EKONOMICKO-MANAZERSKE SPEKTRUM

Recognized expertise in their respective fields is held by the members of the Editorial and Scientific Boards. Their full names and affiliations are provided on the journal website in the section titled Editorial Board. The contact information for the editorial office is made available on the journal website, in the Contact section.

Decisions regarding the articles submitted to the journal are made by the editors of the peer-reviewed journal, and full accountability for all content published in the journal is borne by them. In the decision-making process, guidance may be taken from the policies of the journal’s editorial board, as well as from legal requirements concerning libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The integrity of the academic record should be maintained, business needs should be prevented from compromising intellectual and ethical standards, and corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies should always be published when necessary.

The integrity of the published record should be guarded by the editors through the issuance of corrections and retractions when needed, and through the pursuit of suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct. Reviewer and editorial misconduct should be pursued. When ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or a published paper, reasonably responsive measures should be taken by an editor.

Decisions about which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published are made by the editors. Such decisions are always driven by the validation of the work in question and by its perceived importance to researchers and readers. Guidance is provided by the policies of the journal's editorial board, and limitations are imposed by legal requirements such as copyright infringement and plagiarism. In making these decisions, consultations may be held with other editors or reviewers.

Each paper should be evaluated according to its intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. The decision to accept or reject a paper for publication should be made based only on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, as well as the study’s relevance to the aim of the journal. No information about a manuscript under consideration may be disclosed to anyone other than the author(s), reviewers, potential reviewers, and, in some instances, members of the editorial board, as deemed appropriate.

No information about a submitted manuscript must be disclosed by the editor or any editorial staff to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate. It is ensured by the editors that material submitted remains confidential while under review.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and must not be used for personal advantage. When retractions, expressions of concern, or corrections are considered for articles published in the journal, guidance is provided by COPE’s Guidelines for Retracting Articles.

A commitment is maintained by the editors to ensure that advertising, reprint, or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. A fair and appropriate peer review process should be ensured by the editor.

When conflicts of interest arise from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers, editors should be recused from the review and consideration of such manuscripts (i.e., a co-editor, associate editor, or other member of the editorial board should be asked instead to handle the manuscript).

All contributors should be required to disclose relevant competing interests, and corrections should be published if such interests are revealed after publication. If needed, other appropriate actions should be taken, such as the publication of a retraction or an expression of concern.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

All submitted papers received by the editorial office are firstly checked by the editors to determine, if they are properly prepared and follow the ethical policies of the journal. The editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editors are guided by the policies of the journal editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as copyright infringement and plagiarism. Papers that do not fit the journal ethics policy or do not meet the requirements of the journal will be rejected before the peer-review process. Papers that are not properly prepared will be returned to the authors for revision and resubmission.

Once a manuscript passes the editorial checks, it will be assigned to two independent experts for a double blind peer-review. The reviewing process is described in details on the journal’s web site in the section Peer Review Policy. Judgements should be objective, reviewers should have no conflict of interest and should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited. Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the paper and the may recommend to: (i) publish the paper in the current form, (ii) publish the paper after minor corrections, (iii) publish the paper after major corrections and an additional review, (iv) reject the paper. The final decision to accept or reject the manuscript will also be sent to the corresponding author along with any recommendations made by the reviewers.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion.

The guidance for authors are published on the journal’s Web site in the section Instruction for Authors. The guidance for reviewers are published on the journal’s Web site in the section Peer Review Policy.

All submitted papers are scanned in order to detect plagiarism, as required of the editors. If plagiarism is detected, the paper is rejected from publication. The journal content is indexed in Similarity Check, the CrossRef initiative established to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism.

Reasonably responsive measures should be taken by the editors, in conjunction with the publisher, when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper. Such measures will generally include the author of the manuscript or paper being contacted and the respective complaint or claims being given due consideration, but may also include further communications being made to the relevant institutions and research bodies. If the complaint is upheld, a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other relevant note may be published. Every reported act of unethical publishing behaviour must be investigated, even if it is discovered years after publication.

The editors ensure digital preservation of access to the journal content on the journal web site. All the printed issues of the EMS journal are available in the registry and library of the Department of Economics, Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, University of Zilina. Based on Slovak publishing regulations on permanent and compulsory availability of all printed issues of scientific journals, all the printed issues of EMS journal are available in 12 most important scientific libraries in Slovakia.

This journal is indexed on outstanding databases such as EBSCO, Index Copernicus, CEEOL, GALE etc., that act as permanent electronic archives for academic journals.

This journal is a member of Crossref, which is an organization for publishing working to make manuscripts easy to find, cite and assess. Crossref is an official Digital Object Identifier Registration Agency.

This journal permits to use copies of the manuscripts on the personal websites of authors, on non-commercial discipline-specific servers of preprints, and within non-commercial digital repositories of non-profit institutions with which the authors are affiliated.

The integrity of the literature is committed to being upheld by the editors, and editorially significant corrections are published depending on the situation. In all cases, the original articles will be removed and replaced with a note stating the reason for retraction along with a corrected version. If plagiarism is found, the entire article will be removed from the journal and replaced with a note indicating the authors’ names and a description of the plagiarism. Notification will be sent to the authors and their institutions.

It is ensured by the editors that the journal website, including the text it contains, reflects that care has been taken to maintain high ethical and professional standards.

Ekonomicko-manazerske spektrum is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published twice a year (June and December).

Ekonomicko-manazerske spektrum journal is unique and cannot be easily confused with any other journal, nor can potential authors or readers be misled about its origin or association with other journals.

Editorial decisions are assisted by peer review, and through editorial communications with the author, assistance in improving the paper may also be provided. Peer review is regarded as an essential component of formal scholarly communication. A fair share of reviewing is expected to be undertaken by authors who wish to contribute to publications.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that a prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process, so that relevant reviewers may be contacted.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editors.

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is considered inappropriate. Clear expression of views with supporting arguments is expected from reviewers.

Independent, external reviewers, who are experts in the given academic field, must not be affiliated with the research centre represented by the author.

Relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors should be identified by reviewers. Any statement indicating that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported should be accompanied by the appropriate citation. The editor should also be alerted by the reviewer to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper known to the reviewer.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer's own research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and must not be used for personal advantage. Manuscripts in which conflicts of interest exist (arising from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers) should not be considered by reviewers.

The paper must be an original unpublished work written in good English. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work, underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

The paper submitted to the EMS journal should neither been published before nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The only exception is if the submitted manuscript builds on previously published articles elsewhere by the same author(s). In this case, author(s) are obligated to show more significant development in the submitted manuscript than the original published article and also to show that the original article is well cited in the submitted manuscript.

All papers are subjected to a double blind, peer-review process. Firstly, each submission is reviewed by the journal editors, who may reject it, if it is not dealing with the subject matter of the journal and does not meet the journal requirements or if it is of a low quality. In the second stage of the review process, the paper is sent to two independent reviewers. The EMS journal uses anonymous double-blind review process. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the paper and they may recommend to: (i) publish the paper in the current form, (ii) publish the paper after minor corrections, (iii) publish the paper after major corrections and an additional review, (iv) reject the paper. Reviewers include the recommendations and comments, which are then sent to the author(s). The editors should not reverse decisions on publication unless serious problems are identified.

Each paper must be submitted by e-mail to: ems@fpedas.uniza.sk. The paper is successfully submitted if the author receives a confirmation e-mail.

The raw data may be requested from the authors in connection with a paper for editorial review. Public access to such data should be made available, if practicable, and in any case, the data should be retained for a reasonable period after publication.

It should be ensured by the authors that entirely original works have been written. If the work and/or words of others have been used, appropriate citation or quotation should have been provided. Plagiarism can take many forms, ranging from the passing off of another’s paper as one’s own, to the copying or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s work without attribution, to the claiming of results from research conducted by others. In all its forms, plagiarism is considered unethical publishing behaviour and is deemed unacceptable.

Manuscripts describing essentially the same research should not, in general, be published in more than one journal or primary publication. The concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is considered unethical publishing behaviour and is deemed unacceptable. In general, a previously published paper should not be submitted for consideration in another journal.

Proper acknowledgment must always be given to the work of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should be cited. Information obtained privately, through conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information acquired through confidential services, such as the refereeing of manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

Authors whose names appear on the submission are considered to have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and are therefore collectively held responsible and accountable for the results. All individuals who have made significant contributions should be included as co-authors. It is assumed by EMS that agreement with the content has been given by all authors, that explicit consent for submission has been provided, and that consent from the responsible authorities at the institute or organization where the work was conducted has been obtained prior to submission. Where other individuals have participated in specific substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The inclusion of all appropriate co-authors, as defined above, and the exclusion of inappropriate ones should be ensured by the corresponding author. Furthermore, it must be ensured that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.

The author(s) must agree that the published version of the paper will be placed on the website of the journal (in pdf format). Before an article goes to print, the author(s) must sign and return the copyright agreement (scanned signed copy in pdf) provided by the journal.

Any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript should be disclosed in the manuscript by all authors. All sources of financial support for the project should be made known. Potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include, but are not limited to, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications or registrations, and grants or other types of funding. Such conflicts should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible. Readers should be informed about the sources of funding for the research and the role played by the funders in the conduct of the research.

When a significant error or inaccuracy is discovered in a published work, the journal editors or publisher should be promptly notified by the author, and cooperation should be provided to retract or correct the paper. If a significant error is brought to the attention of the editors or the publisher by a third party, it is the author’s obligation to ensure that the paper is promptly retracted or corrected, or that evidence is provided to the editor confirming the correctness of the original work.

The journal offers access to the contents in the open access system on the principles of non-exclusive license Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).

There is no publication fee for the manuscript processing in the Ekonomicko-manazerske spektrum.

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Appeals and complaints procedure applies to appeals to editorial decisions, complaints about failure of processes such as long delays in handling papers and complaints about publication ethics. The complaint should in first instance be handled by the Editor-in-Chief(s) responsible for the journal and/or the Editor who handled the paper. If they are the subject of the complaint please approach the in-house publishing contact as regards scientific content, (e.g., an appeal against rejection), processes (e.g., time taken to review), and publication ethics (e.g., author’s, or reviewer’s conduct).

It is assumed by the EMS Journal that agreement with the content has been given by all authors, that explicit consent for submission has been provided, and that permission from the responsible authorities at the institute or organization where the work was carried out has been obtained prior to submission. The guidelines for authorship applicable within the specific research field must be adhered to by all authors.

Substantial contributions must have been made by all authors listed on the submission - whether to the conception or design of the work; the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; the creation of new software used in the work; drafting the work; or revising it critically for important intellectual content. The final version to be published must have been approved, and agreement must have been given to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that any concerns regarding the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, ethics committee approval (for studies involving human or animal subjects), informed consent (for research involving human participants), and statements on animal welfare (when applicable) is requested to be included by all authors. Furthermore, it must be ensured that all data, materials, and software applications or custom code supporting the claims made in the published work comply with field standards.

It must be ensured by the corresponding author that the manuscript has been approved by all listed authors prior to submission, including agreement on the names and order of authors. All communication with the Journal before and after publication must be managed by the corresponding author on behalf of all co-authors. Transparency regarding the re-use of material must be provided, and any unpublished material included in the manuscript should be mentioned in a cover letter to the Editor. All relevant disclosures, declarations, and data transparency statements from all authors should be included in the manuscript as appropriate.

The primary affiliation of each author should reflect the institution where the majority of their work was conducted. Authors are advised to verify the correct author group, designate the corresponding author, and confirm the order of authors at the time of submission. In cases where an author has changed their name, for reasons such as gender transition or religious conversion, a request may be made for the correction of their name, pronouns, and other relevant biographical information in previously published papers.

The use of an ORCID ID when submitting an article is strongly recommended, and authors who do not yet have one may acquire it through the submission process. In cases where a co-author becomes deceased or incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and inclusion as an author is deemed appropriate by the co-authors, approval should be obtained from a legal representative, such as a direct relative.

All communication with the journal, including correspondence with Editors, Associate Editors, and reviewer reports, should be treated as confidential, unless explicit permission has been granted to share such information. In the event of an authorship dispute arising during peer review or after acceptance and publication, investigations or adjudications will not be undertaken by the journal.

Research submitted to the journal must be carried out in compliance with relevant institutional biosafety and biosecurity protocols and any national or international recommendations relevant to the research field. Researchers are expected to be aware of dual-use concerns related to their work and take steps to minimize misuse of their work. Where submitted research is deemed to present a potential dual-use risk, the Editor may ask authors to provide details of how such a risk has been mitigated and how it complies with their institutional and funder’s requirements, as well as any national regulations. We reserve the right to take expert advice in cases where we believe that concerns may arise and may require a manuscript to undergo peer review specifically to assess the dual use risk.

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work and to support the claims they made. Excessive self-citation, coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite, gratuitous and unnecessary citation of articles published in the journal to which the paper has been submitted, and any other form of citation manipulation are inappropriate. Citation manipulation will result in the article being rejected, and may be reported to authors’ institutions. Any attempts by peer-reviewers or editors to encourage such practices should be reported by authors to the publisher.

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work. If there is suspicion of misbehaviour or alleged fraud, the journal and/or publisher will carry out an investigation. If, after an investigation, there are valid concerns, the authors concerned will be contacted under their given email address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the journal and/or publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to: if the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author; if the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction: an erratum/correction may be placed with the article, an editor’s note or editorial expression of concern may be placed with the article, or, in severe cases, retraction of the article may occur. The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, editor’s note, editorial expression of concern, or retraction notice. Retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform marked “retracted”.

Scientific claims can be replicated by access to the raw data, thus assessing the integrity of original published research that must include mandatory availability statements as regards the associated data or figure source data files (even concerning confidential or proprietary data).

Editors of the EMS journal enforce a peer-review process together with ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Authors wishing to publish their papers in the journal must abide to the following:

• Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
• Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
• Republishing content that is not novel, published elsewhere or in other language is not tolerated unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work.
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various publications or to one publication over time.
• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper. Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings. Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data. No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own. Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given.
• If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper or some corrections are to be made, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of the EMS journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.
• The journal uses software to check for plagiarism. Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated and the following measures will be taken accordingly. First, the manuscript that has been proven to be involved in plagiarism will be immediately rejected along with the immediate rejection of any other manuscript submitted by the same authors. Second, each author involved in the violating manuscript will be banned from submitting any new manuscript to the journal in a period of two years.

For any complain or concerns with regard to any publishing article, please contact us at ems@fpedas.uniza.sk. We will acknowledge your e-mail and provide an estimated time to study and solve your complain or concerns.

Individual participants can decide with reference to personal data collected, recorded text, or taken photos, particularly regarding images of vulnerable people or in sensitive contexts. Authors must secure written informed consent, and identifying details of the studied participants must not be made public. Consent is not required if information is anonymized and does not include detailed descriptions that may result in identity disclosure.

The EMS journal supports international ethical standards related to research and publication of research that relate to vulnerable groups and individuals who must receive specific protections throughout the entire scientific enterprise. Ethical oversight focuses on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices.

The welfare of animals used for research, education and testing must be respected. Authors should provide detailed information on the ethical treatment of their animals in their submission, and document informed consent in manuscripts entailing client-owned animals together with adherence to exemplary practice of veterinary care. If a research was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, this information should be presented in the manuscript.

Research studies involving human participants, their data or biological material, should declare a statement that confirms that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the appropriate institutional or national research ethics committee and certify that the study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards (Declaration of Helsinki or comparable ethical standards). To ensure the integrity of the reporting of patient-centered trials, authors must register prospective clinical trials in suitable publicly available repositories. EMS journal advocates complete and transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research and research with biological applications.

Research reporting experiments covering human embryos/embryonic stem cells and gametes, and associated clinical applications must clarify having followed specific guidelines and regulations. A detailed statement must specify the research ethics committee that approved the experiment. Informed consent must be received from cell/tissue recipient/donor, and the circumstances of material donation must be outlined.

EMS journal values stewardship, transparency, and adhering to governance with regards to collecting and utilizing specimens and conducting experiments and/or field studies. Field studies involving genetically engineered plants must be conducted in accordance with national or local legislation and, if applicable, the manuscript needs to include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions or licenses.

Sex as a biological attribute and gender as influenced by socio-cultural contexts must be employed must be employed carefully to keep clear of confusion, including in article title and abstract. Disaggregated data and study design must be configured in terms of sex and/or gender, and respective outcomes clarified.

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, all appropriate measures will be taken by the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, to clarify the situation and amend the article in question. This may include the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work.