Publishing Ethics
The Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations is committed to upholding international standards of publication ethics that are presented, in particular in recommended guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics. The Editorial Staff of the Journal adheres to principles of publishing ethics accepted by the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (Russia) (Declaration of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers).
The prevention of unethical publication practices (malpractice, stating unreliable information and other forms of research misconduct), the ensuring the high quality of academic publications, public acceptance of an author’s research results are the responsibilities of the editor or any editorial staff, the author, a reviewer, publishers, as well as institutions involved in the publication operation. All the aforementioned ones are required to follow ethical standards, norms and regulations and to take all rational measures to prevent their violation.
Publication decisions
The editor is responsible for
- further development of the journal;
- abidance by the principle on freedom of expression;
- striving for meeting requirements of readership and authors
- elimination of business and political influence on decision making about publications;
- making decisions based on the principle of justice and fairness, ensuring transparency at all stages of editor’s activities;
- withholding the information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than corresponding authors, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate;
- evaluating manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of authors;
- making decision about publication materials following the spectrum of criteria such as relevance to the journal’s scope and content, topicality, novelty and scientific significance of a submitted manuscript; language clarity; scientific certainty of research results and completeness of conclusions;
- accepting all rational measures for ensuring the high quality of publication materials and data privacy protection. If a published paper is subsequently found to have errors (contextual, grammatical, stylistic or any other ones) or major flaws, the editor should take responsibility for promptly correcting the written record in the journal. The editor assures that all measures will be taken to eliminate errors.
- taking into consideration reviewers’ recommendations for acceptance or rejection for all manuscripts they receive. The editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published;
- justification of a final decision on acceptance or rejection;
- providing the author of the peer-reviewed article with the opportunity to explicit an authorial research standpoint;
- preserving the decision on acceptance in case of rotations in the editorial staff;
- supporting discussions and giving the opportunity for expressing opposing opinions;
- not using information contained in unpublished articles for editor’s research purposes.
Author responsibilities
Authors acknowledge to having submitted to The Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations:
- to submit only original articles;
- to guarantee that textual or graphic information publications/submissions having been published by the author prior or by other authors is cited ethically and to present the justification of inclusion of the aforementioned material through a written permission in the usage. There must be full and prominent disclosure of the original source; otherwise it is regarded as plagiarism;
- to present an accurate account of the work performed and original data obtained. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper avoiding private sources, without written permission. The authors should not give false information or fabrication results;
- to guarantee that duplicate or redundant publications/submissions have not occurred (the application letter should contain the information that the article is to be published). If the submitted manuscript builds on previously published articles, authors are encouraged to enclose citations and show the difference between the new submission and the prior printed articles and indicate the contribution to the paper. Submission to more than one journal is considered unethical.
- to follow the ethical standards whilst criticizing and commenting in regard to other authors’ research work;
- to inform immediately the editorial board or the publisher about the glaring error in the published paper;
- to ensure the evidence of the correctness of the submitted article to the editorial board or the publisher and to correct errors if third parties inform the publisher;
- to enlist all co-authors of the article.
The author has the right to appeal against the editorial board’s decision in line with the established procedures (indicated in the appendix to the part “Reviewing”)
Reviewer responsibilities
The reviewer giving opinion on the scientific merit of the paper submitted to The Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations is invited to provide the following:
- to give objective and impassionate decisions;
- to ensure confidentiality policies, i.e. manuscripts must not be shown or discussed with others, except as authorized by the editor;
- not to use the information obtained in the course of expertize for self-profit;
- to notify the Editor-in-Chief and to excuse himself from the review process if any expert feels unqualified to review the research reported in the manuscript and knows that he cannot meet the deadline;
- to express opinions based on factual information and prove decisions adopted;
- to attract the Editor-in-Chief’s attention to significant or fractional similarity of the manuscript with any other paper, as well as the absence of references to ideas, conclusions and arguments in the papers published by the author seeking submission or other authors;
- to include specific opinions on the paper suggestions for its improvement;
- not to use the unpublished manuscript for private research gain.
Conflict of interest
The potential conflict of interest ought to be avoided in the process of reviewing and publishing the submitted manuscript. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial, scientific or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) or might appear to influence, his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties).
To prevent the conflict of interest and according to the ethical rules of the journal each party involved in the publishing process is required to comply with the following guidance.
The editor should:
- appoint another expert referee in case if there is a conflict of interest between the initially appointed reviewer and the manuscript author;
- ask all the parties for information about the potential competing interest that may arise in the publishing process;
- make a decision on publishing the information from the author’s letter concerning the conflict of scientific or/and financial interest in case the information is not confidential and can influence the estimation of the published paper by the reader’s or scientific community;
- ensure the publication of a correction if the relevant information about the conflict of interest arises after the publication of the article.
The author should:
- mention all known and potential sources of the conflict of interest in his/her covering letter;
- disclose the employment, institutional affiliations and the source of research funding;
- confirm the absence of the conflict of interest in the cover letter.
The reviewer should:
- inform the editor-in-chief about the presence of the conflict of interest (double bindings, competing interests) and recuse himself / herself from reviewing the manuscript.
Violations
In situations related to violation of the publishing ethics by editors, authors or reviewers, the Editorial Staff of the journal will carry out investigation. This applies to both published and unpublished materials from the moment of their publication. The Editorial Staff will request clarification, without involving persons who may have a conflict of interest with one of the parties..
Complaints on publishing ethics violation may be connected with incorrect citing of information and plagiarism (using other authors’ content and conclusions without references to their papers), duplication of one’s own publications, inclusion of unreliable and/or false data in publications, incorrect indication of authors’ contribution into conducted research and some other violations.
To report a violation
In case a violation is revealed, the complaint is submitted in written form via e-mail of Editorial Board or sent to postal address – Prosp. Universitetsky, 100, 400062 Volgograd, Russian Federation, to the chief editor of Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations.
The complaint should include the detailed description of suggested violation and the information proving this fact.
The Executive Editor will make the record of a complaint and prepare 'incident report' with all factual questions on the matter after its close consideration.
For the examination of the article and related materials, the Chief Editor forms an expert Commission consisting of the Chairman (the Chief Editor or Deputy Chief Editor of the journal) and members of the Commission (not less than 2 members of the Editorial Board).
The Editorial Staff guarantees the confidentiality, fairness, and impartiality of all stages of investigation.
Claims to author (incorrect citing and plagiarism, inclusion of unreliable or false data, incorrect indication of authors’ contribution into conducted research)
The Editor will ensure comprehensive investigation when incorrect citing or plagiarism is suspected. It is possible that an author could unintentionally quote or copy parts of another article without giving references. It mostly concerns short extracts. However, this should not occur with whole articles or substantial portions of another article as it is considered to be a serious violation of Publishing Ethics principles. The Editorial Staff will apply prescribed sanctions in regard to such authors.
When the complaint is made against an author, the editor will contact them and ask to explain the situation. On the basis of the author's response, the Editor makes decision whether to reject the claim (if the author is responsive, has clear and convincing position) or to accept the claim (if the author waives from answer, or his/her explanations are unconvincing). The Chief Editor informs necessarily a complaining party on the decision.
If the material containing significant errors was published, it will be corrected in the form available for the readers and index systems. Articles with detected plagiary materials will be corrected or retracted.
The decision on retraction of the article must be formulated in the Protocol of the meeting of the Editorial Staff. Having made the decision to retract the article, the Editorial Staff will indicates necessarily the cause of retraction (in the case of plagiarism detection with reference to the sources of borrowing) and the date of retraction. Article and article description remain on the website of the journal in the appropriate issue, but the electronic version of the text will be marked with the inscription "ОТКЛОНЕНА/RETRACTED" and the date of retraction, the same mark being applied to the article and the table of contents of the issue.
If the Editorial Staff decides to revoke the text of the article on the basis of its expertise or information received by the editor, the author / coauthors will be informed and asked for their reasoned opinion on the validity of the Chief Editor's decision.If the author / co-authors ignore the editorial request, the Editorial Staff will revoke the article without consulting the author. If the Editorial Staff receives the appeal with some grounds for article retraction, the editors inform the author of the appeal about the terms of its consideration. The maximum period for consideration may not exceed three months. An appeal shall not be considered if it does not indicate the author's last name, first name, patronymic name or contact information, contains unreadable text or offensive expressions.
The information on the retracted articles is placed in the repertory "Publishing Ethics" in the documents "List of Retracted Articles".
Duplication claim
Duplication claim is considered by the Chief Editor who will thoroughly investigates the contents of both publications and reveals all significant differences and supplementations. If an article does not contribute to research’ topic and novelty, it is defined as a duplicate version and is subjected to appropriate corrections.
If authors use their own published article or the article which is currently reviewed for other journal, they are obliged to give references to such research and indicate substantial difference between them.
The second article may be published in another language only under the following conditions:
- editor and/or publisher of the original article give their consent;
- the Editorial Staff receives compulsory notification about article’s republication;
- the Chief Editor believes the article is significant and being published in another language it will reach a new or different community of readers.
Measures and sanctions
In the event that the Chief Editor acknowledges violation of the Publishing Ethics principles, the following corrective actions (depending on the violation severity) will be taken:
- rejecting the publication;
- publishing a notice on correcting the violation in a future issue of the journal;
- correcting the published material in the form available for the readers and indexing systems;
- forbidding the publication of materials for the period up to 3 years;
- rejecting further cooperation within the Editorial Board;
- publishing an editorial concerning the ethical issues raised by received complaint;
- removing the article’s material (deleting text from the journal’s website) that violates confidentiality, invades a subject's privacy or could cause serious harm);
All sanctions are imposed by the Chief Editor only after thorough consideration of claim and making objective and fair decision.
In cases where the violations of the above policies are found to be particularly egregious, the publisher and the chief editor reserve the right to impose additional sanctions beyond those described above.
Author(s) shall have the right to appeal a decision on violation. All appeals must be submitted in written form to the Editorial Board within 30 days of notification of the decision. The appeal must include a rebuttal of the decision, explaining in detail the author(s) rationale for why the decision was in error.
Appendix 1
The standard format of a cover letter
Dear authors! Submitting to The Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations enclose a cover letter, please. The body of the cover letter should contain the following information:
- information about the author (authors)
- the insurance of the article originality, absence unreliable information and plagiarism;
- the commitment not to submit the manuscript to another journal;
- presence / absence of the potential conflict of interest with the editorial team;
- information about the research funding, noting the confidentiality or the essentiality of publication;
- information for the section Acknowledgments if any;
- the author’s consent to follow the principles in the section Publication Ethics of The Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations.
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