process (data analysis, image generation, code development) must be described in Material and Methods. Authors are fully responsible for all AI-assisted content. AI systems cannot be listed as authors. Simple grammar/spelling checkers do not require disclosure.

Example (AI used): "The authors used ChatGPT to assist with language editing and text refinement. All outputs were reviewed, edited, and verified by the authors, who take full responsibility for the content."

Example (no AI used): "The authors declare that no AI tools were used in the preparation of this manuscript."

For Reviewers: Manuscripts are confidential. Reviewers must not use generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) to read, summarise, or draft reviews. Non-generative tools may be used if confidentiality is maintained. Any AI use influencing review content must be disclosed to the editor.

For Editors: Editors must not share manuscripts with external AI systems or use generative AI for editorial assessment or correspondence. Editors must verify authors' AI declarations and seek clarification if undeclared or inappropriate use is suspected.

Editorial Independence

The Editors have the right to select which articles to consider for publication and which to accept or reject, without influence from the publisher or external bodies. Editorial decisions are guided by the policies of the Editorial Board and constrained by applicable legal requirements regarding copyright and plagiarism.

Published articles shall remain unaltered. In exceptional circumstances, an article may be retracted or removed. The Journal's official archives retain all versions, including retracted or removed articles.

Retractions and Corrections

In cases of suspected dishonesty or unethical publishing practices at any stage of publication, the Journal will take action in accordance with COPE guidelines. Misconduct may result in manuscript rejection, article retraction, and notification of the author's institution.

For published articles, the following actions may be taken:

• Author Correction: Published to address significant error(s) made by the author(s) affecting scientific integrity
• Publisher Correction: Published to rectify significant error(s) made by the Journal
• Addendum: Published when significant additional information crucial to understanding comes to light
• Editor's Note: Online-only notification alerting readers to an ongoing inquiry (not indexed)
• Retraction: Issued when evidence of unethical research, unreliable data, misconduct, plagiarism, or substantial errors undermines the integrity of the work. The original article is marked as retracted; a PDF remains available. The retraction statement is bi-directionally linked to the original paper.

Authors and readers are encouraged to report errors to the Editor-in-Chief. Reported errors will be investigated and discussed with the authors prior to correction.

Removal of Published Content

In exceptional circumstances, the Journal reserves the right to remove an article temporarily or permanently from the online database if:

• The article is defamatory, infringes intellectual property rights, privacy, or other legal rights, or is otherwise unlawful; or
• A court or government order requires removal of such content.

In these circumstances, the metadata (title and authors) will be retained with a statement explaining the removal.

Digital Preservation

Published content is archived in the digital repository of the National Library of Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa).

Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)