This document formulates the main principles of honesty and ethical behavior of the parties participating in publication of scientific research results.
The present document was elaborated in accordance with the guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE, http://publicationethics.org, Singapore Statement on Research Integrity, http://www.singaporestatement.org, as well as accounting Russian and foreign publishing houses experience.
Responsibility. Editors should be accountable for everything they published in their journals. Editors should make honest and objective decisions on publishing the works independently from the author’s personality and commercial considerations; provide effective process of independent reviewing the works received for publication.
Honesty. Editors should conduct editing policy encouraging maximum transparency, completeness and authenticity of publications. They should defend authenticity of the materials being published through putting in corrections and denials when it is necessary, struggle with preconceived behavior under reviewing and editing articles.
Confidentiality. Members of editorial stuff should provide confidentiality of authors manuscripts and inform reviewers and other persons taking part in journal publication of the necessity to preserve such confidentiality. Members of editorial staff and editorial board should not use unpublished materials in their own research.
Conflict of Interest. Editors should make every effort for preventing conflict of interest of all the parties participating in journal publication.
Complaints Consideration. In case of receiving complaints in relation to submitted manuscript or already published work editors cooperating with the publisher should take every possible measure on resolving the conflict. Such measures mean contact with the author of manuscript or published work, consideration of the corresponding complaint or submitted claims, further appeals to corresponding organizations and research institutions. As the result of such consideration the submitted article could be corrected or withdrawn and the published work could be taken aside.
Reviewing helps the chief editor in adopting editing decisions in relation to the expediency of publishing articles in this very journal, as well as it can help the author in improving the quality of his work.
Reviewers should conduct their activity according to the following principles:
Competence. Reviewers should agree to review just those articles for evaluating of which they obtain sufficient qualification and experience and which they can review timely.
Objectiveness. Under working over an article reviewers should be guided by principles of objectiveness, keeping themselves from statements or comments of personal character, they should not allow the content of their review to be influenced by manuscript’s origin; nationality, religious belongings, political or other views of its authors or commercial considerations.
Transparent Reviewing. Reviewers should put their opinion on the work concretely and clearly, giving reasonable conclusions and references.
Conflict of Interest. Reviewers should notify the editor about existing conflicts of any character that could influence his work. Reviewers should refuse reviewing a manuscript in case of conflict of interest coming from competition, cooperation or other relations or connections with any authors, companies or establishments related to the work.
Confidentiality. Reviewers should observe confidentiality of the submitted manuscripts, they should not discuss the review and unpublished manuscripts with their colleagues or use the information those manuscripts contain in their own work.
Tracking Breaches. Reviewers should test an article for signs of plagiarism and excessive self-quoting (both textual and referential), as well as for signs of results falsification. They should immediately notify the editorial board of detecting an error in the work, if they worry about its ethicality, got to know of considerable similarity between the manuscript under reviewing and any other document or suspect that during the research or submitting the manuscript to journal some unfair behavior was taking place; at the same time reviewers should keep their fears a secret and should not investigate the matter further if only the journal itself does not turn to them for help.
Timeliness. Reviewers should present their conclusions to the editing board in time stated by the journal and as soon as possible carry out the requests of the journal to evaluate the corrections brought in the article or its new version.
Sending an article to the journal authors should observe the following principles.
Conscience. Authors should bear complete and collective responsibility for authenticity of the results and conclusions given in the article which should be thoroughly regarded, carefully tested and clearly stated without concealing possible defects, hitches and inaccuracies.
Authors should immediately notify the editor of detecting errors in any work submitted for publication, adopted for publication or having been already published. Authors should collaborate with editors if it is necessary to put corrections or amendments in such works.
Originality. Authors should guarantee that their work is original, was not published earlier and was not submitted for publication to any other edition or in any other language.
Honesty. Plagiarism is inadmissible (including incorrect borrowings), as well as references manipulation and data, results, illustrations and graphs falsification. In case of detecting such events in the submitted or published articles the editing board has the right to take appropriate measures, up to returning the article.
Reproduction. In an article the course and methods of research should be described distinctly and accurately for verification and possibility to introduce the results. It concerns, in particular, the origin of initial materials and data assortments.
Authorship. Scientific –research work authorship should reflect exactly a contribution of individuals to its fulfillment and description. A list of authors should include just those persons who respond the authorship criteria, i.e. have put a considerable contribution to the work. Along with it, authors should not forget to express their gratitude to the persons who facilitated the receipt of the results but did not satisfy the authorship criteria.
Quoting. New results should be described in the context of the previous research. Authors should quote the works they used accurately and completely, both their own and those of other authors.
Openness. Authors should open the sources of financing their work, possible conflicts of interest, bear responsibility for conducting the research work in accordance with the adopted ethic and juridical standards. Authors should guarantee that the article does not contain violations of the authorship right, closed or secret materials, as well as it does not threaten the society and environment safety.