Ethical rules
ETHICAL PUBLISHING GUIDELINES
The publishing policy of Scientific Research Almanac fully complies with the international standards adopted for publication ethics. Publishing standards and ethical conduct, as a prerequisite for quality research papers, are applicable to all parties involved in the publishing process.
Ethical publishing guidelines must be approached as part of the general code of ethics applicable to scientific and professional environments in addition to legal regulations and must act as a self-regulatory mechanism in scholarly communities. Their application is closely related to an individual’s personal code of ethics and the professional conscience of scholars, as well as their honesty and integrity.
The Editorial board of Scientific Research Almanac fully shares and adopts as its guiding principle Elsevier’s position on publishing ethics in reviewing, editing and publishing scientific papers while respecting copyright and preventing plagiarism. The operation of the editorial board is in compliance with the rules prescribed by the Committee on Publication Ethics.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDITOR AND EDITORIAL BOARD
Publishing decisions
The Editorial Board of Scientific Research Almanac is responsible for deciding which of the submitted research papers should be published. These decisions are made after the submission of the relevant manuscript and its significance for researchers, practitioners and readers.
The editor is guided by the policy of the Almanac’s Editorial board and respects the legal requirements in force with respect to discrediting, copyright infringement and plagiarism. He/She accepts the submitted papers, convenes the Editorial board, specifying the date, the place and the time of the sessions. The editor makes a well-grounded proposal to the Editorial board regarding specific reviewers for each paper, providing them with the results of the originality verification via the iThenticate system.
The Editorial board approves the reviewers and decides to accept or refuse to publish materials on the basis of their significance, originality, clarity of the body text, and compliance of the topics of research with the Almanac’s priorities (with the thematic coverage announced).
When making a decision, the Editorial board may delegate rights to the Editor to consult other editors or reviewers.
Objective assessment
The Editorial board will assess manuscripts according to their intellectual merits, without discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, citizenship or political affiliation of authors.
Confidentiality
The Editor and Editorial board, as appropriate, should disclose no information about the submitted manuscript to anyone except the author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisors, and the publisher if necessary.
Disclosure and preventing conflicts of interest
The submitted unpublished materials should not be used in their own research by the editor, reviewers, and any member of the Editorial board without the express written consent of the author. Confidential information or ideas received during the review process must be kept secret and not used for personal gain. Editors should require that all participants disclose any competing interests and publish corrections if competitive interests are disclosed after publication. If necessary, other appropriate actions, such as retraction of the published paper, should be taken.
Participation and cooperation in the investigation of complaints
When ethics complaints have been filed regarding a submitted manuscript or a published paper, the editor and the Editorial board must take appropriate measures. These include contacting the author of the manuscript and taking the related complaint or claims under due consideration. Any instance of unethical publishing conduct must be considered and corrected accordingly.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS
Contribution to editorial decisions
As a tool for scientific verification, peer reviews help the Editorial board in the decision-making process and enable the authors to improve their papers. As a means of formal scientific communication, peer review is at the core of the scientific method. Hence, the foremost responsibility of peer reviewers is to honestly review each piece of work before it is published.
Promptness (efficiency)
Each chosen reviewer, who feels insufficiently qualified to review a manuscript on a given topic or believes that he/she cannot supply a prompt evaluation, should notify the editor-in-chief and declare a refusal for participation in the review process.
Confidentiality
Each manuscript submitted for peer review has the status of a confidential document that should not be presented to or discussed with third parties except for the editor-in-chief or persons authorized by him/her.
Integrity standards
Manuscripts must be reviewed objectively. Personal criticism is considered inappropriate. Reviewers’ opinions must be clearly expressed and supported by sufficient arguments.
Referencing
Reviewers must ensure that any reference to a source of information, or any argument in the paper under review is accompanied by relevant citations. They should alert the author or authors to any similarities between the manuscript and other publications that they are aware of. Reviewers should identify any research content or results which have already been published but have not been cited by the authors of the manuscript, as well as any other form of plagiarism.
Disclosure and preventing conflicts of interest
Reviewers must not use any unpublished content disclosed in a submitted manuscript in their own scientific research without the express written consent of the author. They must withhold any confidential information or ideas developed in the reviewing process and not use them to their own benefit. Reviewers must not review manuscripts when there is a conflict of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or any other relationships between them and any of the authors, companies, or institutions related to the publication.
When a reviewer doubts the integrity of an author, they must inform the editor about this confidentially in writing.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF AUTHORS
Publishing standards
Authors must submit their manuscripts with consideration to the requirements regarding the format of publications as published by the editorial board. Source data must be presented accurately in the paper. It is considered as professional to adhere to the rules of scientific discourse and observe the requirements of the genre in which the paper will be published, therefore all texts must have an introduction presenting the author’s goals and motivation for writing the paper, a main body presenting relevant analyses and results, and a third section containing conclusions and acknowledgements. Each research paper must contain sufficient details and references to enable other authors to cite and use it correctly in their scientific work. Deliberate inaccuracies are an instance of unethical behaviour and are therefore unacceptable.
Data access and storage
Authors may be asked to provide unprocessed data related to the manuscript under review. They must also store such data for a certain period of time after the publication of their work.
Originality and plagiarism
Authors must confirm that the content of their submitted manuscript is original and that they have adequately acknowledged and cited any content reproduced from other authors. Authors must comply with the rules for referencing which the editorial board has prescribed, since plagiarism exists in many forms, varying from unjustified copying and paraphrasing of a significant amount of content from other publications, to declaring as one’s own the results of other scientists’ research. Plagiarism in all its forms is unethical and therefore unacceptable.
Multiple, duplicate or concurrent publication
Authors must not submit as an initial publication or to more than one journal manuscripts describing the same scientific research. Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical publishing conduct and is therefore unacceptable. In general, authors must not submit for review papers already published elsewhere.
Referencing
The work of other individuals must always be acknowledged appropriately. Authors must cite any publication that they have used whilst writing their paper. Information obtained in private, verbally or in writing, or via a discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without the express written consent of the source author. Information obtained in the process of providing confidential services, such as reviewing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the express written consent from the author involved in these services.
Authorship of publications
Authorship must be attributed to research workers who have contributed significantly to the conception, design, conduct, or interpretation of the published paper. Individuals with a substantive contribution must be named as co-authors. When other people have been involved in significant aspects of the research project, they must be acknowledged and listed as contributors. Co-authorship requirements and responsibilities must be observed by acknowledging not only senior positions and academic titles, but also the contribution of individuals. The author submitting a manuscript must confirm that all co-authors and participants have been named in the publication and have agreed on the final draft of the paper before its submission.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
All authors are obliged to declare any financial or other substantial conflict of interest within their manuscripts that might be considered to have influenced the validity or interpretation of their work. Any sources of financial support to the project must be disclosed. Potential conflicts of interest that should be declared include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents or registrations, as well as any grants or other type of funding. Any potential conflict of interest must be disclosed as soon as possible.
Key errors in published papers
Should an author identify a significant error or inaccuracy in a published paper of their own, they are obliged to notify the editor immediately and cooperate to retract or correct their paper. When the editor or the publisher are informed by a third party that a published piece of work contains a substantial error, the author will be obliged to retract or correct their paper immediately or to present evidence of the original paper’s accuracy to the editor.
This Code of ethics was adopted by the Editorial Board of the Scientific Research Almanac on 27th April 2017.