Editorial Ethics

General guidelines

Publishing ethics policy of the Journal is the code of conduct and guidelines which should be followed by all participants of the academic publication process, including authors, peer reviewers, editors, publishers, distributors, and readers.

The Editorial Board abides by the copyright law and anti-plagiarism regulations of the Russian Federation as well as the set of the ethical principles shared by the community of academic publishers; Editorial Board is responsible for publishing and disseminating manuscripts.

Publishing ethics policy of Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology follows the guidelines designed by the international Committee on Publication Ethics (СОРЕ).

Ethical principles and obligations of the Editor

  1. The Editorial Board is responsible for everything that is published in the journal.
  2. The Editorial Board implements the whole process of work with manuscripts submitted to the Editorial Board (evaluation materials' accordance to the profile of the journal, review, contacts with the author, preparation of the manuscript for publication, etc.) and objectivity, guided by the Editorial Ethics, Peer Review Guidlines, Author Guidelines.
  3. The Editorial Board of the Journal is responsible for maintaining high standards of publications, relevant to those accepted in scientific community, and strives for the improvement and development of the journal.
  4. The Editorial Board is responsible for the objectivity, honesty and impartiality in evaluation of manuscripts submitted to the Journal, ensuring their review and informing the authors about its results.
  5. The Editorial Board is responsible for the observance of intellectual property right and restriction of access to manuscripts submitted to the Editorial Board by the editor-in-chief, the executive secretary of the journal, members of the Editorial Board by assessing their compliance with the profile of the Journal, and reviewers. Information about the receiving of materials (unpublished manuscripts) is not a subject to disclosure, the scientific information presented in manuscripts can not be used for any purpose before its publication.
  6. In case the Editorial Board receives convincing evidence that the materials presented in the published article contain erroneous information, an author makes misinformation of the Editorial Board regarding his/her authorship and intellectual property on the submitted manuscript, as well as in case of revealing any facts of unreliability of the information contained in the article, the Editorial Board is obliged to take measures for the prompt publication of corrections, refutations or other relevant statements.


Ethical principles of Reviewers

Reviewing is an important part of the Journal's publication activities aimed at providing the level of publications that meets the standards of scientific community. To ensure the review process, corresponding to the editorial policy and editorial ethics of the Journal, the Editorial Board is guided by the regulations on reviewing, adopted in the Journal.

Reviewers should be guided by the following ethical principles when carrying out the review process:

  1. A reviewer must agree to review only those manuscripts in respect of which he/she has the necessary competence.
  2. A reviewer is obliged to inform the editorial office about actual or potential conflict of interests.
  3. A reviewer is obliged to respect the confidentiality of review and not to disclose a content of manuscript or review during or after a peer-review to anyone other than an editor-in-chief and an executive secretary of the Journal.
  4. A reviewer has no right to use an information obtained during a review neither for his/her own benefit or a benefit of other persons, nor for the purpose of discrediting or causing harm to other persons.
  5. In the process of reviewing, a reviewer should be guided by the principles of objectivity and constructiveness, the inconsistency to author’s personal opinion and and his/her own scientific views should not impact on a content of the review and evaluation of reviewed materials. The content of the review should be presented in the correct form and should not contain degrading statements and comments.

Ethical principles and obligations of the Authors

  1. The author is responsible for the accuracy of materials submitted to the Journal for publication and compliance of the published research with ethical and legal standards adopted in the scientific community.
  2. The author is responsible for the fact that the manuscript submitted for publication has an original character, it does not contain plagiarism, it has not been previously published and it is not submitted for publication in another journal.
  3. The author is responsible for the claimed copyright in relation to the submitted manuscript, an objective representation of his/her own contribution to the described study, as well as for assessing the contribution of other people in this study (if any) in the form of co-authorship or a separate mention of other participants in the study.
  4. In case of acceptance of the manuscript for publication, the author signs the License agreement and is responsible for its compliance.
  5. In cooperation with the Editorial Board, the author is obliged to show respect, correctly respond to the requirements of the Editorial Board and reviewers' evaluation.
  6. In case of any misunderstanding in the interaction with the editor, claims or disagreement with the requirements or actions, the author is obliged to submit his/her claims in writing to the editor-in-chief of the Journal.

Checking materials for borrowing

Materials entering the journal for publication are tested for borrowings through the Anti-Plagiarism system using existing search engines. Authors can pre-check their texts through the system Antiplagiat-Rukontext. Articles containing less than 80% of the original text, as well as articles in which the result already published previously is resubmitted, are not published. The editors do not welcome the excessive amount of citations and self-citations, even  issued properly. Reviews and other kind of articles requiring more citations are reviewed individually by the editors.

Plagiarism is considered both literal and non-literal, paraphrased reproduction without indicating the source: fragments of text, formulas, tables, illustrations, etc. material; if necessary, the author independently agrees on the use of the material, providing the publisher with the written permission of the copyright holder.

Retraction of articles

Retraction (recall of an article) is applied in the case of plagiarism, the detection of a hidden conflict of interest, duplicate publications, information about the inaccuracy of the data presented in the text. Article retraction is initiated by:

  • the editorial board of the journal when it detects facts of inaccuracy of the submitted materials, information about authorship or other violations of ethical principles by the author
  • by the author of the article in case of detection of significant errors in the presented research data, the occurrence of a conflict of interest or claims of potential co-authors of the study, preference for publication in another publication, etc.
  • by third parties - participants in a potential conflict of interest, employees of other magazines, etc.

To make a decision on the retraction of the article after receiving information about one of the above cases and presenting the relevant reasoned evidence, a joint (in-person or in absentia) discussion of the situation by the editorial board and editorial board is held. The decision is made in the protocol, which provides complete information about the author and the article submitted by him, the grounds for initiating retraction, the results of the examination, the rationale for the decision, as well as information about the meeting procedure and composition of its participants. Information on recalled texts may be sent to the appropriate scientific information databases. The editorial board retains the right to decide on further cooperation with authors of retracted articles.

Open Access Policy and Copyright Protection

Vestnik of St. Petersburg University. Psychology  provides open access to the full texts of scientific articles on the Internet immediately after their publication (as well as to all archival materials - issues of previous years) through the site http.://psyjournal.spbu.ru: the contents of the journal are open on the Internet for reading, downloading, copying, distributing, printing, any users can search or link to the full texts of articles. No usage fee will be charged.

Before publication, authors of articles are required to sign a License Agreement, which reflects the mutual obligations of the magazine’s editorial staff and authors and protects copyright and intellectual property rights. The terms of the license agreement provide the authors with unlimited distribution and independent archiving of materials. This journal website and its contents are the property of St. Petersburg State University and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws.