Ethical Principles of Authors of Scientific Articles

Ethical Principles of Authors of Scientific Articles

The authors of articles of the ‘Journal of the Institute for African Studies’ are required to ensure:

– originality – the scientific work has not been previously published in other publications in its current or similar form;

– reliability – the scientific work does not contain knowingly erroneous or falsified statements;

– correct borrowing – statements and quotations of other authors are properly executed with obligatory indication of the author and the source of the quotation;

– adequate acknowledgement of the contribution of all persons who in one way or another influenced the course of the research, in particular, the article should provide references to the works that were important to the research;

– exclusivity – the submitted manuscript is not under consideration by the editorial boards of other journals,

– Copyright compliance – the publication does not violate any of the existing copyrights; if such violations are detected, the losses will be reimbursed to the publisher. 

The Editorial Office of the ‘Journal of the Institute for African Studies’ does not publish plagiarism in any form, including works containing plagiarized text, plagiarized ideas and plagiarized data. Manuscripts submitted to our Journal for publication are subject to a mandatory text plagiarism check through the ‘Anti-Plagiat’ Plagiarism Detection System.

If the Editorial Office has reasons for a more detailed check, additional tools may be used to search for borrowings. The Editorial Office of the Journal strongly discourages the use of any technical methods to increase the originality of the text in the ‘Anti-Plagiat’ system. Articles that contain signs of technical modifications to artificially increase the originality of the text will not be published in the Journal even in case of revision. The Editorial Office informs the reviewer about all such facts and, if the author works in an educational or scientific institution, its administration.

Detection of plagiarism of ideas and plagiarized data is carried out within the framework of scientific review, as well as after the publication of manuscripts – on the basis of requests from readers with relevant statements. If the fact of unauthorized borrowing of data (results of scientific work) or ideas is established, the manuscript (article) will be retracted and rejected from publication, even if it has already been published.

Each author submitting a manuscript to the Journal agrees to the following principles of countering plagiarism and other unethical practices in scientific research and publication:

– verbatim copying of the work or part of the work of another author without its proper formatting (i.e. attribution, citation, use of quotation marks);

– incorrect paraphrasing of another author’s work (i.e. replacing terms with synonyms, rearranging words in a sentence or sentences in a paragraph) without proper reference to the source;

– using elements of another person’s work (e.g., a figure, a table, or a method for drawing a diagram or carrying out a calculation or analysis) without attribution and reference to the source. Authors must obtain the authorization of the copyright owner to use elements of his/her work;

– verbatim copying and paraphrasing of their own works, including those previously published in other languages (antiplagiarism or self-citation), without reference to their source, as well as compiling a ‘new’ manuscript from the author’s previously published works. If elements of the manuscript have been previously published in another paper, the author is obliged to refer to the earlier paper, to indicate the essential difference between the new paper and the previous one, to show the relationship of the obtained research results with the conclusions presented in the previous paper;

– simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to several editions (multiple submissions and publications);

– excessive citation, including of the author’s own work (with references to sources and graphical highlighting of the cited text), the amount of which is not justified by the genre and goals of the article. 

To ensure transparency in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), authors are encouraged to explicitly state and describe for readers any such process, which will be in line with the Journal’s policy against plagiarism and unacceptable borrowing, including:

-while generating images and diagrams in the text of the manuscript;

-while creating the text;

-while analyzing and extracting insights from other data, indicating the sources of such data.

The editors do not believe that artificial intelligence services fulfil the requirements of authorship responsibility, so generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek and others should not be cited as sources of information in any submitted content.

Authors of the ‘Journal of the Institute for African Studies’ can only be persons who have made a significant contribution to the formation of the idea (concept) of the article, to the development of the scientific design, to the execution and/or interpretation of the results of the presented research, as well as to the process of writing the manuscript, including scientific and stylistic editing and design in accordance with the requirements of the Journal. The consent of all authors for publication is mandatory.

All persons meeting the criteria for authorship should be included in the author’s team. One author may be selected for correspondence, authorized by the author team to carry out communication between the editorial office and the authors. In this case, all co-authors are equally responsible for the final version of the article approved by the team of authors for publication and subsequently published. All co-authors are also the subjects of copyright for the published article.

In order to avoid disagreements in further scientific activities about the authors’ contribution to the publication in the ‘Journal of the Institute for African Studies’, it is recommended to explicitly indicate the contribution of individual authors to the writing of the article, including its individual sections, in the ‘Authors’ Contributions’ section.

All authors should disclose (declare in the corresponding section of the manuscript) any financial or other relevant conflicts of interest that might be construed to affect the results or the conclusions of their manuscript. Information on grants is reflected in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of the article.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include:

  • receiving funding in support of the research or the preparation of the manuscript;
  • any association (employment, consultancies, stock ownership, royalties, providing expert opinions) with organizations that have a direct interest in the subject of the research or review;
  • application or registration of patents for research results (copyright, etc.);
  • obtaining financial support for any of the stages of research or the preparation of the manuscript (including grants and other financial support).

Explicit and potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed as early as possible.

Information on conflicts of interest received from the authors of the manuscripts is not provided to the reviewers and is available only to the Editorial Office when deciding on the publication of the manuscript. Information on conflicts of interest is also published as part of the full text of the article in the ‘Conflict of Interests’ section.

Authors are responsible for the selection and reliability of the facts, quotations, economic and statistical data, proper names, geographical names and other information, as well as for the use of data not intended for public disclosure.

If the author discovers significant errors or inaccuracies in the article at the stage of its review or after its publication, he should promptly notify the Editorial Office of the Journal. If the Editorial Office or the Publisher has received reasonable information from a third party that the publication contains serious errors, the author must withdraw the article or correct the errors as soon as possible, or refute the claim of errors by submitting the necessary evidence to the Editorial Office.

If the article contains inaccuracies and factual errors that do not require retraction of the article, the Editorial Office shall carry out the procedure of reprinting the article with corrections. The purpose of corrections made to a scientific article after publication is to bring true, accurate information to the reader, to help avoid unauthorized borrowings, to eliminate erroneous data.

The article may be reprinted if there are multiple typographical errors, incorrect citation, incorrect wording, incorrect factual statements, the need to make corrections in the composition of the author’s team and other cases requiring the correction of errors. The reprinting of an article with corrections can be initiated by the author, the readers or the Editorial Office of the Journal.

The printed issue of the Journal publishes a notice of the error with the number/year and pages of the issue with the article in which the error was made, a description of the error and the text with the corrected error. It also indicates on whose initiative the reprinting procedure is carried out. In the online version of the Journal the message about the error is placed on the website page and/or PDF-file with the article. Readers are given the opportunity to work with the corrected version of the article by posting it on the website. Information about the corrections made is transferred to RSCI as well.

In a number of cases, the Editorial Office of the Journal may decide to retract an article (retraction).

The article will be officially retracted, if at any stage of review, pre-publication preparation or after publication, the Editorial Office or readers identify a violation of the requirements of publication ethics. Retraction of an article due to a breach of publication ethics will also result in a ban on future publication of articles in this Journal for all members of the author’s team involved in the incident.

Reasons for retracting an article:

– detection of plagiarism in an article, including the borrowing of figures, graphs, tables, etc., if the fact of plagiarism became obvious already after the publication of the article;

-emergence of copyright claims to the article or its individual parts by third parties;

– discovery of the fact of publication of the article in another journal before the date of its publication in the «Journal of the Institute for African Studies»;

– the presence of serious errors in the published article that cast doubt on its scientific value.

In such circumstances, the Editorial Office of the Journal initiates an inspection, according to the results of which the article may be retracted. An act of retraction of the article will be drawn up and signed by the Editor-in-Chief. A copy of the act is sent to the author of the article.

At the same time, the article is not physically withdrawn from the published circulation and the issue file on the website. The Editorial Office publishes a statement on the retraction of the article and places it on the relevant page of the issue content on the official website of the Journal.