Editorial Ethics

General guidelines

Publishing ethics policy of the Journal is the code of conduct and guidelines which should be followed by all participants of the academic publication process, including authors, peer reviewers, editors, publishers, distributors, and readers.

The Editorial Board abides by the copyright law and anti-plagiarism regulations of the Russian Federation as well as the set of the ethical principles shared by the community of academic publishers; Editorial Board is responsible for publishing and disseminating manuscripts.

Publishing ethics policy of “Vestnik of Saint Petersburg State University. Medicine” follows the guidelines designed by the international Committee on Publication Ethics (СОРЕ).

Ethical guidelines for editors

Some of the most common ethical issues that the journal editor faces:

  • allegations of plagiarism and dual submission;
  • authorship disputes;
  • author and reviewer conflicts of interest.

Chief Editor and Editorial Board are responsible for publishing manuscripts, which means that they should adhere to the following basic guidelines:

  • Editors’ decisions to accept or reject the manuscript should be based on the validity and academic importance of the study;
  • Editors should consider research characteristics of the manuscripts regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnicity, nationality, social background or political beliefs of the author;
  • Previously unpublished data disclosed in the manuscript should not be used for personal purposes or forwarded to third parties without written consent of the author;
  • Information or ideas obtained in the course of editing process, leading to any kind of benefit, should be kept confidential and should not be used for personal advantage;
  • Editors should not publish the information if there is reasonable ground to suspect that it was plagiarized;
  • Editor and publisher shall respond to every appeal concerning submitted manuscripts or published articles; in case of conflict they shall take all necessary steps to defend violated copyright.

Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers

Impartial peer reviewing of submitted manuscripts should be guided by the following principles:

  • The manuscript submitted for peer review should be regarded as a confidential document, which cannot be transferred to third parties for review and discussion unless the permission there for was obtained from the Journal;
  • Peer reviewer should provide objective and sound evaluation of the conducted research, refraining from making personal comments about the author;
  • Previously unpublished data disclosed in the manuscripts shall not be used for reviewer’s personal ends;
  • In case the reviewer does not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review of the manuscript or if he/she feels unable to provide unbiased review, (for example, because of the conflicting interests with the author or affiliated institution), the reviewer should inform the editor and decline to review the manuscript.

Ethical guidelines for authors

Author (or authors) shall be responsible for originality and validity of research they submitted, which means they have to abide by the following guidelines:

  • The authors should report valid research results, refraining from fabrication or falsification of data;
  • The authors should guarantee that the results presented in the submitted work are original;
  • All borrowed fragments and statements should be acknowledged and referenced, with the indication of its author and the source of information: citation manipulation as well as plagiarism of any kind, including hidden or disguised quotations, paraphrasing or usurpation of copyright is unethical and unacceptable;
  • It is compulsory to acknowledge the contribution made by all those who influenced the research in any way; the academic works that affected the author’s research, should be cited in the manuscript;
  • The authors should not submit the manuscripts, which are currently under consideration for publication in any other journal or have already been published elsewhere;
  • All major contributors to the research should be listed as authors; it is not allowed to list those who did not contribute to the current research as authors; all named co-authors must have made a significant contribution to the work reported: this includes research conception or design, and/or acquisition of data, and/or the analysis and interpretation of those data;
  • All named co-authors are responsible for drafting, writing, and revising the article, or checking and confirming the article before submission; if the author discovers an error or inaccuracy in any submitted or published work, he or she should declare that immediately to the editorial staff;
  • All named co-authors approve the final version of the article before submission; they all are aware and approve of submitting the final version of the article;
  • All named co-authors accept that if the article is found to be unsafe, in error, fraudulent, or in breach of warranties made, they share responsibility.

Anti-plagiarism

In order to ensure the high quality of published materials, as well as to verify the authenticity of plagiarism (borrowing) all submitted articles are tested by the “Antiplagiat-Rukontext” system.

Anti-plagiarism policy

Plagiarism can be attested in case of:

  • use (literal quotation) of any materials without indicating the source;
  • use of images, drawings, photographs, tables, graphs, diagrams and any other forms of graphical presentation of information without indicating the source;
  • use of images, drawings, photographs, tables, graphs, diagrams and any other forms of graphical presentation of information published in scientific and popular publications without the consent of the copyright holder;
  • use without written permission of materials whose authors or copyright holders prohibit the use of their materials without special consent.

The legislation of the Russian Federation does not give a clear answer to the question about the amount of borrowing, you can use borrowed materials “in the amount justified by the purpose of citation” (Article 1274 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). Borrowing of any size should be justified by the purpose of writing the article.

Articles containing less than 80 % of the author’s text are not published in the journal. The editors do not welcome the excessive number of citations, even issued properly. Allowed citations — no more than 20 % of the total article. Reviews and other articles that, for objective reasons, require more citations, are reviewed individually by the editorial staff.

Checking materials for borrowing

All articles published in the journal are tested in the Anti-Plagiarism system for the presence of texts on the Internet (through search engines). In case the editorial staff has grounds for a more detailed check, additional tools are used to search for borrowing. Texts in foreign languages are checked by CrossCheck and other similar tools.

Authors can check their articles for plagiarism using the following systems:
http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html
http://turnitin.com
http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/
http://antiplagiat.ru
http://www.miratools.ru
http://advego.ru/plagiatus/advego_plagiatus.exe

Retraction

Retraction initiated by the journal editorial board is aimed at warning readers and authors about instances of duplicate publications (when authors submit the same data in several publications), the provision of false data, plagiarism, concealment of conflicts of interest that could affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use.

Grounds for retraction initiation:

  • detection of plagiarism in the publication;
  • detection of falsifications or fabrications (eg, juggling of research data);
  • duplication of the article in several editions;
  • detection of serious mistakes in the work (for example, misinterpretation of results), which casts doubt on its scientific value;
  • not the correct composition of authors);
  • the conflict of interests (and other violations of the publication ethics) is hidden;
  • re-publication of the article without the consent of the author.

A retraction may be initiated:

  • by the author’s appellation;
  • when the editor of another journal appeals;
  • if other sides (possibly participants in the conflict of interest) introduce any evidence of violations of scientific ethics by the author of the article;
  • if a journal reveals author’s violation of the scientific ethics.

Retraction procedure:

  1. After the appeal of the author or other person who provided facts of the violation of scientific ethics in the article, the editorial board of the journal appoints a commission that conducts case investigations, taking into account all available facts and possibilities for checking the ethics of publication.
  2. Deciding to withdraw the article, the editorial board indicates in the minutes of the meeting the reason for the retraction (in case of detection of plagiarism — with reference to sources of borrowing), as well as the date of retraction.
  3. The Council for the Ethics of Scientific Publications (to enter information into a single database of retracted articles) provides a protocol that indicates the date of the meeting, the composition of the meeting, the results of the examination, an informed decision and a completed form:
    — The author's name and title of the article;
    — The title of the publication from which the text is withdrawn;
    — The initiator of the article's review;
    — Grounds for revoking the article and the date of the decision;
    — A link to the page on the website of the publication, on which information about the retraction is given;
    — Output data to become a DOI (if any);
    — Subject (social sciences, agriculture, etc.).
  4. Information on the revoked texts is transferred to the scientific information base — NEB, CyberLenin. Upon receipt of the application for retraction, information on the article and the full text remain on elibrary.ru and in CyberLenin, but is supplemented with information on retraction. The withdrawn articles and references from them are excluded from the RINC and do not participate in the calculation of the indicators.
  5. In case of serious moral damage to the parties to a conflict of interest, information on the fact of violation of scientific ethics can be transferred to the author's place of work.
  6. The editorial board reserves the right to decide independently on further cooperation with the authors of the retracted articles (complete refusal of cooperation, refusal to cooperate for a certain period of time, appointment of additional expert examination of articles in case of repeated cooperation).

Publication Charges

There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.

Open Access

This journal gives authors the option to publish open access, making it free to access online immediately on publication.