NATURAL SCIENCES

Journal of fundamental
and
applied researches

PUBLISHING ETHICS

Editorial policy of “Natural Sciences” sticks to the international standards of publishing ethics (http://publicationethics.org) and research ethics. The journal is among the ones recommended by the State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles for publishing the research papers, thus the editorial board observes all significant moral and ethical principles and standards.
The journal staff respects the rights of the authors, who send their manuscripts to be published, the rights to be protected by Russian laws and international acts. For the editorial board the copyright of the submitted papers is based on mandatory observing of three conditions:
1) considerable contribution to the concept and structure of research or to the analysis or interpretation of the data;
2)composing of the article or making fundamental changes in the text;
3) approval of the final version submitted into print.
Authors submitting their papers to be published in “Natural Sciences” journal should in their turn guarantee that the articles:

  • are original (not published in any other journals in their current version or the one close to it in content);
  • are not under the review of any other periodical and all potential conflicts of interests, associated with the copyright and publishing of the articles under the question, are settled;
  • do not infringe any of the copyrights, thus guaranteeing indemnity to the publisher in case any of such infringements are detected;
  • to facilitate distribution and implementation of the policy governing the use of materials the authors assign the exclusive ownership right on the manuscript, unless otherwise provided.

The following can be treated as the infringement of research ethics:

  • forging, falsification of data by means of illicit data retrieval and denial of undesired results by manipulating pictures or illustrations;
  • infringement of intellectual property rights in regard to another author’s papers, which is protected by the copyright, significant scientific discoveries, hypotheses, theories and research methods:
    a) illegal use (plagiarism);
    b) falsification of the content;
    c) illegal publishing and providing some third party with the access to any unpublished papers, discoveries, hypotheses, theories or research methods;
  • claiming for (co)authorship with another person without his/her consent.

In compliance with the “Natural Sciences” editorial policy it is prohibited:

  • to copy literally some paper of another person without noting his/her authorship, referring to the source and using quotation marks;
  • to incorrectly rephrase some work of another person when more than one sentence was changed within one paragraph or section of the text, or the sentences were positioned in some other order without a respective reference to the source. Considerable incorrect rephrasing without a reference to the source is made equivalent to literary copying;
  • to use elements of some other person’s work without noting his/her authorship, e.g. a drawing, table, paragraph without expressing gratitude, referring to the source or using quotation marks;
  • to resort to self-plagiarism: authors must state that their work is being published for the first time. If some elements of the manuscript were previously published in another article, the author must refer to that previous work, stipulate what is the major difference between the new work and the previous one at the same time define its connection with the research results and conclusions presented in the previous publication. Literary copying of the author’s papers and their rephrasing are not allowed.

In case of violation of human treatment of animals and conducting experiments arising doubts in scientific credibility of the obtained data presented in the article and found by the reviewer, the journal editorial board must immediately return the article to the author with a due note of the reason for returning it. Authors are solely responsible for the content of the submitted article and credibility of the results presented in it, as well as the correctness of the references to the cited papers.
Authors of an original article must submit credible results of their work and objective discussion of their research importance. The data underlying the work must be presented without mistakes. The work must contain enough details and references for potential reproduction. False or consciously wrong statements are unacceptable and are considered as unethical behaviour.
Only those who made outstanding contribution to forming of the paper’s idea, development, implementation or interpretation of the submitted research can be the authors of an article. Those who made considerable contribution are considered co-authors.
In case an author found considerable mistakes and inaccuracies in the publication, he/she must report about that to the journal editor so that the article should be removed from the publication and corrected. If the editor learns about some significant mistakes in the article from some third party, the author must withdraw the work or correct the mistakes as soon as possible.
Submitting an article to “Natural Sciences” the authors thus prove that they are aware of the editorial policy and publishing ethics of the journal and are in full and direct charge for the content of the submitted paper.
The journal staff observes the research ethics standards, protecting the reputation of the authors and treating seriously separate cases of plagiarism. Should such situations occur, a system of procedures enabling to react to the possible accusations in plagiarism is used. To provide objectivity the journal staff studies carefully every case and considers the arguments of all the stakeholders. Before taking some further steps the journal staff tries to get the maximum precise information from the authors of the debatable article or copyright owners and studies it.
The editorial board studies thoroughly any disputes, related to a potential plagiarism of falsification of the results, as well as the disputes on authorship and reasonability to divide the results of work unto small articles. In case plagiarism of results falsification is confirmed, the article is unconditionally rejected.
At the same time the journal reserves its right not to respond to any accusations in plagiarism, if the accuser presents unauthentic personal information or acts in an unethical or threatening manner. The journal staff has a right not to discuss the cases of alleged plagiarism with anyone who is not directly related to that.
The journal editorial board provides anonymous reviewing of the submitted articles taking into account the potential conflicts of interests and guarantee confidentiality of the information about the articles. Editors and reviewers only assess the articles from the viewpoint of the importance of the theoretical and practical results, regardless of the authors’ ethnic origin, citizenship etc. Opinions on the advisability if the article should be published or not are formed in a clear and reasonable manner and forwarded to the authors.