Thank you for choosing to submit your paper to us. These instructions will ensure we have everything required so your paper can move through peer review, production and publication smoothly. Please take the time to read and follow as closely as possible, as doing so will ensure your paper matches the journal's requirements.

All submissions need to be fully formatted in accordance with Guidelines for Authors. Manuscripts without proper formatting will be returned to the author(s).

Conformance to standards of ethical behaviour is expected of all parties involved: authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher. Before submitting the paper, please read our Journal policy and Publication ethics statement carefully.

The Journal of the Polytechnic of Rijeka is issued once a year and it encompasses scientific and professional articles, critical book reviews and other publications and translations of significant articles written by foreign authors in the field of natural, biotechnical and social sciences, which can, according to their content, generate interest of scientific and professional public. The paper must be relevant to international scientific and professional public with clearly defined objectives and results of the research, a conclusion, references in the text and a bibliography at the end of the paper. The ideas presented in the paper must be original, considerably contributing to the development of the topic researched with a clearly described methodology. All articles submitted that are in accordance with the conception of the journal will be reviewed by two anonymous and independent reviewers and categorized into one of the following categories according to the prescribed classification of scientific and professional papers: original scientific paper, preliminary communication, review article, conference paper, professional paper.

One author can submit and publish not more than one article in a single issue of the Journal.

The Journal of the Polytechnic of Rijeka does not charge article processing charge (non-APC model).

Paper must be submitted no later than 1^st December in order to be sent through a review process and taken into consideration for publishing in the current issue.

When writing articles authors must pay special attention to the appropriate structuring of the text and its length according to the instructions - please, read Guidelines for Authors carefully. The manuscript should not exceed 7000 words (including abstracts, keywords, footnotes, tables, references, captions and appendices), and the manuscript should not be published or sent to another publisher for publishing. It is also necessary to submit the summary in English (if the article is in Croatian or vice versa).

When submitting your manuscript, please create a fully anonymized document containing the complete article.

The main body of the text should begin with an introduction and contain sections, footnotes, tables, graphs, diagrams, references in the text, a conclusion and a bibliography.

Manuscrips are submitted via email together with a completed form (Application form) which contains the following information: title of the article, name and surname of the author and co-author, and academic title, qualification, a field of interest, i.e. a field that the author deals with, name and address of the institution affiliation, telephone number, fax number, email address, and a signed Copyright Statement, the consent to submit the paper to the reviewing procedure, and Statement - consent for personal data collection, processing and sharing. All the information given should be written in the language of the article, in Croatian and in English (if the original language of the article is other than English). If there is more than one author, the Application form, the statement and consent have to be signed by all authors.

By signing the Application form the author gives consent to publish the delivered paper in The Journal of the Polytechnic of Rijeka according to the rules of a CC BY-NC licence.

Manuscript should be written in standard language free of spelling and grammar mistakes. Authors have to comply with all the editing and other guidelines provided by the Editorial Board. The authors are responsible for language editing. Therefore, they must submit a proofread final version of the positively evaluated paper in order to be accepted for publishing, together with the signed proofreading confirmation by professional proofreaders.

It is necessary to ensure the application of the standards of ethical practice by all parties that participate in the publication procedure. Author(s) should read Publication Ethics Statement (Code of Ethics) and act accordingly.

If there is more than one author, all of the authors must contribute to the scientific results and findings to a sufficient extent to be regarded for co-authorship. Guest authorship without the actual involvement of the co-author and Ghost authorship without listing the real author are considered as unethical behaviour.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) - assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted manuscript should be reported in the acknowledgment section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors should describe this use in the methods section in sufficient detail to enable replication of the approach, including the tool used, version, and prompts where applicable. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship. Authors should carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI.

Manuscripts should be sent to the Editorial Board electronically via email: zbornik@veleri.hr.

The editors reserve the right to return manuscripts which do not meet the guidelines criteria to the authors, without blind review. The editors reserve the right to fully adapt the manuscript to comply with the Journal editing rules.

The author(s) should register via (https://orcid.org/signin) in order to obtain an ORCID identifier. The ORCID identifier is a researcher’s unique and permanent identifier which allows for better visibility and interoperability of a wide range of information systems.