Medicine and Public Health

Ethical Oversight ↑ Back to contents

The Editorial Team and the Publisher of Medicine and Public Health have adopted and adhere to ethical principles consistent with the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The journal follows COPE Core Practices and, in cases not described on this website, applies relevant COPE guidance and COPE Flowcharts.

This statement applies to all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, reviewers, guest editors, members of the Editorial Board, the Publisher, and editorial staff.

Any suspected case of unethical conduct will be considered individually and thoroughly. Depending on the nature and severity of the case, the Editorial Team may request explanations or additional documentation from the authors, contact reviewers, consult members of the Editorial Board or external experts, contact the authors’ institution, and recommend appropriate action in accordance with COPE guidance. The final decision concerning rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other formal editorial action rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Authors, readers, reviewers, and other parties may report suspected publication misconduct, research misconduct, errors, or ethical concerns to the Editorial Office. Reports will be handled confidentially, fairly, and without retaliatory measures against persons who raise concerns in good faith.

Direct marketing activities, including the solicitation of manuscripts, are conducted appropriately, unobtrusively, and in a well-targeted manner. The journal ensures that all information provided about its scope, metrics, editorial policies, fees, and publication processes is truthful and not misleading.

Research Ethics, Human Participants and Consent ↑ Back to contents

Research involving human participants, human biological material, personal data, sensitive information, patients, minors, vulnerable groups, or identifiable individuals must be conducted in accordance with applicable legal and ethical standards. Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate ethics committee, institutional review board, or other authorised body before conducting the study.

Authors must state in the manuscript whether ethical approval was obtained, waived, or not required. Where applicable, the statement should include the name of the approving body, approval number, and date of approval. If ethical approval was not required, authors should briefly explain the reason.

Studies involving human participants should include information on informed consent. Authors are responsible for ensuring that participants’ privacy, anonymity, dignity, rights, safety, and confidentiality are protected. Identifiable personal data, images, case details, quotations, or contextual information may be published only when appropriate consent has been obtained or when the material has been sufficiently anonymised.

Case studies, case reports, and manuscripts containing potentially identifiable information must be prepared with particular care. Authors must remove unnecessary identifying details and obtain consent for publication where individuals may be identifiable from the text, images, tables, quotations, or contextual information.

Where research involves animals, biological material, environmental samples, clinical data, or other regulated material, authors must comply with applicable legal, institutional, and ethical requirements and provide appropriate declarations in the manuscript.

The Editorial Team may request additional documentation confirming ethical approval, consent, permissions, or compliance with applicable ethical standards. Failure to meet applicable ethical requirements may lead to a recommendation for rejection. If ethical concerns are identified after publication, the Editorial Team will investigate the matter in accordance with COPE guidance and may recommend a correction, expression of concern, or retraction. The final decision rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Data Sharing and Reproducibility ↑ Back to contents

Medicine and Public Health supports transparency, responsible data sharing, and reproducibility of research. Authors should present methods, materials, data sources, analytical procedures, and references in sufficient detail to allow the research to be assessed and, where possible, reproduced or verified.

All submitted manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement indicating whether and how the data, materials, code, or other resources supporting the findings can be accessed. Where legal, ethical, contractual, or privacy restrictions apply, authors should clearly state the nature of the restriction.

Authors are encouraged to deposit research data, supplementary materials, analytical code, and protocols in recognised repositories whenever legally, ethically, and practically possible. Data sharing must respect privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, informed consent, and applicable data protection regulations.

The Editorial Team may request access to underlying data, materials, code, documentation, or ethics approvals when this is necessary to assess the manuscript or investigate post-publication concerns. Failure to provide requested information may lead to a recommendation for rejection or post-publication action, depending on the circumstances. The final decision rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Rules for Authors ↑ Back to contents

1. Authors are required to familiarise themselves with the journal’s publication ethics, peer-review procedure, article requirements, and technical guidelines before submission.
2. The journal accepts manuscripts exclusively in English.
3. Authors may submit only original manuscripts that have not been published elsewhere and are not under consideration by another journal, publisher, or editorial office.
4. Authors are responsible for ensuring that all borrowings, including cited opinions, quotations, data, tables, figures, and other materials, are properly referenced.
5. Authors are required to provide a reliable description of the research performed and an objective interpretation of the results.
6. Authors are required to include a complete and accurate reference list and to cite relevant sources in the main text.
7. Authors must disclose all funding sources, conflicts of interest, and other information required by the journal’s editorial policies.
8. Authors must include a Data Availability Statement and comply with the journal’s Data Sharing and Reproducibility Policy.
9. Authors undertake to participate actively in the editorial process, including responding to reviews, submitting revised versions, and approving copyedited or proofread versions within the deadlines set by the Editorial Office.
10. If serious errors or inaccuracies are discovered in the submitted manuscript, the author should immediately notify the Editorial Office so that these errors can be corrected during the editorial process.
11. If serious errors, inaccuracies, disputes, or allegations of misconduct arise after publication, the author is obligated to cooperate with the Editorial Office and respond to the matter.
12. Any instances of unethical conduct, including guest authorship, ghost authorship, data manipulation, plagiarism, text recycling, duplicate submission, redundant publication, or citation manipulation, will be considered in accordance with COPE guidance.
13. No article processing charges, submission fees, publication fees, or editorial fees are charged by the journal.
14. Authors do not receive remuneration for the publication of articles.

Rules for Readers ↑ Back to contents

1. The journal is published in Open Access. Content is available free of charge to individual readers and institutions.
2. Access to content does not require logging in.
3. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Under this licence, users may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, provided that:
   • appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is provided, and any changes are indicated where applicable;
   • the material is not used for commercial purposes;
   • if the material is remixed, transformed, or built upon, the modified material is not distributed;
   • no additional legal terms or technological measures are applied that restrict others from exercising rights permitted by the licence.
4. The Editors invite Readers to discuss published content. The Editors may publish polemical articles, debates, or responses in the journal, where appropriate.
5. The Editorial Office encourages Readers to report any suspected instances of scientific or publication misconduct, particularly ghost authorship, guest authorship, plagiarism, data falsification, data manipulation, incorrect or negligent research procedures, citation manipulation, or violations of ethical principles in science.
6. Reports of suspected misconduct will be reviewed and considered by the Editor-in-Chief, who may review the evidence, contact the Author, consult the Editorial Board or other appropriate experts, publish a correction, expression of concern or retraction, inform appropriate authorities or institutions where justified, and record and archive the case.

Rules for Editors ↑ Back to contents

1. The Editorial Team ensures the quality, regularity of publication, and accessibility of the journal. It is guided by scientific integrity, transparency, impartiality, and the aim of raising scientific, editorial, and ethical standards.
2. The Editorial Team ensures compliance with publication ethics and counteracts plagiarism, abuse, misconduct, ghost authorship, guest authorship, citation manipulation, and other unfair practices.
3. The Editorial Team evaluates submitted materials according to an established and transparent procedure and formulates editorial recommendations, taking into account the opinions of external reviewers appointed for this purpose. The final decision regarding acceptance or rejection rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.
4. Editorial assessments are based on the originality of the submitted material, its scientific value, methodological quality, relevance to the journal’s scope, and importance for the advancement of research and clinical practice internationally.
5. Commercial considerations do not influence editorial decisions.
6. The Editorial Team treats received manuscripts as confidential and does not disclose information about submitted articles to unauthorised persons.
7. Editors must not use unpublished manuscripts, data, arguments, or interpretations without the written consent of the authors.
8. Editors who have a conflict of interest in relation to a submitted manuscript are excluded from handling the manuscript and from participating in the editorial assessment or recommendation concerning that manuscript.
9. The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for editorial decisions and for maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.
10. The Editorial Team may investigate and recommend corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions if evidence emerges indicating unreliability or falsification of research, major methodological errors, plagiarism, redundant publication, unethical research, data unavailability affecting verification, peer-review manipulation, or other serious violations of publication ethics. The final decision to issue such a notice rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.
11. The Editorial Team prevents and manages conflicts of interest in accordance with the journal’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

Rules for Reviewers ↑ Back to contents

1. Reviewers are obligated to evaluate submitted manuscripts objectively, fairly, constructively, and within the scope of their expertise.
2. Reviewers are obligated to decline a review invitation if they suspect a conflict of interest, lack of competence in the subject matter, or inability to complete the review within the specified deadline.
3. Reviewers should report any significant similarity between the reviewed manuscript and other works known to them.
4. Reviewers should indicate significant works related to the subject of the manuscript that have not been cited by the author, where relevant.
5. Reviewers must not use the reviewed manuscript, data, arguments, or interpretations for their own personal, professional, or scientific benefit.
6. Reviewers are obligated to submit the review using the journal’s review form within the specified deadline.
7. The review must conclude with one of the following recommendations: acceptance without revisions, acceptance subject to revisions, or rejection of the manuscript. The recommendation is advisory; the final editorial decision rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.
8. Reviewed manuscripts are confidential documents and must not be disclosed to unauthorised persons.
9. The content of the review is not publicly disclosed.
10. Reviewers must not suggest adding citations to their own works or to the works of colleagues unless such citations are scientifically justified and directly relevant to the manuscript.
11. The author receives reviews in an anonymous form. Direct interaction between the author and the reviewer is prohibited.
12. Reviewers must not use generative AI tools in the review process.

Authorship and Contributorship ↑ Back to contents

Medicine and Public Health applies the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). All persons listed as authors must meet all four of the following criteria:

1. substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
2. drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content;
3. final approval of the version to be published;
4. agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All persons who meet all four criteria should be identified as authors. Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors and may instead be acknowledged in the “Acknowledgements” section, where appropriate.

Guest authorship, gift authorship, and ghost authorship are unacceptable. Activities such as administrative support, general supervision, technical assistance, funding acquisition, language editing, statistical assistance, or general advice do not, on their own, qualify a person for authorship.

The order of authors should be agreed upon by all authors before submission. Any change in authorship after submission, including adding, removing, or rearranging authors, requires a written explanation and confirmation from all affected authors. Authorship disputes will be considered in accordance with COPE and ICMJE guidance.

The Editorial Office corresponds primarily with the corresponding author. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors approve the final version of the manuscript after review, editing, and proofreading.

Only humans may be listed as authors or co-authors. Artificial intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Authors undertake to respond to reviews and editorial corrections within the deadline set by the Editorial Office and, upon request, to respond to any post-publication discussion, dispute, or controversy concerning the article.

Text Recycling / Self-plagiarism ↑ Back to contents

Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism, occurs when sections of the same or substantially similar text appear in more than one of an author’s own publications without proper disclosure, justification, or citation.

The editors of Medicine and Public Health will consider each case of text recycling on an individual basis, both in submitted manuscripts and in published articles. The assessment will depend on the degree, location, and nature of the overlap.

Limited overlap may be acceptable in some cases, for example in the description of previously used methods, provided that the original source is properly cited. However, undisclosed overlap, excessive overlap, or overlap in the results, discussion, or conclusions is unacceptable.

Where overlap is considered minor, authors may be asked to rewrite overlapping sections and cite their previous article or articles. More significant overlap may result in a recommendation for rejection of the manuscript.

If text recycling is discovered in a published article, the Editorial Team may recommend a correction, expression of concern, or retraction, depending on the severity and consequences of the overlap. The final decision rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Conflict of Interest Policy ↑ Back to contents

Complaints and Appeals ↑ Back to contents

Complaints and appeals may be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief at fgolkowski@uafm.edu.pl. Concerns may also be submitted to the Managing Editor at gwojciak@uafm.edu.pl.

In the event of complaints, grievances, or appeals, particularly those concerning a breach of impartiality, procedural irregularities, editorial conduct, peer-review quality, or publication ethics, the Editorial Office registers and archives the complaint or appeal, requests a detailed description of the matter and relevant documentation where necessary, maintains confidentiality, and responds in writing within 30 days of receipt where possible.

Appeals must provide a clear justification and, where relevant, identify specific procedural errors, factual errors, or significant issues concerning the review or editorial process. The Editorial Office may assess the documentation and obtain additional expert or editorial opinions where necessary. The final decision on an appeal rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief. Mere disagreement with the scientific judgement of the Editor-in-Chief or reviewers does not in itself constitute grounds for an appeal.

Intellectual Property ↑ Back to contents

The Author submitting a manuscript for publication declares that the article is the result of the Author’s independent, original creative work and has been prepared with respect for all third-party rights, including property copyrights, moral rights, personal rights, privacy rights, and other legally protected interests.

If the manuscript contains works not created by the Author, such as photographs, illustrations, drawings, tables, figures, charts, or other materials, the Author is responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions for their use, reproduction, and distribution in the article.

Authors are obliged to indicate all publications, data sources, archival materials, legal acts, reports, websites, and other sources used in the preparation of the manuscript. When citing data, words, ideas, or other materials created by others, authors must use appropriate citation practices, including quotation marks and references where required.

Special Issues and Guest Editors ↑ Back to contents

If the journal publishes special issues or thematic sections involving guest editors, all submissions are subject to the same editorial standards, ethical policies, plagiarism screening, and external peer-review procedures as regular submissions.

The Editor-in-Chief remains responsible for the academic integrity and editorial oversight of the journal, including special issues and thematic sections.

Guest editors may coordinate the editorial handling of manuscripts assigned to a special issue or thematic section but may not make final acceptance or rejection decisions. They are excluded from handling their own submissions and any manuscripts where a conflict of interest exists. The final decision regarding every manuscript rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

AI Policy ↑ Back to contents

The Editorial Board of Medicine and Public Health recognises both the rapid development of artificial intelligence tools and their usefulness when used responsibly, as well as the risks and threats associated with them, including unreliable content generation, fabricated citations, breaches of confidentiality, plagiarism, authorship misrepresentation, and lack of accountability.

Confidentiality ↑ Back to contents

• Submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents.
• Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff must maintain the confidentiality of the review process.
• Information about submitted manuscripts, reviews, editorial correspondence, reviewer identities, editorial deliberations, and unpublished materials may not be disclosed to unauthorised persons.
• Editors and reviewers may not submit manuscripts, manuscript fragments, reviews, data, or confidential information to generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar systems, as this may violate confidentiality, copyright, data protection, and publication ethics.
• Confidentiality obligations continue after the editorial or review process has been completed.

Anti-plagiarism Checking ↑ Back to contents

All articles intended for publication in the journal are screened for potential plagiarism using Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate). There are no fixed percentage thresholds for determining plagiarism. Each similarity report is individually analysed and assessed by the Editorial Office.

Any borrowing from another publication must be accompanied by an appropriate reference. Similarity reports are interpreted in context, taking into account the nature of the overlap, cited sources, quotations, methodology descriptions, reference lists, and other relevant elements.

Where a similarity report or editorial assessment indicates possible plagiarism, text recycling, redundant publication, citation manipulation, or another form of publication misconduct, the Editorial Team may request explanations from the authors, request corrections, or recommend rejection or appropriate post-publication action in accordance with COPE guidance. The final decision rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Post-publication Discussions, Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions ↑ Back to contents

The Editors of Medicine and Public Health encourage post-publication discussion, scholarly debate, and the reporting of potential errors, ethical concerns, or concerns regarding the reliability of published content. Post-publication concerns may be reported by authors, readers, reviewers, editors, institutions, or other parties.

The journal follows COPE guidance when handling post-publication corrections, allegations of misconduct, expressions of concern, retractions, and other updates to the scholarly record. Each case is assessed individually, fairly, and on the basis of available evidence.

The Editorial Team may recommend publishing a correction if an error affects the accuracy, clarity, interpretation, funding information, authorship information, acknowledgements, references, metadata, or other elements of the article but does not invalidate the main findings or conclusions.

The Editorial Team may recommend publishing an expression of concern if serious concerns arise regarding the integrity, ethics, or reliability of the article, but the available evidence is inconclusive, an investigation is ongoing, the authors’ institution has not yet completed its assessment, or the authors’ explanations are insufficient at the time of assessment.

The Editorial Team may recommend retracting a publication if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, the article constitutes plagiarism, the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution, the article is a case of redundant publication, it contains unauthorised copyrighted material or data, copyright has been infringed, it reports unethical research, underlying data or documentation necessary for verification cannot be provided where required, it was created using generative artificial intelligence tools in a manner inconsistent with the journal’s AI policy, the Author or Authors failed to disclose a major conflict of interest, or there is evidence of peer-review manipulation, authorship manipulation, citation manipulation, or another serious breach of publication ethics.