Slovak Journal of Civil Engineering

Peer Review Process

1. The author is submitting the paper via the online submission system Editorial Manager: www.editorialmanager.com/sjce.
2. The editor of the Journal will check whether the paper is appropriate for the Journal. The manuscript will be screened in the Similarity Check and Turnitin anti-plagiarism systems. The manuscript can be rejected without any peer review at this moment. 
3. All the manuscripts are subject to a double-blind peer review by two internationally recognized experts. The Deputy Manager of the Journal assigns the paper to the Handling Editor in accordance with their expertise. The Handling Editor invites two reviewers to review the manuscript.  
4. The reviews are submitted to the Journal with a recommendation to accept or reject the manuscript or to request minor or major revisions. The requests for revisions are communicated to the corresponding author of the manuscript. The revised manuscript is returned to the requesting reviewer for a follow-up review. 
5. The Handling Editor communicates to the author as to whether the manuscript will be accepted and published or rejected. 

Open Access Statement

The Slovak Journal of Civil Engineering is an Open Access journal that allows free, unlimited and permanent access to all its contents without any restrictions upon publication to all users provided the original work is properly cited.

Articles are published under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Under this license, users are free to share the material in any medium or format and adapt the original work for any purpose. Users must indicate if the original work was altered and do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the author(s) endorses the adaptation. Adaptation may not damage the author's reputation.

Change of licensing rules: up to issue 3, volume 30 (2022), the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license was in force. From issue 4, volume 30 (2022), the license changes to CC BY 4.0.

Open Access License

Article Processing Charge (APC)

The journal does not have article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges.

PSJCE Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The Slovak Journal of Civil Engineering (SJCE) is an international scientific journal of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of The Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava published by Sciendo, De Gruyter Poland. The SJCE is a multidisciplinary forum aiming at publishing high-quality original content in the broad field of civil engineering.

Editorial policy

The Journal is committed to only publishing original, unpublished manuscripts to avoid ethical violations. These were not published elsewhere before, except in the form of abstracts and extended abstracts, preprints, excerpts from theses, or similar formats that have not undergone full journal peer review and that are not under consideration for peer-reviewed publication elsewhere.

The Faculty and the Editorial Board stand for editorial operations governed by rigorous ethical standards that are transparent and fair. The Journal recognizes the complexity of the scholarly publishing ecosystem. Therefore, the Journal expects all involved parties, including editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers, to understand, accept and follow the policies on publication ethics and malpractice stated herein and in the COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) documents, which can be accessed at:

COPE Core Practices https://publicationethics.org/core-practices, COPE flowcharts https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts, COPE Guidelines https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines, and COPE Members cases https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Case.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE EDITORS

Editorial Decisions and Accountability

Qualified, independent reviewers review all articles, and in case of necessity, by the editorial board members. Submissions are single-blind peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers. Editors may confer with each other and reviewers when making publication decisions. Editors should guard the integrity of the published record and suggest and issue corrections and retractions when needed.

The handling editor’s primary responsibility is to decide which submissions to the Journal will be accepted for review, can get published or has to be corrected or retracted. They must make decisions based solely on the manuscript’s intellectual content, quality and merits without considering the author’s race, gender, religious beliefs, ethnicity, political philosophy or citizenship in any way or form.

Their decisions are to be guided by the Editorial policy, consultations with the Journal’s editors and editorial board members and constrained by legal requirements concerning libel, copyright violation and plagiarism.

Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Editors are pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication, reviewer and editorial misconduct. Suppose an editor discovers or learns from a third party that the review or a published work contains error(s) or exhibits fraudulent behaviour. In that case, they should consult the matter with the editorial board. Editors should jointly consult ethical complaints concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper and decide on taking reasonably responsive measures. The handling editor discusses the correctness of the original article with the author and, in case of necessity, informs on a published correction or full retraction.

Confidentiality

Any information concerning a submitted unpublished manuscript should not be disclosed to anyone other than the editorial board members, editorial staff concerned, corresponding author, potential reviewers and reviewers, and the publisher, as required or otherwise appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editorial board members and editorial staff must not use unpublished privileged information from submitted manuscripts and manuscripts under review for their research and other relevant purposes. In addition, editors will refuse to handle a submitted manuscript when they may have any conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected.

Plagiarism

Using any material and ideas developed or created by others other than the authors without acknowledging the source may lead to plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism, the Journal’s language and technical editors check each newly submitted manuscript through the service provided by Crossref and powered by iThenticate. Whether a manuscript should be rejected because of suspected plagiarism or proceed to the peer-review process rests with the handling editor. The similarity reports are also made available to referees.

RESPONSIBILITY OF REVIEWERS

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Reviewers are aware of their crucial role in assuring the quality control of publications for the advancement of science and maintaining the excellence of scientific literature. They serve the Journal by helping the editors arrive at editorial or publishing decisions that sustain the Journal's high-quality aspirations. The similarity reports are made available to referees. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been acknowledged and cited by the authors. Reviewers should also call attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under review and any other published source they have learned.

Qualification and promptness

Potential reviewers and reviewers reject handling a submitted manuscript outside the areas of their primary expertise. Reviewers should withdraw from the review process if they cannot assess the contribution and provide an assessment promptly, as requested by the editor.

Standards of objectivity and fairness

Reviewers should assess the contributions and provide their assessment objectively. Personal criticism of the authors is considered unethical, inappropriate, and unacceptable. They are aware of their duty to serve the authors in improving the quality of the submission and thereby contribute to their personal advancement in science. Therefore, reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Confidentiality and conflicts of interest

Potential reviewers will refuse to assess a submitted manuscript when they may have any conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected. By agreeing to review the manuscript, the reviewer declares having no conflicts of interest. Reviewers will not use unpublished information from submitted manuscripts and manuscripts under their review for their research and other relevant purposes. Reviewers handle the manuscript under consideration as a confidential document. Information contained therein and concerning the manuscript should not be disclosed and discussed with others without the explicit approval of the editor.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHORS

Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources

Generally, papers describing the same research should not be published more than once. Authors should submit only entirely original works and appropriately cite or quote the work and texts of others needed to create the framework for the actual results submitted for publication. Including citations not contributing to the research described in the manuscript, self-citations aiming at increasing an author’s citation record, and inappropriate journal self-citation are considered scientific malpractice. Publications that have been influential in designing and conducting the research reported in the manuscript should also be appropriately acknowledged.

Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without reference based on explicit permission from the source. Likewise, information obtained by reviewing manuscripts, grant applications or similar confidential services must not be noted in the manuscript without the authors’ explicit written permission.

Reporting Standards and Reproducibility

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account and sufficiently detailed description of the work performed. An objective, critical discussion of the significance of the results is required. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the manuscript and made available to the reviewers if necessary for correctly assessing the work. Sufficient detail and references must be provided to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent, fabricated or knowingly inaccurate statements are considered unethical, are not acceptable at all and lead to an immediate rejection/retraction of the manuscript.

Data access and retention

Dependent on the valid legal rights concerning proprietary data and open access rules at the time of submission, authors may be required to provide reference to the data underlying their study (stored preferably in an institutional or subject-based data repository or other open access data centre) for the editorial review. In addition, authors should be prepared to be called upon to make the data available for followers, if practicable, for a reasonable time after publication, provided that the confidentiality of the data can be assured and does not preclude their release.

Hazards and human or animal subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Authorship of the paper

The corresponding author should ensure that only appropriate co-authors are included in the paper. Appropriateness consists of a clear contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the research reported in the manuscript. All co-authors must have full knowledge of their potential authorship before submission, have access to the manuscript versions and agree with its submission for publication. Others, who have contributed in certain substantive but not significant ways to the reported results, which would not require recognized co-authorship, should be acknowledged or listed as contributors in the acknowledgements.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication

Authors may only submit original, unpublished manuscripts not published elsewhere before, except in the form of abstracts and extended abstracts, preprints, excerpts from theses, or similar formats that have not undergone full journal peer review. Manuscripts which have been peer-reviewed and published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. Likewise, manuscripts under consideration by another journal should not be submitted. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal is considered unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Sources of financial support for the research underlying the results submitted for publication should be fully disclosed and acknowledged. In addition, authors should disclose, if relevant, any financial or other applicable conflicts of interest that might be interpreted as potential influences regarding the interpretation of results and conclusions resulting from these.

Correction of Errors in Published Works and Retraction of Papers

Authors must promptly notify the editor of errors or inaccuracies in their published work in the Journal. If the editor learns from a third party that a published work may contain error(s) or inaccuracies, they inform the author, who is obliged to react promptly. Following the evaluation of the author’s attempts to provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper, authors may be asked to jointly decide with the editor on the appropriate rectification measures ranging from a published correction to a complete retraction of the original article.