Educational Discourse
Editorial standards

Publication ethics and editorial policies

Principles for evaluating and reviewing scholarly work and for publishing and preserving every accepted article.

Ethical principles

The journal’s publication ethics and editorial policy are based on COPE guidance and internationally recognised standards of scholarly publishing.

Publication decisions

The editor-in-chief makes publication decisions with regard to editorial policy, scholarly significance, reviewers’ reports, and plagiarism checks. Manuscripts are assessed solely on their intellectual and scholarly content.

Confidentiality

The editor and editorial board do not disclose information about submitted manuscripts. Every manuscript sent for review is treated as a confidential document.

Conflicts of interest

Editors, reviewers, and advisers must withdraw where competitive, professional, collaborative, or other relationships could compromise impartiality.

Responsibilities in the editorial process

Editor-in-chief

  • Makes publication decisions based on the editorial board, reviewers, and plagiarism-check results.
  • Protects manuscript confidentiality throughout the editorial process.
  • Resolves ethical disputes and retains original reviews for five years.
  • Decides on retraction or rejection when copyright or research-ethics standards are breached.

Editorial board

  • Is responsible for scholarly quality and keeps review information confidential.
  • Checks submissions against the journal’s scope and formatting requirements and appoints independent specialists.
  • May return a manuscript for revision or reject it when requirements are materially unmet.
  • May reject a submission where self-plagiarism exceeds 15 percent.

Reviewer

  • Provides an objective, reasoned assessment through double-blind peer review.
  • Maintains confidentiality and observes the review period set by the editors, normally two weeks.
  • Does not use manuscript ideas or content without the author’s written permission.
  • Recommends publication, revision, or rejection.

Author

  • Guarantees originality and confirms that the work is neither plagiarised nor under review elsewhere.
  • Accepts responsibility for facts, citations, quotations, and translations and names all substantial contributors.
  • Observes copyright law and discloses relevant project, grant, or funding support.
  • Retains authorship while granting the journal first-publication rights under CC BY 4.0.

Policy on the use of AI

AI-assisted tools must not compromise academic integrity, intellectual-property rights, personal-data protection, transparency, accuracy, or the author’s responsibility for the submitted work.

Permitted uses

  • Language editing and checks of grammar, spelling, style, and structure.
  • Technical formatting of manuscripts, abstracts, references, or tables.
  • Translation, provided that the author verifies the result.
  • Supporting data analysis, visualisation, coding, or processing where the author can explain the method and verify the output.

Prohibited uses

  • Submitting text generated wholly or predominantly by AI.
  • Fabricating, falsifying, or distorting data, charts, images, observations, or results.
  • Using AI to conceal plagiarism, unattributed borrowing, or other forms of academic misconduct.

At submission, authors must disclose the tool, purpose, stage, and extent of AI use, confirm that all outputs were checked, and accept full responsibility for the final text.

Example disclosure: ‘In preparing this article, the author(s) used [tool name] solely for [purpose]. All outputs were critically checked and edited by the author(s), who accept full responsibility for the article.’

Editors and reviewers must not upload manuscripts, reviews, or personal data to open or unverified AI services without appropriate legal and security safeguards.

Undisclosed or improper AI use may result in a request for explanation or revision, rejection, additional review, a published correction, or retraction.

Complaints procedure

Complaints concerning possible breaches of academic integrity or publication ethics must be submitted in writing to the editorial email address with a description, grounds, evidence, and contact details.

The complaint is registered and referred to the editor-in-chief. Where necessary, a temporary committee is formed and the author is invited to respond.

Possible decisions

  • Dismiss the complaint where no breach is substantiated.
  • Publish a correction where minor errors are identified.
  • Retract the article where serious academic-integrity breaches are confirmed.
  • Reject a manuscript where a breach is found during review.
  • Notify the author’s institution or another relevant organisation where appropriate.

An appeal may be lodged within 30 calendar days. Every complaint is considered impartially, confidentially, and fairly.

Archiving policy

The journal provides long-term preservation and open availability through its electronic archive and recognised external repositories.

Archives and dissemination systems

  • The journal’s official electronic archive.
  • Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.
  • Dragomanov Ukrainian State University Repository.
  • Crossref, OJS, and DOAJ.
  • Index Copernicus, Google Scholar, ResearchBib, and OUCI.

Long-term preservation measures

  • Durable PDF, XML, and HTML formats.
  • A persistent DOI for every publication.
  • Regular backup and data-recovery procedures.
  • Reliable server and cloud storage protected against data loss.

Readers may freely download and use articles under the applicable open-access licence. Compatibility with scholarly databases and search systems supports visibility and citation.