Ethical norms

Responsibilities of Authors

  1. The article should contain enough information and citations to allow others to duplicate work. Fraudulent or deliberately inaccurate statements are unethical and unacceptable. Reviews and professional publications of articles should be accurate and objective, and the editorial “thought” should be the same.
  2. Authors must ensure that they have written entirely original works and if they used the work and/or the words of other authors, it was properly quoted or taken in quotation marks. Plagiarism takes many forms, from the presentation of someone else’s work as their own to copying or paraphrasing of the essential parts of someone else’s work (without indication of authorship) to appropriation of the results of research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms is unethical and unacceptable.
  3. The author should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same study in more than one journal or primary publication. Sending of one and the same manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously is unethical and unacceptable.
  4. The author always must validate works of other authors as required. The authors should publish researches that were critical in determining the nature of the published work. Information received in private capacity, for example, in conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties, should not be used or provided without the written permission of the source. Information obtained through confidential services, such as manuscript reviews or grant applications, should not be used without the written permission of the author of the work.
  5. Authorship should belong to someone who has made a significant contribution to the concept, intention, execution or interpretation of published research. All those, who have made a significant contribution, should be listed as co-authors. Those, who participated in certain essential aspects of a research project, should be recognized or presented as participants. The author should ensure that all identified collaborators are listed in the work and that they are acquainted and approved the final version of the document and agreed with its submission for publication.
  6. When an author reveals a material error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, the author should immediately notify editor of the journal or publisher and co-operate with editor in order to correct the document. If editor or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a material error, the author must immediately correct the document or submit evidence of correctness of the original article to the editorial office.

Responsibilities of Editors

  1. The decision of the editors to accept or reject a document for publication based on the importance, originality and clarity of the article, and the validity of the study and its relevance to the subject matter of the journal. Editors decide on which articles to publish, depending on the quality and relevance for the journal and without interference on the part of owner/publisher of the journal.
  2. Articles are given an unbiased assessment, taking into account their scientific and practical content. All articles are assessed irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship or political beliefs of the author.
  3. The editorial board does not disclose information that has become known in the process of study of the submitted articles and other materials, except for the author, reviewer (reviewers).
  4. If the author submits a complaint about his publication in the journal, the editorial board applies appropriate adequate measures. Such measures have the nature of negotiations of the editorial board with the author. The facts of violation of ethical norms are considered by the editorial council irrespective of the publication date. If the arguments, complaints were reasonable, the editorial board is obliged to make appropriate refutations, changes or disclosures.

Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

  1. An independent and impartial conclusion of the quality of the submitted article (publication) promotes the adoption of an objective decision by the editorial council to place such a publication in the journal. Scientists, who have volunteered to perform the role of a reviewer, must read and evaluate the article (publication) in good faith.
  2. The editorial board will provide information about the deadlines for the request for review. Notify them during the day or two that you have received the request. They will appreciate the fact that you have timely made them aware of whether you are able to complete the review or not. Failure to review the document does not entail any consequences. If the reviewer understands that the review will take longer than usual, please contact the editor to discuss this issue. The editor may ask you to recommend another reviewer, or may be willing to wait a bit longer (for example, if the document is highly specialized and reviewers are difficult to find). As a general recommendation, if you know that you will not be able to complete the review within the specified time frame, you must refuse to process the document.
  3. Any manuscripts received for consideration should be treated as confidential documents. They should not be shown or discussed with others, except cases when it is agreed with the editor. Unpublished materials, disclosed in the submitted manuscript, should not be used in own research of a reviewer without the written consent of the author. Information, which is not subjected to disclosure or ideas obtained during an independent assessment must be confidential and not be used for personal gain.
  4. Reviews of submitted publications should be impartial, objective and based solely on a comprehensive assessment of the content and results of the research to be carried out. The critique of the author’s personality is unacceptable. The review should be qualified, understood and reasoned.
  5. Reviewers are obliged to identify relevant published works in the reviewed material that were not quoted by the authors. Any statements, conclusions or arguments that have been used previously in any publication should be documented as quotes. The reviewer is also obliged to draw the editor-in-chief’s attention to substantial or partial resemblance to any other work with which the reviewer is directly acquainted.\
  6. Reviewers do not accept manuscripts, which can provoke conflicts of interest as a result of competitive, collaborative or other relationships or communications with any of the authors, companies or institutions that are related to the work. In this case, the reviewer should contact the editor and refuse to review the particular document.

Retraction policy

The Editorial Board follows retraction policy to warn readers about self-plagiarism (authors submit the same data in several journals), academic plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification, disguise the conflicts of interests, which would affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use. The retraction of the scientific article is the mechanism of correcting published data and alerting readers about articles with serious gaps or invalid content, incl. unreliable one. The publication of such data may be accidental or intentional misconduct.

The retraction’s goal is to inform readers about the article which contains unreliable data.

Based on the Recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journal staff is guided by the below policy of retraction of previously published articles.

Editors should consider retracting a publication if:

  • it contains material or data without authorization for use;
  • the research findings have previously been published;
  • the article has serious errors (e.g., the misinterpretation of research findings) which call into question scientific value;
  • authorship is invalid (the inclusion of persons who do not meet the authorship criteria, or no one is worth being the author);
  • the author(s) failed to disclose a conflict of interests (as well as other violations of publication ethics);
  • the article was republished with the consent of the author(s);
  • there are other violations of ethics.

Grounds for initiating article retraction:

  • the author’s request to retract the article;
  • the request of the third parties (e.g., participants in the conflict of interests) who have evidence of the violations of academic ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;
  • the editorial board has found ethics violations by the article’s author.

The Academic Integrity Commission of Kherson State University decides about article retraction by relying on the decision of the Editorial Board.

Information on article retraction is available on the journal’s web-site.

The surname(s) of the author(s) and article title are kept in the contents of the relevant issue on the journal’s web-site, but reasons for retractions are specified.

The decision reasoning article retraction is sent to the author (s).