Publication Ethics

All parties involved in the process of preparation of materials to the journal "Epic studies", namely the authors, reviewers, editorial board members, representatives of the publishers – should follow as described below standards of publication ethics.

These provisions correspond to the ethical principles adopted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In the event that any of the following principles are violated, the editorial board will follow the instructions of COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

All the participants in the process of publication must adhere to the following ethical principles:

the importance of scientific content, the reliability of research results and scientific novelty of published texts.

confidentiality of information and preventing its use prior to publication.

avoidance and, in the event of, a fair resolution of a conflict of interest.

compliance with the editorial policy.

1. Duties of editors

The editorial staff and the editorial board are obliged:

to communicate with the authors encouragingly and amiably;

to avoid any preferences to authors according to their race, gender, religious views, citizenship, political preferences or other circumstances that are unrelated to the reliability of the submitted materials and scientific value of the article;

to not accept articles in respect to which they may have a conflict of interest (a conflict of interest is a situation where someone in a position of trust has competing professional or personal interests);

to provide participation of unbiased competent reviewers, to substitute them when necessary;

to ensure the involvement of objective and competent reviewers, replace them if the need arises;

to not submit information on received manuscripts to any persons except the authors and reviewers;

to not allow publication of articles in regard to which there is sufficient evidence of plagiarism, articles without scientific value or are inconsistent with the specialization of the Journal and its editorial policy;

to be responsible for the content of the articles published in the journal (reliability and scientific value of the article must be the chief criteria for publication);

to not publish the final version of the article without coordination with its authors;

to take adequate measures in case of ethical complaints concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper (see section The regulation of violations of Publication Ethics).

 

2. Duties of Reviewers

The reviewers are obliged:

to assess the intellectual content of the manuscript, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality or political opinions of its author;

to review objectively. Reviewers must give a reasoned opinion on each material;

to indicate the publications with no references in peer-reviewed article on the subject of submitted manuscript. Any statement, whether the findings, conclusions, or an argument made in earlier papers must be accompanied by a reference to the source. The reviewer should also pay attention of the editor to any substantial similarity or match between the manuscript under consideration and any other known publication.

to treat the reviewed manuscript as a confidential document, not to submit it to other persons without authorization from the editors;

not to provide public comments regarding their participation of manuscript reviews;

not to use the unpublished data from the submitted manuscripts for personal use;

not to review the manuscript or the author in a way that is emotional or inappropriate for scientific discourse;

to inform the Editorial Board about the lack of time to complete the review, their insufficient competence for the objective evaluation of the manuscript and about the circumstances that prevent such evaluation;

to inform the editorial board if a conflict of interest arises prior to starting to working with an article;

 

3. Duties of Authors

The authors are obliged:

to include everyone who participated in the creation of the publication (in the research or in the process of writing the text of the article) as co-authors. However, each co-author must be responsible for the content of the article.

to ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication;

to ensure that the paper submitted is entirely original;

to point out all external sources of information, essential for this article (including his own previously published articles and research materials) as quotations or references in the text of the manuscript.

to invoke scientific predecessors, whose research results are significant in the development of the subject of the article;

to avoid offending scientists whose concepts are the subject of controversy in the article (polemical statements addressed to other authors should be respectful and proper, criticism must be well-reasoned);

to monitor the correctness of the citations presented in the article;

be responsible for the accuracy of the facts, quotes, proper names, geographical names and other information;

to guarantee that the article is being submitted for publication for the first time and was not previously published or submitted to another journal.

to properly cite one’s previous works and avoid self-plagiarism (self-citation) in the paper and artificial increase of the article size;

to correspond with reviewers properly through the editors and respond to comments and remarks if they arise;

to indicate the source of financing of the researches presented in the article;

to inform the editorial board upon discovery of mistakes or misspellings in the article submitted for publication and correct the mistakes as soon as possible.

 

Presenting the paper to the editorial board, the authors thereby confirm their authorship of the submitted materials. The editors do not require signatures of all the authors of the article in a letter of application. The fact of the application submission means that all of the authors agree with the content of the article.

4. Responsibility of the Journal’s Founding Publisher

The publisher not only supports scientific communication and invests in this process, but is also responsible for adhering to all current recommendations in the published work;

The publisher has no influence on the editorial policy of the journal;

The publisher provides legal support to the editorial office of the journal, if necessary;

The publisher ensures the timely release of the next issues of the journal;

The publisher prints edits, clarifications, and withdraws articles in which violations of scientific ethics or critical errors have been identified.

 

5. Conflict of Interest

In order to avoid violations of Publication Ethics, it is necessary to exclude all conflicts of interests of all parties involved in the publication of the manuscript. Conflicts of interest arise when the Authors, the Reviewers or members of the Editorial Board have financial, scientific or personal relations that may influence their actions. Such relations are known as dual commitments, competing interests or competing loyalties.

In order to prevent conflicts of interest and in accordance with the ethical standards adopted by the Journal, each party should bear the following responsibilities.

The Editor should:

pass on the manuscript for consideration to another Editorial Board member if the initially appointed Reviewer has a conflict of interest with the Author of the manuscript;

ask that all parties involved in publishing report a potential conflict of interest;

make decisions to publish information from the Author concerning scientific and / or financial conflicts of interest if it is not confidential and may affect the published work evaluation by readers or academia;

publish corrections if a conflict of interest arose after the paper was published.

Author should:

indicate his employer and the source of research funding.

The Reviewer should:

inform the Editor-in-Chief about conflicts of interest (dual commitments, competing interests) and decline to review the manuscript.

 

6. Regulation of violations of Publication Ethics

The editors and editorial board make every effort to prevent breaches of publication ethics. They reserve the right to reject the publication of articles in case of their violation.

The editorial board informs the author (or an unfair reviewer) with a warning letter of non-compliance with the above listed ethical standards, revealing the facts of ethics violation and warning of possible consequences. The author (or an unfair reviewer) is given the opportunity to answer any charges.

Minor violations are handled without third-party involvement.

Major violations may require the official publication of the revealed facts of violations on the journal's website; notification of the employer of the accused. The editor-in-chief and the editorial board should make a decision on whether to inform the employer by examining the available data and through consultations with a limited number of experts.