Publishing ethics

Publication Ethics

The Editorial Board of Mineralogy guarantees the authors the compliance with ethics of publishing, authorship, peer-review process and editing of scientific publications submitted. The policy of the Editorial Board is based on respect of the author’s personal rights and intellectual property. The Editorial Board guarantees independent and conscientious peer-review process of all submitted manuscripts. 

Ethics of publishing of scientific publications

The Editorial Board

– guarantees the consideration of all manuscripts submitted for publication and the objective decisions without prejudice to authors based on their national or religious affiliation or official position, their commercial interests and relations with the founder of the Journal, respecting the author’s personal and intellectual property rights;

– ensures and improves the quality of published materials;

– determines the degree of relevance, importance, clarity, reliability, and validity of the manuscripts submitted for publication;

– attracts highly qualified scientists to the Editorial Board, who actively contribute to the development of the Journal;

– improves a system of peer-review process and editing of publications guaranteeing the accuracy, completeness, and clarity of the manuscripts submitted to publication and their prompt publication;

– informs the readers on funding of published materials;

– checks the submitted manuscripts for duplicate texts, figures and tables, which could have already been published by the authors;

– decides whether or not to accept the manuscript for the publication on the basis of the opinion of independent reviewers.

The high quality of the submitted manuscript should meet the following standards:

– the results provided in the submitted manuscript must be in accordance with generally accepted scientific standards; authors have a collective responsibility for their study and the content of the publication;

– the authors must present their results without fabrication, falsification or dishonest manipulation of scientific data;

– the publication must provide sufficient information to allow other researchers to replicate the experiments;

– the results of new study must be presented on the basis of previous results;

– the authors guarantee that the study is original and its results have not previously been published elsewhere in any language; the manuscript cannot be submitted to several journals;

– the authors must acknowledge all funding sources (including direct and indirect), analytical centers with used equipment, and those who provide the materials for studies (if they are not the co-authors of the manuscript) or other types of technical support.

Authorship ethics of scientific publication

The authors of the submitted manuscript must

– ensure that only those who made significant contributions to the study are included as co-authors and those who deserve the co-authorship are not excluded;

– agree to be a co-author and must approve the revised version of the manuscript; any changes to the co-authorship must be approved by all authors, including those who are excluded from the co-authorship;

– collaborate with editors to correct their manuscript as soon as possible;

– immediately notify the editors in case of errors in papers, which are submitted and accepted for publication or already published;

– not simply copy references from other publications without their careful reading; the references to other published papers must be accurate and formatted in accordance with the requirements of Mineralogy;

– refer correctly and accurately to previously published papers; the direct reproduction of previous papers of the authors and their paraphrasing are unacceptable: they can be used only as a basis for new conclusions;

– must comply with a copyright law: indicate the authorship of data, text, figures, and ideas taken from other sources; direct quotations from other papers must be put in quotes with a corresponding reference; tables, figures or large quotations must only be reproduced with the permission of their owners.

Ethics of peer-review process

The Editorial Board guarantees the independent review of the submitted manuscripts ensuring the honesty and objectivity of the decision about a scientific value of the submitted manuscript. The Editorial Board invites the qualified reviewers without conflict of interests with the authors of the submitted manuscript. The authors could suggest the possible reviewers for their papers; however, this does not mean that these reviewers will agree to join the review process. The reviewers are informed of the requirements of the peer-review process. The Editorial Board ensures the confidentiality of the authors’ data and maintains the confidentiality of the authors and reviewers. The Editorial Board does not inform anyone about the status of the manuscript in Mineralogy except the authors.

The personal data of the reviewers are confidential as well. The reviewer can refuse its anonymous status and contact the authors to better improve the quality of the paper. The reviews are immediately sent to the authors. The revised manuscripts could be evaluated again by the same reviewers. If the authors disagree with the reviewer’s decision, the Editorial Board can invite more reviewers to assess the quality of the manuscript. The Editorial Board can reject the manuscript before the peer-review process if the manuscript is of low quality or seems unsuitable for the Journal. The Editor’s-in-Chief decision is final.

Ethics of editing

All manuscripts, which are accepted to publishing in Mineralogy after the peer-review process, are subject to scientific and language editing by the Editorial Board members. The results of editing are aligned with the authors. To minimize the editing process, the authors of the submitted manuscripts are encouraged to use an understandable logical style of writing based on the rules of Russian or English languages. The authors should avoid verbosity and excessive using of adverbs and language constructions, which increase the volume of the manuscript, but does not affect its sense (e.g., however, unfortunately, as was mentioned above, probably, in other words, in opinion, etc.).

Retraction of manuscripts

In case of violation of publishing ethics in already published papers, the Editorial Board of Mineralogy can retract the papers following the Rectraction guidelines of COPE and (https://publicationethics.org/node/19896) and the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ANRI) (https://rassep.ru/sovet-po-etike/retraktsiya/). The paper is subject to retraction if it

• constitutes plagiarism;
• presents falsified or fabricated data (e.g., falsified or fabricated experimental or calculated data);
• contains serious errors, e.g., erroneous interpretation of results;
• includes the authors, who do not meet criteria for the authorship, and vice versa (the authors, who made a significant contribution, are excluded from the paper);
• the authors of the paper have conflict of interest;
• presents the data without permission of author (authors);
• contains any other violations of publishing ethics.

Rectraction of the published paper is issued by the Editorial Board of Mineralogy on the basis of the Editor’s-in-Chief decision, which contains a substantiated data on the reasons of the retraction. The protocol copy of the substantiated retraction decision (in case of plagiarism, the protocol must contain the plagiarism sources) and retraction date are sent to the corresponding author of the paper. The authors could disagree with the decision of the Editorial Board of Mineralogy, however, the Editorial Board of Mineralogy has rights for the rectraction procedure.

The retraction decision takes into account the author’s response, which substantiate the author’s opinion. If the author ignores the request on the retraction procedure, the Editorial Board of Mineralogy can appeal to the Commission on Publishing Ethics of ANRI and/or retract the paper without author’s opinion. If the authors would like to retract their paper for any reasons mentioned above, they cooperate with Editorial Board of Mineralogy providing a steady reason for the retraction.

After the procedure of retraction is completed, the paper and its metadata remain on web-site of the Journal within a corresponding issue with a note “RETRACTED” and the date of retraction (the same note is included into the Content of the corresponding issue of Mineralogy). After the retraction, the Editorial Board of Mineralogy notifies the Committee on Publishing Ethics of ANRI, National Electron Library (eLibrary.ru) and other Russian information resources to include the retraced paper into the corresponding database.

Conflict of interests

The authors should disclose in their manuscript any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript or declare the absence of conflict of interests in a corresponding section at the end of the manuscript.

Unpublished data from the submitted manuscripts cannot be used in personal studies without the permission of the author(s). Information or ideas, which are recovered by reviewers or editors during the peer-review or editing process and which are related to possible benefits for the reviewers or editors, must remain confidential and not be used for a personal gain.

The reviewers must reject the peer-review process of the submitted manuscripts in case of the conflict of interests related to competitive, collaborative or other interactions and relationships with any of the authors, companies or other organizations related to the submitted manuscripts.

Relations with readers

Information about Mineralogy and Editorial Board activities is published on the official website of Mineralogy. The Editorial Board undertakes to operatively make necessary changes at the website. The readers have a free access to the published papers of Mineralogy and can download the papers for personal use only. Reprinting, duplication, and partial or verbatim use of papers without the permission of the authors or editors are prohibited.