Ethical principles
Siberian Journal of Forest Science is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional scientific ethical codes, such as plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data, should be taken very seriously by the editors with no tolerance.
The submitted manuscript should be original, has not been formally published elsewhere and is not under consideration by any other journal or conference; and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights.
The ethical principles for the participants of the publication process in Siberian Journal of Forest Science are developed in compliance with the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE, and the Code on Publication Ethics. Publication of a paper in the peer-reviewed Siberian Journal of Forest Science clearly indicates high professionalism of its authors and a high scientific level of the research institution where they work. Double blind peer review and selection of papers is limited to only those that fall within the research fields included in the scope of the journal.
It is therefore crucially important for everyone involved in the publication process (author, editor, reviewer, and publisher) to develop and to agree to certain ethics principles. Below are the ethics principles established and followed by Siberian Journal of Forest Science Editorial Board
Authors
- follow universally accepted scientific reporting standards;
- make their data available;
- make sure that their papers are original, that no plagiarism exists, and that their submitted papers have not been published elsewhere;
- characterize materials used for their studies;
- make sure that the research study intended to be published in the journal threatens neither people, nor animals;
- avoid conflict of interests;
- follow reviewer’s recommendations as to how their paper might be fundamentally improved.
- are responsible for all materials published in the journal;
- make impartial decisions independent of commercial interests and ensure reviewing is objective;
- maximally protect authors’ reputations, rights, and interests;
- protect papers’ integrity, suggest changes in papers when needed, and notify authors of rejection if their papers fall out of the journal’s subject scope or do not meet the journal ethic principles;
- protect other entities from unauthorized use of their materials;
- resolve situations where a conflict of interest may exist;
- follow ethical norms involving use of people or animals for experiments;
- inform authors and reviewers about what they are expected to do, see to that no conflicts of interests occur.
- participate in the journal editorial policy development;
- follow reviewing timeline and ensure confidentiality of opinions;
- make reviews in an impartial manner, reveal and deter plagiarism and parallel publications, and, where needed, confirm their opinions by references to literature sources.
- strive to remove advertising, reprinting, and other commercial influences from the journal editorial board decision-making;
- promote cooperation with publisher in many fields.
Editors
- are responsible for everything that is published in the journal;
- undertake to make fair and impartial decisions independent of commercial interests and to organize an objective review process;
- adopt an editorial policy that ensures maximum transparency and full accountability to the author
- protect the integrity of publications, making corrections if necessary, and issue reasonable refusals to those whose manuscripts do not comply with research or publishing ethics;
- protect the rights of third parties from unauthorized use of materials;
- manage editorial conflicts of interest;
- critically assess the ethical standards of research in humans and animals;
- ensure that authors and reviewers are aware of what is expected of them.
Reviewers
- participate in the formation of editorial policy;
- comply with the deadlines for reviewing articles and the confidentiality of assessments;
- formulate a review objectively and impartially, if necessary, confirming their opinion with a reference to the source;
- monitor and stop plagiarism, parallel publications and situations of conflict of interest.
Publisher – Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
From the very beginning of its online presence, Siberian Journal of Forest Science has adhered to the principle of open access. This means that access to all abstracts and full-text articles is free.
Dear Authors!
Please note the requirements applicable to Russian and international legislation in the field of intellectual property rights for the use of copyrighted material published in scientific journals. In order to comply with current legislation, as well as the generally accepted norms of publishing ethics, standard forms of publishing contracts with authors, as well as a number of other documents were developed and approved for further use, such as: «Declaration on Publication Ethics and Unacceptable Practices», Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE and the «Code of Scientific Publication Ethics», developed by the Russian Committee on Scientific Publications’ Ethics, which are based on generally accepted international scientific community guidelines. These documents are freely available on the Siberian Journal of Forest Science website in the «Ethical principles» section, and on the MAIK «Nauka/Interperiodica» website in Russian and English.
The compliance with legal and ethical standards of scientific publications is now quite a burning question and is discussed in many forums. However, violations of legal and ethical standards continue to occur.
In this regard, we consider it necessary to remind the authors of the basic principles that must be followed in the preparation of scientific publications:
1. Author (s), submitting research paper (s) to Siberian Journal of Forest Science, agree with transmission of the paper in production (processing as is customary with the Publisher), adoption of its editorial staff to consider, as there are not only the provision of certain rights to use the paper, but also guarantees its originality, transfer only original paper to the Publisher, as well as compliance with rules for the use of unoriginal materials and data.
2. Any use by the Author(s) of previously published materials (tables, figures, parts of the text, including its own, which granted the right to use) must be accompanied by written permission of the right-holder.
3. In addition, as we have listed below, the Author (s) should not use unacceptable practices and editors should ensure maximum checking that such practices are not implemented:
– Fabrication and falsification of data: fabrication of data means that the Author (s) did not carry out the referenced research, and made up (fabricated) data. Falsification of data means that the Author (s) has changed some of the data without research to justify the change;
– Plagiarism: the misuse of other author(s)” ideas and works without a corresponding documentation of source and permission for their use; intentional appropriation of authorship of another person’s publications or parts of publications;
– Repeated publication: submitting papers in several journals, which is a violation of the terms of publishing materials and in conflict with generally accepted international publishing ethics. In addition, the result of repeated publications is violation by us of the rights of other publishers that may result in legal proceedings and the payment of large sums of money in the form of compensation and fines, not only to publishers who previously published such papers, but also to distributors. There is no sense to talk about reputation in such cases;
– Duplicate publication (selfplagiarism): submitting a similar or identical manuscript to more than one journal, often in different languages. Submission of the same material in different publications, including different languages is considered selfplagiarism.
The Editorial board of the Siberian Journal of Forest Science insists on compliance with the above and other legal norms, and avoidance of unacceptable practices.
If plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data is found in the submitted articles, the editors of the journal will notify the employer and grantor of the author (authors) by official letter.