Editorial policy

Publication ethics

The editorial board of the scientific journal “Science and Science of Science” (referred hereinafter as Journal) is guided by the international ethical rules of scientific publications: compliance with principles of integrity, confidentiality, impartiality and objectivity, high quality standards for scientific research, support of new knowledge, collegiality in decision-making on publishing scientific manuscripts, observance of copyright and related rights, impermissibility of plagiarism, supervision of publications and prevention of potential conflicts of interests. 

Editorial Board (referred hereinafter as Editorial Board), Editor-in-Chief / editor are guided by the recommendations by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)), and, notably, the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (https://www.elsevier.com/editor/perk) by Elsevier, and rely on the practices of authoritative international publishers. The compliance with the rules of scientific publications by anybody concerned with the publishing process is supposed to ensure intellectual property rights of the authors, to enhance the quality of Journal, and to prevent potential illicit uses of authors’ materials in somebody’s individual interests. This document complies with the policy of Journal and constitutes a principal component of articles’ review and publishing of Journal. Free review and publishing of the manuscripts aim to support scientific research (especially domestic one) and open science.   

Editorial Board complies with the rules of publication ethics: unreserved loyalty to all the entities involved in the creation of Journal; using double “blind review” with engaging credible and competent reviewers; providing continual consultative assistance to the authors, aiming to meet the requirements of international databases with respect to arrangement and content of the materials submitted for publication. 

Responsibilities and ethical principles of the activities of Editorial Board

The members of Editorial Board are responsible for taking decisions on publishing of the articles submitted to Journal. Editorial Board is guided by the editorial policy and the existing legal requirements on the observance of copyright.

Editorial Board reserves the right to refuse the publishing of submitted manuscripts, when they have been found incompliant with the standards of content and arrangement.

The members of Editorial Board shall not have a conflict of interests with respect to the manuscripts that they review for publishing. Whenever one or more members of Editorial Board have a conflict of interests with respect to the submitted manuscript, these members shall refuse from the appointment of reviewers, and shall abstain from decision-making related with this manuscript.   

Editorial Board shall evaluate the manuscripts for scientific content without any kind of racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic or political bias. 

The members of Editorial Board shall treat the author and his/her research outlook in a respectful and proper manner, shall not disclose the editorial secret, shall not tolerate dishonesty in dealing with authors’ manuscripts and materials, and shall ensure an appropriate practice of manuscript review.

All the materials submitted to the editorial office of Journal shall be reviewed by independent experts / reviewers selected and appointed for each manuscript at regular meetings of Editorial Board and/or by Editor-in-Chief. Journal shall invite impartial and competent reviewers, with pursuing the practice of dual external “blind review” of manuscripts given the anonymity of reviewers before, in time, and after review.   

Editorial Board shall not use unpublished materials disclosed in the submitted manuscripts without a written permission of the authors. Information and ideas contained in the submitted manuscripts shall be preserved in secrecy, and shall not be used for personal gain.

The members of Editorial Board shall take decisions on handling ethical complaints pertaining to a submitted manuscript. 

The authors’ obligations

The authors shall guarantee that the manuscript is their original work not published before, neither submitted nor considered for publishing in other edition. A parallel submission of the manuscript to another edition constitutes an illicit behavior and a reason for the refusal to accept the manuscript for review in Journal.

When a submitted manuscript is the result of a research project, or when its previous option has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral report (under the analogous title), detailed data about the project or conferences shall be provided in a footnote, at the end of the manuscript, or in Acknowledgement.

The authors are responsible for the observance of ethical standards in the manuscripts submitted to Journal. The authors submitting the manuscript shall confirm that the manuscript does not contain either trivial or illicit claims, nor does it violate the rights of third persons. The publisher shall not bear a legal responsibility if a claim for compensation occurs.

Reporting standards

Journal as a means of scientific communications shall ensure that all the articles contain information sufficient for validating the reliability of statements and research results by third persons, reviewers and readers in particular. This information includes references, descriptions of methods and spatial-temporal aspects, etc.

As the authors bear the sole responsibility for the content of their materials, they must care to have the permission from all the involved parties for their publishing. The authors submitting the manuscript shall confirm that the rules of data protection, ethical standards, copyrights of third parties and the other rights were observed in course of data collection, processing, and exchange. 

The authors intended to include in the article graphs, tables or other materials already published in another edition, must obtain a permission from the proprietor of copyrights. Any kind of material provided without such a permission shall be deemed as one originating from the authors.  

The authorship

The authors must make sure that the list of authors includes only the persons actively involved in the research process and preparation of the manuscript. Contributions of other persons associated with the research process or preparation of the manuscript must be mentioned in a footnote or Acknowledgement. 

The authors must account for the authorship criteria developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):

  • a substantial contribution in the article’s concept or design, or collection, analysis or interpretation of data;
  • a contribution in writing the manuscript or a critical review of its content;
  • the final approval of the version due to publishing; the consent to bear responsibility for all the aspects of work;
  • the involvement in research and solution of problems related with accuracy or integrity of any part of the work (article);
  • the consent to the inclusion in the list of authors and participation in the approval of the full list of authors.

Adding or withdrawing of authors in course of editing shall only be permitted on the grounds of reasonable explanations given to Editorial Board and the publisher.

ORCID

The authors submitting the manuscript to the editorial office must provide the account in Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) and/or other author identifiers. ORCID numbers of all the authors and coauthors must be attached to the authors’ details when submitting the manuscript, and shall be printed in the article, if accepted for review and approved for publishing by Editorial Board of Journal. 

Information sources and citations

The authors must properly refer to the sources, with providing their correct arrangements. Information obtained in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties or in scrutinizing project applications, manuscripts or analogous materials must not be used without a written permission of the information source. 

Citing the sources in the context of the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation

In keeping with the Information Security Strategy approved by the Decree of President of Ukraine, No. 685/2021 issued 28.12.2021, and Recommendations of the Ministry for Education and Science of Ukraine “Using Information Sources Created on the Territory of Aggressor State”, No. 1/19894-24 issued 25.10.2024, the journal’s Editorial Board asks the authors to avoid, whenever possible, citing Russian information sources published after the launch of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine in February 2014. Exclusions: the need to avoid allegations of plagiarism and violation of copyright when the cited publications have no accessible analogues in a given research field; citations required for well-reasoned critiques of enemy narratives in the process of research.     

Gross errors in published works

Whenever the author reveals a gross error or inaccuracy in the submitted or published article, he/she shall be obliged to inform it immediately to Journal editor or publisher, and to collaborate with the editor for retraction or correction of the article. When submitting the manuscript, the authors shall give consent to comply with the editorial policy of Journal.

Self-archiving policy

Once published, an article shall be displayed in open access, with author copyrights preserved. Thereafter the authors can file (deposit) the final version of their article in repositories, on the websites of the institutes where they work and on personal web resources (Research Gate, Academia.edu, etc.). In this case, one is obliged to provide the bibliographic description of a publication (author(s), article’s title, journal’s title, issue / number, pages), and to refer to the article’s DOI and the license. This open access practice will ensure the maximal visibility and impact of the publication.

Copyright and licensing

The authors shall preserve the copyright for published articles and grant the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to cite it as an original one in case of its repeated use, and to disseminate it in mass media outlets. The articles are disseminated under the terms of Creative Commons with signifying the authorship 4.0 International CC BY 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Funding details

When the article is a result of a funded project, the authors will be obliged to indicate the funding sources in accordance with their contracts with a sponsor. Example: “This work was funded by ___ (title of a fund or an organization), ___ (grant No.), ___ (year).”

Acknowledgements

Journal welcomes acknowledgements as an international scientific practice of politeness and transparence. Acknowledgements are expressed for technical or linguistic assistance, providing data or material, providing access to infrastructures, consultative advice or administrative support. Surnames of the persons whom an acknowledgement is expressed can be signified only with their consent. Acknowledgements are placed at the end of the article. 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, i.e. the fact of using others’ ideas, words or other achievements as one’s own, is an outward violation of scientific ethics. Also, plagiarism may be associated with violations of the law on copyright, which may entail a lawsuit. Plagiarism is deemed to be:  

  • word-by-word or almost word-by-word copying or intentional paraphrasing of parts from a work of another author without a clear signification of the source or marking a copying fragment (e.g. by quotation marks);
  • copying of equations, graphs or tables from other’s work without a proper reference to the source and/or without a permission of the original author or proprietor of copyright.

The materials summited to Journal are subject to checking for plagiarism by software tools and expert assessment. A manuscript containing outward signs of plagiarism shall be immediately rejected. 

When a plagiarism is revealed in an already published article, this shall entail other sanctions.

Provisions on article review

The manuscripts to be published in “Science and Science of Science” journal are subject to the obligatory review performed by independent experts and specialists in a respective field. The articles shall be reviewed by invited highly qualified specialists with publications on the topic of an article under review.

The review procedure shall apply to all the articles submitted to Editorial Board. The objective of a review is to promote rigorous selection of the manuscripts, intended to enhance the quality of articles printed in the journal. The review procedure, aiming to provide the most objective assessment of the article’s content and determine its compliance with the journal requirements, involves a comprehensive analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.

The main purpose of the review procedure is to eliminate instances of substandard research practices, to ensure coordination and balancing of interests of authors, readers, Editorial Board, reviewers, and the institution where the research was carried out.

The manuscript review shall be held confidentially. By submitting the manuscript to the journal’s editorial office, the authors entrust to the editors the results of their scientific work and creative effort, on which their reputation and career may depend. The disclosure of confidentiality of the manuscript review violates the author’s rights. The editors shall not report the manuscript-related details (e.g., its receipt, content, reviewing process, reviewers’ criticism and final opinion) to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. A breach of confidentiality may only occur in case of a notice on inauthenticity or falsification of the material.

The responsibility for copyright infringement and non-compliance with existing standards in the article rests on the author. The responsibility for the authenticity of facts and data, the validity of findings and recommendations rests on the author and reviewer.

The policy of using generated artificial intelligence (AI)

Journal complies with the below given recommendations on using generated artificial intelligence (AI) in a scientific publication.

Generative AI systems (ChatGPT, Gemini, and others) cannot be deemed as manuscript authors or coauthors, because they cannot bear legal or ethical responsibility. The authorship implies one’s ability to approve the final version of a manuscript, to respond on editors’ comments, to ensure the reliability and absence of plagiarism, which can only be done by real researchers. The employment of AI in working over the text is permissible only for improving the style, language or structure of a manuscript. The authors shall bear full responsibility for the whole content of the manuscript irrespective of the sources used in its creation. 

The fact of AI employment must be clearly stated. When an AI tool has been used in formatting and editing of the text, it must be informed in a footnote.

Reviewers and editors are not permitted to download manuscript texts to AI systems, in order to preserve the confidentiality of reviewing. Downloading a manuscript in AI software that stores the entered information without author(s) consent is a violation of the manuscript’s confidentiality.

Compliance with the principles of San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and the International Standards for Research Data Management (FAIR principles)

The editorial policy of Journal is guided by the recommendations of San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) https://sfdora.org/read/ as an initiative on promoting practical and reliable approaches to research assessment, and by the principles of research assessment by the criteria of quality, novelty, and scientific contribution.

The implementation of policies and procedures of open science makes research results more accessible for a wide circle of scientists, enhances the research capacities, and broadens the opportunities for R&D staffing. Hence, the editorial office relies the guiding FAIR principles https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/, by which data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

Retraction policy

Any kind of a gross violation of rights (restrictions) of the publisher, the copyright proprietor (author), professional ethical codes and illicit behavior in conducting research, other gross violations of the academic integrity, publication ethics, and the occurrence of substantial errors affecting principal results of research are the reasons for article retraction. These violations include: repeated submission of manuscripts, duplication of the publication, fictitious notices of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use and forgery of data, unethical research, etc. Also, the retraction procedure can be initiated by the author and employed for removing errors from the manuscript given that the research integrity is preserved.

The retraction procedure is specified on the Journal’s website, section “The procedure for retraction of published articles” (https://nasu-periodicals.org.ua/index.php/sofs/Retraction-procedure).

The principles underlying the retraction procedure are: transparence – a notice on retraction is public and accessible; impartiality – all the taken decisions are based on expert evidence and conclusions; responsibility – the authors bear full responsibility for reliability and quality of presented results.