Publication Ethics

          The Editorial Board of the scientific journal “Polymer Journal” in its work is guided by ethics of international scientific publications, including the concepts of integrity, confidentiality, oversight of publications and prevention of possible conflicts of interest and so on.

          Editors, in turn, is follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/), and, in particular, the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit by publisher Elsevier, and based on the experience of reputable international publishers. Compliance with the rules of publications ethics of the all parties of the publishing process helps to ensure the intellectual property rights of creators, improvement of publication quality and prevention of possible misuse of copyrighted material for the benefit of individuals.

          This Regulation meets the policy of the journal and is one of the main components of article review and journal publishing.

          The authors are personally responsible for submitted to the journal manuscript and must observe the following principles:

1. Provide reliable results of the conducted research. False or fraudulent statements are equal to unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

2. At the request of the Editorial Board provide baseline data for editor review. Authors must provide free access to such data and store this data for a reasonable time after their publication.

3. Ensure that research results contained in the manuscript, are an independent and original work. When using fragments of others’ work and/or borrowing statements of other authors, the article should have appropriate references with the obligatory indication of the author and the source. Excessive borrowing and plagiarism in any form, including incomplete references, paraphrasing or appropriation of rights to the results of others’ research is unethical and unacceptable. Articles which are a compilation of material published by other authors without own creative processing and author thinking are not accepted by the editorial.

4. Realize that the author(s) is (are) responsible for the initial novelty and reliability of the results of scientific research.

5. Recognize the contribution of all persons who influenced in any way the course of the study or determined the nature of the presented scientific research. In particular, the article should have references to publications that had some significance for the study. Information obtained privately through conversations, correspondence and discussions with third parties should not be used without written permission of the representative of its source. All sources must be open. Even if written or illustrative material of a large number of people is used, the permission to do so must be obtained and submitted to the editor.

6. Present in the journal only the original manuscript. Do not submit to the journal articles that have been sent to another journal and are now pending review, as well as articles published previously in another journal. Failure to observe this principle is regarded as gross misconduct of publication ethics and gives reason for removing the article from the review. If elements of the manuscript were previously published in another article, the authors are obliged to refer to their earlier work and specify how the new work is significantly different from the previous one. Verbatim copying of own work and its paraphrasing is unacceptable, it can only be used as a basis for new conclusions.

7. Ensure the correct composition of the list of co-authors. The co-authors of the article should include all the persons who have made a significant intellectual contribution to its concept, structure and in the conduct or interpretation of results of the presented work. Other persons (or organizations) who participated in some aspect of the work must be expressed gratitude. The author must also ensure that all co-authors are familiar with the final version of the article, approve it and agree to its submission for publication. All of the authors of the article have to bear public responsibility for the content of the article. If the article is a multidisciplinary work, co-authors are responsible each for their own contribution, leaving a collective responsibility for the overall result. It is unacceptable to include persons in co-authors who were not involved in the research.

8. In the event of emergence of significant errors or inaccuracies in the article at the stage of its review or immediately following its publication notify the editorial of the magazine and make a joint decision to recognize errors and/or correct them as soon as possible. If the journal becomes aware that a published work contains a significant error, the author is obliged to prepare for publication in the journal a report on the relevant error correction or submit proof of correctness of the information they provided.

9. The author should clearly indicate situations in their work where research is related to chemicals, physical and chemical processes or equipment, during which there is a risk to human or animal health. If the research involves the use of animals or humans as subjects, the author must ensure that all procedures were conducted according to the relevant laws and institutional principles, as well as the fact that the relevant government agencies have given their approval. The presented paper should include application and confirmation from the relevant authorities on consent to experiments with people. The right of the person involved in the experiment to privacy must always be followed.

10. Specify in their manuscripts all sources of financial support for the project, information about the employer, patent applications/registrations, grants and other types of funding.

11. Disclose in their works about any information about significant conflicts of interest that could affect the results of the study or their interpretation. All potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible.

          The reviewer provides scientific expertise of copyrighted material in order to objectively evaluate the quality of the submitted article and determine the level of its compliance with scientific, literary and ethical standards. In assessing the article the reviewer should be impartial and observe the following principles:

1. Expert evaluation should help the author improve the quality of the text and the editor-in-chief to decide on publication.

2. The reviewer who does not consider themselves an expert in the subject of the article or know that they cannot submit a timely review of the article should notify the editor-in-chief and decline to review.

3. The reviewer cannot be the author or co-author of the work presented for review. This also applies to supervisors of candidates to a scientific degree and/or staff of the department in which the author works.

4. Any manuscripts received by an expert from the editors for review shall be a confidential document. It cannot be discussed with other individuals except the aforementioned persons.

5. The reviewer must be objective. It is unacceptable to make personal remarks towards the author in the review. The reviewer should express their views clearly and reasonably.

6. The reviewer must identify published articles related to the reviewed articles, not cited by the author. Any statement in the review that some observations, conclusions or arguments in the reviewed article have previously appeared in literature should be accompanied by an accurate bibliographic reference to the source. The reviewer should also draw the attention of the chief editor to significant overlap or similarity of a reviewed article with any other previously published.

7. In the event of a reviewer suspecting plagiarism, authorship or falsification of data, they must contact the editorial board with a proposal for collective consideration of the author’s article.

8. The reviewer should provide an objective opinion on the adequacy of citation of published articles in the literature on the given subject.

9. The reviewer should not use the information and ideas presented for review in the article for personal gain, following the principle of confidentiality.

10. The reviewer shall not accept for review manuscripts in cases of a conflict of interest caused by competition, cooperation, or other relationship with any authors or institutions associated with the article.

          Members of the editorial board are responsible for the publication of the provided manuscript following such fundamental principles:

1. When deciding on the publication the chief editor of the scientific journal is guided by authenticity of the submitted data and the scientific significance of the reviewed work.

2. The chief editor should not have their own interests in relation to the articles they reject or accept.

3. The chief editor is responsible for decisions about which of the presented articles will be accepted for publication, and which will be rejected. They are guided by the policy of the journal and adhere to the principles of law, preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism.

4. The chief editor evaluates the submitted article solely by its scientific content, regardless of the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious convictions, ethnicity, nationality, origin, social status or political views.

5. The chief editor, the editorial and publishing staff and the members of the editorial board should not report information presented in the journal article to anyone except the author(s), assigned and potential reviewers, other editorial staff and (if necessary) the publisher.

6. Unpublished data from manuscripts submitted for consideration should not be used by the chief editor, the editorial staff, members of the editorial and publishing groups or the editorial board for personal purposes or transfer to third parties (without written permission).

7. The chief editor should not allow for publication a submitted article if there is sufficient reason to believe that it is plagiarism.

8. The article, in case of approval of its publication, is placed in open access with copyright reserved by the authors.

9. The chief editor together with the publisher should not leave unanswered claims relating to the reviewed manuscripts or published materials. In case of a conflict situation they should take all necessary measures to restore infringed rights, and in case of detected errors – to promote the publication of corrections or refutations.

10. The chief editor, the staff of the editorial or the journal publishing and editorial group must ensure the confidentiality of the names and other information relating to reviewers. If it is necessary, when deciding on assigning new reviewer, the latter may be informed of the names of previous reviewers.

          The publisher is responsible for the publication of works following these basic principles and procedures:

1. Facilitate implementation of ethical responsibilities of editors, editorial and publishing group, editorial board, reviewers and authors in accordance with these requirements.

2. Support the journal in reviewing claims to the ethical aspects of published materials and help interact with other journals and/or publishers if it facilitates the duties of editors.

3. Observe the position that the activity of the journal is not commercial and does not intend to obtain profit.

4. Facilitate the process of publishing corrections, explanations, refutations and apologies when needed.

5. Provide the journal an opportunity to recall publications containing plagiarism and inaccurate data.