I. Basic provisions

• Reviewers and editors are obliged to make unbiased revision of manuscripts, following the confidentiality principle and declare the existence of the conflict of interests in advance.
• The Editorial Board thoroughly considers all debatable situations and violations; if necessary, introduces corrections or retracts the materials.

 

II. General obligations and responsibility of the Editorial Board

• The Editorial Board of the Journal «Ukrainian sense / Український смисл» relies in its work on the developments of the Committee on Publication Ethics, Great Britain, publishing company Elsevier (the Netherlands) and other international publishing associations.
• Provides information support to journal users during the editing and publishing process.
• Guarantees confidentiality of the materials submitted to the journal throughout the entire editing and publishing process, considers the provisions of the Law of Ukraine «On Personal Data Protection» and the General Data Protection Regulation  GDPR.
• Takes into consideration the comments and proposals of authors and reviewers as for the ways of enhancing the journal efficiency.
• The Editorial Board promptly reacts to any complaints of the journal operation and guarantees the resolution of any problem situations.

 

Cooperation with readers

• The Editorial Board ensures that readers should be properly informed and the recently published content should be sent.
• It guarantees that the material published should be reviewed by qualified experts.

 

Cooperation with authors

• The Editorial Board provides authors with detailed instructions on the review and editing process, informs on the terms of material submission and the date of issue publishing.
• Authors are provided with the detailed description of the peer review process; in case of any non-compliance with the described process, editors are obliged to provide explanations to the author. 
• The Editorial Board determines the material evaluation criteria and chooses reviewers for every particular paper.
• Sends detailed reviewers’ comments to authors.
• The Editorial Board keeps the right for minor literary editing and correction of texts while preserving the author’s style.
• The editor’s decision on acceptance/ rejection of the paper is based on its topicality, novelty, suitability to the scholarly focus and the requirements of the journal. 
• If a paper contains a lot of debatable issues (for example, negative conclusion of both reviewers on the quality of a paper, a paper was not improved by an author taking into consideration the reviewers’ comments), the Editorial Board can not approve of its publishing.   
• In case an author disagrees with the editor’s decision, the journal has the declared mechanism of appeal to the Editorial Board (see Peer Review Process. Appeal procedure).

 

Cooperation with reviewers

• The Editorial Board provides reviewers with detailed instructions on working in the journal’s system.
• The Editorial Board asks a reviewer to indicate the existence of possible conflicts of interests before he or she agrees to review the assigned material. 
• The Editorial Board asks reviewers to report all plagiarism cases. 
• It sends reviewers the message with acknowledgment for their contribution to the journal work. 
• Guarantees that the qualification of all reviewers fits the level of the professional journal and, if necessary, invites other reviewers. 
• Terminates cooperation with the reviewers who provide low quality reviews or do it with repeated delays.
• Uses a variety of sources (not only personal contacts) to find potential reviewers (specialized area databases). 
• Guarantees that the editing process is fair, objective, unbiased and timely.  
• Adapts the peer review process to users’ needs and enables every reviewer to review a paper in the most convenient way possible. 
• Confidentiality. Reviewers do not have the right to give information on the manuscripts before they are published. 

 

Interaction with editors

The Editorial Board takes responsibility:

• To provide new editors with detailed instruction as for the work with the journal’s system and specific features of the editing and publishing process. 
• To review the list of the Editorial Board members.
• To inform constantly the Editorial Board members about new regulations.
• To provide editors with clear instructions on their functions, powers and responsibilities (journal support and promotion).
• Arrange regular consultations with the Editorial Board members, inform them of the changes in the journal policy, technical novelties and exchange suggestions regarding further functioning of the journal. 

• Confidentiality. Editors do not have the right to give information about manuscripts before they are published. 

 

III. Author’s status

The author’s list must contain the people who made a significant contribution to the scientific research presented in the paper. The academic status, position or any other seniority indicator should not determine the order in this list; the order of authors should indicate the relative leadership and the magnitude of scholars’ contribution to the scientific study.     

The author of the manuscript is considered to be the researcher who took part at all paper preparation stages, in particular:

• formulation of the research idea, problem statement and goal setting;
• concept design, material collection, its analysis and interpretation;
• article writing or its critical scientific review and correction;
• approval of the final version to be published.

Every author is responsible for the content of an article. If the research was carried out by a large group of scientists, the people who meet the above criteria must be included to the list of authors and the name of the group must be added. 

Research funding or general supervision is not authorship. 

Change of authors. If it is necessary for any reasons to make changes in the list of the authors in the period from paper submission to its publishing, the author who depones the manuscript should contact the Editorial Board and point out the reason for a change.  

 

IV. Conflict of interests

Conflict of interests (CI) are the factors that have a negative impact on objectivity or can be perceived as interference in the peer review process, the process of making editorial decisions, manuscript publishing and presentation.

Conflict of interests may occur in relations to particular people and organizations and are divided into the following categories (but are not limited to the above): 

Personal CІ:

• Personal relationships (for example, friends, family members, current or former supervisors, opponents) with the people who take part in manuscript submission or reviewing (authors, reviewers, editors or Editorial Board members);
• Personal beliefs (political, religious, ideological, and others) related to the manuscript subject that can interfere with the objective publishing process (at the stage of submission, peer review, making editorial decision or publishing). 

Professional CІ

• A reviewer or an editor is a colleague of the author who took part in or supervised the research.
• Membership in organizations that lobby the author’s interests.

Financial CІ:

• Research grants from any sponsor organizations: state, non-state, scientific research or charity organizations;
• Patent applications (existing or expected), in particular, applications of the institutions the author is related to and can gain profit from; 
• Any royalties, gifts and bonuses.

All individuals who are related to the manuscript, specifically, authors, editors, reviewers and readers who comment and assess the material submitted must report the existence of a conflict. 

If, in editors’ opinion, there exist some circumstances that can influence the unbiased review, the Editorial Board does not involve such a reviewer. 

The Editorial Board holds the right not to publish the manuscript if the conflict of interests reported by an author poses a threat to objectivity and reliability of the research review. 

If the Editorial Board reveals the existence of a conflict of interests that has not been declared during submission, the manuscript can be rejected. If a non-declared conflict of interests is revealed after publishing, if necessary, an article can be corrected or retracted.   

 

V. Access and use of materials and data

Authors agree that all materials presented in a publication are access-free and can be used by other researchers for non-profit purposes under the license Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

 

VI. Correction and addition

• If necessary, the Editorial Board makes corrections and introduces specifications to the content, publishes refutation and apology.
• The Editorial Board can make minor corrections (correction of minor errors) and specify the content of the paper, which improve its content, however, do not change its general structure.   

 

VII. A paper submitted to several journals

During submission, authors must confirm that the uploaded paper (or any other similar to it) is not currently submitted for review and publication to any other journal / edition. If the similar paper has already been submitted or published in any other journal / edition, the Editorial Board will not consider such papers.   

 

VIII. Intellectual property

• The Editorial Board reacts to the signals related to the issues of intellectual property and works at the prevention of potential violations of current legislation of Ukraine on intellectual property and copyright.
• The Editorial Board controls that the findings of scientific research published in the journal should be obtained in accordance with the internationally accepted recommendations.   

 

 IX. Plagiarism

• Information reliability in articles, accuracy of names, surnames and citations is the responsibility of the authors. 
• In case plagiarism is disclosed, the authors of submitted materials bear responsibility.