Publishing ethics

The editorial Board of the journal Regional Economy. South of Russia adheres to the internationally agreed principles of publication ethics reflected in particular in recommendations of the Committee on the ethics of scientific publications (Committee on Publication Ethics, http://publicationethics.org/).

In order to avoid unfair practices in publishing activities (plagiarism, the presentation of inaccurate information, and others), in order to ensure high quality scientific publications, public recognition received by the author of the scientific results of each member of the editorial Board (hereinafter - editor, author, reviewer, publisher, and institutions involved in the publishing process, must comply with ethical standards, rules and regulations and to take all reasonable measures to prevent violations.

Duties of the editor

Editor in its activities shall:

- to constantly improve the journal;

- to follow the principle of freedom of opinion;

- strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;

- to exclude the influence of business interests or policy decisions about the publication of materials;

- make decisions on the basis of the principle of fairness and impartiality, to ensure the transparency of the editorial activity at all stages;

- not to disclose such information to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial consultants and, if necessary, the publisher;

- to evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, sex, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, nationality and political views of the authors;

- to decide on the publication of materials based on the following main criteria: conformity of the manuscript to the journal; the relevance, novelty and scientific significance of the article; clarity; reliability of results and completeness of the findings. The quality of the research and its relevance are the basis for the decision to publish;

- take all reasonable measures to ensure the high quality of the published materials and the protection of the privacy of personal information. Upon detection of a meaningful, grammatical, stylistic, and other errors, the revision shall take all measures to eliminate them;

- to take into account the recommendations of the reviewers when making the final decision on publication of the article. The responsibility for the decision to publish rests on the editorial Board of the journal;

- to justify its decision in the case of acceptance or rejection of the article;

- give the author a peer-reviewed material able to justify their research positions;

- when changing the composition of the editorial Board not to reverse the decision of the previous part about publishing material;

- to promote discussion and to provide an opportunity for the presentation of viewpoints;

- not to use in their own research information fr om unpublished materials.

Responsibilities of the author

Authors when submitting materials to the journal of Regional Economy. South of Russia undertake:

- submit only original work;

- if you have a text or graphic information from previously published studies of the author or the work of another researcher to refer to the respective publication or to provide written permission to use these materials. The presence of borrowing without links will be considered by the editorial Board as plagiarism;

- to bring in the manuscript only genuine facts and information; to give sufficient information for review and repetition of experiments by other researchers; not to use information obtained privately, without the Express written permission; do not allow the fabrication and falsification of data;

- avoid duplication of publications (in the covering letter should indicate that the work is published for the first time). If parts of the manuscript have been previously published, the author must refer to earlier work and to indicate the differences of the new work from the previous one. The submission of a manuscript to more than one journal at the same time is unethical;

- avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person;

- to adhere to the principles of bioethics in research animal facilities;

- immediately notify the editorial Board or the publisher of the magazine about the discovery of significant errors in published work;

- provide editorial Board or the publisher the proof of correctness for the original article or to correct significant errors, if they are of the editorial Board or the publisher became aware of third parties;

- to list all authors of the material. The author has the right to appeal the decision of the editorial Board in the prescribed manner.

Responsibilities of the reviewer

Reviewer participating in the expert evaluation of materials sent for publication in the journal of Regional Economy. South of Russia, shall:

- make an objective and impartial decision;

- to maintain confidentiality. Not allowed to discuss with other parties, except persons authorized by the chief editor to work with the manuscript of the author;

- do not use obtained in the course of reviewing the information for personal gain;

- to inform the editor-in-chief and to withdraw from the examination process of the manuscript, if, in the opinion of the reviewer, his skills not enough presents for consideration for review of material, or when possible violation of terms of consideration of the manuscript;

- make decisions on the basis of the particular facts and provide supporting evidence for its decision;

- to draw the attention of the chief editor at substantial similarity or overlap between the estimated manuscripts with any other work, as well as the lack of references to provisions, conclusions or arguments previously published in other works of this or other authors.

- to assist the author in improving the quality of the article;

- do not use unpublished materials manuscripts in their own research.

Conflict of interest

The potential conflict of interest ought to be avoided in the process of reviewing and publishing the submitted manuscript. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial, scientific or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) or might appear to influence, his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties).

To prevent the conflict of interest and according to the ethical rules of the journal each party involved in the publishing process is required to comply with the following guidance.

The editor should:

- appoint another expert referee in case if there is a conflict of interest between the initially appointed reviewer and the manuscript author;

- ask all the parties for information about the potential competing interest that may arise in the publishing process;

- make a decision on publishing the information from the author’s letter concerning the conflict of scientific or/and financial interest in case the information is not confidential and can influence the estimation of the published paper by the reader’s or scientific community;

- ensure the publication of a correction if the relevant information about the conflict of interest arises after the publication of the article.

The author should:

- mention all known and potential sources of the conflict of interest in his/her covering letter;

- disclose the employment, institutional affiliations and the source of research funding;

- confirm the absence of the conflict of interest in the cover letter.

The reviewer should:

- inform the editor-in-chief about the presence of the conflict of interest (double bindings, competing interests) and recuse himself / herself from reviewing the manuscript.

Guidelines for Studies Involving Human Participants

The journal has a compliance policy with international, national and/or institutional standards regarding studies involving human participants and the need for authors to obtain informed consent.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants must comply with ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee, as well as the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

If the work includes empirical data that have been received with involvement of certain people, organizations and communities, the author is responsible for ensuring that the submitted publication does not contain information that could harm the interests of the people who provided the necessary information in the form of documents or interviews.

Authors must avoid providing identifying information unless it is strictly necessary for the submission. For submissions that include identifying information or potentially identifying information about participants, authors must confirm that the individual has provided written consent for the use of that information (or explain why consent was not obtained).

In cases wh ere informed consent was obtained, authors should indicate in the Methods section whether participants (or a legally authorized representative) provided written or verbal consent. Authors who include photographs of participants must also state in the Methods section whether participants (or a legally authorized representative) reviewed and approved the images for publication.

If identifying information is discovered after publication, the article will be temporarily withdrawn while any content compromising the privacy of participants will be removed.

Formal consent is not required for retrospective studies of this type.

Violations

In situations related to violation of the publishing ethics by editors, authors or reviewers, the Editorial Staff of the journal will carry out investigation. This applies to both published and unpublished materials from the moment of their publication. The Editorial Staff will request clarification, without involving persons who may have a conflict of interest with one of the parties.

Complaints on publishing ethics violation may be connected with incorrect citing of information and plagiarism (using other authors’ content and conclusions without references to their papers), duplication of one’s own publications, inclusion of unreliable and/or false data in publications, incorrect indication of authors’ contribution into conducted research and some other violations.

To report a violation

In case a violation is revealed, the complaint is submitted in written form via e-mail of Editorial Board or sent to postal address – Prosp. Universitetsky, 100, 400062 Volgograd, Russian Federation, to the chief editor of Regional Economy. South of Russia.

The complaint should include the detailed description of suggested violation and the information proving this fact.

The Executive Editor will make the record of a complaint and prepare 'incident report' with all factual questions on the matter after its close consideration.

For the examination of the article and related materials, the Chief Editor forms an expert Commission consisting of the Chairman (the Chief Editor or Deputy Chief Editor of the journal) and members of the Commission (not less than 2 members of the Editorial Board).

The Editorial Staff guarantees the confidentiality, fairness, and impartiality of all stages of investigation.

Claims to author (incorrect citing and plagiarism, inclusion of unreliable or false data, incorrect indication of authors’ contribution into conducted research)

The Editor will ensure comprehensive investigation when incorrect citing or plagiarism is suspected. It is possible that an author could unintentionally quote or copy parts of another article without giving references. It mostly concerns short extracts. However, this should not occur with whole articles or substantial portions of another article as it is considered to be a serious violation of Publishing Ethics principles. The Editorial Staff will apply prescribed sanctions in regard to such authors.

When the complaint is made against an author, the editor will contact them and ask to explain the situation. On the basis of the author's response, the Editor makes decision whether to reject the claim (if the author is responsive, has clear and convincing position) or to accept the claim (if the author waives from answer, or his/her explanations are unconvincing). The Chief Editor informs necessarily a complaining party on the decision.

If the material containing significant errors was published, it will be corrected in the form available for the readers and index systems. Articles with detected plagiary materials will be corrected or retracted.

The decision on retraction of the article must be formulated in the Protocol of the meeting of the Editorial Staff. Having made the decision to retract the article, the Editorial Staff will indicates necessarily the cause of retraction (in the case of plagiarism detection with reference to the sources of borrowing) and the date of retraction. Article and article description remain on the website of the journal in the appropriate issue, but the electronic version of the text will be marked with the inscription "ОТКЛОНЕНА/RETRACTED" and the date of retraction, the same mark being applied to the article and the table of contents of the issue.

If the Editorial Staff decides to revoke the text of the article on the basis of its expertise or information received by the editor, the author / coauthors will be informed and asked for their reasoned opinion on the validity of the Chief Editor's decision.If the author / co-authors ignore the editorial request, the Editorial Staff will revoke the article without consulting the author. If the Editorial Staff receives the appeal with some grounds for article retraction, the editors inform the author of the appeal about the terms of its consideration. The maximum period for consideration may not exceed three months. An appeal shall not be considered if it does not indicate the author's last name, first name, patronymic name or contact information, contains unreadable text or offensive expressions.