Sarajevo Declaration on Integrity and Visibility of Scholarly Publications

"Non-mainstream scholarly journals are struggling to maintain a healthy flow of the best submissions, influence science growth locally and internationally, and become indexed in prestigious bibliographic databases. There are financial and non-financial factors confounding editing and publishing practices across low-resource countries. Publishers in these countries often face difficulties with involving experienced reviewers and editors in the processing of submissions to their journal. As a result, non-mainstream scholarly journals are at risk of publishing unchecked, poorly edited, erroneous, and unethical papers. They face challenges of inappropriate authorship, non-disclosure of conflicts of interests, plagiarism, and other forms of scientific misconduct. Journals’ applications to global indexing abstract and citation databases are often declined due to the lack of transparent and ethical editorial strategies, inappropriate scope of interest, low level of evidence, and low citation rates. A hhandful of the indexed regional journals are aggressively targeted by unethical authors and brokering editing agencies, exploiting the deficiencies in the editorial strategies and thus further damaging the reputation of the journals. To curb the problems with editing and publishing, journal editors from non-mainstream science countries are encouraged to upgrade their strategies of ethical editing and research reporting in accordance with the updated recommendations of editorial associations, such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the Council of Science Editors (CSE). Academic institutions and professional societies from these countries are called to provide guidance for researchers and science editors and allocate resources for improving editing and publishing practices."