Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials
Founded at 2009


REVIEW AND PUBLISHING ETHICS

REGULATION
on reviewing scientific articles in scientific edition
«Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials»

The Editorial board of the scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials» (hereinafter – the journal) has approved the following procedure for reviewing manuscripts of scientific papers (protocol No. 1 of 1 October 2009 with changes reflected in protocols No. 2 of 5 June 2016 and No.1 of 1 February 2020).

1. General Items

1.1. All scientific article manuscripts received for reviewing to be published in the journal, are subjects to mandatory procedure of the simple double-blind review (any information about the reviewers is confidential for authors).

1.2. Reviewers may be members of the editorial board, as well as of other highly qualified professionals with a recognized position and experience in the research activity under the theme of the peer-reviewed manuscript including publications over the last 3 years. Reviews are stored in the editorial office within 5 years. None of the authors of the manuscript can be a reviewer.

1.3. All the manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal should be reviewed.

1.4. In the Regulation the following basic notions are used:

The author is a person or a group of persons (group of authors) participating in preparation of the scientific paper on the results of their scientific research.

Chief editor is a person heading the office and taking decisions in respect of the production and issue of the journal as agreed with the deputy chief editor, executive secretary of the editorial board.

Deputy editor, executive secretary of the editorial board is a person, organizing and controlling the planning, timetable and qualitative preparation of the journal for printing.

Plagiarism is the intentional attribution of authorship of scientific works of other people, ideas or inventions. Plagiarism may be a violation of the copyright law, patent law and may result in the juridical responsibility.

Editorial Board is an advisory committee of the eminent person group, providing the assistance to the chief editor in selection, preparation and evaluation of scientific papers before their publication.

Reviewer should be an expert acting on behalf of the editorial board of the journal and providing a scientific assessment of author’s copyright in order to determine the possibility of publication of the paper.

Review is the review procedure and the peer review of the presented scientific article to determine whether it should be published, identifying its advantages and disadvantages that is important for the improvement of the manuscript by the author and the publisher.

2. Organization of the reviewing

2.1. Deputy Chief Editor is obliged to notify the author of the receipt of the manuscript within 3 working days by e-mail of the author responsible on behalf of all the authors of the scientific papers for contacts with the editorial office.

2.2. The chief editor together with the deputy chief editor send the article to two reviewers selected in accordance with paragraph 1.2 of this Regulation within 3 working days after receiving the manuscript.

2.3. One month is provided for reviewing the manuscript. However, the editorial board reserves the right to prolong the reviewing period.

2.3.1. The average time during which the preliminary assessment of manuscripts is conducted – 5 (Days).

2.3.2. The average time during which the reviews of manuscripts are conducted — 20 (Days).

2.4. The Review of the manuscript consists of several stages: a) the first phase corresponds to its compliance with the profile of the journal, scientific presentation and the design requirements; b)at the second one the content of the manuscript should be analyzed in terms of the consistency of the title and the content of the work, goals and chosen methodology, originality and relevance of the results, personal contribution of the author’s approach to the studied problem, the correct interpretation of the data and their reliability, the  to justify the sufficiency of conclusions. In addition, the reviewer recommends the author to eliminate inaccuracies, errors and technical errors, to thoroughly examine the quality of the annotation, list of references, and their compliance with the problem under study, as well as the presence of significant borrowings without specifying the source and plagiarism.

2.5. The reviewer should justify a reasonable opinion on the above analysis, and reflect it in his review, drawn up in compliance with Appendix 1 to one of the next resolutions:

  • recommended for publication in the present form;
  • recommended to be published in final form required by the reviewer;
  • recommended to publish revised and re-reviewed;
  • may not be published;
  • recommended to send to another journal.

2.6. If the reviewer/s recommended some revisions, the Journal requests the author/s either to make the necessary corrections or reasonably reject them. The revised version of the manuscript is re-submitted within the period of maximum 1 month for final assessment. The revised manuscript may be additionally sent for the review. The authors are requested to notify the Editorial board verbally or in a written form if they decide to refuse from revising their manuscript following the reviewer’s comments, thus refusing from publishing their manuscript.

2.7. Revised manuscripts re-submitted after 1 month from receiving the initial review are withdrawn from the publication process. The author/s are invited to submit their manuscript as a new submission. The Editorial board treats such manuscripts as entirely new submissions.

2.8. In cases when one of the reviewers has not recommended the manuscript for publication, the Editorial board has the right to send it to another reviewer for the additional evaluation. All conflicts arising during the peer review are resolved exclusively by the Chief Editor/Deputy Chief Editor, executive secretary of the editorial board.

2.9. The decision to refuse to publish the manuscript is made at a meeting of the editorial board in accordance with recommendations of the reviewers. Manuscripts that have been rejected following the peer-review process cannot be submitted to the journal «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials» again. A refusal to publish is sent to the author by e-mail.

2.10. Upon the decision to accept the manuscript for publication, the author is notified of the scheduled period of publication by the Deputy Chief Editor, executive secretary of the editorial board.

2.11. Positive reviews do not guarantee the acceptance, since the final decision on the publication lies exclusively with Editorial Board based on the presentation of the Chief Editor/Deputy Chief Editor, executive secretary of the editorial board.

2.12. The average time in which the article is published (publication notice) — 45 (Days).

3. The procedure for storing and providing reviews of the manuscript

The original versions of all reviews are kept as documents of the editorial board for 5 years. Copies of the reviews can be sent to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for admission to the editors of the corresponding request.

4. Reviewing and publishing ethics

An editor should take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper, in conjunction with the publisher. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior must be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.

5. Plagiarism

Any form of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, constitutes unethical academic behaviour and is, therefore, impermissible. Simultaneous submission of one and the same manuscript to more than one journal is considered to be unethical practice.

All the manuscripts submitted to the journal are examined for incorrect borrowings and plagiarism using either the Antiplagiat system (for papers written in Russian) or Google Scholar tools (at the moment used for papers written in English).

Plagiarism may take diverse forms, such as:

  • borrowing any information published in other editions without indicating the primary source;
  • use of images, pictures, photographs, tables, diagrams, schemes or any other forms of graphical information without indicating the primary source;
  • use of any materials published in scientific and popular editions without approval of the copyright holder;
  • incorrect citation, including incomplete bibliographic description of the source, which prevents its identification;
  • reference not to the primary source of the borrowed text without clear indication of this fact, which may result in mistakes with the determination of the primary source;
  • absence of in-text references to the sources listed in the bibliography of the paper.

Any paper, in which plagiarism are detected or suspected, will be withdrawn from the publication process, even if the paper has already been published.

6. Retraction policy

A retraction procedure in compliance with the COPE protocol is applied whenever the Editorial board:

  • receives evidence of the fraudulence of the published information as a result of either the authors’ conscious actions or bona fide errors (e.g., non-intentional errors in calculations);
  • receives evidence of multiple publications or multiple submissions;
  • reveals the fact of a deliberate or non-intentional concealment of a conflict of interest which could affect interpretation of the data or recommendations on the use of the obtained results.

Retraction is aimed at correcting errors in publications and informing the readership about those papers comprising erroneous data.

Retraction does not imply deletion of the publication from the website of the Journal or corresponding bibliographic databases. A retraction note is published alongside the original publication. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the .pdf indicating «retraction». This is considered important, since the paper may have already been cited by third parties. Information about retracted papers is presented on the Journal’s website.

7. Conflict of interest

Public trust in science, as well as the overall credibility of scientific findings, in large measure depends on how well potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest are mitigated and managed. Conflicts of interest can arise during the course of research, peer review and publication process. Conflicts of interest arise when there is a risk that independent professional judgement can be influenced by personal or financial interests.

The Editorial Board of the journal requires that the authors disclose any relations with organizations that may have affected the interpretation of the obtained results or the recommendations provided. This information should be disclosed in the paper subsection «Conflict of interest» (if relevant).

Reviewers should not consider manuscripts, in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any institutions involved in the research.

The Chief Editor should pass the submitted manuscript for consideration by another Editorial Board member (deputy chief editor, executive secretary of the editorial board or an Editorial Board member) if he/she discovers conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any of the authors or institutions involved in the presented research.

Articles submitted by the members of the Editorial Board are treated on the general grounds.

All actions related to the paper submission, peer review and acceptance/rejection processes should be inspected for potential conflicts of interest in a preventive manner. Any unresolved conflict of interest must be considered by a specially convened commission that includes 2 Editorial board members not related to the conflicting parties and 3 independent specialists not related to the Journal.

8. Protection of personal information

In their work, the Editorial board is guided by the valid legislation of the Russian Federation with regard to confidentiality issues, including the Federal Law No. 152-FZ «On Personal Data» passed 27 July 2006 and the Federal Law No. 149-FZ «On the Information, Informational Technologies and the Protection of Information» passed 27 July 2006. Editors must always protect the confidentiality of personal information obtained during professional interactions. If necessary, the Chief Editor is entitled to require written informed consent for publication from people who may recognize themselves or be identified by others.

9. Relationship with the Founders

The scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials» has been founded by Tver State University. Relations between the Editorial board and its Founders are based on the principle of editorial independence. The Editorial board makes publication decisions exclusively on the basis of the quality and suitability of the paper for the journal, without any interference from the Founder. The position of the Founder cannot be considered as a basis for interfering in the functions and duties of the Chief Editor and the Editorial Board. The editors reject any action that might compromise the editorial independence.

10. Intellectual property

Intellectual property issues in the journal are governed by the Russian Federation legislation and relevant international norms and agreements.

11. Preprint and postprint Policy

As part of the submission process, authors are requested to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor is under consideration of publication by any other journal. After the manuscript has been published in «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials», the authors must indicate a link to the article on the Journal’s website. It can be provided when the article is shared on personal or public websites.

Prior to acceptance and publication in scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials», authors are allowed to make their manuscripts available as preprints on personal or public websites. 

12. Position of Editorial board about AI

The editorial board supports COPE’s statement regarding the use of AI by authors: COPE: Authorship and AI Tools.

Declaration on the ethical and legal basis of the editorial policy of the scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials»

The level of the research and development of science as a whole is largely determined by adherence to ethical and legal principles that are accepted in the scientific community regarding the publication of the results of scientific research and secured a number of international documents: Declaration of the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers «Ethical Principles of Scientific Publications»; Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective published in International Journal of Clinical Practice, Graf C., Wager E., Bowman A., et al. Int. J. Clin. Pract, 2007.; 61 (s152): 126.

According to these documents, the editorial board of the scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials» (hereinafter – the journal) adopted the ethical and legal standards (protocol No. 1 of 1 October 2009 with changes reflected in protocols No. 2 of 5 June 2016 and No.1 of 1 February 2020). The compliance of these standards is mandatory for all the participants involved in the process of publishing scientific papers (the members of the editorial board, authors and reviewers, and publishers).

1. Ethical code for the Chief Editor and Editorial Board members

The Chief Editor bears full personal responsibility for the content published in the scientific edition «Physical and chemical aspects of the study of clusters, nanostructures and nanomaterials». The Chief Editor is guided by the Ethical code presented herein, as well as by the valid legislation of the Russian Federation with regard to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Chief Editor and the Editorial Board members should adhere to the following ethical principles:

1.1. Treat all materials provided by the author of the manuscript and make an objective decision about the possibility of their publication, on the basis of relevance of the manuscript and reliability of the results, as well as the matching to the journal profile

1.2. Respect the author regardless of their gender, race or other subjective qualities.

1.3. Follow the author’s right to intellectual property, preventing the disclosure of research and use them for personal purposes without consent of the author, defend the freedom of scientific inquiry.

1.4. Exclude from publishing materials that contain falsification of results and plagiarism, as well as multiple copying of the information and the false attribution of authorship.

1.5. Ensure confidentiality and anonymity of the review of the manuscript materials.

1.6. Engage in peer review articles by specialists of high level only.

1.7. Ensure that the submitted manuscripts be processed in a timely and efficient manner

1.8. To reasonably react and prevent publication of papers relating to some unethical behavior of the authors.

1.9. Members of the editorial board should not provoke such unethical actions or consciously permit such sort of violations.

1.10. If somebody of the members of the editorial board has learned about unethical behavior of potential authors, the editorial board should discuss the fact of the violation or an application relating to such a fact.

1.11. The members of the editorial board should be ready to publish corrections, explanations, refutes and apologies in the cases when it would be necessary.

1.12. Be mindful that the primary goal of the journal is not profit but the benefit of science,.

1.13. Constantly work on raising the ethical standards of the editorial work and publication process.

1.14. Continuously update the pool of independent specialists acting as peer reviewers.

1.15. Convene meetings of the Editorial board, either in person or remotely, at least 2 times per year to make strategic decisions or discuss current issues.

1.16. Promote discussions on the journal pages and be prepared to respond to critical comments to the articles published therein.

1.17. Consider manuscripts containing negative results on general grounds.

2. Ethical code for Authors

The author is a person who has made a personal contribution to the formation and interpretation of the research results. Providing the manuscript to publishing and disseminating in the scientific community the author should:

2.1. Rely solely on precise and real data as well as their objective interpretation, avoiding initially false and fraudulent statements about the results achieved.

2.2. Do not submit the manuscript materials for publication to more than one journal (or other edition), and not to take part in multiple and duplicated publications which is regarded as self-plagiarism.

2.3. Disclose all sources of financial or other support for the study, the results of which employed in the manuscript, with a separate indication of the role and contribution of each side, particularly if these could have had an impact on the research results, their interpretation, the Reviewers’ decisions, or provoke any conflict-of-interest situations.

2.4. Do not use information from personal conversations or correspondence used in research without the written permission of the person to whom it is provided.

2.5. The textual and graphical information extracted from published results of other persons should be provided with a reference to the relevant work. In addition, the works on the same subject, the results of which have influenced the course of the study, should be announced in the list of references.

2.6. Notify the editorial board of the journal to make corrections, denials or revocation of the work, when an apparent misstatement or erroneous findings in the accepted for publication or already

published manuscript is revealed.

2.7. Agree to the transfer of rights to its publication and dissemination (in electronic and printed versions), when making the decision on the editorial board of the publication of the manuscript, including presentation of bibliographic information in the databases of Science Citation and the full-text version of the Scientific Electronic Library (www.elibrary.ru) for free access. In addition, the author agrees to transfer the manuscript or metadata to international databases freely of charge.. Wherein the editorial board determines the priorities when choosing international databases, and also sets the list of issues of the journal to be transferred.

2.8. To withdraw the article at any stage of reviewing before agreeing on the final proofreading of the journal in the presence of ethical violations.

2.9. Ensure that all named co-authors have expressed their consent to publication and to being named as a co-author.

2.10. Ensure that all co-authors have approved the final version of the manuscript and expressed their consent to publication.

2.11. Give credit to the authors of cited documents by providing correct bibliographic references to the sources.

2.12. Provide, if needed, access to the raw data, which has relation to the work, both at all stages of the publication process and after the paper has been published.

2.13. Refrain from making defamatory statements in their articles which could be construed as impugning any person’s reputation.

2.14. Disclose any intangible or tangible conflicts of interest.

3. Ethical code for Reviewers

Author / co-author of the manuscript cannot act as its reviewer. Reviewer is responsible for compliance with the following basic principles:

3.1. Implement confidential scientific expertise of the manuscript materials to improve its quality and help to make a decision about the possibility of publishing the results of the study.

3.2. Refuse to review in the case of insufficient skill or inability to provide a review of the manuscript within a specified term and also in the case of any relationships that could be viewed as a potential conflict of interest, since such relationships may affect the impartial evaluation of the work under review.

3.3. To ensure maximum objectivity of the review on the basis of relevance, scientific merit, originality and authenticity of the results of research carried out by the author. Any criticism of a personal nature, arising from intersubjective relations  or any other reasons, are unacceptable and are not allowed.

3.4. Report all cases of possible conflict of interest.

3.5. Do not keep copies of the manuscript and did not pass it to other persons. In addition, the information given in the peer-reviewed manuscripts cannot be used in their own research prior the publication without the author’s consent.

3.6. Check the clarity of presentation of the material under review and that it contains links to all used data from previously published works.

3.7. Argue the conclusions on the peer-reviewed manuscripts so that the author and the members of the editorial board are sure of their objectivity and legitimacy.

3.8. Inform members of the editorial board if the manuscript under review is significantly similar to previously published articles, that is, in the case of the plagiarism.

Annex 1

ARTICLE REVIEW

Author(s)_____________________________________________________________________

Article title____________________________________________________________________

Criteria for the review Yes No Note
1. Relevance of the topic
2. The scientific novelty and importance of the work
3. Match of the name and content of materials
4. Consistency and the sequence of presentation
5. Analysis of declared problematics
6. Statistical analysis of the results (experiment)
7. The use of scientific knowledge
8. Citation of  scientific sources
9. The scientific writing style, terminology
10. Compliance with the rules of registration
11. Other notes of the reviewer (if any)

 

Recommendation for publication (underlined):
recommended for publication in the present form recommended to be published in the final form, required by the reviewer recommended to publish revised and re-reviewed may not be published recommended to send to another journal

 

Reviewer______________________________________(______________________________)

Academic degree_______________________________________________________________

Position_____________________________________________________________________

Affiliations________________________________________________________

Date