The publication ethics of the journal Exceptional Child: Teaching and Upbringing of the Mykola Yarmachenko Institute of Special Education and Psychology of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine complies with the best international practices and standards in scholarly periodical publishing, including the EASE Guidelines, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, Publishing Ethics Resource Kit for Editors, COPE Guidelines, ICMJE, as well as the criteria and recommendations of DOAJ, Web of Science, and Scopus.

The publication ethics policy also takes into account the provisions of the journal’s Editorial Policy, in particular the following sections:

• Open Access Policy

• Authorship and Co-authorship

• Conflict of Interest Policy

• Policy on Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication

• Policy on Violations of Academic Integrity

• Complaints and Appeals

• Post-Publication Discussion and Corrections

Publication ethics consists of the following parts:

• Publication and sharing of open data

• General issues of submission, peer review, and editorial processes

• Responsibilities of authors

• Responsibilities of reviewers

• Responsibilities of editors

• Privacy and confidentiality statement

• Policy on funding sources

• Neutrality regarding geopolitical disputes

• Gender policy

Publication and sharing of open data

We encourage the publication and sharing of open data in accordance with the FAIR Data Principles. Data may be published in various ways, for example by depositing them in data repositories linked to the relevant article, or as data files or packages supplementing the article. Datasets should be placed in an appropriate reliable repository, and the related dataset identifier (URL or DOI) should be added to the article’s data resources section. References to datasets should also be added to the article’s reference list with a DOI, where available. If no dedicated data repository is available, authors should store their datasets in a general repository such as Zenodo or a similar platform.

General issues of submission, peer review, and editorial processes

A detailed description of submission, peer review, editing, and correction procedures, together with all necessary instructions, is provided in the sections “Submit an Article” and “Peer Review Process” on this website.

Responsibilities of authors

Authors are required to agree that their articles will be published in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).

Authors must certify that their manuscripts are original works, have not been published previously, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors must submit manuscripts in competent English or Ukrainian and formatted in accordance with the Guidelines for Authors (see the relevant link on the website).

All listed authors are expected to have made a substantial contribution to the research and to have agreed among themselves on the order of authorship and the nature of their respective contributions.

Authors must cite all sources used in their manuscript.

Authors must participate in the peer review process, including responding to reviewers’ comments in a timely manner.

Authors must notify the editorial office of any errors they discover in their article during the editorial and production process and after publication. The procedure for making corrections is described in the section “Post-Publication Discussion and Corrections.”

Authors must acknowledge all major sponsors of the research related to their article. Other sources of publication support should also be clearly identified in the manuscript as acknowledgements, for example funding for language editing of the article.

Authors must disclose any conflict of interest to the editorial office. A conflict of interest may relate to a shared place of work, funding sources, personal financial interests, membership in relevant organizations, and similar circumstances.

Responsibilities of reviewers

Manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two experts in order to reach an initial decision as promptly as possible. Reviewers are asked to declare any conflicts of interest (see the Conflict of Interest Policy for details).

Reviewers are not expected to perform detailed structural or stylistic editing of the manuscript, but rather to focus on its scientific quality and on the overall style, which should meet best practices of clear and concise academic writing. If reviewers believe that the manuscript requires editing, they should inform the authors and the editor in their report.

Reviewers are asked to assess whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and clear, how interesting it is for the audience, and whether the quality of writing is acceptable. The manuscript evaluation criteria are described in detail in the Guidelines for Reviewers.

In the event of serious discrepancies between reviews, or between authors and reviewers, the editors may evaluate the matter in light of their own experience or seek advice from a member of the editorial board.

Reviewers are also asked to indicate which articles they consider particularly interesting or significant. Such articles may receive greater attention and broader external visibility, including press releases addressed to science journalists and the media.

During the second round of review, after the authors’ revisions, the subject editor may ask the reviewer to assess the revised manuscript in light of the recommendations made during the first round.

Reviewers are asked to be polite and constructive in their reports. Messages that may be offensive or uninformative will be withdrawn.

Reviewers must not review manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any authors, companies, or institutions associated with the manuscript.

Review of original author manuscripts is carried out confidentially.

Reviewers must keep manuscripts, related materials, and all details connected with the review strictly confidential and must not disclose them to third parties.

Reviewers must express their views clearly and support them with argumentation.

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.

Reviewers must refrain from using any of the authors’ ideas prior to publication of the article.

Reviewers should also draw the editors’ attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under review and any other published article known to them.

Responsibilities of editors

Editors are responsible for the scientific quality of published articles and make decisions solely on the basis of the importance, originality, clarity, and relevance of the submission to the subject field.

Handling editors are responsible for the structural and stylistic language editing of articles.

Handling editors must ensure that all research articles comply with international ethical principles and the publication ethics of the journal, and must prevent any conflicts of interest among authors, reviewers, and members of the editorial board.

Handling editors must not reject articles on the basis of suspicion alone, without evidence of misconduct by the author or authors.

Editors must preserve the anonymity of reviewers unless the reviewers choose to disclose their identity in accordance with the procedure established by this policy.

Privacy and confidentiality statement

The editorial office uses the personal information of authors, reviewers, editors, and other persons registered on the journal’s website, including names and email addresses, solely for the purposes of verification, peer review, and/or publication of articles, and does not disclose it to any other party.

The editorial office recognizes that all materials submitted to the journal are the private and confidential property of the authors. In order to avoid harm to authors or reviewers through premature disclosure of any information from the original manuscript, it is prohibited to share any details of submitted articles or peer review reports with third parties.

All editors and reviewers involved in the editorial process must not disclose information about the content of the original manuscript, whether in whole or in part, its status in the peer review process, reviewers’ comments and suggestions, or the interim or final results of peer review to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. Any third-party requests for the use or transfer of author manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal/collection will be declined by the editorial office.

The editorial office ensures reviewer confidentiality in the double-blind peer review process.

All staff involved in the editorial process must refrain from commenting publicly or disclosing any details of the editorial process or peer review process during preparation for publication and after publication of the article.

The editorial office does not keep copies of rejected manuscripts. Reviewers’ comments may not be published or disclosed in any other way without the permission of the reviewer, the author, and the handling editor.

Policy on funding sources

Authors must clearly indicate the sources of funding used in the preparation of their manuscript, including funding for the research and/or publication. Information on financial support provided by specific organizations is declared by the corresponding author on behalf of all authors during submission of the article in the relevant form on the OJS platform.

Other sources of publication support should also be clearly indicated in the manuscript, usually in the form of an acknowledgement, for example funding for translation or language editing of the article.

Neutrality regarding geopolitical disputes

The journal remains neutral with respect to any political disputes. Editors have no right to express personal preferences or to treat a manuscript or its author(s) with bias on the basis of their country of origin, residence, and/or affiliation.

No decision regarding publication of an article should be influenced by the origin of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Decisions on editing and publication must not be determined by the policies of governments or other institutions outside the journal’s editorial office.

Authors should depoliticize their research by avoiding provocative remarks, disputed geopolitical claims, and disputed designations on maps. Where this cannot be avoided, the journal reserves the right to label them at least as disputed during or after publication, to publish editorial comments, or to reject or retract the article.

At the same time, the editorial office reserves the right to reject manuscripts without peer review if:

• the author(s) are affiliated with an organization or institution located in the territory of an aggressor state or a state sponsor of terrorism;

• the research is funded by an organization or institution located in the territory of an aggressor state or a state sponsor of terrorism;

• the manuscript contains calls to undermine the constitutional order or the rule of law, violate human rights, promote terrorism, or disseminate ideological positions and/or politicized ideas;

• the research is based on conclusions or results obtained by authors affiliated with an organization or institution located in the territory of an aggressor state or a state sponsor of terrorism, as evidenced by the sources used in the research, without proper justification of their uniqueness, originality, significance in world science, and specific relevance for the proposed publication;

• the research devotes unjustifiably substantial attention to conclusions or results of studies that contain and/or reflect subjective assessments and/or opinions of the author(s) concerning Ukrainian statehood and/or independence, or that distort historical events and/or the Ukrainian language or national identity.

Gender policy

The editorial office encourages the use of gender-neutral language, such as “they” instead of “he/she” and “their” instead of “his/her,” or advises authors to consider restructuring sentences in order to achieve gender neutrality.

In making decisions on manuscript publication, selecting reviewers, and throughout the editorial and publishing process generally, the editorial office adheres to a gender-neutral position, gives no preference under any circumstances to representatives of any particular sex or age, and does not act on any other discriminatory grounds.