PUBLICATION ETHICS POLICY

The Editorial Board has taken up the obligation to strictly follow all guidelines and recommendations issued by COPE - the Committee on Publication Ethics (for references & details: https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

More specifically, we would like to emphasize on the following COPE provisions equally applicable to all our authors (current and potential), all members of the editorial team and all acting reviewers:

1. All editors (chief, managing, guest editors in special cases) are responsible for maintaining the right balance between high quality of the materials published, their academic integrity and the right for free expression of own thoughts.
2. High standards of academic publishing shall always be prevalent over personal interests and needs of the editorial team members and publishers of this journal.
3. At any point of time, authors of the already published texts have the right to request a retraction, publish apology, additional clarification or correction. The editorial team is to support this decision of the authors, however, the editorial team also reserves the right to request an additional explanation before publication and/or retraction.
4. Editors of the journal are responsible for the final decision on whether the text fits the journal’s scope. The decision is to be provided in a timely manner and directly to the author(s) along with the sufficient explanation and, if applicable, recommendations on further improvements or alternative publication options.
5. The top-priority criterion in the process of any text consideration is originality of the central idea and importance of the core research output.
6. Journal’s editors (chief or guest) are responsible for explaining all double-blind review procedures to both reviewers and authors (if needed). Each time a text is delivered to a reviewer for a blind review, a standard editorial reminder on rules and procedures shall be attached.
7. In case of changes in the editorial team, newer editors shall not change the decisions of previous editors, unless a complaint regarding plagiarism has been filed by a third party.
8. Whenever a plagiarism complaint is filed by an author, reader or editorial team member — the editors shall initiate the appropriate procedures, using COPE regulations as the benchmark.
9. Articles containing criticism of other academic works, encouraging discussion and/or presenting negative results should be treated equally to standard articles describing authors’ own results. Such articles shall be also subject to standard double-blind review.
10. All editorial rules are similarly applicable to both published and unpublished (under review) texts.
11. Whenever a case of plagiarism has been reported externally, the editors are obliged to fully cooperate on the case and provide all available evidence with the exception of the involved reviewers’ personal details.
12. Chief editor is responsible for informing the international databases and catalogues in the cases of text retraction. At the same time, chief editor cannot be treated as responsible for the timing of the related updates in these databases and catalogues.
13. All members of the editorial team, including publishers, editors and reviewers, are expected to communicate, between each other and with third parties, following the principles of editorial independence.
14. All cases of a potential conflict of interests shall be resolved according to COPE regulations. In such a case the chief editor will do their best to find a similar case among those described on the COPE site and take actions accordingly.
15. Whenever an author (already published or potential), a reviewer or a reader is planning to file an external complaint regarding the journal’s performance or communication, they are asked to make the chief editor their first contact point. If the explanation provided by the chief editor has been found unsatisfactory - the complainant is recommended to contact the publisher. The latter reserves the right to disregard the complaint if the complainant did not make a fair attempt to settle the conflict with the chief editor first.

PRIVACY POLICY

1. Editors responsible for communication with authors (current or potential, online or offline) take up the responsibility to store all authors’ personal data confidential.
2. All members of the editorial team shall not track location or IP addresses of the authors, current or potential.
3. All members of the editorial teams shall not use any parts of the personal data provided by authors and/or reviewers in their interests or for their personal purposes, including those of purely research/academic nature.
4. If any member of the editorial team decides to organize a survey, authors/reviewers/readers participating in it would be informed in advance and would be asked for a permission.
5. Members of the editorial team are formally allowed to share personal information related to authors only in situations when plagiarism or other academic misconduct has been detected and proved in the course of an investigation. In such situations all members of the editorial team shall fully cooperate with the investigation authorities.
6. Authors’ current work affiliation and contact emails are published in each article as part of open-access information. If an author is strongly against publication of their email or photo - they shall contact the editorial team at least 3 business days before the date of article’s online publication.
7. Since university affiliation is an integral element of indexation in the international databases, this information is treated as an open-source one. All authors are strongly encouraged to provide their university affiliations in the course of text submission.
8. The editorial team shall not share personal contacts of the authors (phone numbers, emails, messengers’ nicknames) with any third parties.
9. Communication on the Journal’s matter using social networks is strongly discouraged. We ask all our authors, reviewers and readership to respect the privacy of the editorial team members.
10. The journal editors have the right to delete all data (personal and textual) on the already published authors and/or former reviewers when there is the need to free up server/cloud storage.
11. If any person/organization receives an email message from the editorial team due to human mistake or technical glitch - we ask such persons to delete the email as soon as possible and inform the editorial team at earliest.
12. If you have a more specific enquiry regarding how we collect/store data - please, contact the chief editor. If a member of the Editorial Board, reviewer or author (current or potential) would like to have their personal data deleted from our site/server/cloud storage - they shall email such a request to the journal’s chief editor.

FREE SPEECH DISCLAIMER

The Editorial Board, editorial team and reviewers do not necessarily share the opinions expressed in the published articles and do not necessarily support the proposed research methods, tools, scientific or applied conclusions. The decision regarding publication, first and foremost, stems from the originality of the vision and/or of the proposed materials.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

СС BY NC ND type of copyright licensing is applicable to all academic articles and other materials published in this journal (on this site).

Under this license, you are legally allowed to:

• Download and share the materials further, with proper indication of their authors;
• Use the materials for non-commercial purposes.

You are legally prohibited to:

• Modify them in any way
• Use them for profit-making purposes
• Share or publish the materials without indication of the original author(s).

PLAGIARISM POLICY

1.Unauthorized publication of third-party materials (partial or in full) in this journal is strictly prohibited. The editorial team shall take all possible actions to avoid such situations.

2.Every submitted article is first of all tested for originality, using the tools and software available to the editorial team. Report on the originality test is then provided to the corresponding author.

3. Articles with the originality rate of less than 80% are automatically withdrawn from further review and consideration.

4. The use of own previous (already published) works should be limited to no more 7-9%, no matter what is the number of coauthors in an article. This is equally applicable to authors’ publications in languages other than English.

5. Author’s attempts to artificially increase the originality rate, disguise plagiarism or self-citations may be the reason for by default rejection and further blacklisting.

6. The editorial team takes up the obligation to counteract plagiarism by all means available to the team, however, the person legally responsible for originality of the published material shall be the author(s) of this material.

7. The editorial team guarantees all submitted but not approved (neither published) materials will be deleted as soon as they are officially rejected and they will not become available to any third party for further improper use.

ALTERNATIVE STORAGES

All issues of journal are alternatively stored and archived by: the National Library of Thailand , Russian E-library and Index Copernicus library of journals, Poland 

EDITORIAL BOARD POLICY. REVIEWERS’ POLICY

1.The Editorial Board includes researchers with PhD or postdoc degrees (or national equivalents) who have been involved in research activities in the scope of this journal and have at least 5  publications within the journal’s scope in the last 5 years.

2. The Editorial Board shall consist of at least 15 persons from at least 10 countries.

3. Membership in this Editorial Board is open. Any researcher interested in the membership may submit an electronic request addressed to the chief editor via this website or via email. The decision on the inclusion is made with the consent of at least 51% of other members of the Editorial Board.

4. Information about the Editorial Board list is publicly available on the Journal website.

5. If a member of the Editorial Board wishes to be excluded from the Board, they should send an electronic request to the chief editor, explaining the reasons behind such a decision. Please, note that removing the name of the excluded member from the official site of the Journal may take from 1 to 3 business days.

6. In some cases, the Editorial Board members may also serve as anonymous reviewers, under the same conditions as for all other reviewers.

7. The main functions of an anonymous/blind reviewer is reviewing materials submitted to the editors in a timely manner and providing recommendations on their improvement (if applicable).

8. Anonymous reviewing in this Journal is an ongoing year-around process which is not subject to seasonality or academic calender.

9. Every submission delivered to the journal is first subject to plagiarism check, then to desk review carried out by the chief editor and only then is passed, in an anonymized, coded form, to a blind review.

10. Double-blind review at this Journal may take from 12 to 60 days, depending on a particular reviewer load and also on a topic, number of pages, amount of mathematical calculations in the text etc. Duration of the review may be in exceptional cases prolonged upon reviewer’s grounded request.

11. The chief editor is responsible for making the final report on each submission, stemming from the results of double-blind review. The final report is then delivered to the author(s), in case of both positive and negative results.

12. In cases when corrections and improvements are required on the author’s side as a result of blind review, the author has max. 25 days for updating the text. In case the author is unable to meet this deadline (for any reason), the chief editor reserves the right to remove the submission from the publication queue. Notification on this removal shall be instantly delivered to the corresponding author. In such a case, the author would have to resubmit the text for another round of review.

13. In case of negative results of the blind review, the corresponding author has 5 business days for filing an appeal. Appeal can be made only once and must be thoroughly grounded.

14. In case reviewer(s) and chief editor agree on the negative decision regarding the text, the submission is completely withdrawn from the database, unless the corresponding author chooses to appeal (see Art. 13 above).

15. In case of contradictions/doubts among the reviewers, the final decision belongs to the chief editor.

16. Membership in the Editorial Board as well as peer-reviewing for this Journal are pro bono.

REVIEWING PROCEDURES

Final decision on a blind review should stem from the following requirements:

• The article’s central topic matches the Journal’s scope
• Problem of the research is relevant and promising 
• Article’s structure is exact and logical
• Research methods are adequate to the topic and to the field and are also advanced; applied data is sufficient in volume and is not outdated
• Results and conclusions in the article demonstrate theoretical significance, practical importance, obvious novelty and originality
• Text readability is sufficiently high.

Each of these requirements has to be separately assessed by the reviewer using the scale from 4 to 1 (4 being the highest score, and 1 — the lowest). The final scores are then presented in the review form.

Recommended form of the review in pdf 

Recommended form of the review in excel  

Additional feedback from the reviewer should be provided in separate blocks for commenting.

One of the following five decisions should be finalized on each text under blind review:

• Accepted in the initial version
• Accepted with minor corrections
• Preliminary accepted, requiring major corrections and second round for review 
• Rejected after appeal.

BUSINESS MODEL. COOPERATION WITH CONFERENCES. ADVERTISING

Once again, the Editorial Board would like to emphasize that the Journal is non-profit. Therefore, zero publication fee is applied in relation to all approved texts.

At the same time, the Editorial Board reserves the right to change its currently non-profit model if at any point of time in the future its funding conditions would change in an unfavorable for the Journal way.

The Editorial Board is open to cooperation with conference committees and organizers of other research-related events.

The following provisions shall apply to such cooperation with event organizers:

• The texts should clearly match the Journal scope;
• The texts shall be published in regular issues. The Journal shall not have special issues for any sort of events.
• Participation in a conference or other event does not automatically guarantee publication in this Journal. Standard blind review rules are applicable to all conference texts.
• The editorial team delivers blind review results directly to the authors of all texts, not to organizers of an event.
• No special treatment or other preferences can be given to event organizers.
• Double publication of identical materials (e.g., in conference proceedings and then in the Journal) is treated as self-plagiarism and is thus automatically banned from publication.

Advertising on the Journal’s page and/or on the Journal site is allowed only in exceptional cases. All advertisement in the Journal and on its site should be limited to such topics as education, research grants, postdoc programs’ call, scientific events, call for authors in joint books and research projects, etc.