Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement
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 editorial calls for adherence to the principles of the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publications developed by the Committee on Ethics of Scientific Publications (COPE).
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.
Copyright and licensing
All materials published in the scientific journal are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International (CC-BY) license. This means that:
Copyright: Authors retain the copyright for their works published in the journal, in accordance with the terms of the CC-BY license.
Permissions: The license allows users to freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, cite, or reference scientific articles, provided the authorship is properly attributed, in compliance with the requirements of the license.
Conditions of use: The use of materials for any commercial or non-commercial purposes is permitted, provided that proper attribution is given, and the content of the articles is not altered unless otherwise stated.
User obligations: When using materials published in the journal, users are required to provide correct attribution to the authors and the source of publication, indicating accurate details of authorship and publication, and not to alter the content of the articles.
Other rights: The license does not restrict authors from publishing their works in other publications or using their materials under different conditions, as long as this does not contradict the requirements of the CC-BY license.
This policy ensures open access to scientific materials and promotes the dissemination of knowledge while protecting the authors' rights.
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.
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.
