Ethical norms

Responsibilities of authors

1. The Author is fully responsible for the content of the article submitted for publication, which must be prepared in accordance with the editorial requirements.
2. The Author is obliged to present an accurate and comprehensive description of the research in the article, to indicate its practical value, scientific significance and novelty objectively.
3. The scientific results presented in the article must be reliable and confirmed. The structural and compositional components of the article should reflect the completed study of a certain aspect of the general analysis of the scientific problem.
4. The Author must cite independently identified works that have led to interest in the scientific problem raised in the article. The text of the article should contain references to all researchers whose names are listed in it. Citation of sources that do not directly relate to the subject of the article should be kept to a minimum.
5. The use and citation of the information represented to the Author by another person in a private, confidential manner, should take place only with the permission of this person.
6. If the article submitted to the collection has relatable publications in other editions (or submitted for publication there), the Author must inform the Editors, providing appropriate copies and indicating the scientific affinity of these articles.
8. The Author has no right to submit the same text as the original publication in more than one edition (unless the Author has previously withdrawn the text himself or herself or re-submits it after rejection by the Editors). 
9. The Authors should not allow personal criticism of scientists, although they may make critical remarks about certain theories or practical results in their articles.
10.If the article is written by Co-authors, they are responsible for its content. The Author and Co-author must be published under their own names, the use of pseudonyms is not allowed. The Author should be aware that he or she must honestly include in the list of Co-authors the names of all the persons who participated in the preparation of the article for publication.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

1. The Reviewer must give a timely and objective evaluation of the overall Author’s concept, theoretical and practical aspects of the article submitted for publication, compliance of its linguistic and stylistic design to the current standards with respect to the creative originality and intellectual independence of the Author.
2. The Reviewer who has doubts about his or her scientific competence in the professional evaluation of the article must refuse to examine it. In the event that the content of the article is closely related to the area of expertise of the Reviewer, he or she should return the text to avoid conflict of interests. If the Reviewer knows or guesses who has participated in writing the article, and therefore is unable to make an objective analysis of it, he or she must also abandon the evaluation.
3. The Reviewer is obliged to adhere to the principle of confidentiality on his or her work: not to show the text to outsiders, not to discuss the content of the article (except when the situation requires additional advice), not to share unpublished information from the article with no Author’s agreement, etc.
4. The Reviewer’s conclusions should contain coherent, reasoned and clear explanations of his or her position on the article. If the new provisions of the article submitted for publication are found to be previously published, the Reviewer must confirm his or her observations with references to specific editions.
5. Examples of incomplete and dishonest citation of sources relevant to the analyzed article should be documented in the review. If the Reviewer, being an expert on the subject of the article, has found a citation of his or her research by the Author insufficient, it should be remembered that the emphasis on this point in the feedback may be evidenced as partiality, a bias of the expert.
6. If the Reviewer has noted a certain similarity of the reviewed article with other already published materials or text submitted for review to another edition, he or she is obliged to report it to the Editors.

Elimination of ethics violations and cases of dishonesty associated with publications
1. The Editorial Board, like any of the readers, has the right to take justified measures in the event of documenting cases of ethics violation in relation to both printed and unpublished materials. If this occurs, the Editors are obliged to conduct their constructive, impartial investigation, and, first of all, to demand appropriate explanations from the Author involved in the ethics violation.
2. In the event of documenting cases of dishonesty in the article, the Editors shall act following the norms established by the Committee on Publication Ethics and taking into account the peculiarities of the documented violations.
3. The following is a list of situations when it is recommended to follow the advice given in some references:
 documenting duplication of an article in another edition;
 detection of the ethics violation in the text submitted for review;
 detection of plagiarism in the text submitted for review;
 documenting fabricated data in a published article;
 documenting cases of appropriation of certain author’s ideas, observations, conclusions, generalizations, facts, etc., by the Reviewer.

RETRACTION POLICY

The Editorial Board follows retraction policy to warn readers about self-plagiarism (authors submit the same data in several journals), academic plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification, disguise the conflicts of interests, which would affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use. The retraction of the scientific article is the mechanism of correcting published data and alerting readers about articles with serious gaps or invalid content, incl. unreliable one. The publication of such data may be accidental or intentional misconduct.
The retraction’s goal is to inform readers about the article which contains unreliable data.
Based on the Recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journal staff is guided by the below policy of retraction of previously published articles.
Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
• it contains material or data without authorization for use;
• the research findings have previously been published;
• the article has serious errors (e.g., the misinterpretation of research findings) which call into question scientific value;
• authorship is invalid (the inclusion of persons who do not meet the authorship criteria, or no one is worth being the author);
• the author(s) failed to disclose a conflict of interests (as well as other violations of publication ethics);
• the article was republished with the consent of the author(s);
• there are other violations of ethics.
Grounds for initiating article retraction:
• the author’s request to retract the article;
• the request of the third parties (e.g., participants in the conflict of interests) who have evidence of the violations of academic ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;
• the editorial board has found ethics violations by the article’s author.
The Academic Integrity Commission of Kherson State University decides about article retraction by relying on the decision of the Editorial Board.
Information on article retraction is available on the journal’s web-site.
The surname(s) of the author(s) and article title are kept in the contents of the relevant issue on the journal’s web-site, but reasons for retractions are specified.
The decision reasoning article retraction is sent to the author (s).