Publication ethics

Section I. General regulations

The editorial board of the journal "Proceedings of Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University":

  1. Adheres to the policy of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE);
  2. Acts according to the principles of international laws on copyright (Responsible research publication: international standards for authors) and copyright legislation applicable within the Russian Federation;
  3. Accepts and works with the materials submitted by the author, on the basis of the Rules of cooperation with the editors and the Author's agreement.

The Rules of cooperation with the editors (responsibilities of the parties) based on the положений CODE OF CONDUCT AND BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL EDITORS are presented below. Before the manuscript submission the authors shall carefully read the requirements and follow them responsibly as soon as the manuscript is submitted. None of the parties shall commit copyright violation during their cooperation.

Section II. The rules of cooperation with editors (responsibilities of the parties)

  1. THE EDITORS` (ASSOCIATE EDITORS AND EDITOR IN CHIEF) RESPONSIBILITIES
    • 1.1. The editor-in-chief shall have personal responsibility for all the materials published in the journal, the contents and quality of the material.
    • 1.2. The editor-in-chief shall have personal responsibility for the decision to accept or reject the manuscript.
    • 1.3. The editors are willing to meet the authors’ needs to improve the publications when making editing, corrections, clarifications, and changes, including possible retractions or changing the deadlines for the purpose of modification and updating the materials.
    • 1.4. The editors shall publish errata in subsequent issues.
    • 1.5. The editors provide appropriate guidelines from publisher experts to provide the print quality (see Manuscript guideline).
    • 1.6. The editors put the information about funding sources of the research and the funders`contribution into the research if so.
    • 1.7. The editors publish the dates of a manuscript submission and an article acceptance.
    • 1.8. The decision to accept an article shall be based on the evaluation of the following parameters only: relevance, originality, importance, accuracy, clarity and the peer reviewer`s conclusion. The editors reserve the right to cooperate with single-discipline specialists if an objective evaluation is necessity of an objective evaluation.
    • 1.9. The editors shallneither use the information for the personal purposes nor disclose the personal data (names, e-mails, etc.) and the content of a manuscript to third parties that are not involved in the immediate work process.
    • 1.10. The editors preserve single-blind peer review within 1 month from the moment of manuscript submission and provide the expert assessment by disinterested, independent, qualified specialist in the field of research. Reviewers` identities are protected (for more inf. see Peer Review process)
    • 1.11. The expert assessment guidelines for peer reviewers are developed and published by the editors (see PEER REVIEWERS` RESPONSIBILITIES section, Peer review guidelines) as well as the guidelines for the authors to follow (Peer Review process).
    • 1.12. The editors shall not cancel their decisions to publish an article unless serious problems arise.
    • 1.13. Rejection of manuscripts shall be validated and substantiated by editors, if needed.
    • 1.14. To maintain the integrity of the academic record the editors, guided by COPE flowcharts, refuse to publish an article in the following reasonable cases: plagiarism in all forms, partial duplication of own / others` articles previously published, submission of a manuscript to more than one journal, duplication of other people's words without references, unauthentic or misleading authorship.
    • 1.15. The editors shall actively encourage authors, readers, reviewers, editorial board members and publishers and also support their initiatives about ways of improving the journal`s processes by reassessing and revising actual policies and discouraging misconduct.
    • 1.16. In the case of valid claims, problems or conflict situations, the Editorial board is obliged to take every care to ensure the protection of the aggrieved party and argue the position, to publish correct version, make the apologizes to the authors, readers and the scientific community when needed.
    • 1.17. Providing reviewers and editors with tools to detect cited links in bibliography and related publications.

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Responsible research publication: international standards for authors
    1. AUTHORS` RESPONSIBILITIES 
      • 2.1. Authors shall take collective responsibility for all information in their paper (facts, results, conclusions, theories, suppositions etc.) and comply with all relevant legislation. The published study should be conducted in accordance with the ethical and legal norms.
      • 2.2. Authors shall confirm that the article data is authentic, objective and not fraudulent or fabricated.
      • 2.3. Authors shall confirm that the article data is original and has not been published before or submitted elsewhere at the same time.
      • 2.4. Authors shall not rephrase, overlap their / others’ works or quote any text without the references. All elements of Plagiarism are unacceptable. The authors shall properly indicate the primary source references in the bibliography list.
      • 2.5. Researcher shall present their results clearly and unambiguously to be possible for others to use them.
      • 2.6. The authors and contributors shall reflect significant contributions to the work made by other individuals.
      • 2.7. All authors, co-authors, and contributors shall be listed in the appropriate field without any misconducts (e.g. ghost - , guest- and gift authors ).
      • 2.8. Authors shall clearly specify the funding sources of the research.
      • 2.9. Authors shall provide the information on their sponsor involvement level, if any.
      • 2.10. New results shall be presented in the context of the previous studies and primary sources, which shall be accurately executed as citations and references.
      • 2.11. Authors shall confirm absence of any relevant conflicts or disclose the conflicts of interests with the editorial board, sponsors, co-authors, publisher, etc., if such conflicts exist.
      • 2.12. Authors shall provide a manuscript made according to Manuscript guideline.
      • 2.13. Authors shall have contact with editors during the process of editing and making corrections.
      • 2.14. Authors shall not make essential changes in the manuscript after acceptance without any serious reasons.
      • 2.15. Authors shall have right to receive the review document, if they make the request to the editor board.
      • 2.16. Authors shall can right to withdraw the article even though it was accepted, but they shall pay the outlay defined by the editors. The only exception is a situation when the article is already in print.
      • 2.17. If people or animals are involved in the experiments, the authors shall obtain appropriate approvals, licenses, and registrations before the study process starts, complying with the current legislation and regulations (British Educational Research Assoсiation ethical guidelines, in case of clinical researches – WMA Declaration of Helsinki).
      • 2.18. Research sponsors shall not have the right to veto the publication of results that are negative for their products or developments.

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Responsible research publication: international standards for authors
    1. PEER REVIEWERS` RESPONSIBILITIES
       
      • 3.1. Reviewers (Ph.D. and D.Sc.) shall make an expert evaluation. They shall do this in accordance with the peer review guidelines, which they can find in Peer Review process page.
      • 3.2. A reviewer shall refuse to make a review in the following cases: insufficient competence, inability to meet deadlines/conditions, in the case of any personal interests or any conflicts of interest with the authors, also due to other moral/ethical contradictions.
      • 3.3. A reviewer shall have publications in the field of knowledge of the article under review during the previous 3 years.
      • 3.4. A reviewer shall make unbiased, objective judgment, and not any libelous or personal comments directed to the authors.
      • 3.5. Unpublished articles received by a reviewer are confidential; the reviewer shall not disclose the information regarding the paper to third persons and use it for personal business.
      • 3.6. A peer reviewer`s opinion and decision shall be argued.
      • 3.7. A peer reviewer shall be attentive to the bibliography data and identify redundant publications and relevant published papers, which have not been cited by author.

The peer reviewer must be alert to any fraud, plagiarism cases, substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript and any other publications. If so, the Peer reviewer shall make comments in the review and contact the Associate Editor.

 

Section III. Malpractice and improper conduct 

  1. Fabrication / falsification of scientific results,
  2. Plagiarism of data, ideas or article fragments (compilation),
  3. Intentional selection or suppression of the results in a publication, when these results are relevant to the conclusions,
  4. False use of statistics or other methods,
  5. Intentional or careless negligence in concealing of methods details,
  6. False informing about authorship (attributed honorary authorship), invisible authorship no references to the participants of research,
  7. False results presentation other researchers  (fictitious citations),
  8. Republication shall be inadmissible (self-plagiarism and duplicate publications),
  9. Improper handling of research facilities,
  10. Conspiracy to increase the quoting artificially,
  11. Agency services proposals: correspondence with the editorial office and updating of articles on behalf of the author,
  12. The transfer of articles by editors to other journals without the authors` consent.
  13. Transfer of the authors' materials by authors or reviewers to third parties,
  14. All possible manipulations with quoting (artificial increase in scientometric indices, excessive self-citation and friendly citation shall be considered as fraud),
  15. Fan-mailing the same article text to several scientific journals,
  16. All cases of digital images falsification and fabrication.

 

All these cases are regarded as behavior that does not correspond to ethical and scientific standards, and is interpreted as fraud.

Please, see Guidelines 2017 to get more information.

   

The section is prepared on the basis of the International Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE) materials, as well as the information on the web site of Elsevier publishing house.