Editorial ethics

General Provisions

The editorial board of the scientific journal "Znak: problemnoe pole mediaobrazovanija" adheres to the ethical norms and standards accepted by the international scientific community as best practice guidelines. In particular, the editorial board follows the principles formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The editorial board also complies with all legal requirements regarding copyright as stipulated in the legislation of the Russian Federation.

The editorial board declares that its decisions are not influenced by the founders of the journal – Chelyabinsk State University, Marina V. Zagidullina and Boris N. Kirshin.

Editor and Editorial Board

The scientific management of the journal "Znak: problemnoe pole mediaobrazovanija" is conducted by the editorial board and editorial team, led by the editor-in-chief, who is elected from among the most competent scholars in the journal's scientific field.

Information about the current editor-in-chief and the current composition of the editorial board and editorial team is available on the journal's website under the "About Us / Editorial" section.

In addition, the editorial team fully supports the fundamental ethical principles of working with scientific information:

• They evaluate all submitted materials impartially, thoughtfully, and objectively.

• In their work with materials, they are guided solely by criteria of originality, scientific significance, relevance of texts, and the reliability of the data presented in them.

• They assess the content of manuscripts regardless of the race, gender, religious beliefs, origin, citizenship, social status, or political preferences of the authors.

• They keep unpublished data, information, or ideas obtained from submitted manuscripts confidential, do not use them for personal purposes, and do not disclose them to third parties without the author's written consent.

• They exclude any conflict of interest among all participants in the publication process: authors, reviewers, editorial representatives, and other members of the editorial team (if reviewers, editorial representatives, or other members of the editorial team have any relationships with the author that could influence the decision regarding the publication of the manuscript, they must declare a conflict of interest to the editorial board and be excluded from the process of working on the article).

• They do not accept rewards from authors in any explicit or implicit form.

• They combat plagiarism by all available means.

• They take appropriate measures in case of ethical claims regarding manuscripts they have reviewed or published materials, diligently and openly investigating all such cases.

The editorial team of the journal "Znak: problemnoe pole mediaobrazovanija" conducts checks for plagiarism and self-plagiarism on any submitted material using the "Antiplagiat" system and refuses to publish a text if it contains a significant amount of unauthorized borrowing.

The editorial team monitors compliance with copyright by authors of articles published in the journal, strictly adhering to the provisions of the Licensing Agreement.

The editorial team of the scientific journal "Znak: problemnoe pole mediaobrazovanija" declares that there are no abuses or conflicts of interest in the performance of its duties.

Authors

The author (or collective of authors) is guided by the following principles when preparing and submitting a manuscript for publication:

• The author bears primary responsibility for the novelty and reliability of the results of the scientific research. Deliberately erroneous or falsified statements are unacceptable.

• The author personally participates in the research on which the article is based, as well as in the preparation of the article's text; the author agrees to confirm the authenticity of their participation by methods commonly accepted in scientific practice.

• The author guarantees the originality of the research results presented in the manuscript submitted for publication.

• Fragments or statements borrowed by the author must be properly attributed to the original author and source. Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) in any form, including unformatted quotes, paraphrasing, or claiming rights to the results of others' research, is unacceptable.

• Co-authors of the article are individuals who have made significant contributions to the conception of the work, its development, execution, or interpretation of the presented research; it is unacceptable to include individuals who did not participate in the work among the authors. All authors approve the final version of the work and consent to its submission for publication; they equally share responsibility for its content.

• The manuscript acknowledges the contributions of all individuals who participated in or influenced the research. The authors provide references to publications that were significant for the development and execution of the presented work. Data obtained privately are not used without the written permission of the original source's author.

• Submitting the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal or submitting an already published article is a violation of ethical norms and grounds for withdrawing the material from consideration.

• If a significant error or inaccuracy made by the author is discovered in the article during its review or after publication, it must be promptly reported to the journal's editorial office for correction or rectification.

• The author indicates their place of work and any funding sources involved in preparing the article (if applicable).

During the submission process, the author must confirm that the article has not been published or accepted for publication in another scientific journal.

Reviewers

The reviewer conducting the expert evaluation of the authors' materials is guided by the following principles:

• The manuscript received for review is considered a confidential document that must not be shared for review or discussion with third parties who do not have authorization from the editorial office.

• The evaluation of the material is impartial. The review serves as an objective and reasoned assessment of the presented research results, containing motivated critical comments regarding the quality and clarity of the presented material, its relevance to the journal's profile, novelty, and reliability of the results. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. The recommendations of the reviewers serve as the basis for the editorial board's final decision on the publication of the article.

• Unpublished data obtained from submitted manuscripts are not used by the reviewer for personal purposes.

• A reviewer who believes they do not possess sufficient qualifications to evaluate the manuscript or cannot remain objective (due to a conflict of interest with the author) may request to be excluded from the review process for that manuscript.

Complaints and Appeals

In all cases of conflict situations between authors and reviewers, or in other cases, interested parties should contact the editor-in-chief to resolve the situation. If a conflict arises between the editor-in-chief and an interested party, that party may contact the journal's editorial board directly by sending an email to the journal (mediaZnak@gmail.com) with "Appeal to the Editorial Board" in the subject line and outlining the nature of their complaint in the email. In such cases, a meeting of the editorial board will be convened, organized by the journal's responsible secretary (using video conferencing tools). The outcome of the complaint review will be communicated to the complainant. If the outcome of the complaint review does not satisfy the complainant, they may seek legal recourse in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and follow COPE's recommendations for addressing this body regarding conflict resolution.

Conflict of Interest

Each author is required to declare the presence or absence of a conflict of interest in the content of their article.

The responsible secretary, when submitting articles for review, adheres to the principle of excluding conflicts of interest.

Journal Policy on Data Sharing and Reproducibility

The journal encourages authors to include links to datasets as supplementary materials that demonstrate the results presented in their articles. Authors may explain any refusal due to confidentiality or security concerns. Authors are required to reference any data from other parties that they use in their article. In certain cases, reviewers may request access to databases, although a reference will not be provided in the final text of the article for confidentiality or security reasons.

Journal Policy on Ethical Oversight

Compliance with ethical standards according to COPE guidelines is ensured by the journal's editor-in-chief, who oversees the transparency and fairness of the actions of the editorial board, editorial team, and reviewers, as well as the consistency of the editorial actions in case of conflict situations. The editorial team strictly adheres to ethical principles in all stages of the acceptance, review, and publication of authors' articles, as well as in communication with authors and other participants in the journal's publication process.

Journal Policy on Intellectual Property

The editorial team is guided by the principles of Russian Federation legislation regarding copyright compliance. Articles are published under the Creative Commons license "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives" (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International.

The editorial team pays close attention to issues related to intellectual property, collaborating with authors and other journals to resolve cases of potential violations of laws and agreements regarding intellectual property protection:

• Utilizes plagiarism detection tools in submitted articles (an extended version of the antiplagiat.ru system is used for all articles);

• Supports authors whose copyright has been violated or those who have become victims of plagiarism;

• Is open to collaboration with authors on copyright protection and pursuing violators (for example, by including a mechanism for retracting articles).

Post-Publication Discussion and Corrections

The journal's editorial team encourages discussions of published articles, including through the tools available on the elibrary.ru website, where a mirror of the journal's site is hosted (https://www.elibrary.ru/title_about_new.asp?id=30804&langid=2).

In the event that errors are identified in articles based on claims from authors or other interested parties, corrections will be made by publishing them in the next issue of the journal in the "Errata" section, along with an apology to readers.

If post-publication violations of copyright or other rights are identified, the article may be retracted.

Retraction

Retraction of materials published in the journal is carried out after a decision by the editorial board at the request of the author or other interested parties (in cases where incorrect data or research results are identified) or if the editorial board discovers incorrect citations, duplicate publications, conflicts of interest, or for other reasons deemed by the editorial board to be significant violations of publication ethics for scientific articles. The decision made will be documented in a retraction protocol.

In case of a conflict of interest, we ask authors and reviewers to report it to the editorial email address mediaZnak@gmail.com.