The Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal is an academic edition, thus being guided exclusively by the benefit of science and society. The Editorial board of the Journal has no political, ideological, confessional and other preferences. All the parties to the process of scientific communication (authors, reviewers, editors and Editorial Board members) should make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical rules that have been developed in compliance with international best practices in scholarly publishing and following the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Declaration “Ethical principles of scientific publications” by the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ASEP, Russia). The Editorial board is also guided by the Russian Federation legislation.

1. Authorship

When submitting a manuscript for consideration for publication in Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii, the author(s) thereby confirm(s) their authorship. In the case when a study presented in the manuscript has been produced in collaboration, one of the authors (referred to as a corresponding author) handles the submission and publication process provided that all co-authors have been properly designated.

Authorship is based on the following fundamental criteria.

Only the person who has made a substantive intellectual contribution to the work presented in the manuscript can be designated as its author. By a substantive intellectual contribution is understood study conceptualization, empirical data acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data obtained, drafting or revising the manuscript.

All authors should participate in the preparation and critical revision of the manuscript before its submission to the Journal.

All authors should provide their consent to the publication of the final version of the manuscript.

All authors bear full responsibility for all aspects of the work, not only for the parts performed personally by them.

The authors of the manuscript should designate the corresponding author, a person who takes primary responsibility for communication with the Editorial board at all stages: during the manuscript submission, peer review and its preparation for publication. The corresponding author ensures that all Journal administrative requirements are properly fulfilled, including adherence of all the co-authors to the ethical norms specified herein, gathering information about conflicts of interest, text formatting, etc. The corresponding author should be available not only throughout the publication process to respond to the Editorial board queries in a timely manner, but also after the publication of the paper to provide additional information (upon request) or respond to critical comments by readers. 

Those colleagues, who have contributed to the process of the knowledge generation, but who do not meet the specified authorship criteria (substantive intellectual contribution, preparation and critical revision of the manuscript, approval of the final version of the manuscript, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work) cannot be named as authors; however, they must be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section of the paper. 

2. Plagiarism

Any form of plagiarism, including auto-plagiarism, constitutes unethical practice and is, therefore, unacceptable. Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is considered to be unethical behaviour.

All manuscripts submitted to the Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal are checked for incorrect borrowings and plagiarism using either the Antiplagiat system (for papers written in Russian) or Google Scholar tools (at the moment used for papers written in English).

Plagiarism may take various forms, such as:

—  use of any information published in other editions without indicating the primary source;

—  use of images, pictures, photographs, tables, diagrams, schemes or any other forms of graphical information without indicating the primary source;

—  use of any materials published in scientific and popular editions without approval of the copyright holder;

—  incorrect citation, including incomplete bibliographic description of the source, which prevents its identification;

— reference not to the primary source of the borrowed text without clear indication of this fact, which may result in mistakes with the determination of the primary source;

— absence of in-text references to the sources listed in the bibliography of the paper;

— excessive citation not justified by the objectives and genre of the paper.

In cases when any form of plagiarism has been detected or suspected, the Editorial board of Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii shall withdraw such papers from any stage of the publication process, even if the paper has already been published.

3. Retraction policy

A retraction mechanism in compliance with the COPE protocol shall be applied when the Editorial board of the Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal:

— receives evidence of the fraudulence of the published information as a result of either the authors’ conscious actions or bona fide errors (e.g., non-intentional errors in calculations);

— receives evidence of multiple publications or multiple submissions;

— reveals the fact of a deliberate or non-intentional concealment of a conflict of interest, which could have affected the interpretation of the data or recommendations on the use of the obtained results.

Retraction is aimed at correcting errors in publications and informing the readership about those papers comprising erroneous data. 

Retraction does not imply deletion of the publication from the Journal’s website or other bibliographic databases. A retraction note is published alongside the original publication. The original article is retained unchanged (with its DOI), except for a watermark on the .pdf indicating “retraction”. This is considered important, since the paper may have already been cited by third parties. Information about retracted papers is presented on the Journal's website.

4. Conflicts of interest

Public trust in scientific findings, as well as the credibility of scientific information, to a large extent, depend on how well potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest are mitigated and managed. A conflict of interest arises when there is a risk that independent professional judgement will be influenced by personal or financial interests. Conflicts of interest can arise during the course of research, expertise of research findings and their subsequent publication.

The Editorial Board of Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii requires that authors disclose any relations with industrial or funding organizations that may have affected the interpretation of the obtained results or the recommendations formulated. This information should be disclosed in the paper subsection “Conflict of interest” (if relevant).

Reviewers should refuse to consider manuscripts, in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any of the authors, companies or institutions involved in the research.

The Editor-in-Chief should pass the submitted manuscript for consideration by another Editorial Board member (e.g. Deputy Editor) if he/she discovers conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any of the authors, companies or institutions involved in the presented research.

Articles submitted by the members of the Editorial board or the Editorial council are treated on general grounds.

All actions related to the paper submission, peer review and acceptance/rejection processes should be checked for potential conflicts of interest in a preventive manner. Any unresolved conflict of interest must be considered by a specially convened commission that includes 2 Editorial board members not related to the conflicting parties and 3 independent specialists not related to the Journal.

5. Ethical code for all the parties to the publication process

5. 1 Ethical code for the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial board members

The Editor-in-Chief bears full personal responsibility and accountability for the content published in the Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal. The Editor-in-Chief is guided by the ethical code presented herein, as well as by the Russian Federation legislation with regard to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism. 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board members should adhere to the following ethical principles:

—   base their decisions solely on the validation of the work in question and its scientific rigour;

—  evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the race, sex, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, social status and political preferences of the authors;

—  never disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than those involved in the publication process;

—  defend the freedom of scientific inquiry;

—  never use information or ideas contained in the submitted manuscripts for their personal benefit; 

—  ensure the fairness and equity of the peer-review process;

—  guard the confidentiality of reviewers’ information;

—  guarantee the confidentiality of the entire peer-review process;

—  ensure that the submitted manuscripts be processed in a timely and efficient manner;

—  be aware that the Journal’s primary goal is to contribute to the benefit of science, not to gain profit;

—  withdraw manuscripts with suspected plagiarism from the publication process;

—  constantly work on raising the ethical standards of editorial work and the publication process;

—  consider manuscripts containing negative results on general grounds.

5.2 Ethical code for Reviewers

Reviewers' work is aimed at providing a rigorous scientific expertise of materials submitted to the Journal. Therefore, their behaviour should be unbiased, which is expressed in adherence to the following recommendations. Reviewers should:

— consider a manuscript under review as a confidential document, which cannot be forwarded to third parties without the Editor-in-Chief’s prior consent;

—  provide unbiased and objective assessment of the paper under review;

—  express their opinion clearly and comprehensively, refraining from any personal criticism of the author;

—  never use information contained in the paper under review for their personal purposes;

— excuse himself/herself from the review process if they feel unqualified to review the proposed paper, or if there is any doubt that they might not complete the review within the specified time period;

—  never suggest that authors include citations to the Reviewer’s work merely to increase the Reviewer’s citation count;

—  declare any potential conflicts of interest (which may, for example, be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious) prior to agreeing to review a manuscript, including any relations with the author that might potentially bias their decision.

5.3 Ethical code for Authors

Authors and co-authors submitting their manuscripts to the Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal bear personal responsibility for the content of their manuscripts and are expected to follow these ethical principles. Authors should:

—  present accurate account of their research work.  The knowingly submission of false or fraudulent results is considered to be a case of malpractice and is, therefore, unacceptable;

—  guarantee that their manuscript is their own original and independent work;

—  ensure that all persons that have made a significant contribution to the research presented in their manuscript are designated as co-authors;

—  ensure that all designated co-authors have expressed their consent to publication and to being named as a co-author;

—  ensure that all co-authors have approved of the final version of the manuscript and expressed their consent to publication; 

—  give credit to the authors of cited documents by providing correct bibliographic references to the sources;

—  if needed, provide access to the raw data, which has relation to the work, both at all stages of the publication process and after the paper has been published; 

—  never submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication;

—  refrain from making defamatory statements in their articles, which could be construed as impugning any person's reputation;

—  indicate correctly all sources of financial support, particularly if these could have had an impact on the research results, their interpretation, the Reviewers’ decisions, or provoke any conflict-of-interest situations;

—  inform the Editor-in-Chief about any errors that have been revealed in their work, at any stage of the publication process;

—  disclose any potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest.

6. Protection of personal information

In their work, the Editorial board is guided by the RF legislation with regard to confidentiality issues, including the RF Federal Law No. 152-FZ “On Personal Data” passed July 27, 2006 and the RF Federal Law No. 149-FZ “On the Information, Informational Technologies and the Protection of Information” passed July 27, 2006. Editors must always protect the confidentiality of personal information obtained during professional interactions. If necessary, the Editor-in-Chief is entitled to require written informed consent for publication from people who may recognize themselves or be identified by others (e.g. in reports on fieldworks).

7. Relationship with the Founder

The Vestnik Arheologii, Antropologii i Etnografii journal has been founded by the Federal Research Centre Tyumen Scientific Centre of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Relations between the Editorial board and its Founder are based on the principle of editorial independence. The Editorial board makes publication decisions solely on the basis of the quality and suitability of the paper for the Journal, without any intervention from the Founder. The position of the Founder cannot be considered as a basis for interfering in the functions and duties of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board. Editors resist any action that might compromise the editorial independence.

8. Intellectual property

Intellectual property issues in the Journal are governed by the RF legislation and respective international norms and agreements.