To avoid any unfair practices in publishing activities (plagiarism, presenting false information, etc.) and to ensure a high quality of scientific publications and public recognition of the author’s scientific results, each member of the Editorial Board, publishers, authors, reviewers and institutions involved in the publishing process shall adhere to ethical standards, rules and regulations and take any reasonable steps to prevent their violations. Compliance with these ethical guidelines by all the parties ensures authors’ intellectual property rights, improves the quality of the journal and excludes a possible misuse of copyright material in the interests of particular individuals.
The editorial board of scientific-practical legal journal “Current Issues of the State and Law” follows the recommendations and standards of Committee on scientific publication ethics (COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors), ethic norms of publishers and editors’ work, fixed in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and we also take into consideration the valuable experience of authoritative international journals and publishing houses.
The publisher of the journal is Derzhavin Tambov State University is a member of the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ASEP) and supports the ASEP Declaration “Ethical Principles of Scientific Publications”.
Key terms used in the given provision:
1. Publication ethics is a system of professional conduct standards in relations between authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and readers when creating, disseminating and using scientific publications.
2. The Author is a person or a group of persons (group of authors) who produce a manuscript that contains the results of their scientific research.
3. The Editor-in-Chief is a person who heads the Editorial Board and makes final decisions concerning production and publication of the Journal.
4. The Editorial Board is an advisory body consisting of competent persons who assist the Editor-in-Chief in selecting, preparing and evaluating manuscripts.
5. The Editor is a representative of the research journal or the publisher responsible for selecting and preparing materials for publication and encouraging communication between authors and readers of scientific papers.
6. The Reviewer is an expert acting on behalf of the research journal or the publisher and providing scientific evaluation of authors’ works in order to consider their publishing.
7. The Publisher is a legal entity or a natural person responsible for publication.
8. The Reader is any person who has familiarized themselves with the published materials.
9. The Manuscript is an author’s work submitted for publication in the journal.
10. The Article is a logically integral one, containing the main results of a study conducted using scientific methods..
11. Plagiarism is a wrongful appropriation of another author’s scientific or artistic work, ideas, discoveries or inventions. Plagiarism may be a violation of copyright law and patent law and, as such, can entail legal liability.
1. The Code of Conduct for Editors and Publishers
In carrying out their activities, editor is responsible for the publication of authors’ works, which implies that the editor shall.
1.1. Ensure confidentiality of the submitted manuscript and any information until its publishing.
1.2. Recognize the fact that the activities of the Journal are noncommercial, without any profit motives.
1.3. Publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
1.4. Reject publications containing plagiarism and false data.
1.5. Have a right to reject the manuscript or require its revision, if it does not comply with the Rules for authors.
1.6. Make the manuscript, accepted for publication, available to the public on the website; with copyright holders retaining their rights.
1.7. Publish information about research funding, if the author gives such information.
1.8. Take measures to correct factual, grammatical, stylistic and any other errors when such are detected.
2. The Code of Conduct for Authors
When submitting to “Current Issues of the State and Law”, authors (groups of authors) are aware that they bear primary responsibility for the novelty and validity of scientific results, which implies adhering to the following principles.
2.1. Authors shall provide reliable research results. Deliberately false or fraudulent statements are not acceptable.
2.2. Authors shall ensure that research results are completely original. Every borrowed fragment or statement must be accompanied by a mandatory reference to the author and the original source. Excessive borrowing and any form of plagiarism including non-documented citations, paraphrasing or appropriating another person’s research results are non-ethical and unacceptable.
2.3. Authors shall only provide authentic facts and data; give enough information for other researchers to be able to verify and repeat experiments; not use information obtained privately, without an open written consent; not allow data fabrication and falsification.
2.4. Authors shall avoid manuscript duplication. If some elements of the manuscript have been previously published, the author shall refer to the earlier work and specify the differences.
2.5. Authors shall not submit the manuscript that has been submitted to another journal and is under consideration, as well as the manuscript already published in another journal.
2.6. It is important to recognize the contribution of all persons who, in one way or another, participated in the research; in particular, the manuscript should contain references to works that significantly influenced the research.
2.7. All those who have made significant contributions are to be described as co-authors. It is not acceptable to list persons who did not take part in the research.
2.8. Authors shall respect the work of the Editorial Board and reviewers and eliminate the indicated inaccuracies or justify them.
2.9. Authors shall submit and prepare their manuscripts in compliance with the Journal standards.
2.10. If the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in the manuscript under consideration or after its publication, they should immediately inform the Editorial Board.
2.11. Authors shall prove to the Editorial Board or the Publisher that their initial manuscript is valid or correct substantial errors, if the Editorial Board has become aware of them from a third party.
3. The Code of Conduct for Reviewers
Reviewers provide scientific expertise of the authors’ material, hence, all their actions shall be impartial, and the following principles shall be adhered to.
3.1. The manuscript received for reviewing shall be treated as a confidential document which cannot be passed for discussion or examination to a third party unless authorized by the Editorial Board.
3.2. Reviewers shall inform the Editor-in-Chief about any substantial or partial similarity of the manuscript under consideration and any other work, as well as the absence of references to statements, conclusions or arguments which have been previously published in the papers of this or another author.
3.3. Reviewers shall give an objective and reasoned evaluation of the research results, as well as clearly justified recommendations. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
3.4. Reviewers’ comments and suggestions shall be objective and essential, aimed at improving the scholarly value of the manuscript.
3.5. Reviewers are not allowed to make copies of the manuscript for personal use.
3.6. Reviewers cannot take advantage of their awareness of the manuscript content until its publication.
3.7. Reviewers shall request the Editor to exclude them from the reviewing process in case they do not possess the required expertise, or cannot be objective, as in case of competing interests with any of the authors or institutions.
3.8. The manuscript review is confidential. Only the Executive Editor and the Editor-in-Chief know the name of the reviewer; this information shall not be disclosed.
4. The Code of Conduct for the Editor-in-Chief
In carrying out their activities, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for making authors’ works public, which implies abiding by the following basic principles.
4.1. When deciding on publication, the Editor-in-Chief shall be guided by the validity and scientific significance of the manuscript.
4.2. The Editor-in-Chief shall evaluate the intellectual content of the manuscript regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, origin, citizenship, social status or political preferences of the author.
4.3. Unpublished data from the submitted manuscripts shall not be used in personal interests or passed to a third party without the author’s written consent. The information or ideas obtained in the course of editing and related to possible advantages shall stay confidential and not be used for personal benefit.
4.4. The Editor-in-Chief shall not allow the information to be published if there are sufficient grounds to believe that it is plagiarism.
4.5. The Editor-in-Chief shall:
– continuously improve the Journal;
– follow the principle of freedom of opinion;
– strive to meet the needs of the readers and authors of the Journal;
– eliminate the influence of business or political interests on decision-making when publishing materials;
– decide on the publication of materials according to the following main criteria: appropriateness of the manuscript for the Journal; relevance, novelty and scientific significance of the submitted manuscript; clarity; reliability of results and completeness of conclusions. A decision on publication is made on the basis of the quality of the research and its relevance;
– take all reasonable steps to provide a high quality of the published materials and protect the confidentiality of personal information.
– consider recommendations of reviewers when making a final decision on publishing the manuscript. The responsibility for a decision on publication is entirely borne by the Editorial Board of the Journal;
– justify decisions regarding acceptance or rejection of the manuscript;
– allow the author of the reviewed material to substantiate their research viewpoint;
– not revoke the decision on publication made by the previous Board, if the list of the Editorial Board members has been updated.
4.6. The Editor-in-Chief, together with the Publisher, shall not leave unanswered the complaints regarding the peer-reviewed manuscripts or published materials; they also shall detect conflicts and take all necessary measures to restore the rights that have been infringed.
5. Conflict of Interest
To avoid any breach of publication ethics, it is crucial to eliminate any conflicts of interest of all the parties involved in publishing. Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers or members of the editorial board have financial, scientific or personal relations that may influence their actions. Such relations are known as dual commitments, competing interests or competing loyalties.
In order to prevent conflicts of interest and in accordance with the ethical standards adopted by the Journal, each party shall bear the following responsibilities.
The Editor shall:
– pass the manuscript for consideration to another Editorial Board member if the initially appointed reviewer has a conflict of interest with the author of the manuscript;
– ask that all the parties involved in publishing report a potential conflict of interest;
– make decisions to publish the information from the letter of the author concerning scientific and / or financial conflicts of interest if it is not confidential and may affect the published work evaluation by readers or academia;
– publish corrections if a conflict of interest arose after the paper was published.
The Author shall:
– indicate his employer and the source of research funding.
The Reviewer shall:
– inform the Editor-in-Chief about conflicts of interest (dual commitments, competing interests) and decline to review the manuscript.
Violations
If publication ethics is breached by the editor, authors or reviewers, a mandatory investigation will be carried out. This applies to both published and unpublished materials. The Editorial Board has the right to seek clarification, without involving those who may have a conflict of interest with any of the parties.
If the article containing significant inaccuracies has been published, and the Editorial Board recognizes this fact, the article shall be immediately modified in a way accessible to readers and indexing systems.
The process of revoking (retracting) articles
1. Purpose of revocation (retraction) of the article
1.1. Without limitation of publication, correction of published information and alerting readers to articles containing serious flaws or erroneous data that cannot be trusted.
1.2. Warning readers about duplicate articles, plagiarism, concealment of important conflicts of interest that may affect the interpretation of data or recommendations on their use.
2. The reason for the withdrawal (retraction) of the article is the confirmation by the editors of the journal of the fact that the article contains extreme violations of scientific and publication ethics.
2.1. Falsification of data, when a large part of the article contains inaccurate information – the result of a conscious violation or bona fide misconceptions as a result of the calculation, experimental errors, typos.
2.2. Multiple publications, that is, authors have published the same data or article in several journals without proper justification, permission or cross-references.
2.3. Plagiarism, when most of the article contains the results of previously published studies of other authors, or when borrowing is not properly designed.
3. The order of revocation (retraction) of the article
3.1. The editorial board retracts the article on the official request of the author/team of authors of the article, who explained the reason for his decision, as well as on the decision of the editorial board on the basis of their own expertise or information received by the editorial board.
3.2. If the editorial board has not responded to the author’s request within 30 working days, the author has the right to apply to the Council on Ethics of Scientific Publications of ASEP.
3.3. If the editorial board decides to retract the article on the basis of violations listed in par. 2, the author (corresponding author in the case of collective authorship) shall be notified with the justification of the reasons for the retraction.
3.4. The decision to retract the article is made taking into account the answer of the author (authors) of the article, justifying their position on this issue. If the author(s) within 10 working days do not respond to the request of the editorial board, the editorial board has the right to retract the article without his (their) consent. The authors may not agree with the position of the editorial board, but this does not negate the right to conduct a retraction procedure.
3.5. The decision to withdraw the article is made with the Protocol. Copies of the Protocol are sent to the author (corresponding author in case of collective authorship), to the Council on Ethics of Scientific Publications of ASEP, to the scientific electronic library eLIBRARY.RU, scientific electronic library “Cyberleninka”.
3.6. Information about the article is published in all versions of the journal (printed and/or electronic) with the reason, basis, and date of retraction. Retracted articles are identified as such in all electronic sources (on the journal’s web-site and in bibliographic databases marked WITHDRAWN/RETRACTED); withdrawn articles and references are excluded from citation indexes and do not participate in the calculation of indicators.
3.7. Along with the decision on the retraction of the article the editorial may make a decision on the imposition of a ban on the acceptance for publication of articles by the author of the retracted article for a certain period.
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