Academic Integrity Policy

Academic Integrity Policy

Academic integrity is very important for the development of science, scientific publications and universities. Authors' compliance with the requirements of academic integrity is the key to the successful development of the journal, increasing of its impact and reputation, and expanding the circle of readers.

In its policy on academic integrity violations, the editorial board is guided by the Law of Ukraine "On Education", the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity", the Code of Ethics of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv as well as "Regulations on the System of Detecting and Preventing Academic Plagiarism at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv" (2020).

According to the provision of subsection 3¹, paragraph 1 of Article 58 of the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", faculty and staff are obliged to: "observe academic integrity in the educational process and scientific (creative) activity and ensure its observance by higher education students".

According to the Code of Ethics of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, the of the university community are obliged to:

- uphold the values of academic integrity and adhere to its rules in all activities within and outside the university environment (paragraph 2.15);

- take care of personal and university scientific reputation when organizing and conducting scientific and technical activities (paragraph 2.18);

- consider it unacceptable to provide false information about one's educational, scientific, creative activities and their results, to appropriate authorship of texts, in particular academic ones, written by other persons (paragraph 2.19).

According to Article 42 of the Law of Ukraine "On Education", "academic integrity is a set of ethical principles and rules defined by law, which should be guided by the participants of the educational process during learning, teaching and carrying out scientific (creative) activities in order to ensure trust in the results of studies and/ or scientific (creative) achievements".

Violations of academic integrity that may be detected during the editorial and publishing process are:

• alienation of authorship is the transfer by the author(s) of an academic work (or part thereof) created by them on commission or without such commission, for payment or free of charge, to another person and the subsequent publication of such academic work (or part thereof) with the indication of a person who is not its author as the author (Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• academic plagiarism – publishing (partially or completely) scientific (creative) results obtained by other person(s) as the results of one's own research (creativity) and/or reproduction in an academic work or educational work (in whole or in part) of a previously disclosed (published) work (educational work) of other author(s) without indicating the relevant source of information and/or its author(s) (if information about the author(s) is available), and/or publication in an academic (educational) work of a translation of a foreign-language work (or part thereof) without indicating the authorship of the translated work (Article 24 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• attribution of authorship – the publication of a work that lists a person who did not participate in its creation among the authors (Article 25 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• self-plagiarism – publishing (partially or completely) one's own previously published scientific results as new scientific results without indicating the source of the previous publication (Article 26 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• fabrication – inventing data or facts about the results of one's own academic activity by a subject of academic activity (Article 27 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• falsification – a deliberate change or modification of available data, resulting in the creation of knowingly false information regarding academic performance (Article 28 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• misuse of results generated by artificial intelligence (Article 29 of the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity");
• deception – provision of knowingly false information about one's own educational (scientific, creative) activity or the organization of the educational process; forms of deception are, in particular, academic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and cheating by authors (clause 4 of Article 42 of the Law of Ukraine "On Education");
• providing or receiving by a participant in the editorial process or offering to provide (receiving) funds, property, services, benefits or any other benefits of a material or non-material nature in order to distort the publication process and make a positive decision on the publication of the article;
• biased evaluation of the work submitted for publication – deliberate overestimation or underestimation of the results, research content, by reviewers or editors;
• making changes to the text of the submitted manuscript without agreement with the authors.

To ensure the academic integrity observance, all manuscripts submitted to the editorial board of the "Problems of Semantics, Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics" undergo mandatory plagiarism screening by plagiarism detection service StrikePlagiarism at the submission stage, prior to consideration for publication.

All claims of breach of academic integrity should be forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief. In the case of a suspected violation of academic integrity, the Editor-in-chief will act in accordance with the relevant COPE instructions, the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity" and the internal documents of the publication's founder – Code of Ethics of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and "Regulations on the System of Detecting and Preventing Academic Plagiarism at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv" (2020).

If reviewers or editors comment on a potential breach of academic integrity, authors will be asked to provide an explanation. If the explanations are satisfactory and the problem is the result of a mistake or misunderstanding, the problem can be easily resolved. If not, the manuscript will be rejected or withdrawn, and the editors may ban such author(s) from publishing in the journal for a period of time.

In case of published plagiarism or double publication in several journals, an announcement will be made explaining the situation.

If the allegations concern the authors, the review and publication process of their submission will be suspended until the said process is completed. The investigation will be conducted even if the authors withdraw the manuscript.

If the allegations involve reviewers or editors, they will be replaced in the review process during the ongoing investigation.

Authors, reviewers and/or editors may be subject to the following academic liability for breach of academic integrity:

• refusal to publish the manuscript with the notification of the institution – the main affiliation of the author or the reviewer about the violation of academic integrity revealed during the editorial process;
• depriving the editor, reviewer of the right to participate in the editorial work of the publication.

Each person, in relation to whom the issue of having violated academic integrity / failed to comply with academic integrity, has been raised, has the following rights:

• to get acquainted with all inspection materials regarding the establishment of the fact of violation of academic integrity, to submit comments to them;
• personally or through a representative to provide oral and written explanations or to refuse to provide any explanations, to participate in the investigation of evidence of violation of academic integrity;
• to know the date, time and place and to be present during the consideration of the issue of establishing the fact of violation of academic integrity and bringing it to academic responsibility;
• to appeal the decision to bring academic responsibility to the body authorized to consider appeals or to the court (Clause 8 of Article 42 of the Law of Ukraine "On Education").

Violations of academic integrity do not include "honest error" or disagreement.