The Scientific Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja applies principles of responsible scholarly and editorial conduct with reference to the COPE Core Practices and the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. The purpose is to protect the integrity of published scholarly content, the impartiality of editorial and peer-review processes, and the rights and responsibilities of authors, reviewers and editors.

Authors’ responsibilities
Authors are responsible for the originality, accuracy and completeness of their work; proper acknowledgement and citation of sources; listing as authors only persons who made a substantial contribution; obtaining the agreement of all authors to the final version and submission; disclosing sources of funding and actual or potential conflicts of interest; obtaining required ethics approval and informed consent where applicable; retaining original data and enabling verification where justified; and promptly notifying the Editorial Team of a significant error in a submitted or published paper.

Reviewers’ responsibilities
Reviewers must act objectively, confidentially, responsibly and without conflicts of interest. Manuscripts should be reviewed professionally and within a reasonable timeframe. Reviewers must not use unpublished ideas, data or results for personal benefit and should alert the Editorial Team to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data manipulation or other ethical concerns. Recommendations must be clear, reasoned and constructive.

Editors’ responsibilities and editorial independence
Editors act in accordance with the COPE Core Practices and are responsible for the integrity of the editorial and peer-review process. Editorial decisions are based on academic merit and must be free from improper influence by sponsors, organisers, institutions or personal interests. Editors select competent and independent reviewers, manage conflicts of interest, protect confidentiality and respond proportionately to concerns about unethical conduct.

Confidentiality
Manuscripts, reviews, author responses and editorial communications are confidential. Unpublished information must not be used for personal benefit or publicly discussed before publication, except where editorially authorised and necessary for the process.

Academic integrity and unethical conduct
The Scientific Assembly does not tolerate plagiarism, misleading text recycling, fabrication or falsification of data, inappropriate manipulation of images or results, citation or peer-review manipulation, undisclosed duplicate publication, concealed conflicts of interest, false authorship or identity, purchased or sold authorship, or other forms of research or publication misconduct.

Where a concern is substantiated, the Editorial Team may seek an explanation, original data, ethics approval, authorship documentation or other relevant evidence; pause the editorial process; reject the manuscript or withdraw a previous acceptance decision; and, where justified and proportionate, notify the competent institution, funder or other appropriate body.

Authorship and contributions
Authorship must reflect genuine and substantial intellectual contribution. All authors must approve the final version and accept responsibility for their contribution and for the integrity of the work. Where appropriate, authors are encouraged to describe contributions using the CRediT taxonomy.

Research ethics, personal data and informed consent
Research involving human participants, personal or sensitive data, vulnerable groups, medical procedures or other ethically sensitive matters must comply with applicable law, institutional requirements and recognised ethical standards. Where applicable, the manuscript should state the name of the relevant ethics body, the approval/reference number if available, how informed consent was obtained, measures used to protect privacy and confidentiality, and a data-availability statement.

Use of generative artificial intelligence
Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citation and all claims made in the manuscript. Generative-AI systems cannot be listed as authors. Where an AI tool has materially contributed to drafting, analysis, code, images or other elements of the paper, its use must be transparently disclosed, except for routine spelling and language assistance that does not alter substantive content.