Principles of reviewing, accepting and preparing articles for publication

Submitting an article

1. Manuscripts to be published in "Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości" (ZTR) and the declaration form for authorship must be sent by the author or one of the co-authors electronically via the website and the ICI Publishers Panel (PP): https://ztr.skwp.pl. Information on this topic is provided in the section: For Authors.  

Principles of reviewing, accepting and preparing articles for publication

1. All scientific manuscripts submitted via the Publishers Panel ICI electronic system undergo a preselection procedure conducted by the ZTR Editorial Team. The editor in charge of the article assesses the text for relevance to the journal’s objectives and scope, checks for plagiarism (using the SimilarityCheck anti-plagiarism tool in ICI's PP system), and applies the requirements specified in the Instructions for authors. Manuscripts that do not meet the preliminary criteria are rejected at this stage. The initial review process usually takes 3–7 business days.
2. Pre-qualified texts are subjected to a double-blind review process (the author does not know the names of the reviewers, and the reviewers do not know the author's name) by two reviewers who specialize in the subject area of the article. If the reviewers give two extreme opinions, the article is forwarded to a third reviewer.
3. In the reviewing process, reviewers and authors are personally and professionally independent of each other, i.e., they must not be employed by or affiliated with the same scientific unit. Reviewers cannot be current members of the ZTR Editorial Team.
4. Reviewers are required to complete the review within 3–4 weeks via the publication panel used by the Editorial Team. In exceptional cases (e.g., when the electronic publication panel does not work periodically), the reviewer may prepare the review in an editable version on the provided form in MS Word (see: Instruction for reviewers).
5. The review of the article for ZTR includes two parts. The first section of the reviewer's opinion contains information to be seen only by the Editorial Team. The second section contains a detailed evaluation of the submitted paper and the reviewer's recommendation: ● accept ● accept with minor revisions ● accept with major revisions ● reject.
6. Papers are reviewed in accordance with the uniform evaluation criteria included in the review form. The following criteria are taken into account: the alignment of the title and content of the article with the thematic scope of the journal, the accuracy of the abstracts in Polish and English, coherence between the title of the article with its content and purpose, the research methods utilized, the presentation and documentation of research, the depth of exploration of the research topic, the originality of the concept (considerations), contribution to the existing state of knowledge, use of the literature on the subject, completeness of bibliographic references, and linguistic correctness.
7. Reviewers are responsible for identifying and including in the review any publications that the author should have cited but did not, as well as providing the Editorial Team with information about unauthorized borrowing, suspected plagiarism, or self-plagiarism.
8. Submissions that have received negative opinions from two reviewers or one negative and one "requires major revisions" are not accepted for publication.
9. Papers that receive two widely differing opinions, e.g., "accept" or "accept with minor revisions" and "reject" are evaluated by a third independent reviewer.
10. Authors should correct the article within the deadline indicated by the managing editor. In justified cases, this deadline may be extended but should not exceed three months from the date of receipt of the review.
11. Authors of articles evaluated by reviewers as requiring improvement are asked to take into account the reviewers' comments in the revised version of the article. Authors correcting the texts according to the reviewers' comments are also asked to post in the PP system, along with the corrected version of the article, separate, anonymous information about the changes made to the text (response to the review).
12. In the event that one or both reviewers formulated significant comments in the review, the revised version of the article will be reviewed again. It shall be carried out by one or both reviewers who evaluated the original version of the article in accordance with their opinions expressed in the review in the first round of evaluation.
13. The decision to qualify or not to accept the article for publication is made by the Editorial Team after receiving the final revised version of the article from the author(s). The decision takes into account the comments and suggestions contained in the reviews and whether the article now meets the substantive and editorial requirements.
14. The last issue of ZTR of a given year contains the list of reviewers. This list is also available on the journal's website (see: Reviewers) 
15. Articles using complex statistical or econometric methods are reviewed by the ZTR statistical editor, a scientific expert in the field. The statistical editor prepares an opinion, which is forwarded to the author(s) to make additions and changes to the article, if necessary.
16. Articles accepted for publication must be provided by the author(s) in the form of editable files (.doc, .docx).
17. Articles accepted for publication are subject to substantive and linguistic editing.
18. Editors reserve the right to make title changes, abbreviations, and editorial corrections in the article in accordance with ZTR's requirements.
19. Editors cooperate with the author(s) on an ongoing basis in the process of the editorial development of the article.

Corrections and retractions

1. The Editorial Team considers retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern in line with COPE's Retraction guidelines.
2. When a serious error is found in a published article, or a significant part is considered invalid (for instance, the theoretical part is identical to another published text), or it includes confidential information or dishonestly uses another work, the text will be deleted from the issue (the electronic version), and the information about the reason (e.g., fraud, plagiarism) will be provided.
3. Should an error be revealed to be the fault of the author, a correction will be published.
4. If an error arises from the editorial side - at the stage of the editorial development of the article, computer typesetting, or publication - the journal will publish a correction along with a relevant statement and apology from the Editorial Team.