Publication Ethics

Editorial Board of "Scientific Journal of Faculty of Theology" commits to the internationally accepted principles of publication ethics expressed in the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

To avoid any unfair practices in publishing activities (plagiarism, presenting false information, etc.) and to ensure a high quality of scientific publications and public recognition of the author’s scientific results, each member of the Editorial Board, publishers, authors, reviewers and institutions involved in the publishing process shall adhere to ethical standards, rules and regulations and take any reasonable steps to prevent their violations. Compliance with these ethical guidelines by all the parties ensures authors’ intellectual property rights, improves the quality of the Journal and excludes a possible misuse of copyright material in the interests of particular individuals.

Author(s) of the article with proved violation of principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics are not allowed to submit articles to the "Scientific Journal of Faculty of Theology" and in other scientific journals, published by Osh State University for the next 3 calendar years from the date of detecting the fact(s) of violated principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics.

 

1. Principles of Publication Ethics of Author(s)

When submitting to the "Scientific Journal of Faculty of Theology", authors (groups of authors) are aware that they bear primary responsibility for the novelty and validity of scientific results, which implies adhering to the following principles:

1.1. Authors shall provide reliable research results. Deliberately false or fraudulent statements are not acceptable.

1.2. Authors shall ensure that research results are completely original. Every borrowed fragment or statement must be accompanied by a mandatory reference to the author and the original source. Excessive borrowing and any form of plagiarism including non-documented citations or appropriating another person’s research results are non-ethical and unacceptable. The Editorial Board regards borrowings without references as plagiarism.

1.3. Authors shall only provide authentic facts and data; give enough information for other researchers to be able to verify and repeat experiments; not use information obtained privately, without an open written consent; not allow data fabrication and falsification. The information obtained from dubious sources should not be used in the preparation of the manuscript.

1.4. Authors shall avoid manuscript duplication. If some elements of the manuscript have been previously published, the author shall refer to the earlier work and specify the differences.

1.5. 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.

1.6. It is important to recognize the contribution of all persons who, in one way or another, participated in the research; in particular, the manuscript should contain references to works that significantly influenced the research.

1.7. Authors shall adhere to ethical principles, when criticizing or commenting a third-party research.

1.8. All those who have made significant contributions are to be described as co-authors. It is not acceptable to list persons who did not take part in the research.

1.9. Authors shall respect the work of the Editorial Board and reviewers and eliminate the indicated inaccuracies or justify them.

1.10. Authors shall submit and prepare their manuscripts in compliance with the Journal standards.

1.11. If the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in the manuscript under consideration or after its publication, they should immediately inform the Editorial Board.

 

2. The Code of Conduct for Reviewers

Reviewers provide scientific expertise of the authors’ material, hence, all their actions shall be impartial, and the following principles shall be adhered to:

2.1. The manuscript received for reviewing shall be treated as a confidential document which cannot be passed for discussion or examination to a third party unless authorized by the Editorial Board.

2.2. Reviewers shall know that the manuscripts they receive are the intellectual property of authors and are not to be disclosed. Confidentiality may only be breached if the reviewer declares unreliability or falsification of the information in the manuscript.

2.3. Reviewers shall inform the Editor-in-Chief about any substantial or partial similarity of the manuscript under consideration and any other work, as well as the absence of references to statements, conclusions or arguments which have been previously published in the papers of this or another author.

2.4. The Reviewer shall note the relevant published works that are not quoted (in the paper).

2.5. The reviewer should indicate scientific papers that would have influenced the research results of the manuscript in question, but were not cited by the author(s).

2.6. If the reviewer has sufficient grounds to believe that the manuscript contains plagiarism, incorrect borrowings, false and fabricated materials or research results, then he should not allow the manuscript to be published and inform the scientific editor of the journal about revealed violations of the principles, standards and norms of publication and scientific ethics.

2.7. Reviewers shall give an objective and reasoned evaluation of the research results, as well as clearly justified recommendations. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

2.8. Reviewers’ comments and suggestions shall be objective and essential, aimed at improving the scholarly value of the manuscript.

2.9. Reviewers shall make decisions basing on particular facts and justify them.

2.10. Reviewers are not allowed to make copies of the manuscript for personal use.

2.11. Reviewers cannot take advantage of their awareness of the manuscript content until its publication.

2.12. Reviewers shall request the Editor to exclude them from the reviewing process in case they do not possess the required expertise, or cannot be objective, as in case of competing interests with any of the authors or institutions.

2.13. The manuscript review is confidential. Only the Executive Editor and the Editor-in-Chief know the name of the reviewer; this information shall not be disclosed.

 

Conflict of interests

A conflict of interests, as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), is conflict situation in which authors, reviewers, or editorial board members have implicit interests that can influence their judgments regarding published materials. A conflict of interests arises when there are financial, personal, or professional conditions that can affect the scientific judgment of the reviewer and editorial board members, and, as a result, the editorial board's decision regarding the publication of a manuscript.

The executive board of the journal should require all the participants in the manuscript publication process to disclose conflicts of interest.

The scientific editor, editorial board member, and reviewers must disclose potential conflicts of interest that could somehow influence the editorial board's decision. Members of the editorial board should refuse to consider the manuscript if they are in any competitive relationship related to the research results of the author(s) of the manuscript, or if there is another conflict of interest.

When submitting a manuscript for consideration to the journal, the author(s) declares that all sources of research funding are indicated in the manuscript content; they also indicate what commercial, financial, personal, or professional factors exist that could create a conflict of interest in relation to the submitted manuscript. The author(s), in the covering letter, if there is a conflict of interests, may indicate scientists who, in their opinion, will not be able to objectively evaluate their manuscript.

The reviewer should not consider manuscripts that may cause a conflict of interests arising from the competition, collaboration, or other relationship with any of the authors related to the manuscript.

If there is a conflict of interest with the content of the manuscript, the executive editor must notify the scientific editor about it, after which the scientific editor delegates the verification and review of the manuscript to another editor/reviewer.

The existence of a conflict of interests between the participants during the review and consideration process does not mean that the manuscript will be rejected.

All the persons concerned should, as far as possible, avoid any variation of conflicts of interest at all the stages of publication. In the event of any conflict of interests, any person who discovers this conflict must immediately notify the editorial board about it. The same goes for any other violations of the principles, standards and norms of publication and scientific ethics.