Res Practica is committed to the standards of good practice set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The policies below apply to authors, reviewers, and the editorial team alike.
Editorial oversight
The editorial team is responsible for the integrity of the published record. It ensures that submissions are assessed on their scholarly merit alone, without regard to the authors’ nationality, institutional affiliation, career stage, gender, or personal characteristics, and that the review process described in Peer Review is followed consistently.
Editorial decisions on individual submissions rest solely with the journal’s editorial team, without intervention from the Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ), its host institutions, or any funding body.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism occurs when an author reproduces the work of others without appropriate acknowledgement, whether deliberately or through failure to provide adequate references. It includes self-plagiarism: the reproduction, in whole or in part, of one’s own previously published work without appropriate reference.
All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism before review begins.
Where plagiarism is detected before publication — whether by the editorial team, by reviewers, or at any later stage of editing — the authors will be notified and asked either to rewrite the passages concerned or to quote them accurately and cite the original source. Where the plagiarised material is extensive, the manuscript will be rejected without further review; authors may revise the manuscript and submit it anew.
Where plagiarism is discovered after publication, the journal will follow COPE guidance in determining the appropriate response, which may include the publication of a correction or the formal retraction of the article. In serious cases, the journal may inform the authors’ institution and, where applicable, their funding bodies.
Competing interests
Authors must disclose any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could be perceived to influence their work, at the time of submission. Where no such interest exists, this should be stated.
Reviewers must decline any assignment where a competing interest would compromise their assessment, including close collaboration with the author, institutional proximity, or any relationship that would prevent an impartial reading.
Members of the editorial team who submit to the journal, or who have a competing interest in a submission, take no part in its handling. Such manuscripts are assigned to another editor and undergo the same double-anonymous review as any other submission. The editorial team keeps no record of who reviewed a colleague’s work beyond what the normal process requires.
Use of generative artificial intelligence
Generative artificial intelligence cannot be listed as an author. Authorship entails responsibility for the content of a work and the capacity to answer for it, neither of which an AI system can assume. Authors remain fully responsible for everything they submit, including any material produced with the assistance of such tools, and for the accuracy of all references and quotations.
Authors who have used generative AI in the substantive preparation of a manuscript — in developing arguments, generating text, analysing data, or reviewing literature — must disclose this at the time of submission, indicating which tools were used and for what purpose. Routine linguistic assistance, such as spelling and grammar correction, translation, or stylistic revision of the author’s own text, does not require disclosure.
Reviewers must not upload any part of a manuscript under review to a generative AI tool. Manuscripts are confidential, and doing so would place unpublished work outside the journal’s control.
Corrections and retractions
Where an error affecting the scholarly record is identified after publication, the journal will publish a correction. Where the findings or argument of an article are substantially undermined — by serious error, by plagiarism, or by other research misconduct — the article will be retracted. Retracted articles remain available, clearly marked as retracted, so that the published record remains complete.
Readers who wish to raise a concern about a published article may write to the editorial team.