GENERAL PROVISIONS
The Editorial Team of the Collected Research Papers “Contemporary Issues of Concrete and Reinforced Concrete” (hereinafter referred to as the “Collected Research Papers”) is engaged in the publication of research papers and responsibly approaches the task of maintaining scientific reputation, ensuring the quality of scientific publications and meeting the highest standards.
In its activities, the Editorial Team is guided by traditional ethical principles of scientific periodicals adopted by the international scientific community with due regard to the set of principles of the “Code of Ethics for Scientific Publications” developed and approved by the community of leading publishers of scientific periodicals – by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The Editorial Team has developed a set of ethical rules and requires all the participants of the publishing process (authors, peer reviewers, editorial staff, editors and employees of the publishing house) to observe the rules; the Editorial Team does everything possible to prevent any violation of these norms.
In the process of publishing activities, the Editorial Team of the collected research papers is guided by the norms of the current legislation of the Republic of Belarus, international rules for protection of intellectual property and copyright, and international publishing standards.
The activities of the Editorial Team are aimed at informing a wide range of scientific community on new scientific developments and technical solutions; moreover, the Editorial Team strives to ensure and improve the quality of the materials being published and make a significant contribution to the development of domestic and foreign construction science; it also tries to satisfy the needs of readers and authors through free access to the Collected Research Papers.
The Editorial Team is responsible for the quality of the research papers published and supports initiatives aimed at reducing the number of incorrect actions of researchers and violations of ethical standards.
The Editorial Team pursues the policy to include leading scientists and highly qualified specialists actively contributing to the development of the Collected Research Papers into its staff.
The following principles have been defined as guiding ones for editorial activities: relevance, novelty, reliability, scientific significance, clarity, and accuracy and validity of the research materials published.
The Editorial Team regards the following as the basic principles of high qualification of the research materials published: validity, reasonableness, completeness of the materials presented, unambiguity, originality, honesty, and transparency of the research papers.
The procedure for acceptance, assessment, and publishing research papers is open.
The Editorial Team does not allow publication of the materials prohibited by the legislation of the Republic of Belarus.
The Editorial Team guarantees to take measures to ensure that the materials published comply with copyright and publication ethics, by checking publications for plagiarism, duplicating or redundant publication.
A paper presented in the collected papers should not duplicate a paper already published in English in publications included in at least one of the citation systems (bibliographic databases) such as Web of Science, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, Astrophysics, PubMed, Mathematics, Chemical Abstracts, Springer, Agris, GeoRef.
The Editorial Team guarantees consideration of all the materials submitted for publication, observance of editorial independence, and good faith in making objective decisions without prejudice to authors depending on national or religious identity, race, origin, gender, citizenship, status, social or professional position, political preferences basing its policy on respect for the author's personal rights, their position and intellectual property rights.
Negative results obtained by the authors during the research are not an obstacle to their publication in the Collected Research Papers. The Editorial Team encourages scientific discussions and exchange of experience throughout the pages of the edition.
The decision to accept or reject a paper for publication is made by the Editorial Team on the basis of all incoming comments of independent peer reviewers in whole. The final editorial decision and the reasons for its delivery will be communicated to the authors.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR THE EDITORIAL TEAM
In its activities, the Editorial Team is responsible for the publication of copyright works, scientific level of the published materials, which imposes the necessity to follow certain basic principles.
The Editorial Team of the Collected Research Papers is guided by the following ethical principles developed in accordance with the ethical norms of the work of editors formalised by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journal Editors:
- impartiality in deciding whether to publish on the basis of the reliability of the data presented and scientific significance of the work under consideration;
- honesty and impartiality in deciding whether to accept or reject materials for publication;
- interests of business or politics should not affect the decision to publish materials;
- confidentiality (of participants of research, authors, peer reviewers);
- promoting the protection of intellectual property and copyrights, in case of detecting a conflict situation, all necessary measures should be taken to restore violated rights;
- rejection of the manuscript of a paper when it reveals materials published earlier by other authors without a reference to primary sources (plagiarism);
- non-disclosure of personal data of authors and peer reviewers and other information or ideas obtained during professional interaction;
- introduction of editorial amendments into a paper by agreement with authors;
- claims regarding the considered manuscripts or published materials should not be left unanswered.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR PEER REVIEW PROCESS
The Editorial Team observes the following principles to be followed by peer reviewers:
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR PEER REVIEW PROCESS
The Editorial Team observes the following principles to be followed by peer reviewers:
- independence, impartiality and impersonality of scientific expertise of copyright materials;
- peer review process for only those manuscripts, for which peer reviewers have sufficient knowledge;
- timeliness of peer review process;
- confidentiality of peer review process;
- honesty, objectivity and reasonableness of the assessment of the stated results of research while drawing up a review;
- the content of a review should not be affected by authors’ origin, nationality, gender, religious or political beliefs;
- personal criticism of an author is unacceptable;
- peer reviewers should not disclose or use information obtained from manuscripts submitted for consideration, including unpublished data, for personal or third-party purposes without the written consent of an author;
- attention emphasis of the Editorial Team in the presence of similarity of a submitted paper with any other published work known to a peer reviewer;
- informing the Editorial Team of conflicts of interest; in the event of a conflict of interest arising out of competition, cooperation or other relations with authors or organisations associated with this work, a peer reviewer should apply to the Editorial Team with a request to exclude them from the peer review process of this manuscript.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR AUTHORS
The authors of the materials submitted to the Editorial Team bear primary responsibility for the reliability of the information contained in them, novelty of the results of research, compliance of the materials with the norms of legislation, morality and ethics.
The Editorial Team ask authors to observe the following principles:
- compliance of publication materials with ethical and legal norms;
- originality and scientific novelty of research described in the submitted manuscript;
- objectivity of arguments in favour of relevance and significance of research;
- accuracy and reliability of the results of the conducted research. Knowingly erroneous facts or falsified statements are unacceptable and unethical;
- clarity and unambiguity of the description of the methodology for performing the work, the results of which can be verified and confirmed by other researchers;
- recognition of a contribution of other persons who somehow have influenced the course of the research, and mandatory availability of bibliographic references to the works used, which were important in the conduct of the research;
- representing as co-authors all the participants who have made a significant contribution to the research. It is inadmissible to indicate persons who have not participated in the research among co-authors;
- informing of detection of significant errors or inaccuracies in the publication and interaction with the Editorial Team with the aim of prompt correction of the identified errors (or removing the publication). If the editorial team learns from the third party that the published work contains a significant error, an author is obliged to urgently refute and submit to the editorial team the evidence of the correctness of the published work or to correct the data;
- absence of borrowings or statements in a paper without references to primary sources (plagiarism). Excessive borrowing, as well as plagiarism in any form, including unexecuted citations, rephrasing or assigning rights to the results of somebody else’s research, are unethical and unacceptable;
- inadmissibility of duplication of publications. If separate elements of a manuscript have already been published, an author is obliged to refer to an earlier work and indicate the difference of the new work from the previous one;
- submission of a manuscript in more than one journal is both unacceptable and unethical.
The Editorial Team reserves the right to reject any manuscript submitted for publication that does not comply with the above principles.
The Editorial Team shall be not liable to third parties for violation of the author's guarantees.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
In order to avoid violation of the publication ethics, it is necessary to exclude conflicts of interests of all the parties participating in the process of publishing a manuscript. Conflicts of interest arise if an author, peer reviewer or member of the Editorial Team has financial, scientific or personal relationships that may affect their actions. An author is obliged to settle all the claims independently and at their own expense. If a situation associated with the violation of publication ethics by any party involved in the editorial and publishing process arises, a mandatory investigation and public explanation of the conflict of interests is required.