Ethical Guidelines

The Editorial Board of AFA commits to the internationally accepted principles of publication ethics expressed in the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and takes into account the valuable experience of reputable international journals and publishers.

To avoid any unfair practices in publishing activities (plagiarism, presenting false information, etc.) and to ensure a high quality of scientific publications and public recognition of the author’s scientific results, each member of the Editorial Board, publishers, authors, reviewers and institutions involved in the publishing process shall adhere to ethical standards, rules and regulations and take any reasonable steps to prevent their violations. Compliance with these ethical guidelines by all the parties ensures authors’ intellectual property rights, improves the quality of the Journal and excludes a possible misuse of copyright material in the interests of particular individuals.

When submitting to AFA, authors (groups of authors) are aware that they bear responsibility for the novelty and validity of scientific results, which implies adhering to the following principles:

• Authors shall provide reliable research results. Deliberately false or fraudulent statements are not acceptable.
• Authors shall ensure that research results are completely original. Every borrowed fragment or statement must be accompanied by a mandatory reference to the author and the original source. Excessive borrowing and any form of plagiarism including non-documented citations, paraphrasing or appropriating another person’s research results are non-ethical and unacceptable. The Editorial Board regards borrowings without references as plagiarism.
• Authors shall only provide authentic facts and data; give enough information for other researchers to be able to verify and repeat experiments; not use information obtained privately, without an open written consent; not allow data fabrication and falsification.
• Authors shall avoid manuscript duplication. If some elements of the manuscript have been previously published, the author shall refer to the earlier work and specify the differences.
• Authors shall not submit the manuscript that has been submitted to another journal and is under consideration, as well as the manuscript already published in another journal.
• It is important to recognize the contribution of all persons who, in one way or another, participated in the research; in particular, the manuscript should contain references to works that significantly influenced the research.
• All those who have made significant contributions are to be described as co-authors. It is not acceptable to list persons who did not take part in the research.
• Authors shall respect the work of the Editorial Board and reviewers and eliminate the indicated inaccuracies or justify them.
• Authors shall submit and prepare their manuscripts in compliance with the Journal standards.
• If the author finds significant errors or inaccuracies in the manuscript under consideration or after its publication, they should immediately inform the Editorial Board.
• Authors shall prove to the Editorial Board or the Publisher that their initial manuscript is valid or correct substantial errors, if the Editorial Board has become aware of them from a third party.
• The author can request withdrawal of manuscript after submission within the time span when the manuscript is still in the peer- reviewing process. After the manuscript is accepted for publication, the withdrawal is not permitted.

 

The Editor-in-Chief shall evaluate the intellectual content of the manuscript regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, origin, citizenship, social status or political preferences of the author.

The Editor-in-Chief shall not allow the paper to be published if there is sufficient evidence to believe that it is plagiarism.

The Editor-in Chief shall decide on the publication of materials according to the following main criteria:

• appropriateness of the manuscript for the Journal;
• relevance, novelty and scientific significance of the submitted manuscript;
• clarity; reliability of results and completeness of conclusions.

A decision on publication is made on the basis of the quality of the research and its relevance.

The Editor-in-Chief shall:

• take all necessary steps to provide a high quality of the published materials and protect the confidentiality of personal information;
• consider recommendations of reviewers when making a final decision on publishing the manuscript. The Editorial Board of the Journal takes all the entire responsibility for a decision on publication or rejection of the manuscript;
• justify decisions regarding acceptance or rejection of the manuscript;
• allow the author of the reviewed material to substantiate their research viewpoint.

Manuscripts are peer-reviewed by minimum two peers of the same field. The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief. The manuscript received for reviewing shall be treated as a confidential document which cannot be passed for discussion or examination to a third party unless authorized by the Editorial Board.

Reviewers shall:

• provide scientific review of the manuscript, hence, all their actions shall be impartial;
• give an objective and reasoned evaluation of the research results, as well as clearly justified recommendations. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate;
• not make copies of the manuscript for personal use;
• know that the manuscripts they receive are the intellectual property of authors and are not to be disclosed. Confidentiality may only be breached if the reviewer declares unreliability or falsification of the information in the manuscript;
• inform the Editor-in-Chief about any substantial or partial similarity of the manuscript under consideration and any other work, as well as the absence of references to statements, conclusions or arguments which have been previously published in the papers of this or another author;
• note the relevant published works that are not properly quoted or cited in the manuscript;
• request the Editor -in-Chief to exclude them from the reviewing process in case they do not possess the required expertise, or cannot be objective, as in case of competing interests with any of the authors or institutions.
• make decisions basing exclusively on particular facts and justify them.

The manuscript review is confidential. Only the Managing Editor and the Editor-in-Chief know the name of the reviewer; this information shall not be disclosed.