Privacy Statement
Privacy Statement
Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

  Archiving, Repository & Unique Identifiers Policy
Archiving Policy
Archiving Policy

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal uses the following open-source software application - Open Journal Systems (OJS) for managing and archiving the scientific articles, and as long-term preservation service, where each article is currently archived.

Open Journal Systems (OJS) was developed and released by PKP in 2001, in order to improve access to research, being the world’s most widely used scholarly publishing platform (see https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/).

Repository Policy
Repository Policy

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal allows authors to deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice.

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal allows authors to deposit the Published version of their manuscript in an institutional or other repository of their choice, such as: Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Google Scholar. The authors are allowed to use and reposit their own published manuscript, by downloading it from the journal website:  www.discobolulunefs.ro, but no modifications are allowed (e.g., article’s repaginating or reformatting).

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal provides repository within the Open Journal Systems (OJS) open-source software application, for the following versions:
a)      Submitted version – reposited in OJS, but not publicly available
b)      Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript) – reposited in OJS, but not publicly available
c)      Published version – reposited in OJS, and publicly available (open access)

Unique Identifiers
Unique Identifiers

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal uses persistent article identifiers for its articles, more exactly, the digital object identifier (DOI), finding a manuscript no matter where it is located,

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal uses DOIs, as a CrossRef member, for all its open access articles, from 2019 (starting with the International Proceedings of Human Motricity/ ICPESK 2019 Supplementary Issue of Discobolul – Physical Education, Sport and Kinetotherapy Journal).

  Copyright and License
Copyright and License
Copyright and License

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal is published and licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made to the original. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions - You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Co-authorship

If a manuscript was prepared by more than one author, any authors submitting the manuscript warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to be agreed on this copyright and license notice (agreement) on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this policy. Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal will not be held liable for anything that may arise due to the author(s) internal dispute.

Learn more about Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licensing.

  Plagiarism Policy
Plagiarism Policy
Plagiarism Policy

Before the scientific articles are sent to review and, also, before publication, all scientific articles will be checked so they are free from plagiarism practice using a Plagiarism Checker software - "sistemantiplagiat.ro" - which is a computer program for comparing documents in text format; it was created in 2002 by the company Plagiat.pl from Poland. If there are any indications of plagiarism of more than 20% for Similarity Coefficient 1 and 5% for Similarity Coefficient 2, the manuscript will be subject to extensive verification in accordance to the Guideline for the interpretation of the Similarity Report Sistemantiplagiat.ro, which accompanies the program, where it is mentioned that exceeding these thresholds does not categorically indicate plagiarism.

Sanctions will be applied in case of detected plagiarism/ misconduct : Refusal to accept future submissions from the individual, unit, or institution responsible for the misconduct, for a period of 2 years.

Plagiarism refers to using the ideas, words, graphics or tables of others and presenting them as your own, being a form of fraud. From accidentally copying from a source without obtaining permission from the rights holder to deliberately seeking academic advantage by replicating the work of others, articles that are found to have been plagiarized will be rejected (we include submitted manuscript or published article).

Plagiarism screening will be conducted by Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal Editorial Board using: sistemantiplagiat.ro.

Retraction

The articles published in Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal will be considered to retract if:

a)      they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of honest error (for example, experimental error, miscalculation) or misconduct (for example, data fabrication)

b)      the findings have previously been published elsewhere

c)      it reports unethical research

The mechanism of retraction will follow the Retraction Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

  Ethical standards and procedures
Ethical standards and procedures
Ethical standards and procedures

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal wants to assure the readers that authors of publications present the results of their work in an honest, reliable, and clear manner. We believe in the ethical meaning of all manuscripts in order to develop the knowledge in the field.

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal Editorial Board follows the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet the appropriate requirements. Scientific articles not conforming to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki should be rejected for publication.

In the context of data publication, Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal follows community best practices on data publishing ethics and aligns with the recommendations and workflows published by the FORCE11 & COPE Research Data PUblishing Ethics Working Group.

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal will follow up on any ethical concerns about the data associated with a submitted manuscript or a published article. Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal will follow due process in accordance with COPE guidelines and the FORCE11 & COPE Working Group recommendations to inform whether any actions may be required about a dataset or an article.

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal reserves the right to remove or disable access or links to a published dataset and/or associated content in order to address a legal or ethical concern, a publication ethics issue, or a breach in journal policy.

Per the Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal discretion, we may also remove access to published data and/or linked articles while such concerns are under investigation. In the context of any data publishing concerns, Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal may contact other parties that host content associated with the dataset (e.g. a data repository) and may contact the institution(s) of relevant authors if required.

https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/concerns-legal-unpublished-data_0.pdf

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal follows legal framework and obligations in Romania and may have a legal obligation to inform the authorities in its own jurisdiction if a legal breach is identified in relation to the content in a submission or a publication in the journal.

When dealing with cases of a possible misconduct Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal follows the ethics flowcharts developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts

The journal Editorial Board and Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to expose any cases of plagiarism, redundant (duplicate) publication, ghostwriting, fabricated data, guest authorship etc., and to inform the relevant institutions or affiliations (institutions employing the author, scientific editor’s associations, scientific societies, etc.).

Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal shows no tolerance to fraudulent activities. The Journal’s Editorial Board follows the code of conduct set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

In the case of a published article for which concerns are raised, the journal will do all the necessary actions for the manuscript to be re-reviewed, in accordance with guidance from the COPE. Therefore, the editorial decision will be made based on the re-reviews and this may result in correcting the academic record. 

Duties and responsibilities of authors

1)      Authors should present their results honestly, without inappropriate data manipulation and without competing interests. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit other researchers to replicate the study. Scientific articles should follow the submission guidelines of the journal.

2)      Authors are obliged to participate in peer review process, to correct any errors upon discovery, prior or subsequent to publication of their manuscript.

3)      Submitting the same paper to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior.

4)      The paper should not be published elsewhere prior to acceptance/rejection by this Journal and a copyright permission should be obtained for materials published elsewhere and which require this permission for reproduction.

5)      Previous ideas, publications should be properly referenced. We encourage authors to cite the primary literature. Multiple papers arising from the same research project should be identified, the primary publication being referenced. Acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given.

6)      Authors should expose the authorship of the paper, by ensuring that: all who participated are credited and have given consent for publication; all persons credited as authors participated in the actual authorship of the work. Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal in the matter of authorship criteria, respects COPE recommendations.

7)      Author(s) are responsible for disclosing all personal and financial relationships that might bias their work. All sources of financial support should be disclosed.

8)      Before accepting the manuscript for publication, authors can withdraw the article by submitting a statement in the electronic system - Open Journal Systems (OJS).

 

For Reviewers

  • Articles respect double-blind peer review process (the identity of both the reviewers and authors is hidden), therefore, information regarding the paper should be kept confidential.
  • The reviewers must alert journal Editorial Board (www.discobolulunefs.ro) of any potential competing interest that could affect the quality of the review, and should not consider the manuscripts (should decline the review).
  • Reviewers (if is a legitimate need) should point out important published manuscripts which are not yet cited; all judgments in the peer-review process must be objective and reviewers should express their point of view with supporting arguments.
  • The reviewers must agree to review a manuscript only if they are aware that they can return a review in a reasonable time-frame (two weeks); reviewers should inform journal Editorial Board if they require an extension.

We encourage reviewers to refer to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers as appropriate.

 

Duties of Editor

The Editor can accept, reject, or request modifications to the paper, based on the reviewers  observations. During this process, editors must act fair and objective, without discrimination of religious, gender, political beliefs, geographical origin or sexual orientation of the authors.

Editors must cooperate with authors and reviewers, in order to ensure a qualitative, unbiased review process, and, in the same time, the confidentiality of the reviewing process. Editors should not be involved in decisions about manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest.

     Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal adopts the World Association of Medical Editors’ definition of editorial freedom/ independence. Therefore, Editor-in-Chief has the final say in decisions about which manuscript and when appears. Authors are obliged to respect the concept of editorial freedom and should not interfere in the selection, evaluation, scheduling, or editing of individual papers.

In the situation when there are concerns regarding the research procedure presented in the scientific article, the journal Editorial Board can request from the authors to submit data considering the approval of the mentioned research procedure by an adequate ethics committee.

  Reviewing process
Reviewing process
Reviewing process

The articles that are published in the Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal follow a double blind peer-review procedure.

The manuscript is submitted by author(s) in English language using the Open Journal Systems (OJS).

  • Received manuscripts are first examined by Editorial Board members (by Editor-in-chief or by the Deputy Editor-in-chief) according to Discobolul – Physical Education, Sports and Kinetotherapy Journal ‘technical’ requirements (https://discobolulunefs.ro/media/Instructions_for_Authors_2020.pdf). Incomplete manuscripts, if English is not of good standard, or papers that are not respecting the available Template (including information considering the preparation of the manuscript) will be returned to author(s) with suggestions for correction. After the paper is improved adequately, the manuscript receives a unique identification code which will be used in the following discussions related to the manuscript. At this stage the article is sent to two reviewers for scientific evaluation.
  • Each reviewer writes the Reviewer’s Report where he/she mentions one of the following:

- Accepted without any revisions - the journal will publish the paper in its original form;

- Accepted with minor changes - in this case the paper cannot be published, for the moment; the authors have to make necessary corrections;

- Accepted with major revisions (major flows are identified by the reviewers);

- Rejected - the research procedure, statistics, or figures are so poor that the merit of the manuscript cannot be assessed, the manuscript is just a small extension of a different article (often from the same authors), or the paper contains elements that are suspected to be plagiarized.

  • After the two independent reviewers endorsed publication, one of the Reviewing Editors reads, also, the manuscript, examining, mainly, the descriptive and inferential statistics and the research procedure.
  • The Proofreading Editor takes a critical look before publication. At this stage, also, if the Proofreading Editor considers that English is not of good standard, the manuscript can return to authors with suggestions for corrections.    

 

       If reviewers appear to differ in their opinion, the Editor-in-Chief or the Deputy Editor-in-chief together with a Reviewing Editor will assess the article, will consider all comments and take the final decision.         

       It should be noted that the author(s) must send the revised version of the article in 10 days’ time since he/she received the Reviewers’ Report or the Editorial Board’s feed-back. Then, the Editorial Board sends the revised version of the paper to the reviewer(s). This process lasts until the reviewer(s) endorses (or rejects) the manuscript.