Policies

OPEN ACCESS & COPYRIGHT

Open access policy
CACTUS – Journal of Tourism for Research, Education, Culture, and Soul is an open access scholarly journal. All articles are freely available online to readers without financial, legal, or technical barriers, ensuring that the integrity of the published content is maintained.

Copyright & License
The journal applies no article processing charges (APCs) and no submission fees. The full text of all published content is available free of charge.
The journal supports the free dissemination of research results and compliance with international open access policies. Copyright of published articles remains with CACTUS – Journal of Tourism for Research, Education, Culture, and Soul.
All published material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. This allows users to copy, distribute, and adapt the material for academic, educational, or other non-commercial purposes, provided that proper attribution is given to the authors and the journal.

Paper template copyright & license statement: © This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

REVENUE, ADVERTISING & MARKETING

Revenue sources
Cactus journal is a non-commercial scientific publication, operating without a business model based on fees or direct revenues. The journal does not obtain income from subscriptions, advertising, reprints or commercial sponsorships. The editorial activity is supported exclusively by the volunteerism of the editorial staff and institutional resources.

Advertising policy
The Cactus Journal does not place commercial adverts. We may, however, with the approval of the Editorial Board, publish announcements of academic events, conferences, or funding opportunities relevant to the scientific community. Such announcements have no influence on the editorial process or the selection of content.

Direct marketing
Cactus Journal does not engage in spamming or aggressive promotional practices. Any direct marketing activities, including the solicitation of manuscripts, will be conducted in an appropriate, well-targeted, and unobtrusive manner.

EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE

Editorial decisions must be independent of the publisher's commercial interests. The editors make their decisions on the basis of: the scientific quality of the manuscript, methodological validity, and compliance with ethical standards. The publisher does not intervene in editorial decisions, except in cases of scientific integrity and legal aspects (plagiarism, defamation, etc.). The editorial structures (editorial board, scientific advisory board, etc.) are responsible for handling complaints related to the editorial process.

INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE & JURISDICTIONAL CLAIMS

Use of inclusive language
Language should be respectful, inclusive, and free from bias in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability, or health status. Avoid stereotypes and assumptions about readers, the use of terms that imply superiority or exclusion, and neutral formulations such as "authors", "researchers" are recommended.

Jurisdictional claims
Cactus Journal takes a neutral stance on territorial disputes. Maps or institutional affiliations must be accurate and reflect only the area under study. Editors may request changes to maps if they do not meet neutrality standards. When describing institutional affiliations, the official and standard name of the institution must be used, without political additions.

ARCHIVING POLICY

Cactus maintains published content on institutional servers and in internal backups. We are also considering including the journal in international archiving services, such as CLOCKSS and PubMed Central, to strengthen long-term access to articles.
In the case that The CACTUS — Journal of Tourism for Research, Education, Culture, and Soul is no longer published, we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that either the published volumes remain available through the website.

OTHER POLICIES

Author Posting Rights Policy — Author may post some version to any repository or website with some delay.
Automatic Posting Policy — No automatic posting in third-party repositories is allowed.
Machine Readability Policy — Article, metadata and citations may be crawled with permission.

ETHICS POLICY

Cactus Journal is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards in scientific publishing. Our publication ethics policies are consistent with the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines and adhere to the principles of transparency and good practices.

Duties of editors: Publication decision, fair play, confidentiality, disclosure and conflicts of interest, involvement and cooperation in investigations
Duties of reviewers: Contribution to editorial decision, promptness, confidentiality, standards of objectivity, acknowledgement of source, disclosure, and conflicts of interest.
Duties of authors: Academic standards, reporting standards, data access and retention, originality and plagiarism, multiple, redundant or concurrent publication, acknowledgement of sources, authorship of the paper, hazards and human or animal subjects, disclosure and conflicts of interest, fundamental errors in published works.

Ethical oversight
Cactus Journal supports the observance of ethical principles in scientific research, but does not automatically require the submission of an opinion from an ethics committee, except in cases where the nature of the research justifies it.
The authors bear full responsibility for observing the ethical norms of the institutions or fields in which they operate. By submitting the manuscript, the authors confirm that the study was conducted ethically and in compliance with academic standards.
The editorial board reserves the right to request supporting documents (e.g., approval of an ethics committee, declaration of consent) in cases where the nature of the research raises specific ethical issues.

Paper template ethical statement: The authors declare that the study was conducted in accordance with ethical standards (and, where applicable, with the approval of the relevant ethics committee / with the informed consent of participants). 

AUTHORSHIP AND CONTRIBUTORSHIP

Criteria for authorship
All authors must have made a substantial contribution to study design, data collection or analysis, drafting or critical revision of the manuscript, and final approval of the version for publication. Individuals who have made only minor contributions (e.g., technical support, funding) may be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section.

Changes to the authorship
The list of authors must be clearly defined at the time the manuscript is submitted. Any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of authorship must be approved by all authors and the editor. Changes to the authorship after acceptance of the manuscript are only permitted in exceptional cases and with detailed justification. In such cases, requests must be submitted by the corresponding author, who must provide the following: the motivation for the change and the written consent of all authors (including those added or deleted). If the manuscript has already been published, any authorized change requires a formal correction.

Paper template author contributions statement: All authors contributed to this work as follows: [Author A] (e.g., conceptualization, study design), [Author B] (e.g., data collection, data curation, analysis), [Author C] (e.g., drafting of the manuscript), [Author D] (e.g., review, editing, supervision). All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST / COMPETING INTERESTS & FUNDING

Declaration of interests
All authors must declare any conflict of interest (financial or personal) that could affect the impartiality of the research. Examples of conflicts of interest: employment in relevant companies; consultancy or shares in companies related to the field of research; honoraria, grants or patents in the field of the study. If there are no conflicts of interest, the authors may declare this (but it is not mandatory): "There are no competing interests to declare."

Funding sources
All authors must declare the sources of funding for their research. The acknowledgment should include the funding organization, the grant number (if applicable), and the funder's role in the project (if they had any influence on the design, conduct or publication of the study). If there was no external funding, the authors may (but are not obliged to) indicate, "This research was not funded by a public, commercial, or non-profit organization."

 DATA SHARING, REPRODUCIBILITY & PREPRINTS

The journal encourages research transparency (e.g., publishing raw data, citing open data sources etc). Authors are encouraged to upload this data to specialized platforms and include links in the article.
The journal accepts original and innovative papers. Replication of studies is permitted only to the extent that it makes new methodological or theoretical contributions.

Preprint policy. CACTUS Journal does not accept manuscripts that have been previously published as preprints on public platforms, whether peer-reviewed or not. Authors are requested to ensure that the manuscript submitted for publication in CACTUS: (1) has not already been published in any other form (including as a preprint), (2) is not available online on scientific content sharing platforms or academic networks. If it is determined that a manuscript has already been published as a preprint, it will be automatically rejected, regardless of its stage in the editorial process.

 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & AI

Plagiarism detection
We take the obligation to assist the scientific community in all aspects of publishing ethics, especially in cases of (suspected) duplicate submission or plagiarism. We use the institutional (Bucharest University of Economic Studies) plagiarism detector.

AI policy
Authors are responsible for the entire content of the manuscripts and must disclose the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the writing process.
Authors using generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation must adhere to the following guidelines:

Originality declaration
Authors publishing in this journal make an official declaration of originality of the material, that it meets the standards of research ethics, and that it has not been published or submitted for peer review elsewhere.

COMPLAINTS AND APPEALS

Any author, reviewer or reader has the right to file a complaint regarding: editorial decisions, inappropriate behavior of editorial staff, suspicions of ethical violations (plagiarism, data manipulation etc.).
Complaints should be sent to: cactus.journal@ase.ro
The editorial team is committed to responding within a maximum of 30 working days, ensuring a fair and confidential process.

POST-PUBLICATION DISCUSSIONS AND CORRECTIONS

Post-publication – Expressions of concern
If there is a serious suspicion of scientific misconduct or serious error, but the evidence is not yet sufficient to warrant a correction or retraction, CACTUS Journal may issue an "Expression of Concern." This is a notice published alongside the article informing the scientific community that there are doubts about the content of the article. The Expression of Concern remains visible until the investigation is completed and is then converted into a correction or retraction or withdrawn if the suspicion is not confirmed.

Article retraction/correction policy
We are transparent about our editorial policy on issuing retractions and corrections developed in accordance with COPE’s publication guidelines pertaining to scientific misconduct and research ethics.
- RETRACTION will be issued when there is an evidence of: data fabrication, data recycling in a purportedly original research article, severe plagiarism, double publication, copyright infringement, unreliable findings, unethical research practices, any other practice or act considered potentially harmful to the scientific community.
- CORRECTION will be issued when: only a small portion of a published article is deemed flawed in a way that does not severely affect findings reported in it; it is determined that the scientific community would be better served by a correction than a retraction.

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct
If the editorial board is notified of a suspicion or accusation of scientific misconduct, the following protocol will apply:

• The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board will analyze the information received. It will be decided whether a full investigation is needed.
• The authors will be informed in writing and asked for a formal and documented response.
• The investigation will be conducted in accordance with the COPE guidelines for handling misconduct. If the misconduct is confirmed, appropriate measures will be taken.
• Depending on the severity of the situation, the journal may decide to: reject the manuscript before publication, publish a correction or retract the published article, notify the authors' institution, temporarily or permanently exclude the authors from future collaborations, inform readers with a formal ethics statement.
• All investigations are conducted with confidentiality, transparency and impartiality, offering the right of defense to all those involved. Final decisions are mad e in the interest of scientific integrity and the reading public.

Any suspicion of scientific misconduct may be reported confidentially to cactus.journal@ase.ro