Publication ethics

The Journal of «Vestnik of Brest State Technical University» is guided by the principles of publication ethics based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (Elsevier).

All articles accepted by the editorial board for consideration after preliminary selection undergo a review procedure. After passing the review process, the article can be either rejected, or sent to the author for revision, or accepted for publication in the journal. The authors are responsible for the content of the article, the editorial board of the journal does not discuss with the authors the correspondence of their articles to the subject of the journal. The authors guarantee that their articles:

• not previously published in other publications and are original works;
• are not considered in the editions of other publications;
• all possible conflicts of interest related to copyright and publication of the articles in question have been resolved;
• do not infringe copyright and guarantee the publisher compensation for damages in case of detection of such violations.

Both the falsification of the data and information used in the article, plagiarism – the appropriation of ideas or words without reference to the source of information and the appropriation of other people's achievements are unacceptable. In case of detection of plagiarism and other violations of copyright, the editors reserve the right to reject the author's articles without consideration.

The editors of the journal are not responsible for any damage caused by the publication of the article. If the publication of the article entailed a violation of someone's rights or generally accepted norms of scientific ethics, the editors of the journal have the right to withdraw the already published article.

The publication of articles for authors is free.

Preparation of an article for publication consists in literary editing in accordance with the standards adopted by the editors of the journal. All edits are agreed with the authors.

The authors of articles, by submitting an article through the journal platform, express their consent to the rules for preparing articles for publication, including peer review, scientific and literary editing. Authors must also express their consent to the transfer to the journal of their right to publish and distribute articles in electronic and paper versions, as well as to place bibliographic information about articles in databases, regardless of their category and location, to place full texts of articles on the journal website (journal.bstu.by) and the website of the Scientific Electronic Library (elibrary.ru) for free access to all Internet users.

All those involved in the publishing process are to observe the abovementioned codes of publication ethics.

1. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE PUBLISHER

The policy of the Journal is based on respect for the individual rights of the author and intellectual property rights.

The publisher ensures independent and conscientious consideration of all submitted manuscripts, without prejudice against ethnic, religious, or social status of their authors and regardless of commercial interests and relations with the founder.

The publisher shall work to ensure and improve the quality of published materials and meet the needs of readers and authors to make a significant contribution to the development of construction, geoecology, mechanical engineering, economics.

Our editorial principles involve relevance, importance, clarity, reliability, and validity of the published research material. Credibility, reproducibility, uniqueness, fullness, balance, and transparency are the main indicators of quality of the publications.

The publisher strives to attract and recruit highly qualified professionals who can contribute to the development of the Journal.

The publisher shall constantly improve the processes of reviewing and editing.

The publisher shall guarantee that all submitted manuscripts are checked for image manipulation, plagiarism, and duplicate or redundant publications.

The publisher shall take all necessary measures in case of conflict and publish improvements, clarifications, refutations, and apologies if necessary.

2. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE EDITORIAL OFFICE

The editorial office publishes information for authors, including the formatting requirements, submission and review procedures.

The editorial office ensures independent and conscientious consideration of all submitted manuscripts, without prejudice against ethnic, religious, or social status of their authors and regardless of any commercial interests and relations with the publisher.

The editorial office has the right to reject a badly written manuscript that does not meet the formatting requirements or contains evidence of slander, plagiarism, or copyright infringement. The final decision on the publication of an article or refusal of such is taken by the editor-in-chief and is fair and unprejudiced.

Manuscripts submitted to the editorial office are checked for borrowings from open sources (plagiarism). Should multiple unauthorized borrowings be detected, the editorial office follows the COPE algorithm.

The editorial office ensures confidentiality, which means that the submitted manuscript cannot be demonstrated to anyone other than the respective authors, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.

The editorial office ensures that the materials of the rejected manuscript will not be used in the board members’ own research without the written consent of the author.

The editorial office shall promptly examine each complaint about any possible unethical behavior of the authors of submitted and published articles and undertake appropriate measures. Should the unethical behavior be proved, the editorial office has the right to refuse to publish the article, cease further cooperation with the author, publish a retraction, or take other necessary measures to further curb unethical behavior of the author in question.

Should an error be detected, amendments shall be provided as soon as possible. When the online version of the article is corrected, it is provided with the correction date and a reference to the errata published.

3. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF AUTHORS

Editorial board publishes information materials for authors (the list of the necessary requirements for the articles, the procedure for article consideration and review) on the site.

Authors guarantee that the manuscript they submit meets the formatting requirements, including those for the illustrative material.

Authors guarantee that the submitted manuscript contains authentic results that have never been published and are not being reviewed by other journals.

Deliberately erroneous or forged data and conclusions are unacceptable.

Authors are free to post the initial draft of their manuscript in the related repository. In this case they should inform the Journal about it and provide a link to the preprint. However, they cannot post their article on preprint servers if it has already been published by the Journal or improved to meet the requirements of the editorial board or reviewers, as it might be regarded as a duplicate publication. When citing an article published in the Journal, please make sure that the link leads to the official page of the article on the Journal's website.

Authors are required to refer to other studies as correctly and accurately as possible by specifying the original source in the references. A word-for-word citation or periphrasis of the author’s own publications is unacceptable: they can only be used as a basis for new findings.

Authors must follow the applicable laws on copyright protection. Materials protected by copyright, e.g. tables, figures, or large citations, may be reproduced only with the permission of their respective owners.

Authors cannot copy references from other publications if they are not familiar with the original source. Quotes and references must be accurate and formatted in accordance with the requirements.

Authors ensure that the list of authors includes only those individuals who have made significant contributions to the work, and that no researcher deserving authorship has been excluded from the list of authors.

In determining the authorship and contributor ship, the editorial office follows the authorship criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published;
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for other parts of the work. Authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to preserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion No. 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

The corresponding author shall guarantee that all the co-authors have seen the final version of the manuscript, approved it, and agreed to its submission for publication in the Journal.

Authors must disclose any conflicts of interests that could affect the evaluation and interpretation of their manuscript.

The sources of financial support for the project (grants, state programs, projects, etc.) are to be indicated in the manuscript.

Authors are required to immediately notify the editorial office in the event of an error in any work filed by them for publication, accepted for publication, or already published, and contribute to its correction. Should the editorial office be informed about an error by third parties, the authors are to promptly correct the error or justify it.

All papers published in the Journal fall under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

4. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The editor-in-chief promotes the Journal, improves the quality of published materials, meets the needs of readers and authors, and contributes to the development of construction, geoecology, mechanical engineering, economics.

The editor-in-chief uses the following criteria to accept a manuscript for publication: compliance with the profile of the Journal; relevance, novelty, and significance; clarity of presentation; reliability of results and completeness of conclusions. The decision is based on all the comments provided by independent reviewers. The main criteria are the quality of research and its relevance.

The editor-in-chief (in his absence – deputy editor-in-chief) shall guarantee an independent and conscientious consideration of all manuscripts without ethnic, religious, or social prejudice and regardless of any commercial interests or relations with the founder or publisher.

Manuscripts are private property of their authors and cannot be subject to disclosure. They cannot be used for personal purposes or transferred to third parties without the written consent of the author.

The editor-in-chief (in his absence – deputy editor-in-chief) has the right to reject the publication with evidence of slander, insult, plagiarism, or copyright infringement.

The editor-in-chief (in his absence – deputy editor-in-chief) selects independent experienced reviewers with no conflict of interest.

The editor-in-chief (in his absence – deputy editor-in-chief) shall decide on the acceptance or rejection of an article for publication on the basis of all the comments provided by independent reviewers. The final editorial decision and the reasons for its adoption are reported to the authors. The editorial office shall take all necessary measures in case of conflict.

5. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF PUBLICATION REVIEWING

Editorial Board guarantees a confidential, independent, honest and objective review of manuscripts of articles. Editorial Board has the right to reject a manuscript without an independent review, if it is found to be of poor quality or does not meet the requirements of the journal. This decision is made fairly and impartially.

With respect to the materials considered for publication editorial board selects independent reviewers having enough experience and no conflict of interests.

Expert evaluation of the manuscript provided by the reviewer, promotes the adoption of editorial decisions, and also helps the author improve the manuscript. On the basis of reviewing results the editorial board makes a decision on the adoption of the manuscript for publication, return it to the author for revision or rejection of the publication.

Reviewer should provide a review within the time specified by the editors of journal. If consideration of the manuscript review and preparation for those dates are not possible, then the reviewer shall notify the editor.

Reviewer undertakes to conduct peer review of the manuscript objectively. All the conclusions of the reviewer should be strictly provided with links to authoritative sources. Personal criticism of author by the reviewer is unacceptable. In such cases, the Editors follow the COPE protocol.

Reviewers must indicate the presence of works that have influenced the results of the study, but were not given by the author. The reviewer is obliged to pay attention to the wording substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and the other previously published work, which is known to the reviewer.

Reviewers have no right to use unpublished manuscript materials in their own research without the express written consent of the author. The reviewer is obliged to refrain from examining the manuscript, in connection with which he has a conflict of interests because of the competitive, cooperative or other relationship with the author or organization related to the manuscript.

If the reviewer raises the issue of the accuracy of the data or the advisability of publication of scientific work, the author is given the opportunity to respond to the questions.

Independent peer reviewers are reported, about the requirements to them, and are also provided with information on any changes in editorial policy.

Editorial Board reserves the privacy of personal data of reviewers.

6. CORRECTION POLICY

The editors of the journal "Vestnik of Brest State Technical University" allows its authors to correct mistakes, typographical errors, or other inaccuracies after their manuscript has been published.

Should you find an error, misprint, or any other inaccuracy in your published article, do not hesitate to inform the Editors.

The Editorial Board is ready to make the following types of correction:

Addendum is published in case some important information, data, or results were unintentionally omitted from the article, i.e. author's affiliation, grant number, funding, research subject or method, etc.

The Addendum is an Appendix to the published article, which informs about the missing information. The Addendum is published in the printed and digital versions of the current issue with the article number added. The original article is not changed, but acquires a hyperlink to the Addendum.

Erratum is a correction of formatting or other unscientific change to something that causes ambiguity, hinders understanding or prevents correct citing, e.g. spelling or factual error in the title or author's name, affiliation, e-mail, etc., missing or fuzzy figures, missing or misspelled words; a typo in the formula or in its explanation, etc. The Erratum is made in the digital version, and a message about the Erratum is published on the website and in the current printed issue. Minor errors that do not hinder the meaning or understanding are not corrected, and no Erratum is published.

Corrections are changes that may affect the scientific interpretation, e.g. incorrect data, extra text, wrong information in equations, conclusions, etc. These changes are evaluated by the Reviewer, and the final decision on making Corrections belongs to the Chief Editor. The Corrections are published in the current issue as a separate publication with a reference to the original article. The original article is not modified, but acquires a hyperlink to the Correction.

7. RETRACTION

Retraction of a published article is considered to be the last resort in case previously unknown facts were revealed after the review stage. In this case, the editorial office follows the COPE algorithm.

Retraction can be initiated by authors, readers, reviewers, editors, and other publishers by appealing to the editorial office.

8. VIOLATIONS

Should the publication ethics be violated by the publisher, editorial office, the editor-in-chief, reviewers, or authors, an investigation is required. This applies to both published and unpublished materials.