Acta Geographica Debrecina Landscape & Environment series (L&E) is an electronic peer reviewed international journal committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. In order to provide our readers with a journal of the highest quality we declare our commitment to the principles outlined in this Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

All articles not in accordance with these standards will be removed from the publication if malpractice is discovered at any time, even after publication. L&E checks all papers in a half-blind peer review process. The Journal also checks for plagiarism and research fabrication (invention of research data); falsification (manipulation of existing research data, tables, or images) and improper use of humans or animals in research. In accordance with the code of conduct the Journal will report any cases of suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing.

The Journal reserves the right to use plagiarism detecting software (iThenticate Plagiarism Software-CrossCheck) to screen submitted papers at all times. Submissions are compared against several databases.

Only submissions by one of the authors will be accepted. The submitting author will take responsibility for the paper during submission and peer review. The submitting author can contact negyesi.gabor@science.unideb.hu for support.

L&E is a electronic journal which follows the procedure of the collegial peer-reviewing (half-blind review), as every interested party included in the publication should accept the standards regarding the expected moral behaviour. If authors submit a paper and reviewers accept to conduct a review, it is presumed that they know and adhere to publication ethics.

The L&E Ethical Standards are in accordance with the COPE standards, particularly the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Responsibilities of the editors

Received submissions will be considered by the editors to determine whether they fall within the scope of the journal. Appropriate submissions will be sent out for full external review. The submissions not falling within the scope of the journal will be returned to the submitting author quickly so that submission elsewhere will not be delayed.

Editors have the authority over the editorial content and are responsible to manage the peer review process of the manuscripts. The editor-in-chief makes the final decision about the articles to be published.

The editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, origin or political philosophy of the authors.

Responsibilities of the peer-reviewers

Peer review assists the responsible editor to make editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Any chosen reviewer who feels unqualified to evaluate the manuscript or has conflict of interest about the invitation must inform the editor. If the invited reviewer knows that the prompt review will be impossible, he/she should notify the responsible editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.

All information regarding the manuscript must be kept confidential. Manuscript must not be shown to or discussed with others.

Responsibilities of the authors

The Author(s) must carefully read and then follow the Instructions for Authors of each L&E journal before the submission of the manuscript.

The Author(s) must declare that the submitted manuscript (or any of its part) is currently not being considered for publication elsewhere or has been already published (or, if so, the relevant works must be cited in the manuscript).

The Author(s) must ensure that the manuscript is original, prepared to a high scholarly standard and fully referenced using the prescribed referencing convention.

The Authors must ensure that all the authors participated actively on the manuscript preparation and contributed substantially to study planning, data collection or interpretation of results and wrote or critically revised the manuscript and approved its final submitted version.

The Authors must ensure that all persons listed as authors of the manuscript are aware of and have agreed to be listed and no person who meets the authorship criteria has been omitted.

The Author(s) must ensure that all the Authors participating in the preparation and writing of the manuscript agree to the manuscript publication in the particular L&E journal both online Open Access version after any amendments arising from the peer review, and that the names of the Authors, their affiliations and email address of the corresponding author will be published together with the article.

The Author(s) must carefully read all the conditions included in the copyright form and to accept the copyright during the submission process.

The Author(s) must declare any potential conflict of interest at any state during the publication process.

The Author(s) must cooperate with the editors in correction or retraction of the manuscript if necessary. The Author(s) must immediately inform the editors whenever any obvious error in the published manuscript is identified.

The article must always be formatted according to the journal's requirements prior to the first insertion into the system. Should the article fail to comply with the editorial guidelines, it may be rejected by the Editor of the Journal.

Review process

The L&E journal review process is a “Half-blind review” process, which means that the reviewer identities are concealed throughout the review process. The reviewers are assigned by the Editor of the Journal or Associate Editor, however the suggestions for the reviewers may come from the authors and also from other assigned reviewers.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

The Reviewer(s) must only agree to review the manuscripts for which he or she has the subject of expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and which they can assess in a timely manner.

The Reviewer(s) after receiving the invitation to review the manuscript must immediately notify the Editor(s) whenever he or she feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or sees difficulties to meet the deadline for the completion of the review.

Reviews written by Editors, Associate Editors and Reviewers must always be written in English and must contain comments on article orientation, originality and scientific/research value, article goal, methodology, achieved results, discussion, references and quality of professional English.

The Reviewer(s) must inform the Editor(s) if there is any possible conflict of interest related to the assigned manuscript.

In case the Reviewer(s) cannot review the manuscript, he or she is asked to suggest another expert from the field of expertise.

The Reviewer(s) must treat the manuscript in a confidential manner and not use any part of the content of the reviewed manuscript for his or her future research as the reviewing manuscript is not published yet.

The main task of the Reviewer(s) is to help improve the quality of the manuscript with the appropriate care and attention, review the manuscript objectively and being constructively critical.

The Reviewer(s) must inform the Editor(s) whenever he or she finds similarities between the reviewed manuscript and another article either published or under consideration to another journal.

To avoid plagiarism, after the submission, the manuscripts will be checked by an international plagiarism search software programme (iThenticate). If the similarity index is too high (above 30%) the manuscript will be immediately rejected. In ethical issues the COPE guidelines are followed (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

Authors must ensure that they have written original works. In addition they must ensure that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere. Any work or passages written by other authors, contributors, or sources should be appropriately credited and referenced. Authors are also responsible for language editing before submitting the article. Authors submitting their works to the journal for publication as original articles confirm that the submitted works represent their authors’ contributions and have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works without clearly citing. Any work or passages written by other authors, contributors, or sources (including online sites) should be appropriately credited and referenced. All authors should disclose financial or any other conflict(s) of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript (financial support for the project should be disclosed). When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. An author agrees to the license agreement before submitting the article. All articles must be submitted using the online submission procedure. Submitting a paper simultaneously to more than one publication at a time is a breach of publication ethics.

Editors must ensure a fair half-blind peer-review of the articles submitted for publication. They will strive to prevent any potential conflict of interests between the author and editorial and review personnel. Editors will also ensure that all information relating to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential before publishing. The Editor-in-Chief will coordinate the work of the editors.

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts based on content without regard to the ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors. They must ensure that all information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and must report to the Editor-in-Chief if they are aware of any copyright infringement and/or plagiarism on the part of the author. They must evaluate the submitted works objectively as well as present their opinions on the works in a clear way in the review form. A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor-in-Chief and excuse him/herself from the review process.

Supplementary files

The authors will be informed by e-mail if there is any action required in relation their submission.

When a submission has been accepted, a copy will be returned to the author for copy-editing, and so that the edited version can be read through and any major changes can be made to the article before publication. The authors must send back their final version within 1-2 weeks.

Once the PDF documents have been created, the author will be asked to proofread them before publication. This is the last chance the author will have to make any changes to their article before publication. The author must send back their proofreading corrections within 2-4 days.

Download our Authorʹs declaration here.