Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics of the periodical «Russian Coatings Journal» («Lakokrasochnye materialy I ikh primenenie»)

1.      Basic Provisions

These regulations have been developed on the basis of the Code of Conduct by Committee on Publication Ethics and on the international ethical principles of scientific publishing, which have been approved by International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM).

2.      Policies of the Editorial Board of the research-and-technology periodical

«Russian Coatings Journal» («Lakokrasochnye materialy I ikh primenenie»)

     2.1. The Editorial Board of «Russian Coatings Journal» («Lakokrasochnye materialy I ikh primenenie») (hereinafter – the journal) is responsible for the published materials and exercises control over compliance with the publication ethics. The journal’s policy is based on the respect of the authors’ rights, including the intellectual property right.

2.2. The journal ensures consideration of all of the submitted materials as well as fairness and independence of judgments rendered by the reviewers. The decisions on acceptance or rejection of manuscripts will not be affected by race, gender, age, nationality, citizenship, social standing, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or political views of the author(s). Business interests and relations with the Founder of the journal are also to be precluded from influencing the editorial decisions.

2.3. The following criteria are set as guiding principles for the journal’s activities:

• The author(s) is accountable for the submitted article content and its accuracy;
• The author(s) should submit only original works which have not been published before in any language; concurrent submission of the article to several periodicals is inadmissible and will be considered unethical;
• The authors should present fairly obtained results without fabrication, falsification or manipulation of data;
• All the financing sources should be declared, including direct and indirect financial support, provision of the equipment and materials, other types of support (such as, for instance, help in statistical data processing or services of technical writers);
• The authors should not use references taken from other works if they are not familiar with the source materials; citations and quotations should be properly presented and be in compliance with the requirements in force;

2.4. The Editorial Board carries out the policy on systematic improvement of the processes of reviewing, editing, expert assessment of publications to ensure greater precision, clarity, objectiveness, and timeliness of expert evaluation and research reporting.

2.5. The editors undertake to provide the readers with full information concerning funding of the scientific researches and sponsors of the published scientific-research materials;

 2.6. The editors take measures for ensuring proper quality of the materials published, uses specialized software to check the manuscripts on the subject of inappropriate image manipulation, plagiarism, repeated or redundant publications.

 2.7.  The Editorial Board reserves the right to abridge and edit the submitted manuscripts, provide full or abridged texts to Russian and foreign organizations maintaining scientific citation indexes, and also to make the materials available to the public on the journal’s web-site.

   2.8. Paint-Media, LLC is the copyright holder of all the journal’s issues. Unauthorized copying is prohibited; reference to the journal is required when quoting its material.

    2.9.  The submitted manuscripts are not subject to return. No remuneration is paid for the submitted materials.

    2.10. Publication of materials in the journal is free of charge for all authors, including post-graduate students.

3. Publication ethics for authors

3.1. The author must make sure that the manuscripts he submits comply to the Requirements for the articles submission 

3.2. The results presented in the submitted work should be relevant, accurate and novel. The methods used for the research should be clearly described; the work is to contain conclusions. The authors must prepare their works in accordance with the standard manuscript structure which includes the following sections: abstract, key words, author’s (authors’) contact information, list of reference.

The authors who submit materials to the journal:

• agree that the list of authors contains only the persons who meet the criteria of authorship (persons who have made a significant contribution to the work), and that all of the actual authors have been listed;
• should cooperate with the editors and publishers in quick introduction of corrections into the manuscripts in cases when errors have been detected after the publication;
• are obliged to inform the Editorial Board if they have noticed an error in the submitted manuscript accepted for publishing or already published;
• should give maximally correct and accurate references to original works related to the manuscript, whether they have been written by other authors or by the same author(s); Duplication of own previous works, even after considerable editing, is inadmissible. Previous works should be used only as a basis for new conclusions;
• using data, text, figures and ideas from other works requires proper acknowledgement of the sources – such items should not be presented as the author’s own. Direct quotation is to be enclosed in quotation marks and followed by a respective reference;
• it is obligatory to observe the legal norms as for the protection of intellectual rights; copyrighted materials (tables, figures or large quotes) should be reproduced only with consent of the copyright holders.

3.3. The author(s) must inform the Editorial Board about the existing conflicts of interests if any emerge during the submitted article consideration.

4.Ethics of peer-reviewing

4.1.The Editorial Board guarantees independent review of the submitted materials by method ensuring maximally honest and fair comments on the scientific value of the proposed article.

4.2. All reviews are performed by the Editorial Board members having sufficient subject expertise. The Editorial Board appeals to leading domestic scientists and skilled experts for reviewing when necessary. In accordance with the journal policy, the Editorial Board has established the Rules of peer-reviewing.

4.3.The reviewer analyzes whether or not the article falls within the remit of the journal, complies to the journal requirements as for the volume, scientific and technical novelty, language accuracy and intelligibility, credibility of the findings, extensiveness of the reference list.

4.4. The reviewers must withdraw from assessing manuscripts if they have a conflict of interests with the author(s) or companies which have sponsored the research in question.

4.5. Upon the evaluation, the reviewer makes a conclusion on rejection/acceptance of the article, make recommendations on its improvement or thorough revision (with subsequent reconsideration). On the basis of this conclusion, the Editorial Board makes its decision.

 4.6. Subsequent to external and internal reviewing, the Editorial Board forwards recommendations on the required revisions to the author, specifying also the terms within which the author should properly address all the comments.

4.7. A manuscript may be rejected without reviewing when the Editorial Board considers its quality to be low or if the material is inappropriate for the journal. The Editorial Board members must adhere to the journal’s policy in making such a decision. Their decisions are not to be influenced by biases or prejudices.

4.8. When the reviewers are concerned with the data integrity or expediency of publishing the submitted manuscript, the Editorial Board allows the author to clarify the posed questions.

4.9. The Editorial Board will ensure confidentiality of all submitted materials and inform the reviewers about the necessity to maintain this confidentiality. The status of the submitted materials will be known only to their author(s).

4.10. The Editorial Board keeps all personal information about the authors confidential.

 4.11. The assessment of the scientific content is to be well-founded, fair and objective. Any ad hominem arguments are inadmissible.

5. Ethics of editing scientific articles

5.1. The editors are accountable for all the materials published. At that, they should:
   - provide freedom of expression of opinions (within the scope of the legislation in force and ethical norms),
   - ensure conformance with the academic standards and international ethical norms for scientific periodicals,
   - preclude business needs from influencing on the editorial decisions which should be motivated only by ethical principles of intellectual activities,
   - publish a correction, retraction, or apology when necessary.
5.2. The editors are fully responsible for their decisions on acceptance or rejection of the submitted manuscripts.
5.3. An editor must withdraw from processing a manuscript if he has a conflict of interests with the author.
5.4. A manuscript may be accepted or rejected only on the basis of its significance, scientific novelty, accuracy, and falling within the scope of the journal.
5.5. Political and economic aspects should be precluded from influencing the editorial decision on acceptance or rejection of the manuscript. The main criteria are quality andfalling within the scope of the journal.
5.6. It is the editors’ obligation to actively pursue improvement of quality of the published articles by revealing and correcting errors and inaccuracies.
5.7. The Editorial Board members should keep open-minded about criticism or appeals of the editorial decisions on the part of the authors; such appeals should be thoroughly considered, and their dismissal – well-founded.
5.8. As a rule, the Editorial Board members change their decisions on rejection of manuscripts only if serious breaches took place during the manuscript consideration.
5.9. The editors are obliged to keep personal information about the authors and reviewers confidential. Any distribution of such information requires authors’ express written consent.
 5.10. Fraudulent and redundant manuscripts should be identified by the editors before they are published.

6. Ethics of publishing

6.1. Scientific publication ethics is a precondition for improving the quality of scientific publications, successful development of cooperation between authors, publishers, and readers. The Editorial Board participates in creating a strategy of the journal and its individual issues, in selecting and reviewing materials, and also addresses complaints (of the ethical nature) about the submitted or published manuscripts in a timely manner. The minimal measures normally taken in such situations are seeking explanation from the author(s) and proper investigation of the complaint. Further measures which can be taken if necessary are contacting the author’s affiliations, and, in cases where the complaint proved true, publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern or another appropriate comment. Each misconduct case should be investigated, even if it was discovered years after the publication. The revealed misconduct requires publishing corrections, retractions and apologies.

6.2. The content-related decisions of journal publishers and owners should not be adjusted to meet commercial and political purposes of any kind. The publishers do not have the right to dismiss an editor for reasons other than his professional negligence or taking decisions on publication of a material in disregard of the journal scholarly mission.

6.3. The journal has the right to publish advertising materials for self-sustainment purposes.The sponsored adds will undergo the same strict quality control and reviewing as any other journal material. The decision-making procedure for such materials is not different from that for other materials. The readers should be informed which materials were sponsored and what was the sponsor’s role. Published advertisements should not contravene the journal policy and should not be related to the journal scientific content; readers should be able to easily distinguish them from other types of materials.

6.4. When it comes to the problems of scientific misconduct, the cooperation, including the informational exchange, between the journal and scientific institutions becomes very important. At that, the journal is responsible for the behavior of its editors, for legal protection of the published materials, for ensuring reliability of the publications. Scientific and research institutions are obliged to provide the information on the journal inquiries as for the issues related to the reliability of manuscripts (disputedauthorship, fraudulent data, conflicting interests, honest errors), and to conduct internal investigations into research misconduct cases or unethical publishing practice on the part of the journal.

6.5. The articles may be retracted either by its author(s) or by the editor. When facts of illegal use of intellectual property (plagiarism) or of redundant/duplicate publication transpire, the Editorial Board will conduct investigation into the case, inform the author(s) and reserve the right not to admit their articles for consideration in the future.
• If the facts that the article has been submitted to several journals or contains plagiarism is revealed at the stage of reviewing or editing, the manuscript will be either forwarded back to the author(s) for revision or rejected.
• If such facts or the presence of unreliable data in the manuscript become known after the work has been published, the Editorial Board reserve the right to publish a statement for the readers in the next issue, and also to mark the pages with this article in the journal’s electronic version or retract the article from the web-site (with subsequent notification of the readers and management of the citation databases).

6.6. In handling complaints and disputable situations the editors will follow the guideline of the international Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) - http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts.
The authors filing complaints to the Editorial Board should be assured that those complaints will be investigated in a reasonable time period.