EDITORIAL ETHICS

In order to improve the quality of publications, guarantee authors’ intellectual property rights and prevent unfair practices in publishing activities, the editorial board of the journal is guided by the principles of publication ethics, developed on the basis of international standards, in particular: the provisions and the Code of Conduct and the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The editorial board, authors, reviewers, publisher, as well as institutions involved in the publishing process are bound by the ethical standards, rules and regulations and take all necessary measures to prevent violations.

The fundamental principles of journals publishing

Compliance with publishing and editorial ethics.

Compliance with the guidelines (scientific character, objectivity, professionalism, impartiality) when rejecting articles.

Prevention of damaging intellectual and ethical standards if there are commercial interests.

Prevention of publishing of plagiarized articles, falsification and fabrication data.

Readiness, if necessary, to publish corrections, clarifications, rejections and apologies.

Ethics of authorship of scientific publications

An author (or a group of authors) realizes he or she bears civil responsibility voluntarily for novelty and reliability of research results which implies compliance with the following principles:

• Authors of an article must provide reliable results of conducted studies. Knowingly inaccurate or fraudulent statements are unacceptable.
• Authors must ensure that results of a study set out in a submitted manuscript are completely original. Borrowed fragments or statements must contain an indication of the author and the source. In the case of using fragments of others' works and/or other authors' statements, corresponding bibliographic references must contain corresponding bibliographic references to the author and the source.
• It is necessary to acknowledge a contribution of every person who in one way or another influenced the course of the research, in particular, references to the works that mattered when conducting a research must be presented in an article.
• Authors must not submit a manuscript that was sent to another journal and is under consideration, as well as an article that has already been published in another journal.
• All persons who have made a significant contribution to a research must be listed as co-authors. It is unacceptable to list persons who did not participate in the research among co-authors.
• Authors must disclose conflicts of interest that can influence an assessment and interpretation of their manuscripts, as well as sources of financial support (grants, governmental programs, projects, etc.) which should be necessarily indicated in the manuscript.
• Authors must immediately notify the editorial board of the journal if they find an error in any work submitted or accepted for publication, as well as in any already published work, and contribute to correction of an error. Authors must immediately correct an error or provide evidence of its absence if the editorial board finds out about an error from third parties.
• Authors must comply with the regulations of Copyright Act; materials protected by copyright (for example, tables, figures or large quotations) may only be reproduced with the owner's permission.
• Authors must comply with ethical principles, when criticizing or commenting a third-party research.
• Authors must respect the work of the editorial board and peer reviewers and address indicated shortcomings or explain it reasonably.
• Authors must provide and format a manuscript in compliance with the guidelines.

Peer review ethics

The journal conducts a single-blind peer-review when a peer reviewer knows authors’ surnames but the authors do not know the peer review’s surname.

The peer reviewer conducts a scientific examination of authors' materials and therefore his actions must be impartial that means observing the following principles:

• The editorial board ensures a confidential, independent, honest and objective review of manuscripts.
• A manuscript received for review must be viewed as a confidential document, which cannot be handed over to third parties for familiarization or discussion, if they are not authorized by the editorial board.
• Violation of confidentiality is only possible in a case of statement of authenticity or falsification of materials, in all other cases, its preservation is required.
• Peer reviewers are not allowed to make copies of manuscripts for their needs.
• A peer reviewer must give an objective and reasoned assessment of presented results of a research aimed at improving the scientific level of a manuscript. Personal criticism of an author is unacceptable.
• A peer reviewer must draw an editor-in-chief’s attention to a substantial or partial similarity between a manuscript under consideration and any other work, as well as to a lack of references to statements, conclusions or arguments previously published in the author’s or other’s works.
• A peer reviewer must note published works that are not cited (in an article).
• A peer reviewer must notify the journal if he finds any conflicts of interest or any other circumstances prevent him from forming a fair and impartial assessment of an article.
• A peer reviewer who believes that he is not an expert on issues considered in an article or that he will not be able to submit an article review must immediately inform the editorial board about his inability to review a submitted article.
• Independent peer reviewers are informed of the requirements for them and provided information about any changes in editorial policy.
• The editorial board protects the confidentiality of peer reviewers’ personal data.

Ethics of Scientific publications editing

In its activities, the editorial office, the staff of the editorial-publishing group and the members of the editorial board are responsible for disclosure of authors’ works, which requires compliance with the following principles:

• The editorial board uses the following indicators of high quality for published research materials: compliance with the theme of the journal, relevance, scientific importance, novelty, completeness of provided materials, originality, reliability of results and completeness of conclusions.
• The editorial board decides on acceptance or rejection of publications based on the results of an inspection of a manuscript for compliance with the requirements for format as well as results of the review. Editorial board has the right to reject the publication of an article with signs of slander, insult, plagiarism or copyright violations.
• The final decision on the publication of an article or refusal of such is accepted by the editor-in-chief along with scientific editor of the journal. A decision and reasons for it are communicated to authors.
• The editorial board ensures confidentiality, i.e. undertakes not to disclose the information about a submitted manuscript to anyone except respective authors, peer reviewers, other editorial advisers and, if required, the publisher.
• The editorial board ensures and improves the quality of published materials, meets the needs of readers and authors, makes a significant contribution to the development of national and foreign science.
• The editorial board commits to eliminate the influence of business or political interests on decision-making about publishing materials and prevent commercial interests from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• The editorial board is working to attract and include highly qualified professionals, actively contributing to the development of the journal.
• The editorial board is constantly improving the processes of reviewing, editing and publication evaluation by experts.
• The editorial board ensures careful consideration of publications for image manipulation, plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication.
• The editorial board commits to take all corrective measures, if they find factual, grammatical, stylistic or any other errors.
• The editorial board coordinates all editorial corrections in an article with an author.
• The editorial board ensures that materials of manuscript rejected for publication will not be used in the editorial board members’ own researches without the author’s written consent.
• The editorial board commits to promptly consider every complaint about unethical behavior of authors of manuscripts and already published articles, regardless of the time of delivery. It commits to undertake appropriate reasonable measures in respect of such complaints. If the complaint is confirmed, the editorial board has the right to reject publication of the article, cease further cooperation with the author, publish a retraction, and take other necessary measures to further curb unethical behaviour of this author.
• With the change of editor-in-chief new editor should not overrule the decisions of previous editors with the exception of cases when such serious problems as plagiarism or falsification are identified.

Ethics of scientific articles publishing

In carrying out his activities the publisher is responsible for publishing authors’ works, which implies the necessity of adhering to the following principles:

• The publisher encourages the editorial board, peer-reviewers and authors to fulfill ethical obligations in compliance with these requirements.
• The publisher must support the journal’s editorial board in consideration of complaints about ethic aspects of published materials such as ethical problems, tracking errors and publishing denials in particular.
• The publisher ensures well-timed publication of the journal.
• The publisher ensures confidentiality of submitted manuscript and any information until its publishing.
• The publisher must be ready to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
• The publisher must make it possible for the editorial board to exclude publications containing plagiarism and false data.
• The publisher undertakes to publish information about financial support for a research, if an author gives such information to an article.

Declaration on conflict of interest

Authors must disclose conflicts of interests that could affect the evaluation and interpretation of their manuscripts, as well as the sources of financial support for the project (grants, state programs, projects, etc.), which should be necessarily indicated in the manuscript.

The editorial board selects peer reviewers, who are independent in relation to materials considered for publication, experienced enough and have no conflict of interests.

A peer reviewer has no right to use unpublished manuscript materials in his own research without the author’s written consent.A peer reviewer must refrain from examining a manuscript, in connection with which he has a conflict of interest because of competitive, cooperative or other relationship with the an author or organization related to the manuscript.

Violations

If publication ethics is breached by the editor, authors or peer reviewer, a mandatory investigation is required. This applies to both published and unpublished materials. The editorial board must demand clarification, without involving those who may have a conflict of interest with one of the parties.

If the material containing significant inaccuracies has been published, it must be modified immediately in a way accessible to readers and indexing systems.

In order to ensure reliability of published data, if there are indisputable errors in the work, it is possible to promptly publish corrections, clarifications, rejections and apologies.