Editorial Policies and Publication Ethics

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The Editorial board includes: Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Editors.

Editorial operations related to content and peer review are independent and free from the influence of the entities that support the journal.

The Editorial Board and its mambers is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Journal’s title will be published. The Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within 60 days from the date of the manuscript submission.

The Editors must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Deputy  Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Board, who shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

 

AUTHORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Journal’s title. Please note that posting of preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior publication. Authors should disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in a footnote / Acknowledgements.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to Journal’s title are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

PUBLICATION ETHICS

Ethical publishing standards exist to ensure the high quality of scientific publications, public trust in scientific discoveries, and for people to be recognized for their work and ideas.

The editorial board strives to comply with the norms of ethical behavior at all stages of the publishing process. We closely follow industry associations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), which set standards and provide best practice guidelines to meet these requirements.

The journal is fully committed Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE).

 

ARTICLE RATING

All manuscripts are peer-reviewed and must meet standards of academic excellence. The journal editors apply a rigorous peer review process, along with strict ethical policies and standards, to ensure that high-quality research is added to the field of scientific publishing. If approved by the editor, submissions will be reviewed by reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors. When we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigate and take the necessary steps to preserve the integrity of the literature and ensure the safety of study participants.

 

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Authors can enter the separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published paper (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

 

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR AUTHORS

Duplication of submission and redundant publication

The journal considers only original content, i.e. articles that have not been previously published, including those in a language other than English. Articles based on content previously published only on the preprint server, institutional repository, or dissertation will be considered.

Manuscripts submitted to the journal should not be sent elsewhere while they are under review and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. Authors whose papers were submitted at the same time elsewhere may be subject to sanctions.

If authors have used their own previously published work or work currently under review as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they should cite previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. The reuse of the authors' own words outside of the Methodology should be indicated or cited in the text. Reuse of authors' own drawings or substantial amounts of language may require permission from the copyright owner, and authors are responsible for obtaining it.

The journal will consider extended versions of papers published at conferences, provided that this is indicated in the cover letter, the previous version is clearly cited and discussed, there is significant new content, and all necessary permissions have been obtained.

Republishing, improperly separating research results into more than one article (also known as salami slicing) may result in rejection or a request to merge submitted manuscripts, as well as correction of published articles. Republishing the same or very similar article may result in retraction of the later article and the authors may be subject to sanctions.

Authorship

The editors of the journal follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which states that in order to claim authorship of a manuscript, authors must meet the following criteria:
           - significant contribution to the concept or design of the work; or obtaining, analyzing or interpreting data for work;
           - drafting or critically reviewing the work for important intellectual content;
           - final approval of the version for publication;
           - agreeing to be responsible for all aspects of the work, ensuring that issues related to the accuracy or validity of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

Those who have contributed to the work, but do not have the right to claim authorship, should be listed in the acknowledgments. More detailed guidance on authorship is provided by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Any changes to the list of authors during editing or after publication must be approved by all authors, including those who have been removed. We reserve the right to request proof of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of the editors.

 

Plagiarism, data falsification and image manipulation

Plagiarism is unacceptable in the journal. Plagiarism involves copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even your own publications, without acknowledging the original source.

Reuse of text copied from another source must be enclosed in quotation marks, and the original source must be quoted. If the study design, structure, or language of the manuscript was inspired by previous studies, those studies should be cited.

All submitted materials are checked for plagiarism using the online service Turnitin. If plagiarism is found during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is found after publication, it will be investigated and action taken in accordance with our policies.

Image files must not be modified or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information contained in the original image. If incorrect image manipulations are identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the article.

The data presented must be original and must not be inappropriately selected, altered, improved or fabricated. This includes:
           1) excluding data points to increase the significance of findings,
           2) falsifying data,
           3) selecting results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of inconsistent data,
           4) deliberately choosing tools or methods of analysis to support a particular conclusion.

 

Research with Humans

In research involving humans, human material, human tissue, or human data, authors must declare that the research was conducted in accordance with the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki 1975, revised in 2024 (Declaration of Helsinki – WMA – The World Medical Association).

For non-interventional research (e.g., surveys, social media research), all participants should be fully informed about whether anonymity is assured, why the research is being done, how their data will be used, and if there are any associated risks. As with all studies involving humans, ethical approval from the appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study.

Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from each study participant. In the case of children participating in the study, informed consent must be obtained from their parents or guardians.

For manuscripts that include any case details, personal information, and/or images of participants, authors must obtain signed informed consent for publication from participants (or their relatives/guardians) prior to submission to the journal.

Information about the research participant should be as anonymous as possible.

If the study reports studies involving vulnerable groups, additional verification may be carried out. The submitted manuscript will be carefully reviewed by the editors, and documentary evidence (consent forms and any relevant documents for discussion at the ethics council) must be provided upon request. In addition, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., the article should clearly state why such categorization is necessary.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject any material that does not meet these requirements.

 Example of an ethical statement: “All subjects gave their informed consent to participate in the study. The study was carried out in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration”.

 

Sex and Gender in Research

We encourage our authors to follow the "Sex and Gender Equality in Research - SAGER Guidelines" and include gender and gender considerations where appropriate. Authors should use the terms "sex" (a biological trait) and "gender" (determined by social and cultural circumstances) with care not to confuse the two terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should clearly indicate which gender(s) the research is in. Authors should also indicate, in general terms, whether sex and/or gender differences can be expected; describe how gender and/or gender were taken into account in designing the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss related results. If a gender and/or gender analysis was not performed, a rationale should be given in the Discussion. We encourage our contributors to read the full manual before submitting.

 

Conflict of interests

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as "competing interests") occur when matters not related to research can reasonably be perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of a work or its evaluation. This can happen at any stage of the research cycle, including during the experimental phase, during the writing of a manuscript, or in the process of turning a manuscript into a published article.

If you are not sure, declare a potential interest or discuss with the editors. Undeclared interests may result in sanctions. Articles with undeclared conflicts that are discovered later may be rejected.

Conflicts of interest do not always prevent a work from being published or from someone participating in the peer review process. However, they must be declared. A clear description of all possible conflicts— whether they actually had an impact or not — allows others to make informed decisions about the work as they review it.

If conflicts of interest are found after publication, the article may need to be re-evaluated, revised, or, in severe cases, retracted. For more information on COI see the ICMJE and WAME guide.

Conflicts include the following:
           - Financial - funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors in connection with the subject of the work or from an organization interested in the result of the work,
           - Affiliations - serving on an advisory board or a member of an organization with a stake in the results of the work,
           - Intellectual property is patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization,
           - Personal - friends, family, relationships and other close personal connections,
           - Ideology - Beliefs or activities, such as political or religious, related to work,
           - Academic - competitors or one whose work is criticized.

Authors should list all potential interests in the "Conflicts of Interest" section, which should explain why the interests might be a conflict. If there are none, authors should indicate: "The author(s) declare(s) that there is(are) no conflicts of interest in relation to the publication of this article." Submitting authors are responsible for co-authors who declare their interests.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including article processing fees) and other payments, goods, or services that may affect the work. All funding, whether conflict or not, must be declared on the Funding Statement.

Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

 

Citation policy

Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published work), the source is clearly cited and that appropriate permission is obtained.

Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

Authors should not copy references from other publications unless they have read the cited work.

Authors should not predominantly cite their own publications or those of their friends, colleagues, or institutions.

Authors should not quote advertisements or promotional materials.

Editors and reviewers should not ask authors to include citations just to increase the number of citations to their own work or that of a colleague, to the journal or other journal to which they are affiliated.

In accordance with the COPE guidelines, we expect that "original wording taken directly from the publications of other researchers should be enclosed in quotation marks with appropriate references." This condition also applies to the author's own work. COPE produced a discussion paper on citation manipulation with best practice recommendations.

 

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR REVIEWERS

Potential Conflict of Interest

We ask reviewers to inform the editor of the journal if they have a conflict of interest that could affect the review report, either positively or negatively. The editors will check, as far as possible, before the invitation; however, we appreciate the cooperation of the reviewers in this matter.

Reviewers must refuse to participate in the submission if they:
           - Have a recent publication or current application with any author,
           - Collaborate or have recently collaborated with any author,
           - Have a close personal connection with any author,
           - Have a financial interest in the subject of work,
           - Feel unable to be objective.

Reviewers should indicate any interests they have in the Review Form, which will be reviewed by the editor.

 

Privacy and anonymity

Reviewers must keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential. They should let the editor know if they want a colleague to complete the review on their behalf.

The journal conducts double blind peer review. Reviewers should be careful not to reveal their identity to authors in their comments.

 

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR ACADEMIC EDITORS

Along with editorial staff, editors-in-chief, editorial board members, and guest editors are responsible for the integrity of the editorial process and for deciding which articles are accepted for publication. Editors act in a balanced, objective and fair manner in the performance of their duties, without discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographic origin of authors.

If the scientific editor has ethical concerns about a manuscript submitted for review, or if he has information about a possible violation of ethical standards after publication, he should contact the editors as soon as possible. Our editorial staff will then conduct an investigation in accordance with COPE guidelines.

To support academic editors, reviews are carried out by managing editors. However, editors must still report any issues on any aspect. Checks include:
           - Ethical approval and approvals for research involving humans or animals,
           - Plagiarism, duplication of publication and the necessary permission of the copyright holder to include already published drawings or images,
           - International Clinical Trials Registry for pre-registration of clinical trials or a link to registration in the Methods section,
           - Author's experience and qualifications.

When making the final decision to accept a manuscript, academic editors should consider the following:
           - Any facts that may be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the document prior to submission,
           - Authors should accurately present the results of their research and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings,
           - The data and methods used in the study should be presented in the article in sufficient detail so that other researchers can repeat the work.

 

Comments and complaints

Readers who have concerns or complaints about published articles should first contact the respective author to try to resolve the issue directly before contacting the editor.

The Editorial office can be contacted in cases where it is impractical to contact the authors, if the authors did not respond, or if the problem was not resolved. The editors will coordinate with the applicant, author/s and Editors-in-Chief or members of the editorial board to investigate, correct or resolve any problems or complaints.

Complaints, comments or requests for updates regarding the scientific soundness, ethical or legal aspects of either the article or its peer review process will be further investigated where appropriate. All complaints, comments or requests for updates regarding published articles are investigated by the editors with the support of the editorial board and final approval by the editor-in-chief. For ethical reasons, final decisions are made by the Editorial Board to ensure adherence to the core principles of publication ethics formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics. Where necessary, consultations will be held with other individuals and institutions, including university leaders or experts in the field. A lawyer may be requested if the complaint has legal implications.

Personal comments or criticism are not accepted. All complaints are investigated, including anonymous complaints. Complainants may request that the editors consider their complaint in confidence, and the editors, any editors-in-chief or other members of the editorial board will attempt to do so, to the extent appropriate and in accordance with our internal procedures.

Decisions regarding corrections, comments and replies, expressions of concern, or retractions resulting from an investigation are made by the Editorial Board and communicated to the authors.

If the complaint is not considered to be justified, further communication will only be considered if additional information is provided to substantiate the concern.

Complainants may not receive an update on the status of the investigation until a final decision is made, however, complainants will be notified if an update is posted. The editors and members of the editorial board are not required to provide additional information. Communication will be terminated if it is not deemed fair or respectful. Readers with complaints or concerns should be aware that investigation require time, which, according to the journal's internal regulations, shouldn't exceed 3 months.

The editors of the journal work closely with authors and editors to promote adherence to the core principles of publishing ethics formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We encourage the use of the COPE resources available on their website. All manuscripts must meet standards of ethical conduct. When we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking appropriate action.

The publisher and editors are always ready to publish corrections, clarifications, reviews and apologies if there is a legal need to do so.

 

RETRACTION POLICY

The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty), unethical research  or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. 

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by “Sportyvnyi Visnyk Prydniprovia”: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

 

USE OF LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS AND GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TOOLS

"Sportyvnyi Visnyk Prydniprovia" conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

AI bots such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission.

Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI for data or code generation, data collection, cleaning, analysis, or interpretation, (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections. Photography, videos or illustrations created wholly or partly using generative AI are not considered acceptable. The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or figures should be disclosed in the relevant caption upon submission to allow a case-by-case review. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical. The use of AI-based tools for copyediting and spell checking does not need to be declared.

AI outputs should not be cited as primary sources for backing up specific claims.

Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the editorial work and the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in editorial work and peer review. The editorial and review processes are confidential, and using AI tools on the manuscript makes it public, violating the confidentiality principle, disclosing confidential information in public, and compromising transparency.

 

RESEARCH DATA AND PROTOCOL SHARING. PRE-REGISTRATION

Journal encourages authors to share research data that are required for confirming the results published in the manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose. Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results / their study and analysis of the research data. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

Exceptions to open access to research data underlying publications include the following: obligation to protect results, confidentiality obligations, security obligations, the obligation to protect personal data and other legitimate constraints.

Where human data cannot be effectively de-identified, data must not be shared in order to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given explicit written consent that their identifiable data can be made publicly available.

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Authors are encouraged to share step-by-step research protocols to facilitate replication and further research. These can be uploaded to a protocol-sharing platform of choice or a repository. If such protocols are available, please provide a DOI or other citation details with submission.

The journal Journal title supports study pre-registration (including clinical trials) and pre-registration of analysis plans in public repositories. Authors should indicate at submission whether any part of their study was preregistered. If so, they must include an active link to the preregistration in the Methods section and specify the preregistration date. Any deviations from the preregistered protocol should be disclosed, along with the reasons for those changes.

 

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

"Sportyvnyi Visnyk Prydniprovia" is an Open Access journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

 

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

Authors can deposit preprints (versions before peer review), Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) and/or Versions of Record (VoRs) in a repository of the authors' choice (e.g. an institutional, disciplinary and general-purpose repository. etc.), author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process, at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

 

METADATA POLICY

The journal metadata are freely accessible to all, and freely reusable by all, under the terms of the Creative Commons Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.

 

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.