ISSN: 2074-8132
ISSN: 2074-8132
The editors are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts sent to the Editorial office will be accepted for publication. The editors make a decision on publication, guided by the journal's policy, taking into account current copyright legislation, avoiding slander, plagiarism and abuse of official position. Editorial evaluation of a manuscript does not depend on the race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, citizenship or political beliefs of the authors. The decision to publish an article is made solely on the basis of its scientific significance, originality, clarity of presentation and compliance of the research topic with the direction of the journal, guided by the principles of scientific character, objectivity, professionalism and impartiality. The editors conscientiously work with the manuscript’s texts, preventing the appearance on the pages of their publications of unscrupulous scientific publications containing plagiarism, falsification and fabrication of data.
All Editorial staff are responsible for disclosing any information about a received manuscript to third parties other than the authors, reviewers, potential reviewers and publishers.
Unpublished materials disclosed in the manuscript submitted by the authors cannot be used by the Editorial staff for the purposes of their own scientific research.
Interaction with authors is based on the principles of fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty and transparency.
When filing an ethical complaint or identifying a conflict situation regarding a submitted manuscript or published article, the editors must take reasonable response measures to restore violated rights, and if errors are detected, facilitate the publication of corrections or refutations. Every report of unethical behavior will be reviewed, even if it is received years after the article was published.
All scientific articles received by the Editorial office of the journal “Lomonosov Journal of Anthropology (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia)” are subject to mandatory review. Currently, the journal uses double-blind peer review: reviewers do not know the identity of the authors, and authors do not know the identity of the reviewers either.
Communication between the editors and the article’s authors is carried out through the author, who is responsible for correspondence with the editors.
The editors do not enter into negotiations with the author regarding negative reviews or rejection of articles.
Manuscripts accepted for publication are not returned. Manuscripts that receive negative feedback from the reviewer are not published and are not returned to the author.
Manuscripts of scientific content must undergo a pre-publication examination procedure – reviewing.
Manuscripts of scientific content include:
all types of research articles;
all types of review articles (including systematic and analytical reviews);
During pre-publication examination, the journal uses the double-blind review method: the authors do not know who is reviewing their manucript, and the reviewers do not know whose article they are reviewing. The manuscript is subject to examination only in an anonymous (impersonal) form.
The initiator of the examination can only be the Journal Editor – the Editor-in-Chief or the Scientific (thematic) Editor. The Scientific Editor nominates two reviewers initially. In controversial cases, an additional third reviewer may be involved.
Well-known specialists recognized in their professional communities, who have publications in topics relevant to the manuscript being reviewed over the past five years, are involved in the review.
Both internal experts from the Editorial board of the journal and external independent researchers can serve as reviewers.
If there is a conflict of interest, for example, the reviewer and the reviewed author are colleagues, work together in the same department, in the same laboratory or research center, in the same faculty, or are participants in the same research project, individual results of which are presented in the manuscript proposed for review, – the reviewer is obliged to notify the Scientific Editor and the Editorial board represented by the Editor-in-chief and refuse to conduct an examination of the manuscript.
The reviewer must be polite towards the author; the text of the review must be constructive. Personal criticism is not allowed.
Based on the results of the examination, the reviewer recommends, and the Scientific Editor makes one of the following possible decisions: • “reject”; • “send for revision taking into account the comments of the reviewers”; • “publish”. Revision of the manuscript can be defined by the reviewer as “minimal and without subsequent re-review” or “significant with subsequent re-review”.
In case of an inconsistent evaluation of the article by reviewers, the final decision is made by the Chief or Scientific editor.
The author receives the text of his/her manuscript with remarks, comments, recommendations of reviewers in an anonymous (impersonal) form, as well as mandatory notification of the decision of the scientific editor.
The standard review time is 40 days from the moment the manuscript is assigned to the reviewer. The total review period, taking into account “minimal” revision and re-review, is 45-50 days. The total review period, taking into account “significant” revision and re-review, is 50-55 days.
All reviewers work on a voluntary basis, without additional compensation.
Reviews are stored in the publishing house and in the Editorial office for 5 years.
The Editor-in-chief, as well as the Scientific editors, are responsible for implementing the journal’s review policy. The Editor-in-chief, Scientific editors, reviewers and authors are responsible for the quality of published works.
The editors undertake to send copies of reviews to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation upon receipt of a corresponding request by the editors of the publication.
All manuscripts are submitted to the Editorial office of the journal through the manuscript submission interface on the journal’s website and/or to the Editorial office’s email address: vestnikmsu23@mail.ru.
Each submitted manuscript goes through several stages of examination and evaluation before publication.
Each new manuscript is reviewed by a Scientific Editor upon entry and determines its compliance with general formal requirements, in particular, the following “input” points:
(1) subject area of the journal;
(2) genre and type of the article to be published;
(3) compliance of the submitted article material with the requirements for the design of the manuscript text, published in the section “Guidelines for the design of the manuscript”: correctness of the design of the manuscript text, the quality of the preparation of illustrative material, etc.;
(4) literacy, clarity and logic of presentation of the text in accordance with the norms of the literary language;
(5) availability of all necessary metadata in Russian and English.
The Scientific Editor sends manuscripts that do not meet the journal's requirements for revision. If the author has finalized the article in accordance with the Guidelines for the presentation of articles adopted in the journal, corrected errors and provided all the necessary metadata in Russian and English, the article is accepted and sent for further examination.
All manuscripts with scientific content – research and review articles that have passed the 1st stage are checked for originality of the text and the presence of incorrect borrowings. If necessary, verification is carried out through the software tools of the company “Antiplagiat”. The Chief or Scientific Editor analyzes the results in detail and makes a final decision on the level of originality of the text and the presence or absence of plagiarism in the manuscript.
The Scientific Editor submits the manuscript, which has passed the 1st and 2nd stages of the preliminary examination, for peer review to two reviewers who are recognized in the professional community as active experts in the thematic area relevant to the work being reviewed.
Before being sent for review, the manuscript is anonymized (affiliations, information about the authors, and links to the author’s own works in the text and in the bibliography are removed). In case of de-anonymization of the author by the reviewer, the latter must immediately notify the Assistant Editor-in-chief and the Editorial board about this fact in order to prevent a possible conflict of interest. A conflict of interest may be due to personal relationships, beliefs and scientific rivalry, that is, factors that prevent an impartial analysis of the contents of the manuscript from making an objective decision about the publication of research results.
The text with the results of the examination of the contents of the manuscript is presented by the reviewer on a review form, which, in addition to answers to the questions posed, also involves a description of the shortcomings and advantages of the manuscript in free form. The free form allows the reviewer, in any order and degree of detail, to determine the scientific value and significance of the manuscript under review. The review may begin with a brief summary of the manuscript being reviewed. The summary will help the Scientific Editor and the author understand whether the reviewer has understood the article correctly. Otherwise, the text of the review may be based on an ambiguous or even false interpretation of the text of the work being reviewed. After the summary, the Reviewer evaluates the content of the manuscript according to the following criteria:
relevance of the topic;
novelty of the research;
academic objectivity;
correctness, reliability and verifiability of the results obtained;
depth of research and completeness of presentation of material;
assessment of the likelihood of practical use of the obtained results;
assessment of the prospects for further research in this direction.
The review, in a reasoned form, contains the following points: positive qualities of the work – both the study itself and the text describing the study; shortcomings in the work as such, and in the text of the manuscript; characteristics of the presentation style of the article and the conclusions obtained; historiographic coverage and completeness of use of the array of previous scientific literature; comments, suggestions and remarks on finalizing the text of the manuscript, if the reviewer intends to recommend the manuscript for publication; a final assessment of the work and a recommendation to publish or reject the manuscript according to the criteria. The review ends with final recommendations, which are formulated on the review form for the reviewer to choose from in the form of one of the following proposals:
(1) Publication of the manuscript without additional revision.
(2) Publication of the manuscript after minor revisions, which can be made by the author without re-reviewing.
(3) Publication of the manuscript after significant revision, which requires mandatory additional review.
(4) Rejection of the manuscript due to significant and irreparable deficiencies.
The reviewer does not spend time on literary editing of the manuscript, but focuses on the scientific quality of the manuscript and the overall style of writing, which should be consistent with the best examples of clear and concise academic writing. If the reviewer finds that the manuscript requires linguistic correction, he reports this to the Scientific or Literary editor. In case of disagreement between reviewers in assessing the manuscript, the final decision is made by the Scientific Editoror Editor-in-chief. If the opinions of reviewers on the same manuscript differ, then a third reviewer is involved in the examination process to make an objective decision on publication or rejection of the article.
The author is obliged to listen to the opinions of reviewers. In case of disagreement, the author has the right to send a letter to the Editorial board of the journal with a reasoned justification for his position.
The Editorial board, in turn, has the right to take the side of the reviewer or the author.
Upon completion of the review and the final decision on publication or rejection of the manuscript, the Scientific Editor should offer reviewers the following opportunities related to the procedures of open science and translation of review texts as (a) a special form of scientific publication; (b) reviews as a specific element of scientific communication and (c) reviews as a significant part of the overall text of science: publication of the review text in the national analytical and bibliographic system “Russian Science Citation Index” on the elibrary.ru platform with attribution.
Reviewing is an essential component of the scientific communication system, the main tool that formalizes the procedure for recognizing a new scientific result in the academic community.
For the author, reviewing is the only means of confirming the achievement of a new scientific result and securing priority to the author. All scientists are readers and at the same time authors. And scientists have the opportunity to publish their own works thanks to their participation in reviewing the manuscripts of colleagues.
A reviewer who realizes that he is not competent enough, or he does not have enough qualifications or professional experience to examine the manuscript, or that he does not have enough time to review, in any of these cases, is obliged to promptly contact the Scientific Editor and the Editorial board represented by the Editor-in-chief with a request to exempt him from reviewing a specific manuscript.
The manuscript of a scientific work that is reviewed by an expert should be treated exclusively as a confidential document. The text of the manuscript must not be discussed with outsiders who are not involved in the work of the journal.
The reviewer is obliged to give only an objective assessment of the text of the manuscript.
Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. The reviewer must clearly and reasonably express his opinion.
The reviewer should pay special attention to the issue of the lists of references presented in manuscripts. Any conclusion, argument, statement that appeared in science earlier, which means it has already been published in a previous source, if such a statement appears in the text of the manuscript, there must be an appropriate bibliographic reference to it.
If a reviewer, while studying a manuscript, discovers significant similarities, textual proximity, or even complete textual matches between the manuscript he is reviewing and any other previously published work, he is obliged to draw the attention of the Scientific Editor to these facts of borrowing. Any conclusion, argument, statement that appeared in the scientific field previous to the reviewed work, that is, already published in a previous source work, must be confirmed through mandatory citation, that is, a bibliographic link to this primary source.
Experts are strictly prohibited from reviewing manuscripts in the event of a conflict of interest in the form of scientific competition or, conversely, in the case of participation in joint scientific projects with the reviewed author.