Publication Ethics

It is essential for all entities involved in publishing to agree on ethical norms. The international scientific journal "Defense and Science" recognizes and respects the rules of ethics.Publishing Ethics fully shares the publishing principles and practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which is based on full adherence to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics https://publicationethics.org/. 

Articles submitted to the journal must be original and unpublished, and must not be in the process of being reviewed at the same time, or have editorial commitments to any other publication.

 

General

 

1. This Code defines the ethical norms and rules of conduct of the International Editorial Board, Editor-in-Chief, Reviewer and Author of the Journal "Defense and Science";

2. The goal of publishing ethics, based on moral responsibility, is for the journal "Defense and Science" to establish trust in society towards highly qualified scientific publications;

3. Publishing ethics are created based on the principles of fairness, objectivity, confidentiality and transparency;

4. This publishing ethics is developing and improving based on the requirements of modernity; 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board - make decisions regarding articles to be published in the journal.They are assisted in making this decision by reviewers, who must ensure all conditions so that the article review process is conducted objectively, according to a well-established protocol, and in compliance with all applicable scientific regulations and principles. 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board together must ensure that all published materials comply with internationally recognized ethical guidelines.  

Duties of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board 

Integrity 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board must perform their work honestly and conscientiously, which instills trust in the user and represents the main value of the journal; 

The Editor-in-Chief and members of the Editorial Board consider any violation of academic integrity unacceptable and deny the presence of signs of such violations in any work. 

Fairness The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board decide on publication based on the scientific and intellectual value of the work, not the author's position,race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality, and political opinions; 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board ensure the storage and protection of submitted works until their publication. 

Confidentiality 

The editor-in-chief and the editorial board must ensure strict confidentiality of the article and the communication that takes place between it and the author. Only the decision on publication may be made public; 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board are obliged not to provide any information about the submitted work to other, outside parties. The author(s) of the article will be informed only of the reviewer(s)' conclusion and, if necessary notes. The identity of the reviewer(s) remains confidential. 

Authors' telephone numbers and email addresses will be used only for the purposes of the journal and not for any other purpose or by any other party. 

Conflict of interest 

Unpublished materials submitted for review should not be used in the publisher's own research without the written consent of the author(s). 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board evaluate submitted manuscripts based on their scientific content, regardless of the authors' ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious beliefs, or political philosophy.

 The Editor-in-Chief and members of the Editorial Board undertake not to use the author's ideas and research results for personal gain.

 The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board refrain from reviewing papers in which they have a conflict of interest arising from competing, collaborative or other relationships/affiliations with any authors, companies or institutions associated with the works; instead, they ask another member of the editorial board to review the manuscript. 

Publishing Decisions 

The editor-in-chief of the journal, together with the editorial board, is responsible for making the final decision on the publication of submitted articles.The editor-in-chief must be guided by the basic principles of the journal's editorial policy and the requirements of applicable legislation to avoid defamation, copyright infringement, and accusations of plagiarism. 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board ensure that all submitted manuscripts considered for publication are reviewed by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. The editor-in-chief sends the reviewer's comments and notes to the author, without disclosing the reviewer's identity. If necessary, the Editor-in-Chief, after consulting with the Editorial Board, presents established and reasoned evidence regarding the content of the work and its scientific values; 

In the event of serious errors being discovered in an article, an immediate response will be issued, which may result in the article being removed from the journal. 

If the editor or members of the editorial board have doubts about the authenticity or ethical correctness of a manuscript submitted to the journal, its publication should be postponed until such doubts are resolved. 

The Editor-in-Chief, in agreement with the Editorial Board, will promptly respond to errors or misconduct by any interested party (including authors and reviewers) during the publication process.These can range from minor errors to serious violations. To deal with such situations, the editor-in-chief, together with the editorial board, uses guidelines published by the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE). 

Papers submitted by members of the editorial board must undergo the same standard peer review process as other authors. Editorial board members do not participate in the evaluation of their own manuscripts. 

The editorial board protects the anonymity of reviewers. 

In case of detection of a violation in the work(s) published in the journal, any person has the right to contact the editorial board of the journal by e-mail: defenseandscience@eta.edu.ge and request an investigation of the issue and appropriate response.The Editorial Board is obliged to consider all such applications within a reasonable time and to inform the applicant of a reasoned response. The author(s) are given the opportunity to present their own explanation of the application.If a violation is confirmed, the editorial team makes a decision on a response. 

Reviewer Responsibilities 

1. Reviewers assist the Editor-in-Chief in obtaining feedback on the publication and, through acceptable communication with the author in a publishing format (while respecting the above-mentioned confidentiality), may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

2. The reviewer, when evaluating an article, clearly justifies his or her position and is independent of any influence or pressure. He or she evaluates all important details and is not influenced by private or other persons' interests;

3. The evaluation must be based on the principle of objectivity. Personal criticism of the author is not allowed. The position regarding the work must be expressed only on the basis of arguments;

4. A review should resemble a creative dialogue with the author, where both parties are equal;

5. The issue presented in the review may be controversial, however, this does not deprive the reviewer of the right to express his/her opinion, which must be supported by appropriate arguments and based on the main and essential episodes and key moments of the reviewed text;

6. The reviewer is required to adhere to the ethical norms of this rule and maintain goodwill even in the event of a negative review;

7. When evaluating a work, the reviewer should not use words such as: "It's not good," "It's unique," "It's special," "It's terrible," "It's pointless," "It's too good to be true," etc.;

8. The reviewer should avoid demonstrating personal bias and should focus on showing the positive and negative aspects of the text under review;

9. When using the information obtained during the evaluation of the article, the reviewer must maintain confidentiality and must not use the information obtained from the unpublished article in any way for personal purposes or for any reason that would conflict with the interests of the author or harm the goals and objectives of the journal;

10. The reviewer shall not pass on the article to other reviewers without the permission of the editor-in-chief;

11.The reviewer's identity is confidential even if the review is of a negative or recommendatory nature;

12.The reviewer should note all important sources that the author has not used. He should also observe the citations used that the author has not properly cited;attention should be paid to whether there is any substantial overlap in the works of other scholars on a similar issue.

13. A reviewer refuses to review a work if:

  • he or she can guess the author's identity from well-known phrases and ideas used in the text;
  • The submitted work is very close to the reviewer's research topic, which makes the reviewer's assessment subjective;
  • There are any other circumstances of conflict of interest (indicate which ones);

14. If during the evaluation process the reviewer discovers any inconsistencies, such as plagiarism, data falsification, double publication, etc., he/she shall inform the editor-in-chief;

15. If a reviewer is unable to review the paper within the deadline proposed by the editorial board or the subject of the research exceeds his/her competence and he/she considers himself/herself unqualified, he/she must inform the editor-in-chief of the journal as soon as possible. 

Author's duties 

1. Voters are required to adhere to ethical rules, which include proper citation of the author(s), proper use of sources, and the exclusion of falsification and fabrication.Proper attribution of persons involved in the development of the work, respect for personal data, and other issues;

2. The author must convince the editorial board that his work is the result of original research;

3. In case of using ideas and quotes from other authors, the paper must be compiled in accordance with the mandatory citation style of the journal "Defense and Science";

4. The author should not submit a work that has already been published to another journal, or send a work published in another publication to the editorial office of the journal "Defense and Science";

5. The author must protect against any manifestation of plagiarism, which is considered unethical and dishonest behavior; in addition, the author takes into account the journal's plagiarism prevention and academic activity principles;

6. In the event of plagiarism discovered before publication, the author will be notified of the discovery of plagiarism and the editorial board will request an explanation within 5 days;

7. The Editor-in-Chief, in agreement with the Editorial Board, is authorized, after the author's explanation, to set a reasonable deadline of no more than 5 working days for correcting the error;

8. If the author refuses to provide an explanation, or the author's explanation fails to disprove the existence of plagiarism, the work will not be considered for publication;

9. In such a case, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board reserve the right to finally refuse to publish future papers submitted by this author in the journal "Defense and Science" or prohibit its publication for a period of up to 3 years, taking into account the severity of the violation;

10. In the case of relatively minor plagiarism, the basis for the author's liability may be, for example, the researcher's inexperience or explanation of an honest mistake, as well as self-plagiarism and negligent plagiarism;

11. The author of the plagiarism shall be notified in writing of any decision taken;

12. The author may request a reasoned written response from the editor-in-chief regarding the measures taken against him. 

Prevention of plagiarism 

The journal's editorial policy involves recognizing and upholding the principles of research ethics and integrity; the editorial team checks each submitted article in the anti-plagiarism program and subjects it to the rules of blinded peer review. 

Prohibition of plagiarism 

A. Plagiarism is not allowed in papers published in the journal, the author(s) must ensure accurate and correct reference to the source of the information provided in the paper;

B. All papers submitted for publication in the journal are checked for plagiarism in the special plagiarism program Turnitin;

C. Matches detected by the program are individually evaluated by the editor and their accuracy is determined;

D. If the program detects more than 10% exact matches, the author will be notified via email at defenseandscience@eta.edu.ge about the detection of plagiarism and will be required to provide an explanation and correction, for which no more than 5 (five) working days will be allocated; If the author refuses to provide an explanation, the paper will not be considered for publication. 

Other provisions 

1.    In the event of a violation discovered in a work published in a journal, any person has the right to contact the editor-in-chief of the journal and request that the issue be investigated and an appropriate response taken.The application must contain detailed information about the violation (author of the work, title, type of violation, justification).

2.    The Editor-in-Chief is obliged to consider all such applications within a reasonable time frame together with the Editorial Board and to provide a reasoned response to the applicant. The author(s) shall be informed of the application and given the opportunity to present their explanations.

3.In the event that suspected or proven scientific misconduct or plagiarism is detected, after reviewing the explanations of the author(s),if the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board believe that a published work violates the journal's rules, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board make a decision collectively.In more serious cases, it may be possible to completely remove the article in question from the relevant issue.  

Self-archiving

The journal "Defense and Science" allows authors to store their work in repositories or on its website after the presentation of the issue in which their work was published, in order to facilitate its wide dissemination. 

Archiving

  • Works published in the journal are stored in the “Iverieli” fund of the National Digital Library of the Parliament of Georgia
  • To ensure the preservation and accessibility of all articles published in the journal, the articles are stored on the open access multidisciplinary publishing platform Openjournals.ge.
  • The editor ensures digital storage of access to the contents of the journal on the website of the Library of the Georgian National Defence Academy named after David Agmashenebeli LEPL https://library.eta.edu.ge/#/home.

Article processing fees All journal expenses are covered by LEPL-David Agmashenebeli Georgian National Defense Academy.