Publishing Ethics

Editorial board of the scientific journal “Scientific Herald of Sivershchyna. Series: Law”  while adopting articles and deciding on their publishing is guided by the requirements contained in this section, the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics and is also based on the experience of reputable international publishing houses.

The main participants of publishing process are the editorial board, the reviewers, the authors of the papers.

Adhering to the rules of ethics by the aforementioned participants of publishing process helps to ensure the authors’ rights to intellectual property, to increase the quality of the issue and to prevent the possibility of improper use of author’s papers in somebody’s interests.

1. The principles of professional ethics in the work of the editorial board

The members of the editorial board of the journal are responsible for publishing the manuscript provided, guided by the following basic principles:

1. While deciding to publish a paper, the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal is guided by the reliability of the submitted data and the scientific significance of the paper under consideration.
2. The editor-in-chief must not have his own interests in relation to the articles he declines or accepts.
3. The editor-in-chief of the journal is responsible for deciding what submitted articles are accepted for publishing and what are rejected. While making this decision, he is guided by the policy of the journal and adheres to legal principles, preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism.
4. The editor-in-chief evaluates the submitted article only according to its scientific essence, regardless of authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, nationality, citizenship, origin, social status or political views.
5. The editor-in-chief, the members of the editorial board, the editorial team staff must not tell the information about the article submitted to the journal anyone other than the author(s), appointed and potential reviewers.
6. Unpublished data obtained from the manuscripts submitted for consideration must not be used by the editor-in-chief, the members of the editorial board, the editorial team staff for their personal purposes or be transferred to the third parties (without written consent).
7. The article, if accepted for publishing, is placed in open access, copyrights are kept by the authors.
8. Ethical principles in the work of the reviewer

While evaluating the article, the reviewer should be impartial and adhere to the following principles:

1. An expert evaluation must help the author to improve the quality of the text of the article. It also must help the editor-in-chief to decide whether the article is worth publishing.
2. The reviewer who does not consider himself to be a specialist in the subject area of ​​the article or who knows that he will not be able to submit a review on the article in time must notify the editor-in-chief and refuse to review.
3. The author or the co-author of the submitted for the review paper can’t be a reviewer. This also applies to scientific supervisors of the applicants of academic degree and/or the staff of the unit in which the author works.

4. Any manuscript received by an expert from the editorial board for a review is a confidential document. It can’t be discussed with the other persons, except for the indicated ones. 5. The reviewer must be objective. It is unacceptable to make personal comments to the author in the review. The reviewer must express his opinion clearly and reasonably. 6. The reviewer must disclose published articles that are relevant to the reviewed article and are not quoted by the author. Any statement in the review that some observations, conclusions, or arguments from a reviewed article have already been met in the literature before must be accompanied by an exact bibliographic reference to the source of information. The reviewer must also pay the attention of the editor-in-chief to significant similarity or partial coincidence of the reviewed article with any other previously published one.7. If the reviewer suspects plagiarism, other authorship or data falsification, he must apply to the editorial board for a collective review of the author’s article.

8. The reviewer must not use the information and ideas from the submitted for the review article for his personal benefit, while adhering to the principle of confidentiality.
9. The reviewer must not accept the manuscripts for the review if there is a conflict of interests caused by competition, cooperation or any other relationships with any authors or organizations associated with the article.
10. Authors’ responsibilities concerning adhering to the ethics of scientific publications

The authors are personally responsible for the text of the manuscript submitted to the editorial board of the journal and should adhere to the following principles:

1. To provide true results of the conducted researches.
2. To provide the necessary data for publishing at the request of the editorial board.

3. To ensure that the results of the research, described in the manuscript, are independent and original work. In case of using the fragments of other people’s papers and/or borrowing the other authors’ statements, corresponding bibliographic references with the obligatory indication of the author and the original source should be made in the article. Excessive borrowing, as well as plagiarism in all forms, including unannounced citations, rephrasing or assigning rights to the results of other people’s research, are unethical and unacceptable. The articles that are compilations of the papers published by other authors, without their creative processing and own author’s understanding, are not accepted by the editors of the journal.4. To submit only original manuscript. Do not submit the article that has already been submitted to another journal and is reviewing now, as well as the article that was previously published in another journal. Not adhering to this principle is regarded as a gross violation of the ethics of publications and gives grounds for withdrawing the article from the review. If the elements of the manuscript were previously published in another article, the authors must refer to their earlier paper and indicate what is a significant difference between the new paper and the previous one. Verbatim copying of their own papers and their paraphrasing are unacceptable, they can only be used as a basis for new conclusions.5. To guarantee the correct list of the co-authors of the paper. All the authors mentioned in the article must be responsible for the essence of the article. If the article is a multidisciplinary paper, each co-author is responsible for his personal contribution, keeping, at the same time, collective responsibility for the overall result. It is unacceptable to indicate the persons, who did not take part in the research.

6. To inform the editorial board of the journal immediately and to make a joint decision on the acknowledgment of the mistake and/or its correction as soon as possible in case of revealing significant mistakes or inaccuracies in the article while its reviewing or after its publishing.
7. To indicate in the manuscripts all the sources of financial support of the project, information about the employer, patent applications/registrations, grants and other types of financing.
8. To reveal in the papers information about any significant conflicts of interests that can affect the results of the research or their interpretation.

Violation of the above mentioned requirements is considered to be an unethical behavior and is unacceptable.