EDITORIAL POLICY Hits: 37
The review process

General Provisions

1.1. These Regulations establish the procedure for peer review of articles submitted for publication to the academic and professional journal Living Standards of the Population in the Regions of Russia (hereinafter referred to as the Journal), in accordance with Russian and international standards of publishing practice.

1.2. The purpose of manuscript peer review is to ensure the Journal’s high academic standards through the publication of original and completed research by scholars and practitioners working in the field of living standards and quality of life.

1.3. Manuscripts are eligible for peer review provided that they comply with the Journal’s manuscript preparation requirements and have successfully passed an originality check using the Antiplagiat system. The manuscript preparation requirements are published in both the print and electronic versions of the Journal and are also available on the Journal’s website: vcugjournal.ru. Reference and informational materials are not subject to peer review.

1.4. Manuscripts constitute the intellectual property of their authors and are regarded as confidential information that must not be disclosed during the peer-review process.

Peer Review Procedure

2.1. Manuscript peer review is conducted according to the double-blind (anonymous) peer-review model: reviewers are not provided with information concerning the authors of the manuscript under review, and authors are not provided with information concerning the reviewers. All communication between reviewers and authors is conducted through the Editorial Office of the Journal.

2.2. Peer reviewers may include members of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council of the Journal, as well as external experts with sufficient research experience in the academic field addressed by the article and holding the academic degree of Candidate of Sciences or Doctor of Sciences. An author or co-author of the manuscript under review, as well as heads or employees of the organisational unit in which the author or co-authors work, may not act as reviewers, with the exception of the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, provided that the Editor-in-Chief is neither an author nor a co-author of the manuscript concerned.

2.3. The manuscript is sent electronically to two reviewers (or in printed form at the reviewer’s request), together with the approved review form and a covering letter. No information concerning the authors is provided. Reviewers are informed that the manuscript constitutes the intellectual property of its authors and contains confidential information that must not be disclosed during the peer-review process.

2.4. Manuscripts are assessed by reviewers for compliance with the criteria established by the Editorial Office of the Journal. The peer-review process should not exceed 10 days from the date on which the manuscript is received by the reviewer.

2.5. The results of peer review provide the basis for the Editorial Office’s decision either to accept the manuscript for publication, with or without revisions by the authors, or to reject it.

2.6. Authors are informed of the results of peer review without disclosure of any information concerning the reviewer. Authors are entitled to submit to the Editorial Office a reasoned statement of disagreement with the results of peer review. A manuscript may be subjected to a further round of peer review.

2.7. A manuscript requiring revision is returned to the authors by the Editorial Office together with the reviewer’s critical comments. Authors are given up to 10 days to complete the revisions. If the authors fail to meet the revision deadline, refuse to revise the manuscript, or fail to address substantive comments, the Editorial Office reserves the right to reject the manuscript. The revised article may be returned to the same reviewer or submitted to another reviewer at the discretion of the Editorial Office. The final decision on the revised article is made at a meeting of the Editorial Board on the basis of the peer-review results.

2.8. Reviewers may be asked to assess the amendments made to the manuscript or to prepare a new version of their review based on the revised manuscript. The final decision on the revised article is made at a meeting of the Editorial Board on the basis of the peer-review results.

2.9. The Editorial Office reserves the right to edit the manuscript subject to agreement with the author.

2.10. Peer review of manuscripts submitted to the Journal is carried out free of charge.

2.11. All reviews are retained by the Editorial Office in written form for a period of five years.

Requirements for the Content of Peer Reviews

3.1. A manuscript review shall include:

  1. a written assessment of the manuscript against the established criteria;

  2. an assessment of the manuscript using a scoring system;

  3. a final recommendation.

3.2. The manuscript is assessed according to the following parameters:

  • relevance of the problem under consideration;

  • formulation of the research hypothesis;

  • academic novelty of the research findings;

  • methodological and educational value;

  • practical application, where such application has already taken place.

In addition, the reviewer shall indicate in the concluding section whether the content corresponds to the stated topic; the relevance of the study; the appropriateness of the theoretical and methodological approaches and research instruments used; the quality of the empirical material, including its novelty and reliability as supported by appropriate sources; the validity of the conclusions and their correspondence to the research objectives; the quality of the abstract, including its completeness and concision; the characteristics of the sources used, including the use of recent academic publications by Russian specialists on the stated topic published within the preceding five years and the use of international sources; and the academic and/or practical significance of the study.

3.3. The written assessment of the manuscript should be concise and clear, while critical comments should be well-founded and properly substantiated.

3.4. The score-based assessment of the manuscript is carried out in accordance with the table contained in the appendix entitled “Review Form”.

3.5. The overall recommendation is provided in the final section of the review. The expert shall select one of the following three recommendations corresponding to the results of the peer review:

  • accept the manuscript for publication — the manuscript fully complies with the established criteria;

  • accept the manuscript for publication subject to revision — the manuscript does not fully comply with the established criteria;

  • reject the manuscript — the manuscript does not comply with the established criteria.

3.6. The review shall be submitted to the Editorial Office of the Journal either in typed hard-copy form or electronically from the reviewer’s personal email address.

3.7. The review shall be signed by the expert, with the reviewer’s full name, academic degree, academic title, position held, and date indicated. The signature must be certified at the reviewer’s place of employment.

3.8. The Editorial Office undertakes to provide copies of reviews to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation upon receipt of an appropriate request addressed to the Journal.

Open Access Policy

The Journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that free access to research results promotes the wider global exchange of knowledge.

Full-text electronic versions of articles and all other published materials are made freely available on the Journal’s official website. Materials published on the Journal’s website may be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched, linked to in full text, used for indexing, entered as data into software, or otherwise used for lawful purposes without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inherent in gaining access to the Internet itself, provided that proper reference is made to the Journal’s website.

The Journal’s materials are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Preprint and Postprint Policy

When submitting an article, the author must confirm that the manuscript has neither been previously published nor accepted for publication by another academic journal.

When citing an article published in Living Standards of the Population in the Regions of Russia, the Editorial Office requests that the article’s full bibliographic details be provided.

The article must be confirmed by email by all authors. Any change in the authorship of the article after the manuscript has been submitted to the Editorial Office requires the approval of the Journal’s Editorial Board.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest Policy

Unpublished data obtained from manuscripts submitted for consideration may not be used in personal research without the written consent of the author or authors. Information or ideas obtained during the peer-review process that may confer potential advantages must remain confidential and may not be used for personal gain.

Reviewers shall not participate in the consideration of manuscripts where conflicts of interest arise from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or interactions with any of the authors, companies, or other organisations associated with the submitted work.

Textual Borrowing and Plagiarism

When considering an article, the Editorial Board may check the manuscript using the Antiplagiat system. Where extensive textual borrowing is detected, the Editorial Office shall act in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; official website: publicationethics.org).

Article Retraction Policy

The Journal’s retraction policy — that is, the withdrawal or retraction of a published article — is implemented by the Editorial Office in order to alert readers to cases of duplicate publication or self-plagiarism, where authors present the same data in several publications; plagiarism; submission of unreliable data; or concealment of conflicts of interest that may have affected the interpretation of the data or recommendations concerning their use.

Retraction is a mechanism for correcting the published record and informing readers about publications containing serious deficiencies or erroneous data, including data that cannot be considered reliable. The publication of such data by an author may result either from an honest error or from deliberate misconduct.

On the basis of the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Editorial Office of the Journal applies the following policy to the retraction of previously published articles.

Grounds for Retraction

An article may be retracted on the following grounds:

  • plagiarism is identified in the publication;

  • the article has been duplicated in several publications;

  • falsification or fabrication is identified in the work, for example manipulation of research data;

  • serious errors are identified in the work, such as incorrect interpretation of the results, calling its academic value into question;

  • the authorship is incorrect, including the inclusion of individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship;

  • a conflict of interest or other violation of publication ethics has been concealed;

  • the article has been republished without the author’s consent.

Initiation of the Retraction Procedure

The retraction procedure may be initiated on the basis of:

  • a request from the author of the article;

  • a request from the editorial office of another journal;

  • a request from third parties, including possible parties to a conflict of interest, accompanied by evidence of violations of research ethics by the author of an article published in the Journal;

  • a request from external organisations or institutions, for example the Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Counteracting the Falsification of Scientific Research;

  • identification by the Journal’s Editorial Board of evidence that the authors of an article have violated research ethics.

Article Retraction Procedure

1. Upon receipt of a request from an author or another individual, organisation, or institution providing evidence of a violation of research ethics in an article, the Editorial Board of the Journal shall appoint a commission to investigate the case, taking into account all available facts and the possibilities for verifying compliance with publication ethics.

2. Where a decision is made to retract an article, the Editorial Office shall record in the minutes of the meeting the reason for the retraction and the date of retraction. Where plagiarism has been identified, the sources from which material was borrowed and/or the source of information confirming the existence of plagiarism shall also be specified.

The article and its bibliographic record shall remain available on the Journal’s website as part of the relevant issue. However, the electronic version of the article shall be marked RETRACTED, together with the date of retraction. The same notice shall appear alongside the article in the table of contents of the relevant issue.

3. The Editorial Office shall not physically remove retracted articles from the electronic version of the Journal or from the Journal’s online archive, in order to preserve the integrity and correct structure of the relevant issue.

4. The Council on Publication Ethics of ANRI shall be provided with the relevant minutes for inclusion of the information in the unified database of retracted articles. The minutes shall specify the date of the meeting, the participants, the results of the review, the reasoned decision, and the retraction request form.

5. Information concerning retracted articles shall be submitted to academic information databases, including the Scientific Electronic Library (eLIBRARY), CyberLeninka, and other databases to which the Editorial Office provides information about published issues of the Journal. Retracted articles and references to them shall be excluded from the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) and shall not be taken into account in the calculation of bibliometric indicators.

6. In cases involving serious reputational or moral harm to parties affected by a conflict of interest, information concerning a violation of research ethics may be forwarded to the author’s place of employment.

7. The Editorial Office reserves the right to make an independent decision regarding any further cooperation with the authors of retracted articles. Such measures may include complete termination of cooperation, suspension of cooperation for a specified period, or the appointment of additional expert review of manuscripts in the event of renewed cooperation.