Ethics, privacy, copyright

Rules and regulations on academic ethics

The Editorial Office strictly follows all rules and regulations recommended for all academic and scientific journals by COPE - the Committee on Publication Ethics

The official web site

Inter alia, we would like to pay the attention of all our authors (especially potential ones) as well as the attention of all our reviewers to the following regulations of COPE which we treat as the most essential for our everyday activities:

  1. All editors, from editor in chief to managing and guest editors, are responsible for guaranteeing all authors a reasonable balance between the freedom of expression on the one hand and academic integrity on the other.
  2. At any point of time the authors of the already published articles have the right to request a retraction, publish an apology, clarification and/or correction. The managing editor is expected to support this intention of the authors, however, they may also request additional explanation before publishing such information.
  3. Editors are responsible for determining whether a potential submission really fits the journal’s scope and framework. The decision that the text does not fit either of them should be delivered directly to the author(s) together with the explanation why so and (optional) recommendation on alternative publication opportunities.
  4. Editors are responsible for explaining double-blind peer-review procedures to both authors and independent reviewers. All reviewers are supposed to get regular (at least once a year) email notifications with reminders and updates on the related rules and procedures.
  5. Editors are responsible for annual revision of internal academic publishing rules and double-blind peer-review standards.
  6. New editors do not have the right to reverse the decision of previously employed editors, the only exception being an external complaint filed regarding plagiarism or other academic misconduct.
  7. Editors are responsible for double confidentiality and proper encoding of all texts before they are being sent for blind review.
  8. Articles containing criticism of previously published works (in this journal or elsewhere globally), encouraging scientific debate and/or presenting negative results should be treated equally to regular articles describing authors’ original results. Articles of this category should be also subject to standard double-blind peer-review.
  9. In case the editors have detected plagiarism and have sufficient evidence to prove it - they have the right, officially or independently, to contact the author’s employer, the Ministry of Education in the related country or other regulatory authority so that to report the case of plagiarism.
  10. If the case of plagiarism has been reported externally, the editors are expected to fully cooperate on it and provide all necessary evidence they have, with the only exception - the names of the blind reviewers involved in this case.
  11. Editors are seen as responsible for informing international databases and online libraries if there is a case of retraction. Editors, however, cannot be responsible for the timing of updates in the involved databases and libraries.
  12. This journal restrains from all advertising activities as such and concentrates on publishing activities. In exceptional cases advertisement can be published though. Published advertisement is supposed to be directly related to academic research, higher education and conferences within the scope of the journal.
  13. All situations presented as the conflict of interests should be resolved according to COPE regulations. In such situations editors (or publishers on their behalf) are expected to find a similar case among those described on the official site of the COPE and act accordingly.

Authorship

Author(s) should meet all four of the following criteria (recommended by ICMJE - the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors):

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
  • Final approval of the version to be published;
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Other individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged, but not identified as
authors.

Author Contributions

For transparency, authors are encouraged to submit a statement that specifies the individual contribution of every author to the research and preparation of the manuscript, using the relevant roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review and Editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Authorship statements should be formatted with the names of authors and role(s).

Changes to authorship

Authors should consider carefully the list and order of authors and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission of their manuscript. Addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if editor-in-chief appoved it.
For a change of autor(s) mane, the the corresponding author should send to editor-in-chief the following:
1. The reason of the change in author list
2. Written confirmation (e-mail, letter) of all authors that they agree with the change (addition, removal or rearrangement).
If there is a request for addition or removal of authors, then author who is added or removed, adds own confirmation.

Only in exceptional cases the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. Publication of the manuscript will be suspended while the Editor considers the request. If the manuscript has already been published, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.
The Editor, having considered the reasons of the change in author list, has the right to refuse the request.

Appeals and complaints

Appeal against rejection. If you wish to appeal a journal Editor’s decision, please submit an appeal letter to the journal’s editorial office. Explain clearly the basis for an appeal:
- Detail why you disagree with the decision. Please provide specific responses to any of the editor’s and/or reviewers’ comments that contributed to the reject decision.
- Provide any new information or data that you would like the journal to take into consideration.
- Provide evidence if you believe a reviewer has made technical errors in their assessment of your manuscript.
- Include evidence if you believe a reviewer may have a conflict of interest.

The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor considers the authors’ argument, the reviewer reports and decides whether
- The decision to reject should stand;
- Another independent opinion is required
- The appeal should be considered.
The complainant is informed of the decision with an explanation.

Editors will consider one appeal per article and all decisions on appeals are final.

Other complaints consideration. Ukrainian Food Journal handles the complaints against the Editorial, its staff, editorial board or publisher, reviewers and other.
You may contact the Editor with a detailed written description of your concern, and information supporting the concern, at ufj_nuft@meta.ua. Editor will acknowledge receipt of your complaint and investigate your complaint.
Ukrainian Food Journalis will follow the rules and advices of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for decision-making in each case (more details - https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Case?classification=2773).

Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests

Authors must disclose any financial or personal interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Examples of potential competing interests include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility

After publication, authors are free to share their work, including on third party repositories, with the obligation to mention the fact that has been first published in Ukrainain Food Journal.

Journal’s policy on ethical oversight

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices. The Ukrainian Food Journal is committed to considering appeals concerning the non-observance of ethical principles by our authors.
However, the subject of research on humans and animals is not covered by the journal.
Ethics approval for all studies must be obtained before the research is conducted. Authors must be prepared to provide further information to the journal editorial office upon request. For example, Editor based on the decision of reviewers or other experts involved may require the conclusion of institutional (of another professional )  ethics board.

Additions, corrections and retractions of a published article

The Ukrainian Food Journal follows guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when considering any ethical concerns regarding a published article, additions, corrections and retractions.

Additions and Corrections

Additions and Corrections may be requested by the author(s) or initiated by the Editor to address important issues or correct errors and omissions of consequence that arise after publication of an article. All Additions and Corrections are subject to approval by the Editor, and should bring new and directly relevant information and corrections that fix scientific facts. Minor corrections and additions will not be published.

Additions and Corrections must be performed in Design File of the Article. The Design File is saved in the Editorial Office and sent to the responsible author upon request. The details of the correction are also described in separated file.
The corresponding author should obtain approval from all coauthors prior to submitting or provide evidence that such approval has been solicited.
The final decision on the correction is given by the editor-in-chief after analyzing the reasons.

Retractions

Articles may be retracted for scientific or ethical reasons and may be requested by the article author(s) or by the journal Editor(s), but are ultimately published at the discretion of the Editor. Articles that contain seriously flawed or erroneous data such that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon may be retracted in order to correct the scientific record. When an article is retracted, a notice of Retraction will be published containing information about the reason for the Retraction. The originally published article will remain online except in extraordinary circumstances (e.g. where deemed legally necessary, or if the availability of the published content poses public health risks).

Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct

Scientific misconduct is “Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research” (according to  ORI – the Office of Research Integrity)
Editorial office shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
In no case the Journal and its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.
If editorial office has any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article, then we follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations.
If there is a suspicion or allegation of scientific misconduct or fraudulent research in manuscripts submitted for review, Editor reserves the right to pass along these manuscripts to the sponsoring or funding institution or other appropriate authority for investigation. The Publisher and Editor recognize their responsibility for a consideration of suspicion of research misconduct, but we do not ourselves make such determinations.

Editorial privacy policy. GDPR compliance

Editorial Board and editorial office are strongly committed to maintain trustful relations with all authors and all reviewers.

In May 2018 we updated our internal rules and code of conduct so that to comply fully with the acting GDPR policies.

The core provisions of the editorial privacy policy are the following:

  1. Editors which are in direct communication with authors, current and/or potential, are responsible for keeping all personal data of the latter strictly confidential.
  2. The Editorial Board and the editorial office should not use any personal data provided by authors and reviewers for private purposes, including those of solely research/academic nature (customer survey or marketing research, for example)
  3. If the Board or the editorial office plans to conduct a survey among authors and/or reviewers, individuals participating in it must be informed in advance and must be asked for a signed permission.
  4. The Board and/or the editorial office is free to share personal information on the authors strictly in one case - when plagiarism has been detected and there is an ongoing formal investigation launched by a third party.
  5. Authors’ work affiliation and contact email are published on the introductory page of each article. This data is considered to be open-access. If an author objects to have their email published - they should inform the editorial office about this once their text has been approved for publishing (blind review results are available).
  6. Authors’ job affiliation is considered globally as being integral part of articles’ indexation in international databases, therefore, this sort of information is treated as open-source data and all authors are encouraged to provide their formal affiliation in the course of texts’ submission.
  7. The Editorial Board and the editorial office will never share personal contact information (telephone numbers, emails, skype name etc.) with any third parties, private or business.
  8. The minimum term of any personal data retention is 1 calendar year since the day of the first contact. The editors maintain the right to delete any personal data on the authors and/or reviewers earlier than 1 year if the text has not been approved for publication (reviewer is not cooperating with the editorial office anymore).
  9. If any individual has received an email from the editorial office due to technical error or human mistake (typo in an email address, for example), we ask them to delete this email as soon as possible and notify the sender as soon as possible.
  10. If you want all your personal data be deleted from our internal editorial records - please, contact our managing editor via email.

Copyright and Open Access License

Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. For ease of dissemination and to ensure proper policing of use, papers and contributions become the legal copyright of the publisher unless otherwise agreed.

The following license will apply to the article: CC BY

The CC BY license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

The publisher will apply the Creative Commons Attribution Works 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY) to the Article for the purposes of publication in the journal on an Open Access basis. For further information, see the Open access options page.

The full details of the license