Russian

EDITOR CODE




General Provisions

a) The Editor Code located on this page is an integral part of RSUTS Publisher Standard (Policy) regarding an ethical behavior of the parties engaged in publication: authors, editorship, reviewer, publisher. The below mentioned standards are based on the common and existing international practice of scientific journals and publishers’ policy.

b) Russian State University of Tourism and Service, as the founder and publisher of scientific journals Service and Tourism: Current Challenges, Service in Russia and Abroad, Service Plus, Universities for Tourism and Service Association Bulletin (hereinafter referred to as the Publications), assumes the obligation to control all stages of editorial activity and recognizes its ethical and other obligations related to this process.

c) The below mentioned provisions comprise the code of the requirements and authorities applied, first of all, to the chief editors of the published journals and/or their deputies executing these functions, as well as other people involved in performance of the editorial functions - a scientific editor, members of the editorial boards and editors, including their foreign members, and also to the guest, executive and other editors.

1. General obligations and liability of editors

  • Editors shall be liable for everything published in the journals where they perform the editorial functions;
  • Editors shall strive to continually enhance the journal published under their editorship, contribute to its maximum wide distribution and promotion among authors and readers in the professional sphere. Editors shall make all efforts to promote the journal to the list of the leading publications in the respective field;
  • Editors shall be liable for organization of the work process and setting up the procedures ensuring the quality of the published materials which comply with the highest world standards;
  • Editors shall protect freedom of opinion, remain faithful to the principles of scientific integrity, and prevent commercial interests from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
  • Editors shall timely inform the managing bodies of the Founder about arising aspects, complications, and opportunities during functioning of the journal entrusted to them, try to persuade the founder to provide necessary resources and help;
  • Editors shall by all available means support the initiatives aimed at reduction of unfair behavior of various participants in the publishing process when performing research and preparing publications, to promote the training of articles authors in the ethics of publications;
  • Editors can assess the influence of the journal's policy to the behavior of authors and reviewers, and, if necessary, revise its policy so that foster their responsible behavior and not foster unfair.

2. Relations of editors with the Founder of the journals

  • Relations of the editors with the Founder of the journals shall be firmly based on the principle of editor’s independence and comply with the Code of Conduct for journal editors COPE; the Founder and editors shall develop a mechanism of dispute resolution between them;
  • Editors shall make decisions what articles to publish only based on their quality and closeness to the subject matter of the journal without interference of the Journal's Founder;
  • Editor-in-Chief and Founder of the journal shall regularly exchange the information, elaborate the unified development and promotion strategy, define its policy.

3. Relations of editors with readers

  • Editors shall ensure the peer-reviewing process of all articles published in the journal only by the specialist with the required qualification;
  • Editors can use the procedures fostering the authors to ensure accuracy, completeness, and clarity of research presentation;
  • Editors shall develop the policy of transparency of the editorial-publishing process;
  • Editors shall use the system for determination of a true authorship of the articles, by all available means counter unfair practices of guest, gift, or ghost authorship;
  • Editors shall inform their readers about the steps aimed at objective and unbiased evaluation of the articles written by the members of the editorship and editorial board, members of the institution-founder of the journal according to which they cannot receive non-objective advantages during acceptance of decision on inclusion/non-inclusion of this or that article to the journal.

4. Relations of editors with authors

  • Editors' decisions on approval or refusal of the article for publication shall be based on the significance of the article, its originality, clarity of presentation, reliability of the information contained in it and its closeness to the subject matter of the journal;
  • Editors shall not cancel the decision on approval of the article publication if only serious issues are detected with regard to their publication;
  • The articles' peer-reviewing process in the journal shall be clearly established, and the editors shall be ready to substantiate any significant deviation from the described process. Editors, if necessary, shall provide the authors with an opportunity to implement a mechanism of editorial decisions appeal with regard to the manuscripts of their articles;
  • Editors shall work out complete requirements, instructions, methodological recommendations to the article manuscripts submitted by the authors for publication. These rules shall be regularly updated and enhanced. Editors shall provide the authors with a possibility to review the internationally approved guides and norms for preparation of the article manuscripts, peer-reviewing processes, contribute to their review with the Author's Code applicable in the editorship;
  • Editors shall ensure an effective selection of reviewers for article manuscripts (i.e., persons capable of making a competent opinion of the work and who have no conflict of interest related to this work); respect the wishes of the authors that a certain person shall not review their work if such a request is reasoned and feasible;
  • In case of suspicion of unfair behavior and disputes about authorship, editors shall use the COPE guidelines, and inform interested parties about how the relevant issues and problems are resolved;
  • Editors shall define the dates for articles submission to the editorship and decisions on their publication.

5. Relations of editors with reviewers

  • Editors shall ensure compliance with the Reviewer Code in full by all experts and specialist involved in the peer-reviewing process, including the required to keep the reviewed material confidential;
  • Editors shall request from a reviewer to disclose any information about a possible conflict of interests before agreeing to make a review;
  • Editors shall ensure an effective functioning of the procedure for reviewers’ anonymity protection during a bilateral blind peer-reviewing of the received article manuscripts;
  • Editors can foster reviewers to comment the ethical issues and evaluate a possibility of unfair behavior of the authors with regard to the reviewed article, evaluate the originality level of the analyzed article, pay attention to a possibility of duplicating publications and plagiarism;
  • Editors shall notify the authors about all comments of the reviewers about their work if only they do not contain unethical or defamatory notes;
  • Editors can by all available means mark contribution of the reviewers to the journal's activity, foster the interested organization to consider the work on peer-reviewing as a part of their academic process;
  • Editors can continually analyze the quality of the reviewers work and take steps to perform it at the highest scientific and methodological level;
  • Editors develop and maintain the database of experts, reviewers, continually update and develop it. For this purpose, they can use a wide range of available sources (not only personal contacts) (for example, proposals of the authors, bibliographic databases);
  • Editors can in the priority mode engage reviewers into different forms of scientific cooperation with the editorships of the journals, structural units of the Founder;
  • Editors can refuse from cooperation with reviewers who continually write impolite, belated, and poor in content reviews, follow the COPE recommendations in case of revealing the facts of unfair behavior of the reviewers.

6. Relations with members of the editorial boards/council and Editor-in-Chief

  • Editor-in-Chiefs shall regularly revise the composition of the editorial board and editorial council. Editors upon agreement with the Founder and within the competencies specified by him, can engage new members into the editorial boards/council of the journal. They shall notify them in full about all types, forms, peculiarities, and requirements provided by the editors to the expert work of the reviewer, as well as timely notify the existing members about all changes in the applied approaches and procedures;
  • Editor-in-Chiefs shall ensure the procedures of unbiased consideration of the quality of the article manuscripts received from the members of the editorial boards/council at the same level that the articles of third-party authors;
  • Editor-in-Chiefs shall clearly explain the functions and obligations to the members of the editorial boards/council, which may include: performance of the functions of the journal representatives; support and promotion of the journal; search of best authors of the best works; active actions to invite authors to submit their articles to the journal; analysis of the articles submitted to the journal; formation of separate issues of the journal; approval of instructions for writing editorial articles, reviews and comments to the works in the field of their specialization;
  • Editor-in-Chiefs shall actively participate in the work of the editor's meetings, from time to time hold consultations with the members of the editorial boards/council to know their opinion on the work of the journal, inform them about the changes in the journal policy and work out the aims for future.

7. Role of the editors in the processes of quality assurance

  • Editors can take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the materials published in the journals considering the journals and sections of the journals can have different aims and standards;
  • Editors can apply the procedures (for example, additional check on plagiarism, expertise) to detect falsified data (for example, photos, processed improperly or incorrect borrowings) or to all submitted articles, or to some of them in case of any suspicions about violations;
  • Editors can establish a style of the journal (scientific, design, publishing etc.) based on the objective methods, not only on the aesthetic basis, personal preferences, or those of the Founder.

8. The role of the editors in ensuring the protection of the personal data of the editorial and publishing process members

  • Editors shall comply with the legislation on confidentiality and protection of the personal data, comply and implement in full the «Privacy Policy». Besides, they shall always protect confidentiality of the personal information received during research and other professional activity (for example, during communication between authors and editors);
  • Editors shall consider the fact that it is common practice for the international publishing practice to receive a written consent for publication from persons who can recognize you or be recognized by others on the articles published by authors. Publishing of the personal information without an explicit consent may be done if public interests outweigh a possible damage, it is impossible to receive an approval, and a sensible person, most likely, would not object this specific publication;
  • Editors can formulate their policy regarding publishing of the personal data (for example the data allowing identify a person, or photos) and clearly explain such policy to the authors, request of their compliance with it.

9. Actions of the editors in case of suspicions in unfair behavior

  • Editors can take certain measures when they are aware or suspect any unfair behavior of the editorial and publishing process members. This obligation shall apply to the published and unpublished materials;
  • Editors shall not simply refuse from publication of the articles in case of suspicions about unfair behavior. Ethically they shall react to such situations that assumes a possibility to inform the respective monitoring organizations and establishments;
  • In all cases when there are suspicions about unfair behavior of the editorial and publishing process members, the editors shall follow the COPE recommendations;
  • In case there are suspicions about unfair behavior by the authors of the article, the editors shall first of all request explanations from them. In case they failed to receive a reply or received an unsatisfactory reply, the editors shall contact their employer or the respective organization (probably, the regulating body) with a request to investigate the issue;
  • Editors shall take all reasonable measures to ensure a duly investigation of unfair behavior; if they fail to do it, they shall do everything possible to solve the issue. Herewith it is possible to follow the provisions of «the Retraction Policy» to retract the published articles the authors of which were proved to behave unfairly after their publication.

10. Actions of the editors on ensuring the safety of the intellectual property

  • Editors shall carefully address the issues related to the intellectual property and cooperate with the Founder when settling possible violations of the law and agreements on the protection of the intellectual property;
  • Editors shall introduce the system of tools to detect plagiarism (for example, social programs) in the article manuscripts submitted for publication (or in all articles, or in case of any suspicions);
  • Editors shall by all available means and ways support the authors whose copyright was violated, or those who became the victim of plagiarism;
  • Editors shall be ready for joint work with the Founder on the protection of the copyright and to prosecution of offenders (for example, by placing a request for retraction/retraction of the articles or removal of the materials from the websites) regardless of whether this case is related to the violation of the journal's copyright.

11. Role of the editors in fostering discussions

  • Editors shall foster and readily consider the reasoned criticism of the works published in the journal;
  • The authors of the materials being criticized shall have an opportunity to respond to the critics;
  • The opinion of the editorship and editors may not always coincide with the opinions, facts and provisions expressed in the article manuscripts. But the latter shall not contradict the common scientific norm and contain pseudoscientific provisions;
  • Works contained not only negative results of the research can be also published.

12. Role of the editors in reacting to the claims and requests

  • Editors shall timely react/respond to the submitted claims and requests, make all possible so that the circle of persons dissatisfied with the consideration of their complaints was minimal. Editors shall inform the authors about the mechanism for settling unresolved issues with the editorship of the journal and its Founder at the COPE;
  • In all cases when there are claims and unresolved issues, the editors shall follow the procedures described in the COPE recommendations.

13. Conflicts of interests with participation of the editors

  • Editors shall have the procedures to settle their own conflicts of interests as well as the conflicts of interests of the employees, authors, reviewers, and members of the editorial board/council;
  • Journals shall have a clearly declared mechanism for submission of the articles from their editors, employees, and members of the editorial board/council to ensure their unbiased consideration;
  • Editors can publish the lists of the significant interests, which can influence their decisions (financial, academic, or other) of all employees of the editorship and members of the editorial board/council.

Additional informational resources

1. Reference books of the scientific editor and publisher (Association of Science Editors and Publishers - ASEP) (In Russ.).

2. What a publication ethics should be (In Russ.).

3. COPE: Code of Conduct and Best Practice for Editors (In Russ.).

4. COPE: Guidelines on Good Publication Practice

5. COPE: Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

6. DOAJ: Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

7. Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK)

8. Elsevier: Ethics in Research & Publication

9. Publishing Ethics: Academic Research (Cambridge University Press, 2019)