Prevention of manipulation

The editorial policy regarding the prevention of manipulation is aimed at preventing the publication of falsified data, plagiarism, theft (attribution) of other people's names for authors' collectives, as well as preventing situations that may lead to biased expert assessment at the stage of reviewing manuscripts.

Based on these principles, each of the journals of the publishing house, within the framework of its regulations:

– accepts for consideration only those manuscripts that are accompanied by a License Agreement signed by the authors, in which the corresponding author is recorded (see Authorship: guarantees and liability);

– checks the availability of the relevant competencies among potential reviewers and confirms that they have no conflicts of interest;

– verifies the accuracy of data about a potential reviewer based on available identifiers (ORCID, profiles in indexing resources) and data on institutions with which the potential reviewer is affiliated, and, if necessary, a request is made to the appropriate institution;

– monitors the reviewing process for the reviewers' compliance with the regulations and identifying possible factors for the manifestation of atypical actions on the part of reviewers, which may have signs of manipulation during the reviewing process. The editors are guided by the COPE recommendations "How to recognise potential manipulation of the peer review process".

In the event that a situation arises when atypical actions are noticed in the behavior of one of the reviewers or both reviewers *, the editorial board may attract other reviewers, including those recommended by the authors when submitting the manuscript as potential. In this case, the editorial board checks the possibility of attracting these reviewers (the reliability of their data, competence, affiliation with the institution, re-confirmation by the corresponding author, etc.) and, in case of successful verification, contacts the reviewers. The editors are guided by the COPE recommendations "What to do if you suspect peer review manipulation".

* all articles submitted for consideration for publication go through the stage of double-blind peer review. In some cases, the editor may also contact the reviewer(s) identified by the authors as potential for additional peer review.

 

Actions of the editorial board in case of falsification/fabrication in the manuscript submitted for consideration.

If the editor or reviewer reveals the fact of falsification/fabrication of data in the submitted manuscript, the following protocol will be implemented:

– obtaining a second (if necessary, a third) expert opinion to confirm the fact of falsification/fabrication of data;

– contact the corresponding authors of the manuscript in question for comments on the accusations that have arisen. If the response from the corresponding author is not received, the editors contact the other authors of the manuscript, the institution in which the authors work or the appropriate organization;

– in case of receiving a satisfactory response from the author(s) of the manuscript, the double-blind review process will continue;

– in case of receiving an unsatisfactory response from the authors, confirming the fact of falsification / fabrication of data, the manuscript will be rejected. The fact of falsification/fabrication of data will be reported to the institutions whose employees are the authors of the manuscript.

 

Actions of the editorial board in case of falsification/fabrication in the published article.

If the reader reveals the fact of falsification/fabrication of data in the published article, the following protocol will be implemented:

– obtaining an additional expert opinion to confirm the fact of detection of falsification/fabrication of data;

– contact the corresponding authors of the published article for comments on the allegations that have arisen. In the event that a response from the corresponding author is not received, the editors should contact other authors of the article, the institution in which the authors work or the relevant organization;

– if a satisfactory answer is received from the author(s) of the article, it will be passed on to the reader who had suspicions of falsification/fabrication of data. The article will remain published without any additions and/or changes;

– in case of receiving an unsatisfactory response from the authors, confirming the fact of falsification / fabrication of data, a corresponding refutation will be published. Also, the refutation will be sent to all indexing resources that include the journal and in which the article is published;

– if the fact of falsification/fabrication of data entails consequences that may cause harm to health, gross insult, etc., the article will be removed from the journal's website and all indexing resources in which the journal is included and in which it was published;

– in the case of confirmation of the fact of falsification / fabrication of data, a notification about this will be sent to all authors of the article, to the reader who revealed this fact, to the institutions of which the authors are employees and, if necessary, to other relevant institutions.