Publication ethics

The editorial board of the Journal of Actual Problems of Preventive Medicine maintains a certain level of requirements for the selection and acceptance of articles submitted for editorial purposes. These norms are determined by the scientific direction of the journal and the standards of quality of scientific works and their presentation, accepted in the scientific community.

The editors call for adherence to the principles of the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publications developed by the Committee for the Ethics of Scientific Publications (COPE), DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Ethical Obligations of Journal Editors

The editor should review all manuscripts submitted for publication without prejudice, evaluating each manuscript properly, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or the position or place of work of the author (s).

Information is not allowed to be published if there is sufficient reason to believe that it is plagiarism.

All materials submitted for publication are carefully selected and reviewed. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the article or to return it for further revision. The author is obliged to revise the article according to the comments of the reviewers or editorial board.

The decision of the editor to accept the article for publication is based on such characteristics of the article as the importance of results, originality, quality of presentation of the material and the correspondence of the journal's profile. Manuscripts may be rejected without review if the editor believes that they do not fit the journal's profile. In making such decisions, the editor may consult with members of the editorial board or reviewers.

Ethical obligations of authors

Authors should ensure that they have written completely original articles, and that if the authors have used the work or words of others, then it has been properly framed in quotation marks or quotes.

Submitting an identical article in more than one journal is considered unethical and unacceptable.

The article should be structured, contain enough links and be designed as required.

Unfair or deliberately inaccurate statements in the article constitute unethical conduct and are inadmissible.

The author who corresponds with the editorial board must ensure that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the article and have agreed to its publication.

The authors of the articles bear full responsibility for the content of the articles and for the fact of their publication. The editorial board does not bear any responsibility to the authors for the possible damage caused by the publication of the article. The editorial board has the right to remove an article if it is found out that in the course of publication the article violated someone's rights or generally accepted norms of scientific ethics. The editorial board informs the author of the fact of removal of the article.

Ethical obligations of reviewers

The editorial staff adheres to double-blind peer review to ensure that the manuscripts are evaluated objectively

Since the review of manuscripts is an essential step in the process of publication and, therefore, in the implementation of the scientific method as such, each scientist is obliged to do some work on the review.

If the selected reviewer is not sure that his or her qualification is in line with the level of research presented in the manuscript, he must immediately return the manuscript.

The reviewer must objectively evaluate the quality of the manuscript, the experimental and theoretical work presented, its interpretation and presentation, and the extent to which the work meets high scientific and literary standards. The reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the authors.

Reviewers should adequately explain and reason their opinions so that editors and authors can understand why their comments are based. Any statement that an observation, conclusion, or argument has already been published must be accompanied by a reference.

The reviewer should draw the editor's attention to any significant similarity between this manuscript and any published article or any manuscript submitted to another journal at the same time.

Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in this manuscript unless the author agrees.

 

In accordance with the principles of DORA, the Journal:

• evaluates manuscripts solely on the basis of their scientific quality, originality, methodological soundness, and contribution to the advancement of knowledge;

• does not use journal-based metrics (including the Impact Factor) as a criterion for assessing individual articles or the scientific quality of an author;

• does not encourage artificial inflation of citation metrics;

• supports the responsible use of scientometric indicators.

 

Plagiarism policy

“Actual Problems of Preventive Medicine” publishes only original materials for publication, articles that have not been published before and have not been presented for publication in other journals and collections.

The Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights” interprets plagiarism as “promulgation (publication), in whole or in part, of someone else’s work under the name of a person who is not the author of this work.”

There are the following types of plagiarism:
– copying and publishing a work performed by another author as his own,
– verbatim copying of fragments of someone else’s work without proper quoting;
– making minor amendments to the copied material (reformulating sentences, changing the order of words in them, etc.) and without proper citation;
– paraphrase – presentation of someone else’s text with the replacement of words and expressions without changing the content of the borrowed text;
– compilation – the creation of a text without in-depth study of the problem by copying texts from a number of sources without making edits, with reference to the authors and “masking” by writing transitional sentences between the copied parts of the text.

Manuscripts in which plagiarism or text borrowings are found without reference to the original source, the editors reject for publication of the article in the journal.

The editors of the journal analyze each case of plagiarism. If plagiarism or text borrowing turns out to be editors or reviewers at any stage before the publication of the manuscript, then the author (s) are warned about the need to rewrite the text or link to the source.

The Editorial Board guarantees high-quality anonymous peer-review of articles and their check for plagiarism using StrikePlagiarism.com by the Polish company Plagiat.pl.

 

Retraction policy

On rare occasions, when the scientific information in an article is substantially undermined, it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted. Journal will follow the COPE in such cases. Retraction articles are indexed and linked to the original article.
Journal provides free, immediate and permanent online access to the full text of all articles.

Journal editors should consider retracting a publication if:

• they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (eg, data fabrication) or honest error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error)

• the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication)

• it constitutes plagiarism

• it reports unethical research

Journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern if:

• they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors

• there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case

• they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive

• an investigation is under way but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time

Journal editors should consider issuing a correction if:

• a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error)

• the author / contributor list is incorrect (ie, a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).

 

Sponsors

It is published at the expense of the authors.

 

Declaration of Informed Consent

In accordance with the rules approved by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), “Patients have the right to privacy, which cannot be violated without their informed consent. Definition of information, including patient names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and ancestries if this information is not important for scientific purposes. Prior to submitting a manuscript for publication, the identified patient must give informed consent. Identification details should be hidden if they are not substantial. Complete anonymity is hard to warrant, but informed consent must still be obtained if there are any doubts.

 

Policy on Ethical Approval of Research

The journal “Actual Problems of Preventive Medicine” adheres to international standards of publication ethics and the requirements of the legislation of Ukraine regarding scientific research involving humans, animals, their biological materials, as well as personal or confidential data.

All studies involving human participants (patients, volunteers), the use of human biological materials, personal or confidential data must be conducted in accordance with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and the applicable legislation of Ukraine. Authors are required to obtain prior approval from the relevant ethics committee (local bioethics committee) of the institution where the research was conducted. The manuscript must indicate the name of the ethics committee as well as the number and date of the approval decision.

If the study involves patients or volunteers, the authors must confirm that informed consent for participation in the study and for the use of the obtained data for scientific and publication purposes has been obtained in written form. In cases where clinical images or other information that may allow identification of a person are used, authors must ensure full anonymization of the data or obtain written consent from the patient for publication.

Research involving animals must comply with international principles of humane treatment of laboratory animals and the requirements of the applicable legislation of Ukraine. In such cases, authors must provide information confirming that the study was approved by the appropriate ethics committee.

The editorial board reserves the right to request copies of documents confirming ethical approval from the authors. Manuscripts that do not confirm compliance with ethical requirements or lack the necessary approvals will not be considered for review or may be rejected at any stage of the editorial process.

 

Conflict of Interest

The editorial board of “Actual Problems of Preventive Medicine” is committed to ensuring transparency and objectivity in the publication of scientific materials. All authors, reviewers, and editors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may influence the assessment or interpretation of the submitted research.

A conflict of interest is any financial, personal, professional, or other relationship that could affect (or be perceived to affect) the impartiality of the author or any participant in the editorial process. These may include:

financial support for the research;

employment or commercial relationships with organizations that may benefit from the research findings;

personal or professional relationships that may result in bias;

membership in advisory boards, shareholding, etc.

For authors: when submitting a manuscript, all authors must complete a conflict of interest disclosure form. If there is no conflict of interest, this must be clearly stated as: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."

For reviewers and editors: individuals involved in reviewing or editing a manuscript must disclose any potential conflicts of interest and, if necessary, withdraw from the editorial process for that manuscript.

This policy follows the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding disclosure of conflicts of interest.

 

Policy on the Use of AI

The Journal’s policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is based on international and national recommendations and regulatory documents, in particular the statements of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the provisions of the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), the Concept for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in Ukraine, and the requirements of the Law of Ukraine “On Academic Integrity”.

The Journal recognizes the possibility of using AI tools as auxiliary instruments during the preparation of scientific materials. At the same time, the use of such tools must comply with the principles of academic integrity, transparency, and the author’s responsibility for the content of the scientific work and the reliability of the results presented.

AI tools may be used, in particular, for auxiliary tasks such as language editing, structuring of materials, technical data processing, and similar activities. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, and scientific validity of the submitted materials, proper citation of sources, and for the absence of plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification of research results.

The Journal requires authors to openly disclose any use of AI tools during manuscript preparation. AI systems cannot be considered authors or co-authors of scientific articles, as they cannot take responsibility for the content of a publication.

Editors and reviewers must also adhere to principles of confidentiality and must not use AI tools in a way that would disclose unpublished manuscript materials or any other confidential information obtained during the editorial review process.

Violations of the principles for using AI tools may be considered breaches of academic integrity and publication ethics and may result in appropriate editorial actions, including rejection of the manuscript or retraction of a published article.