Publishing Policies

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their research has been conducted in accordance with the applicable research ethics requirements.

Research involving human participants, their personal data, biological material, or other information that can identify an individual must comply with the applicable research ethics requirements and legislation. Where ethical approval or permission is required, authors must obtain approval from the appropriate research ethics committee or other competent body before the research is conducted.

Where applicable, the article should state the name of the ethics committee or other competent body that approved the research, together with the approval or permission number.

Authors must obtain informed consent from research participants where this is required. Participants should be informed about the purpose of the research, the use of their data, confidentiality and any relevant risks. Where research involves children or other persons who cannot provide informed consent themselves, the required consent must be obtained from their parent, legal representative or other authorised person.

Authors must protect the privacy and confidentiality of research participants and must not disclose personal information unless this is necessary for the research and permitted by the applicable requirements. Authors are responsible for ensuring that personal data are collected, processed, stored and reported in accordance with applicable data protection requirements.

Research involving animals must comply with applicable legislation and recognised standards for the ethical treatment and welfare of animals. Where approval is required, authors must provide information about the relevant approval.

Authors should include sufficient information about ethical approval or permission, informed consent and other relevant ethical requirements in the manuscript where these are applicable. If ethical approval or informed consent was not required, this should be stated where appropriate.

The Editor-in-Chief may request evidence of ethical approval or permission, informed consent or other documentation demonstrating compliance with research ethics requirements. If concerns arise regarding the ethical conduct of research, the manuscript may be held while the matter is investigated.

Articles may be rejected or retracted if the research is found to have been conducted in breach of applicable research ethics requirements.

Authors are expected to conduct and report research in accordance with recognized principles of research integrity, including the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity-ALLEA. For medical research involving human participants, authors should follow the principles of the WMA Declaration of Helsinki (2024).

Anyone identified as an author must have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research and to the writing of the article. They must be willing to take a shared responsibility in the research and in the article, and approve the final version to be published. Anyone who does not fulfil these criteria but has contributed to either the research or the writing of the article should be acknowledged and thanked in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section at the end of the article.

Any changes to authorship during peer review or after acceptance must be approved in writing by all authors, including any authors proposed to be added or removed. A reason for adding or removing an author must be provided to the Editor-in-Chief.Where possible, the contribution of each author should be stated in the ‘Author Contributions’ section at the end of the article (for example, “TS and SS conceived the research idea and were responsible for planning and preparing the data analysis. TS, MG and SS were responsible for data collection and analysis. TS and SS were responsible for interpreting the data. MG prepared the first version of the article.”).

Conflict of interest is a situation in which personal relationships (for example, friendship, collegial or family relationships), business relationships (for example, employment by a competing company) or financial influence (for example, funding) may affect the decision of any person involved in the journal publication process.

Authors must declare in the article and inform the Editor-in-Chief of any conflict of interest that may have influenced their research (for example, funding) or their decision to submit the article to the journal.

Reviewers must declare whether they have a conflict of interest that may affect their decision regarding the article under review. A conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent a reviewer from reviewing an article, but the Editor-in-Chief must be informed immediately.

Editors do not participate in publication decisions when they have a conflict of interest. For example, if an article by a colleague of the Editor-in-Chief is submitted to the journal, the peer review process and all editorial decisions are handled by another editor.

We encourage all researchers to archive and share their research data. Some research funders require this, and sharing data enables other researchers to reuse and interpret the data, thereby contributing to the development of research.

We encourage all authors to make their data available in suitable repositories (for example FigShare, or other similar repository), where the data can be safely preserved and assigned a unique identifier (DOI or similar) so that the data can be cited in authors’ articles.

The use of AI and AI-assisted technologies in journals published by VILNIUS TECH should follow the principles of transparency, accountability, confidentiality, and human responsibility. VILNIUS TECH journals allow the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies in research and in the preparation of manuscripts, provided that their use does not compromise the originality, accuracy, integrity, or confidentiality of the work.

Authors are responsible for the content of their articles, including any content prepared or amended using AI. Authors should check the accuracy of information, references, citations, and other content generated or amended using AI before submitting their manuscript.

AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors of an article. Authors remain responsible for the research, the interpretation of results, and the conclusions of the article.

The declaration should identify the AI tool used and explain how it was used, for example, to improve language or readability, translate, generate or amend text, develop code, analyze data, or generate, modify, or enhance images, figures, graphs, or illustrations.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that AI-assisted content does not contain plagiarism, fabricated information, inappropriate attribution, or unsupported references.

Where AI or AI-assisted technologies have been used in preparing the manuscript, authors should include a statement in the article. For example:

“The authors used [name of AI tool/service] in the preparation of this manuscript for [briefly describe the purpose]. The authors reviewed the output and remain responsible for the accuracy, integrity and content of the published article”.

If generative AI tools were used to generate or alter images or figures, it should be documented in the image captions, including the name of the tool used. Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts submitted for peer review. It is not allowed to upload manuscripts, parts of manuscripts, unpublished data, figures, tables, or other confidential material into generative AI tools or other AI systems. Such use is prohibited because it may compromise the confidentiality of the manuscript, unpublished research, or the authors’ intellectual property.

The use of AI must not replace the reviewer's independent assessment of a manuscript. Reviewers remain responsible for the content and recommendations of their review.

Editors are not allowed to upload manuscripts or any part of a manuscript to AI tools. AI must not replace the Editor-in-Chief's or editor's judgment when making decisions about the publication of a manuscript.

Editors are responsible for ensuring that the use of AI in the editorial process does not compromise the confidentiality of manuscripts, the independence of editorial decisions, or the integrity of the publication process.

The use of AI as a research object, research method, or analytical tool should be described in the article in accordance with the relevant research and reporting requirements.

VILNIUS TECH journals follow the recommendations and Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) regarding publication ethics and research and publication misconduct. Misconduct includes falsifying data, plagiarism, and breach of confidentiality. Each case is considered by the publisher and the Editor-in-Chief, and in all cases, the author or reviewer is contacted directly.

The publisher reserves the right, where serious misconduct is suspected, to contact the author’s or reviewer’s institution or another competent organisation directly.

If misconduct is suspected during peer review, consideration of the manuscript is suspended until all related matters have been resolved. If misconduct is confirmed during peer review, the manuscript is immediately rejected. If misconduct is identified after publication, the article is retracted.

Information about article preparation and submission is provided in the ‘For Authors’ section of each journal.

All authors are responsible for ensuring that:

• the manuscript is their own original work and does not reproduce any previously published work, including the authors’ own previously published work;
• the manuscript has been submitted only to this journal; it is not under consideration, peer review, accepted for publication, in production, or published elsewhere;
• the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Failure to comply with any of the above requirements is considered misconduct and will be dealt with accordingly. If it is found that the authors have breached any of these requirements, the publisher reserves the right, at the discretion of the journal editors and the publisher, to require reimbursement of costs incurred by the journal in connection with the manuscript.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work is original and that they fully acknowledge the source of any content that is not entirely their own.

The journal will check articles for plagiarism (i.e. reproducing content without acknowledging the source and obtaining the necessary permission) using CrossCheck/iThenticate and considers the inclusion of plagiarised content to be misconduct by the authors.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce anything (e.g. figure, table, text) that has been previously published or created by another person. At the request of the editorial office or publisher, authors must be able to provide evidence of such permission.

The journal may accept additional files supporting the submitted article (for example, audio, video or text files, including a questionnaire described in the article).

Supplemental information must be submitted together with the manuscript. It is not formally peer reviewed, but it is taken into consideration when deciding whether it is appropriate for the article.

Authors take full responsibility for the content of supplemental information. Supplemental information must clearly state that it has not been formally peer reviewed.

Each submission received by the journal is checked by the editorial office to determine whether it fits the scope of the journal and meets the basic requirements. A manuscript may be rejected without peer review if it is outside the scope of the journal, is clearly of insufficient quality, or lacks important sections.

For each article considered suitable for further consideration, the journal invites external experts, rather than only members of the Editorial Board, to review the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief makes the publication decision after receiving at least two external reviewer reports and recommendations.

Authors may suggest suitable reviewers, but the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office reserve the right to select other reviewers. Authors are asked to suggest reviewers because they are often best placed to identify experts in their field. Suggested reviewers may also be suitable for reviewing other articles on the same topic. This information, therefore, helps the editorial office ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for all articles.

Most VILNIUS TECH journals use double-blind peer review, in which neither the authors nor the reviewers know each other’s identities, in order to minimise bias. Some journals use single-blind peer review, in which the authors’ names are disclosed to reviewers by default, while the reviewers’ names are not disclosed to authors. Authors may request that their names be concealed.

After receiving at least two reviews, the Editor-in-Chief makes one of the following decisions: (1) accept, (2) accept subject to minor revisions, (3) accept subject to major revisions, or (4) reject. The reasons for the decision are provided to the authors.

If a decision is made to require minor or major revisions, and the authors do not adequately revise the article in response to the reviewers’ comments, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject the article. When a revised article is received, it may be sent for further review or, depending on the extent of the requested revisions, the Editor-in-Chief may make the decision.

The duration of the peer review and decision-making process may vary considerably, as it can sometimes be difficult to find suitable reviewers or reviewers may be late in submitting their reports. The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office make every effort to keep the time from submission to the first decision as short as possible.

Articles that do not report original research results (for example, letters to the editor or editorials) are not reviewed by external reviewers, and the decision on their publication is made by the Editor-in-Chief.

Editors have the right to decide which articles to consider, accept or reject without influence from the publisher or other external bodies.

The journal editors have a duty to treat all submissions confidentially, and to ensure that judgements are made free of bias, and in a timely manner. Decisions about publication are the responsibility of the editors. They are also responsible for ensuring that the journal's reputation is not compromised by knowingly accepting poor-quality or unethical articles or by failing to follow the journal’s policies. The composition of the Editorial Board is the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief.

If an author believes that a decision to reject an article was made incorrectly, the decision may be appealed. To appeal a decision, the author must contact the Editor-in-Chief or the publisher by email and state the reasons why the decision is considered incorrect.

The appeal is considered by an Editorial Board member who was not involved in the original decision and who is jointly appointed by the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher.

A decision may be appealed only once, so authors should provide clear reasons and supporting arguments for the appeal.

If an author, reviewer, reader, or other person has a complaint about the journal or its editors, they should first contact the publisher directly. Where possible, the complaint is considered by the appropriate publishing or editorial staff member. If the decision is not satisfactory, the complaint is referred to a senior responsible person.

The publisher has a duty to ensure that the journal meets international standards regarding technology, archiving, data protection, and ethical policies. Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, as the publisher, is responsible for appointing the Editor-in-Chief.

VILNIUS TECH supports open-access publishing and covers the majority of journal publishing costs. The full publishing costs of seven journals are covered by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and sponsors (the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences). However, part of the publishing costs is financed through article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or their institutions. Such charges apply to nine VILNIUS TECH journals and cover publishing costs, making articles freely available to all readers worldwide.

Detailed information about APCs is provided in the ‘Fees and charges’ section of each journal.

VILNIUS TECH journals are published under open access using the CC BY 4.0 licence, which allows readers to reuse the content without restriction. Open access enables the free sharing of scientific information and helps disseminate knowledge worldwide.

VILNIUS TECH supports open access as an equitable means of ensuring that research, most often funded by public institutions, is available to everyone. Open access publications are more likely to be found, read, cited, and used in further research. We believe that making all content freely available and allowing it to be reused is in the interests of authors, their institutions, and the journals themselves.

If an error is identified after publication, it is corrected by publishing an erratum, a retraction or a dated correction in the article itself. Authors and readers are encouraged to inform the publisher and the Editor-in-Chief of any errors that require correction.

When an erratum or retraction notice is published, this is indicated using the Crossmark logo used in the publishing industry. It shows whether an update has been published for the article; by clicking the logo, readers can see whether they are reading the latest version and whether there are changes that require attention.

Upon receiving information about an error, the publisher and the Editor-in-Chief investigate the matter and discuss it with the authors. An appropriate correction is made following this investigation.

Articles are retracted in accordance with the COPE (Publication Ethics Committee) retraction policy. An article is retracted if its content is unreliable because of misconduct (for example, data fabrication) or honest error (for example, a calculation or experimental error), if the content is plagiarised, or if the article reports the results of unethical research.

Authors may request the retraction of their article if they have justified reasons why it should be removed.

Where concerns about the reliability or integrity of a published article cannot be resolved immediately, the publisher and the Editor-in-Chief may publish an Expression of Concern while the matter is being investigated.