- » Aim and Scope
- » Section Policies
- » Publication Frequency
- » Open Access Policy
- » Archiving
- » Peer-Review
- » Indexation
- » Publishing Ethics
- » Founder
- » Author fees
- » Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
- » Plagiarism detection
- » Preprint and postprint Policy
Aim and Scope
“Medical Herald of the South of Russia” (Meditsinsky Vestnik Yuga Rossii) provides the platform for publication of innovative research results, reviews, practical advice, singular and instructive clinical cases, and brief communications concerning medicine and health care, which draw attention both in Russia and abroad. The Journal's priority are highly argumentative research materials presented in compliance with the internationally established ethical standards and capable of evoking interest among the Russian and foreign authors and readers.
Top-priority goals of the journal “Medical Herald of the South of Russia” is the coordination of collaboration in different clinical and fundamental medical directions and presentation of received information from the viewpoint of evidential medicine to wide audience.
Section Policies
Open Submissions
IndexedPublication Frequency
4 issues per year
Open Access Policy
"Medical Herald of the South of Russia" is an open access journal. All articles are made freely available to readers immediatly upon publication.
Our open access policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition - it means that articles have free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.
For more information please read BOAI statement..
The publication of the article for authors is also free.
Archiving
- Russian State Library (RSL)
- National Electronic-Information Consortium (NEICON)
Peer-Review
All scientific articles sent to the editorial office are reviewed according to the standard order.
An executive secretary checks conformance of the article to the typographic requirements and directs it to the deputy chief editor of the journal for consideration of the article adequacy to the journal profile. The deputy chief editor appoints the reviewer – MD whose scientific specialization is the closest to the theme of the article.
All reviewers are acknowledged experts on the subject of peer-reviewed material and have publications of peer-reviewed articles on the subject. The experts working in a structural division where the work has been carried out are not involved in reviewing.
Articles undergo «double-blind peer review» (anonymous) - the reviewer and the author do not know the names of each other. The reviewers are notified that the sent manuscripts are a private property of the authors and the data are beyond any disclosure. The reviewers are not allowed to copy the manuscripts for their own needs. Confidentiality breach is possible only in case of unauthenticity or falsification of materials. The author of the reviewed article is given the possibility to get familiarized with the review text.
The peer review takes not longer than 3 weeks.
The reviewer draws his conclusion about the further destiny of the article: a) the article is recommended to the publication as it is or after taking into consideration corrections noted by the reviewer; b) the article has to be given to another expert for additional review; c) to reject the publication.
If the review contains some recommendations on correction and revision of the article, the journal editors send the text of the review to the author and suggest to consider them while preparing a new variant of the article or to disprove them (partially or completely) reasonably. The revised article is directed to the recurrent reviewing then.
If the author and the reviewer have insoluble contradictions concerning the article (or there is a conflict of interests), the edition has the right to send the article to other reviewer. In conflict situations the article can be handed to one of members of Consulting Editors, and in such cases the final decision is made by the editor-in-chief.
An article which is not recommended by a reviewer cannot be resubmitted for consideration. Information about a negative review is e-mailed to the author.
The peer review results are notified to the author via email.
A positive review is not a sufficient ground for publication of the article. A decision about reasonableness of publication after reading is made by the Consulting Editors and approved by the Editor – in – Chief. In the case of a negative decision to the authors of the publication editorial submissions reasoned refusal.
The originals of the reviews are kept in the editorial office during five years. The copies are sent to the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation on request.
Indexation
Articles in «Medical Herald of the South of Russia» are indexed by several systems:
- Russian Scientific Citation Index (RSCI) – a database, accumulating information on papers by Russian scientists, published in native and foreign titles. The RSCI project is under development since 2005 by “Electronic Scientific Library” foundation (elibrary.ru).
- Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. The Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest scholarly publishers, plus scholarly books and other non-peer reviewed journals.
- RNMJ.RU
- Dimensions
- Base
- VINITI RAS
- SOCIONET
- Cyberleninka
- EDS
Publishing Ethics
Ethical principles of “Medical Herald of the South of Russia”
“Medical Herald of the South of Russia” opposes any forms of unethical behavior or publication of unproven, inaccurate or fraudulent materials, or plagiarism.
The editorial board is committed to upholding international standards of publication ethics that are presented, in particular in recommended guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics. (COPE), International committee of medical journal editors , Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK) of Elsevier International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Council of Science Editors (CSE) and Association of Sciences Editors and Publishers.
Our editors are committed to the principles of the Sarajevo Declaration of Integrity and Visibility of Scholarly Publications.
The Editorial Board has established the Ethical Guidelines that shall be mandatorily observed by all participants of the process of publication of scientific articles – Authors, Reviewers, members of the Editorial Board, Lead Editors, and Publisher.
We recommend our potential authors to get acquainted with the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.
BASIC ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF EDITORIAL STAFF ACTIVITY
- Editorial staff establishes its relationship with its founder in accordance with the principle of editorial independence.
- Editorial staff pursues an independent policy on selection and publication of the materials of research.
- Editorial staff ensures conformity of the published materials with the accepted international and ethical principles
- Editorial staff constantly takes steps to upgrade the journal.
- Editorial staff takes all reasonable measures to guarantee the quality of the published material.
- Editorial staff works in close collaboration with authors and reviewers to guarantee high quality of the published material
- Editorial staff makes a decision whether to accept/decline the research material for publication considering only the significance of the research, its originality, distinctness and topicality.
- Editorial staff guarantees the possibility of publishing the materials presenting different points of view.
- Editorial staff guarantees that no financial interests will influence the level of requirements for peer-reviewed and published materials.
- Editors make decisions only on the basis of the research credibility, its significance for readers of the journal and not of the commercial profit of the journal.
- Editorial staff is always prepared to admit its mistakes and if necessary to publish corrections, clarifications, refutations and apology.
DUTIES OF AUTHORS
- Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
- Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial 'opinion’ works should be clearly identified as such.
- Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
- The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted
- Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
- An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
- An author should not submit for consideration in another journal a previously published paper.
- Publication of some kinds of articles (eg, clinical guidelines, translations) in more than one journal is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. The authors and editors of the journals concerned must agree to the secondary publication, which must reflect the same data and interpretation of the primary document. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.
- Authors are encouraged to provide the information about their previously published materials on the topic and materials included in the submitted article. Copies of such material should be included with the submitted manuscript to help the editor to decide on the possibility of redundant (duplicate) publication. Redundant (or duplicate) publication is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published in print or electronic media.
- Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.
- Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study, who are accountable for all aspects of the work.
- If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript.
- In cases when diagnostic and treatment methods do not correspond to the standard procedures, the approval by the Ethics Committee of the institution where the research was conducted should be presented as well as the correspondence of the methods employed to the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 and its reviewed variant of 2000. In doubtful cases authors should submit to the editorial staff (when requested) the reasoning of the applied approaches as well as the evidence that the Ethics Committee of the institution approved all doubtful aspects of the research
- If the work involves the use of animal or human subjects, the author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects.
- The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed. Patients have the right to privacy that has not be violated without their informed consent. The information identifying the personality of a patient (patients’ surnames and initials, registration number of the card) is prohibited to be published in articles. Photos presented for publication should not identify patient either. Authors have to inform patients (parents, guardians) about the possibility of publishing the materials revealing the details of his/her disease and the used methods of diagnostics and treatment as well as about the guarantees to provide confidentiality when publishing the materials in the print and electronic media and also about their availability in the Internet after publication. When submitting the article to the editorial staff authors have to provide the patient’s written informed consent for disclosing the information and inform about it in the article.
- All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript
- Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest possible stage
- While submitting the manuscript to the editorial staff authors should indicate whether the conflict of interest does or does not exist; inform the editorial staff about the sources of the research support such as grants, equipment, medicinal preparations; guarantee in the covering letter, that they have not received any rewards from manufacturers of medicinal preparations, medical equipment and materials including the competitors able to affect the research results. Authors should inform about a sponsor and his role in determining the study design, in collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in study description; in making the decision to submit the report for publication. If necessary and asked by the editorial staff, authors must provide the additional information permitting the editorial staff to assess the impact of sponsors on the process of research.
- Authors have the right to indicate in the covering letter the names of those specialists they feel should not be asked to review a manuscript because of potential, usually professional, conflict of interest. The given information is strictly confidential and is taken in consideration while organizing the reviewing.
- When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in a published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper, If the editor or the publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper.
- The authors are obliged to ensure transparency as regards participation of any third parties, outside editors or editing agencies in the arrangement and editing of the text and graphics, review of the manuscript, and statistical processing of the research results
DUTIES OF EDITORS
- The Editors of the journal (Chief Editor, Publishing editor) are solely and independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers must always underwrite such decisions. The Editor may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with reviewers in making this decision.
- An editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors
- The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the establisher, as appropriate.
- Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
- Editors should recuse themselves (i.e. should ask a co-editor or other member of the editorial board instead to review and consider) from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers.
- An editor presented with convincing evidence that the substance or conclusions of a published paper are erroneous should promote the prompt publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other note, as may be relevant
- An editor should take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper, in conjunction with the establisher. Such measures will generally include contacting the author of the manuscript or paper and giving due consideration of the respective complaint or claims made, but may also include further communications to the relevant institutions and research bodies.
- The editors reserve the right to truncate the published materials and adapt it to the journal’s headings. The text of the article prepared for publishing and with the corrections made by the editors is sent to the authors for approval in PDF format by email. Author’s corrections and approval should be sent to the editors within 5- day’s period. After this period is over the editorial staff will consider that author have approved the text.
DUTIES OF REVIEWERS
- Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
- Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process
- Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorised by the editor.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
- Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge
- Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage
- Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
DUTIES OF THE ESTABLISHER
- The establisher should adopt policies and procedures that support editors, reviewers and authors in performing their ethical duties under these ethics guidelines. The establisher should ensure that the potential for advertising or reprint revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.
- The establisher should support journal editors in the review of complaints raised concerning ethical issues and help communications with other journals and/or publishers where this is useful to editors.
- The establisher should develop codes of practice and inculcate industry standards for best practice on ethical matters, errors and retractions.
- The establisher should provide specialised legal review and counsel if necessary.
Founder
Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education «Rostov State Medical University» of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation
Author fees
Publication in «Medical Herald of the South of Russia» is free of charge for all the authors.
The journal doesn't have any Arcticle processing charges.
The journal doesn't have any Article submission charges.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
Public trust in the peer-review process and the credibility of published articles depends in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the Journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.
All participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Disclosure of such relationships is also important in connection with editorials and review articles, because it can be more difficult to detect bias in these types of publications than in reports of original research. Editors may use information disclosed in conflict-of-interest and financial-interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions. Editors should publish this information if they believe it is important in judging the manuscript.
Potential Conflicts of Interest Related to Individual Authors’ Commitments
When authors submit a manuscript, whether an article or a letter, they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias their work. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist. Authors should do so in the manuscript on a conflict-of-interest notification page that follows the title page, providing additional detail, if necessary, in a cover letter that accompanies the manuscript (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). Authors should identify individuals who provide writing or other assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Investigators must disclose potential conflicts to study participants and should state in the manuscript whether they have done so.
Editors also need to decide whether to publish information disclosed by authors about potential conflicts. If doubt exists, it is best to err on the side of publication.
Potential Conflicts of Interest Related to Project Support
Increasingly, individual studies receive funding from commercial firms, private foundations, and government. The conditions of this funding have the potential to bias and otherwise discredit the research.
Scientists have an ethical obligation to submit creditable research results for publication. Researchers should not enter into agreements that interfere with their access to all of the data and their ability to analyze them independently, and to prepare and publish manuscripts. Authors should describe the role of the study sponsor, if any, in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing the report; and the decision to submit the report for publication. If the supporting source had no such involvement, the authors should so state. Biases potentially introduced when sponsors are directly involved in research are analogous to methodological biases. Some journals, therefore, choose to include information in the Methods section about the sponsor’s involvement.
Editors may request that authors of a study funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome sign a statement, such as “I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.” Editors should review copies of the protocol and/or contracts associated with project specific studies before accepting such studies for publication. Editors may choose not to consider an article if a sponsor has asserted control over the authors’ right to publish.
Potential Conflicts of Interest Related to Commitments of Editors, Journal Staff, or Reviewers
Editors should avoid selecting external peer reviewers with obvious potential conflicts of interest - for example, those who work in the same department or institution as any of the authors. Authors often provide editors with the names of persons they feel should not be asked to review a manuscript because of potential, usually professional, conflicts of interest. When possible, authors should be asked to explain or justify their concerns; that information is important to editors in deciding whether to honor such requests.
Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and they should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. As in the case of authors, silence on the part of reviewers concerning potential conflicts may mean either that conflicts exist and the reviewer has failed to disclose them or conflicts do not exist. Reviewers must therefore also be asked to state explicitly whether conflicts do or do not exist. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work, before its publication, to further their own interests.
Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts must have no personal, professional, or financial involvement in any of the issues they might judge. Other members of the editorial staff, if they participate in editorial decisions, must provide editors with a current description of their financial interests (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to the commitments of journal staff.
Revision date August 21, 2017
Plagiarism detection
«Medical Herald of the South of Russia» use native russian-language plagiarism detection software Antiplagiat to screen the submissions. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.
Preprint and postprint Policy
Prior to acceptance and publication in «Medical Herald of the South of Russia», authors may make their submissions available as preprints on personal or public websites.
As part of submission process, authors are required to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor has been submitted. After a manuscript has been published in «Medical Herald of the South of Russia» we suggest that the link to the article on journal's website is used when the article is shared on personal or public websites.
