Editorial policy
Ethical standards
The editorial board of Water Bioresources and Aquaculture maintains a certain level of requirements when selecting and accepting articles submitted to the editorial board. 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.
Peer-review process
In accordance with the requirements of item 6, paragraphs. 6 of the Ministry of Education and Science № 32 of January 15, 2018 “On Approval of the Procedure for Forming the List of Scientific Professional Editions of Ukraine” submitted for publication are qualitatively independent peer review by scientists who carry out research in the specialty.
In accordance with Clause 15 of this Order, the Chairman and the members of the Editorial Board are responsible for organizing the reviewing of articles and the observance of academic integrity.
All articles submitted to the journal Water Bioresources and Aquaculture undergo a peer review process that aims to evaluate the content of the scientific article as objectively as possible and to provide a comprehensive analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the article.
Unpublished materials that are relevant to the subject of the collection are accepted for printing.
The degree of conformity of the article received to the requirements of the preparation of manuscripts for publication in the journal "Water Bioresources and Aquaculture" is separately taken into account.
The review process is carried out by members of the Editorial Board. The review process is anonymous for the reviewer and the author (double-blind review).
Reviewers evaluate the theoretical and methodological level of the article, its practical value and scientific significance. In addition, the article determines the compliance of the article with the principles of ethics in scientific publications and provides recommendations for eliminating violations.
The members of the editorial board do not participate in the review of their own manuscripts.
The executive editor is a mediator between the author and the peer reviewer.
If the peer reviewer emphasizes the need to alter the article, the author is sent the article back with the proposal to take into account the peer reviewer’s comments when elaborating an updated version of the article or to confute them. The peer reviewer is provided with an updated article to decide and make a reasoned conclusion on publication.
The final decision on the relevance of manuscript publication is approved by the editorial board.
Copyrights and licensing
Licensing conditions: authors reserve copyright and grant the publisher the right to publish original manuscripts, which present the findings of experimental and theoretical research and have not been published previously and have not been submitted for publication in other journals. All materials are distributed based on Creative Commons Attribution License International CC-BY. The license allows others to copy and redistribute the material giving appropriate credit.
By submitting an original manuscript to Water Bioresources and Aquaculture, an author confirms that a submitted paper:
- does not violate the copyrights of other persons or organizations;
- has not been published previously and has not been submitted for publication in other journals.
An author delegates the rights to Water Bioresources and Aquaculture:
to publish an article in Ukrainian (English) and distribute its printed copy;
to translate an article in English (if needed) and distribute its printed copy;
to distribute the article’s electronic version via any electronic means (publishing on the journal’s official website, electronic databases, repositories, etc.).
Privacy and confidentiality policy
Authors should familiarize themselves with the confidentiality policy of Water Bioresources and Aquaculture before submitting a manuscript.
Manuscripts should be reviewed with due respect for author confidentiality. By submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust editors with the results of their scholarly work, which may affect their reputation and career. Authors' rights may be violated if confidential information is disclosed during review of their manuscript. In addition, the editor should respect the reviewers' right to confidentiality. It may be violated only for combating fraud and deception.
Editors have no obligation to disclose information about manuscripts (receipt, content, review status, reviewer criticism, and final fate) to anyone except authors and reviewers. This includes requests to use materials to resolve legal issues.
The editors are obliged to inform their reviewers that the manuscripts subject to review are confidential information and authors’ private property. Thus, reviewers and editorial staff shall respect authors' rights and refrain from public discussion of the authors' work until the manuscript is published. Reviewers are not allowed to copy manuscripts and give them to third parties, except when authorized by the editor. The reviewer's comments must not be published or made public in any other way without the consent of the reviewer, the author and the editor.
According to the above information on confidentiality policy, reviews are anonymous; the identities of the reviewers are not disclosed to the author or anyone else without the permission of the reviewers. In some cases, reviewers' comments are sent to others to analyze the same manuscript and hence help reviewers understand the review process. Reviewers are notified of the final decision of the editorial board and the editor to accept or reject the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The editorial board of Water Bioresources and Aquaculture does not exclude a potential conflict of interests during the publication process.
A conflict of interest may arise in relation to individuals or organizations and is divided into the following categories (but not limited to the below):
Personal conflict of interest
Personal relationships (e.g., friends, family members, actual or previous supervisors, opponents) with individuals involved in submitting or reviewing manuscripts (authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members);
personal beliefs (political, religious, ideological, and others) related to the manuscript’s topic may interfere with the objective process of publication (at the stage of submission, review, editorial decision-making, or publication).
Professional conflict of interest
A reviewer or editor is a colleague of the author who participated in or observed the conduct of the specific study.
Membership in organizations lobbying the author’s interests.
Financial conflict of interest
Research grants from various organizations funding governmental, non-governmental, research or charitable institutions.
Patent applications (existing or pending), including applications from institutions the author is affiliated with and from which one may profit.
Fees, gifts, and rewards of any kind.
All persons related to the manuscript, including authors, editors, reviewers, and readers, who comment on or evaluate the relevant paper, must report any conflict of interest.
If, according to the editors, there are circumstances that may affect an unbiased review, the editors will not engage such a reviewer into the peer-review process.
Anti-plagiarism policy
Water Bioresources and Aquaculture accepts entirely original manuscripts which have not been published before and have not been submitted to other journals.
All articles are subject to checking for plagiarism using StrikePlagiarism.com by the Polish company Plagiat.pl. The editors reject articles that contain plagiarism or textual borrowings without references to their original sources with further determination of the causes and circumstances of borrowings.
Plagiarism before publishing. The editorial board analyzes any case of plagiarism on its merits. If plagiarism or textual borrowing is detected by the editors or reviewers at any stage before publishing a manuscript, the author/authors is/are informed about the need to find out whether the detected plagiarism is borrowed by the author, or the author has copyright and it was borrowed by another person and published, that is, it is not plagiarism for a peer-reviewed article. If this is not the case, the author is asked to rewrite the text or refer to their original source. If plagiarism is more than 40%, the article may be rejected.
Plagiarism check procedure. Manuscripts in which plagiarism is detected are assessed based on the amount of plagiarism: if plagiarism is less than 40%, the manuscript is sent back to the authors for content revision. At the same time, the author/authors are advised to review the text borrowings in the manuscript and resubmit the updated article. If plagiarism is more than 40%, the manuscript is rejected without editorial review.
The percentage of plagiarism is detected using appropriate software and is also assessed by the editorial board.
Plagiarism after publishing. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the editorial board can decide to retract the paper from the journal’s electronic resources.
Self-plagiarism. The editors do not encourage excessive self-citations, although they do not deny their justified use for clarifying a verbalized opinion or an appropriate reference to previously conducted and published research.
Retraction policy
The Editorial Board follows retraction policy to warn readers about self-plagiarism (authors submit the same data in several journals), academic plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification, disguise the conflicts of interests, which would affect the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use. The retraction of the scientific article is the mechanism of correcting published data and alerting readers about articles with serious gaps or invalid content, incl. unreliable one. The publication of such data may be accidental or intentional misconduct.
The retraction’s goal is to inform readers about the article which contains unreliable data.
Based on the Recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journal staff is guided by the below policy of retraction of previously published articles.
Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
it contains material or data without authorization for use;
the research findings have previously been published;
the article has serious errors (e.g., the misinterpretation of research findings) which call into question scientific value;
authorship is invalid (the inclusion of persons who do not meet the authorship criteria, or no one is worth being the author);
the author(s) failed to disclose a conflict of interests (as well as other violations of publication ethics);
the article was republished with the consent of the author(s);
there are other violations of ethics.
Grounds for initiating article retraction:
the author’s request to retract the article;
the request of the third parties (e.g., participants in the conflict of interests) who have evidence of the violations of academic ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;
the editorial board has found ethics violations by the article’s author.
The Academic Integrity Commission of National University of Water and Environmental Engineering decides about article retraction by relying on the decision of the Editorial Board.
Information on article retraction is available on the journal’s web-site.
The surname(s) of the author(s) and article title are kept in the contents of the relevant issue on the journal’s web-site, but reasons for retractions are specified.
The decision reasoning article retraction is sent to the author (s).
Open Access policy
Journal Water Bioresources and Aquaculture provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Full-text access to scientific articles of the journal is presented on the official website.
This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. The licensing policy is compatible with the overwhelming majority of open access and archiving policies.
Water Bioresources and Aquaculture is an open access journal, which means all its content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author as long as they cite the source. The journal is licensed by Creative Commons Attribution International CC-BY.