1. General Provisions
1.1. The regulation on the publication ethics of the scientific journal «Social Competence» is developed in accordance with the Copyright Law of the Russian Federation (Chapter 70), recommendations and standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), as well as on the basis of the provisions adopted at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity (Singapore, July 22-24, 2010), and taking into account the experience of authoritative international scientific journals and publishing companies.
1.2. The principles of ethical behavior presented below are mandatory for all parties involved in reviewing and publishing a scientific article: Authors, Reviewers, Editor-in-Chief and Editorial collegium of the journal.
1.3. Implementation of regulations on ethics of scientific publications by all participants contributes to ensuring authors’ intellectual property rights, improving the quality of publications in the opinion of the world scientific community and eliminating the possibility of misuse of copyright.
1.4. This Regulation is consistent with the journal’s policy and is one of the main components of the review and edition of the journal.
2. Principles of ethical behavior of Authors
Authors bear personal responsibility for manuscript and shall follow the following principles:
- Provide reliable research results. Intentionally false or fraudulent statements are considered unethical and are not acceptable.
- Ensure that research results are independent and original. If using fragments of other works and / or borrowing statements of other Authors, the relevant references to the author and the original source must be made in the article.
- Be aware that they bear primary responsibility for the novelty and validity of scientific results.
- Avoid duplicate publication; Authors shall not submit the manuscript that has been submitted to another journal and is under consideration, as well as the manuscript already published in another journal.
- Describe as co-authors of the article all persons who have made a significant contribution to the study. It is not acceptable to list persons who did not take part in the research. The author must also ensure that all co-authors are familiar with the final version of the article, approve it and agree with its submission for publication. All authors mentioned in the article should be publicly responsible for the content of the article.
- If the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in the manuscript under consideration or after its publication, they should immediately inform the Editorial Board.
- Be obliged to cooperate with the Editorial Board at the stages of reviewing and preparing the manuscript for publication. When received the review, they should respond swiftly to comments and take into account the recommendations of the Reviewer.
- In case of disagreement with the reviewer’s assessment, the Authors shall send reasoned comments to the Editor-in-Chief. The revision of the article should take no more than two months from the moment of sending the review text to the Authors by e-mail. The authors are obliged to notify the editors of the refusal to modify the text.
- Bhould indicate in articles the sources of funding for the work if they can affect the results of the study, their interpretation, as well as opinions of Reviewers, or provoke a conflict of interest.
- In case of finding significant errors or inaccuracies in publication, the Author should inform the Editor-in-chief of the journal «Social Competence» and interact with him/her in order to withdraw the publication or correct the error. If the Editor-in-Chief or the Publishing Company received information from a third party that the publication contains significant errors, the Author is obliged to withdraw the work or correct the errors as soon as possible.
- According to the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases, Authors may be requested to present raw data related to the manuscript for review by the Editor-in-Chief and members of the Editorial Collegium. Authors should be ready to provide open access to this kind of information even after the publication of an article.
3. Principles of Reviewer’s Ethical Conduct
The Reviewer provides scientific expertise of the authors’ material, hence, his/her actions shall be impartial, and the following principles shall be adhered to:
3.1. The manuscript received for reviewing is a confidential document that cannot be passed for discussion to the unauthorized third parties by the Editorial Board.
3.2. Reviewer shall give an objective and reasoned evaluation of the research results. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Reviewer should state his opinion clearly with supporting arguments.
3.3. The manuscript review is confidential.
3.4. The maximum review period is 30 days, but the reviewer may request the deadline extension.
3.5. The reviewer may state the lack of references to most relevant published articles to cover the problem under investigation in the text and References; should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript, published or unpublished.
3.6. Unpublished data obtained from submitted manuscripts for review should not be used by the Reviewer for personal purposes.
3.7. The reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.
3.8. The Reviewer may not be an author or co-author of the reviewed manuscript, as well as a scientific advisor of applicants for a scientific degree and / or employees of the subdivision where the Author works.
4. Principles of Ethical Behavior of the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Collegium
The editor-in-chief and the editorial collegium are responsible for the publication of copyright works, and should adhere to the following principles:
4.1. when making the decision to accept or reject the manuscript, they shall be guided by the validity and scientific significance of the manuscript.
4.2. they 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.
4.3. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the Author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
4.4. they should not allow to publish the materials if there is every reason to believe that it is plagiarism.
4.5. they should not remain the claim relating to submitted or published manuscripts unanswered. If there is a disagreement, they will make all reasonable efforts to restore the violated rights.
4.6. they should keep Reviewers’ names and other information about them strictly confidential.
4.7. they should recognize that the journal is not a commercial project and do not have the goal of making a profit.
4.8. the editor-in-chief is obliged to respond to claims relating to the review of manuscripts or publication of materials; in case of a conflict, he/she should make all reasonable efforts to restore the violated rights.
4.9. the editor-in-chief should guarantee to publish corrections and apologies in case of detecting errors by the Author or third parties.
4.10. the editor-in-chief is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. At that, he\she is guided by the journal policy and legal requirements for preventing libel, plagiarism and copyright infringement. When making this decision, he\she may confer with editorial staff and reviewers in.
4.11. accepted papers are published under Open Access route, authors’ copyrights are reserved.
4.12. any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
4.10. the major reasons for the rejection are; manuscripts are out of scope of the journal, duplicate publication, plagiarism, and a low scientific level.
5. The procedure for recalling (retraction) an article in the scientific journal «Social Competence»
This section has been prepared in accordance with the rules of retraction of the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ANRI) and the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
The grounds for retraction are:
- detection of falsification or fabrication (for example, manipulation of experimental data);
- detection of grave errors in the article (for example, results misinterpretation), which casts doubt on its scientific value;
- multiple borrowings;
- duplicate publication in a different journal;
- incorrect composition of the authors (a person directly involved in the research is not mentioned;
- persons who do not meet the criteria of authorship are included);
- hidden conflict of interest (and other violations of publication ethics);
- republishing the author’s work without his/her permission;
- other violations of ethical principles of the journal.
Procedure for recalling
5.1. The decision to retract the article is taken by the editorial collegium of the scientific journal on the editor-in-chief’s recommendation. Transcripts of minutes of the editorial collegium meeting with a justification of the reasons for retraction (in case of plagiarism indicating the sources of borrowing) and the date of retraction are sent to the author (the first author in case of co-authorship). The authors may disagree with the editors’ standpoint, but this does not cancel the editors’ rights to conduct the procedure.
5.2. The decision to retract an article is accepted on the editorial staff initiative taking into account the author’s response who justifies his/her position on the issue of recalling the article. If the author leaves unaddressed the editorial request, the editorial office has the right to ask for help from the Council for ANRI ethics and / or to withdraw the publication without taking into account the author’s opinion.
5.3. If the author / co-authors consider it necessary to withdraw the article, they should give a reasonable explanation for their decision to the editorial staff. Then the editorial staff shall retract the text.
5.4. The article and its description remain on the website of the scientific journal as part of the corresponding issue of the publication but annotated as «RETRACTED»; date of retraction and the retraction notice is placed in the table of contents of the issue.
5.6. Information on the recalled articles is sent to the Council for Ethics of Scientific Publications of ANRI and the scientific information base (NEB, CyberLeninka) to be included into the single database of retracted articles. Recalled articles and references to them are excluded from the RSCI and are not considered in the calculation of indicators.