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.
Ethics guidelines of the editorial board are based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics, as well as the principles of DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment).
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
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.
Timeframes
Average time from submission to the first final decision: 3–8 weeks
Time allocated for author revisions: 14 days
Time for additional review (if required): 7 days
Appeal Procedure
Authors have the right to submit an appeal against a rejection decision within 10 days. The appeal is reviewed by an independent member of the Editorial Board.
In accordance with the principles of DORA, the Journal:
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evaluates manuscripts solely on the basis of their scientific quality, originality, methodological soundness, and contribution to the advancement of knowledge;
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does not use journal-based metrics (including the Impact Factor) as a criterion for assessing individual articles or the scientific quality of an author;
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does not encourage artificial inflation of citation metrics;
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supports the responsible use of scientometric indicators.
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.
Consideration of Complaints and Appaeals
The Editorial Board of the Journal ensures a transparent and fair procedure for handling complaints related to potential violations of academic integrity and publication ethics. This procedure establishes the process for considering complaints regarding breaches of ethical principles by authors, reviewers, or members of the Editorial Board. It applies to issues related to plagiarism, improper appropriation of materials, conflicts of interest, data manipulation, and other violations of academic integrity.
1. Submission of a complaint.
Complaints regarding possible violations of academic integrity, plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, conflicts of interest, duplicate or redundant publications, authorship issues, or other breaches of publication ethics should be submitted to the Editorial Office in written form (via email), clearly stating the nature of the alleged violation and providing supporting evidence or justification.
2. Preliminary assessment.
The Editorial Board conducts an initial evaluation of the complaint to determine its validity and relevance to the journal’s scope. If necessary, the Editorial Office may request explanations or additional materials from the author(s).
3. Investigation.
If the complaint is deemed well-founded, the Editorial Board initiates an internal investigation involving independent experts or Editorial Board members not associated with the handling of the manuscript in question. All parties have the right to be heard.
4. Decision-making.
Based on the results of the investigation, the Editorial Board may decide to:
close the case if no violation is found;
require corrections or clarifications;
publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction;
reject the manuscript or impose a temporary ban on future submissions;
inform the author’s institution or other relevant bodies, if appropriate.
5. Notification of parties.
The complainant and the author(s) are informed of the outcome of the complaint review in writing within the timeframe established by the Editorial Office. All correspondence is handled confidentially.
6. Confidentiality and impartiality.
All complaints are handled confidentially, objectively, and without discrimination. The Editorial Office ensures that no conflicts of interest affect the complaint review process.
Any appeals to the editorial office regarding violations of the requirements of the Procedure for forming the List of scientific professional publications of Ukraine are accepted in a written form by sending a letter of appeal to the official address of the journal’s founder.
Policy on the Use of AI
The Journal’s policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is based on international and national recommendations and regulatory documents, in particular the statements of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the provisions of the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), the Concept for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in Ukraine, and the requirements of the Law of Ukraine “On Academic Integrity”.
The Journal recognizes the possibility of using AI tools as auxiliary instruments during the preparation of scientific materials. At the same time, the use of such tools must comply with the principles of academic integrity, transparency, and the author’s responsibility for the content of the scientific work and the reliability of the results presented.
AI tools may be used, in particular, for auxiliary tasks such as language editing, structuring of materials, technical data processing, and similar activities. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, and scientific validity of the submitted materials, proper citation of sources, and for the absence of plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification of research results.
The Journal requires authors to openly disclose any use of AI tools during manuscript preparation. AI systems cannot be considered authors or co-authors of scientific articles, as they cannot take responsibility for the content of a publication.
Editors and reviewers must also adhere to principles of confidentiality and must not use AI tools in a way that would disclose unpublished manuscript materials or any other confidential information obtained during the editorial review process.
Violations of the principles for using AI tools may be considered breaches of academic integrity and publication ethics and may result in appropriate editorial actions, including rejection of the manuscript or retraction of a published article.
Ethical Approval Policy
The editorial board adheres to international standards of academic integrity and research ethics. All studies involving human participants, animals or their biological materials, as well as research involving personal or confidential data, must be conducted in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine and generally accepted international ethical standards.
In cases where the research falls under the scope of relevant legal or regulatory requirements, authors are required to obtain approval from a competent ethics committee or another authorized body (Ethics Committee / Institutional Review Board).
In the manuscript, authors must:
- indicate information about the obtained ethical approval, including the name of the institution, protocol number, and date of the decision (if available);
- confirm that the research was conducted in compliance with ethical standards and relevant regulatory requirements;
- in the case of research involving human participants, state that informed consent was obtained from the participants;
- in the case of studies involving animals, confirm that the experiments were conducted in accordance with the principles of humane treatment of animals.
The editorial board reserves the right to request additional documents or confirmation from authors regarding compliance with ethical requirements. Manuscripts that do not meet these ethical standards may be rejected at any stage of the editorial review process.
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 operates under a Diamond Open Access model: all articles and issues are freely accessible to both authors and readers.
Key Principles:
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Free access to all materials – full-text articles can be read, downloaded, copied, shared, and printed without restrictions.
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Free use for academic purposes – journal materials may be used in personal research, teaching courses, and presentations, provided proper citation of the original article is given.
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License – all materials are published under the Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY 4.0) license, allowing citation, sharing, and commercial use with mandatory attribution to the authors.
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Copyright – authors retain full rights to their articles and may deposit the final published version or the accepted manuscript in any repository.
Access to the Archive
Full-text access to all published articles is provided immediately upon issue release and is available in the Archives section of the journal’s website.
This policy fully complies with the BOAI definition of Open Access and is compatible with most international standards for open access and scholarly material archiving.
Archiving and Long-Term Preservation Policy
The journal ensures reliable and long-term preservation of all published materials in accordance with international digital archiving standards.
To safeguard scientific content:
all journal issues are archived in the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine;
articles are deposited in the institutional repositories of universities collaborating with the authors.
Each published article:
is permanently available on the journal website without time limitations;
has a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier), ensuring stable and long-term access.
Self-Archiving Policy
The journal supports the principles of open science and allows authors to self-archive their publications without any time restrictions (no embargo period).
Authors have the right to deposit:
- the accepted manuscript (accepted version);
- the final published version of the article (publisher’s version)
in the following resources:
- institutional and national repositories;
- university digital libraries;
- personal websites of the authors;
- academic social networks, such as ResearchGate.
When reposting materials, authors must provide a full bibliographic reference to the published article in the journal, including its DOI.
Open Data Policy
The journal encourages authors to deposit all data supporting the results of their research in open repositories (institutional, national, or international), in line with FAIR principles. A DOI or other persistent data identifier should be provided in the article metadata and/or in the Data Availability section.