Publishing Ethics

1. General Provisions

Publishing ethics establishes the standards of the ethical conduct for the parties involved in publishing process: contributors, editors, reviewers and publisher.

2. Ethical Standards for the Editor and the Editorial Staff

2.1. Publication Decision

The Editor-in-Chief (further on – the Editor) of the Journal “Meždunarodnoe pravosudie” [International Justice] (further on – the Journal) is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the Journal should be published. The authenticity of the submitted work and its scientific importance to researchers and readers must always underlie such decisions. The Editor should be guided by the editorial policies of the Journal’s Editorial board and fully comply with legal requirements as shall then be in force in regard of libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

2.2. Fairness

The Editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

2.3. Confidentiality

The Editor, any Editorial board and staff member of the Journal should not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the respective author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.

2.4. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

2.4.1. Unpublished material, ideas and data disclosed in a submitted manuscript cannot be used in any Editor’s own research and papers without an explicit written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

2.4.2. The Editor and staff editors should recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers, in which case they should ask a co-editor, associate editor or other member of the Editorial board to take a care of respective manuscript instead to make a review thereof and consider it by themselves.

3. Ethical Standards for the Reviewers

3.1. Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication, and lies at the heart of the scientific ethos and the network of relations within scientific community. Publisher shares the generally recognized view that all scholars who wish to contribute to publications have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.

3.2. Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor of the Journal and excuse himself from the review process.

3.3. Confidentiality

Any manuscript received for review must be treated as confidential document. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorised by the Editor.

3.4. Standard and Objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers and Peer readers should express their views respectfully, substantially, clearly, and with supporting arguments and good reasons.

3.5. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

3.5.1. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the explicit written consent of the Author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

3.5.2. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

4. Ethical Standards for the Authors

4.1. Reporting Standards

Authors of articles and other scholarly papers based on original research should present an accurate account of the performed work as well as an objective discussion on the subject, demonstrating the originality and consistence of used approach, concepts, research methods as well as their significance. Underlying data should be represented in the paper in an accurate manner. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to afford others to replicate the work or make references. Fraudulent or clearly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

4.2. Data Access and Data Keeping

Authors, as appropriate, may be asked to provide the original or unelaborated data supporting the scientific basis of a paper for peer reading, expert reviews and editorial work, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), and should in any event be prepared to keep these data for a reasonable time after publication.

4.3. Originality and Plagiarism

4.3.1. Authors should make sure that they have delivered and submitted entirely original works, and if they have used the works, and/or fragments, and/or phrases or words of others, this should be appropriately referred or quoted.

4.3.2. Plagiarism may take many forms, from direct un-referred use of another Author’s paper (fragment thereof) as the Author’s own, to copying or paraphrasing (without any attribution) substantial parts of others’ papers, or to claiming others’ research results of submitter’s own. Plagiarism in all forms constitutes an extreme mode of unethical publishing behaviour and is considered absolutely unacceptable.

4.4. Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publications

4.4.1. The Author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is considered as unacceptable.

4.4.2. The author should not submit to the Journal a previously published paper in another scientific media for editorial consideration.

4.4.3. The only exception to this rule could be the publication of an already published material abroad, translated into another language, by mutual consent of the author and the foreign publisher meeting all the rights and interests of the right-holder. Also possible is the inclusion of a previously published work with a precise indication of the original publication into the special edition, such as: a collection of selected works of the author, a full collection of her/his scientific publications, or any thematic collective edition, in compliance with all copyright rules.

4.5. Acknowledgement of Sources

The Author should always provide proper acknowledgment of the work of other scolars and researchers. Authors should cite essential publications that have influenced or determinied the nature of the delivered and submitted work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, should not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.

4.6. Authorship of the Paper

4.6.1. Authorship should be limited to those persons who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as important contributors.

4.6.2. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included into the authorship headline of the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

4.7. Should the Author find any substantial errors, mistakes or inaccuracies in the publication, the Author must inform the Editor and cooperate to promptly stop the publication or withdraw it from circulation, or, if possible, eliminate errors and mistakes. If the information on errors and mistakes would come to the Editor or Publisher from a third party, the Author should withdraw the work, or to correct all inadequacies as soon as possible.

5. Ethical standards for the Publisher

5.1. Duties of the Publisher

5.1.1. Publisher should adopt policies and procedures that support editors, reviewers and authors of the Journal in performing their ethical duties under these ethics guidelines. The publisher should ensure that the potential for advertising or reprint revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.

5.1.2. The publisher should support the Journal editors in the review of complaints raised concerning ethical issues and, when needed, help establish appropriate communications with other journals and/or publishers.

5.1.3. Publisher should develop codes of practice and inculcate industry standards for best practice on ethical matters, errors and retractions.

5.2. Legal Support

Publisher if necessary should provide the Editor and editorial staff with specialised legal support (advisory assistance, expert opinion etc).


This section was prepared on the base of materials and experience of the Elsevier academic publishing company and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).