AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The purpose of the journal is to reflect and consider the fundamental and practically significant issues within biology, achievements within theoretical and methodological biology and biomedicine, and opportunities to apply scientific results in rational nature management, biotechnology and bionics. The journal furthers the development of fundamental knowledge of biological phenomena and processes and their correlations in nature.
 
SECTIONS
Physiology and Сell Biology
Genetics, Microbiology and Molecular Biology
Ecology and Conservancy
Taxonomy
Biochemistry
Genetics and Molecular Biology
Biotechnology and Microbiology
Zoology and Botany
Zoology
Botany
Reviews
Book Review
Chronicle, Information
Jubilees
Outstanding Scientists
To the Memory of Scientist
 
PUBLICATION FREQUENCY
3 issues per year.
 
OPEN ACCESS POLICY
All articles are available for reading and downloading in 3 months after publication.
 
ARCHIVING
National Library of Belarus
Belarusian State University
Electronic Library System of the Publishing House «Lan»
 
PEER-REVIEW
A blind and/or double-blind peer-review method is a mandatory process for all scientific manuscripts submitted to the editorial staff of «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Biology».
Order of peer-review
1. The scientific manuscript submitted to the editorial board of the journal is reviewed by the editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief or executive secretary for compliance with the scope of the journal and requirements for the article design. In the case of compliance with indicated requirements the manuscript is sent to the specialists for review.
2. The peer-review is performed by the members of the editorial board, who are mostly specialized in the scope of the article. All reviewers are recognized specialists in the scope of reviewed materials and have publications related to the subject of the reviewed article for recent three years. The editorial staff has the right to engage external reviewers (doctor of science or PhD, including practitioners). The specialists from the institutions and branches, where the work is performed, are not engaged.
3. The process of reviewing is kept confidential. The reviewers are informed that manuscripts submitted to them are private property of authors and are not a subject of disclosure. The reviewers and also the editorial staff have no right to use knowledge about the content of the article for their own benefit before its publication. The reviewers and the editorial staff are not allowed to make copies of the article for their own needs. The reviewers should not give a part of the manuscript to other person for review without advanced permission of the editorial board. The disclosure is possible only in the case of claim for unreliability or falsification of materials, in all other cases non-disclosure is obligatory.
4. The deadlines of pee-review:
а) the editor-in-chief of the journal reviews the manuscript submitted for publication within five workdays beginning from the date of receiving the manuscript by the editorial staff. Then the author is informed about the decision made by the chief editor;
b) review of the manuscript by experts is performed within twenty workdays from the date of its submission from the editor-in-chief;
c) with the approval of the editorial board and the reviewer, manuscript review may be performed within the shorter period as to include the manuscript into the coming issue of the journal.
5. Content of review:
а) the review should contain the expert analysis of the manuscript according to the following characteristics: accordance of the matter of the article with its title; relevance of the research issue; scientific novelty of obtained results; reasonability of publication of the article according to the previously published literature on the matter; presentation of the data (writing, style, used categories and constructions);
b) the reviewer is obliged to provide recommendations to the author and the editorial staff on article adaptation. Reviewer’s remarks and recommendations should by critical, objective, and worthwhile for scientific and methodological aspects of the article;
c) in the conclusion the review should contain one of the followings decisions:
– to recommend the manuscript for publication in public sources;
– to recommend the manuscript for publication in public sources after technical revision;
– to recommend the manuscript for publication in public sources after the remarks suggested by the reviewers have been agreed with the author, with the following repeated review by the same reviewer;
– to recommend to reject the publication of the manuscript in public sources due to its nonconformance with the requirements for scientific level of the journal.
6. If the reviewer makes decision to recommend the manuscript for publication in public sources after the remarks have been agreed, the authors should make all necessary corrections in the final version of the manuscript and submit the final text with the cover letter (response for the reviewer). In this case the date of submission to the editorial board is the date when the revised manuscript has been returned. If the reviewer makes the same decision for the repeated review (i.e. impossibility to accept the paper without revision), the manuscript is considered to be rejected and is no more the subject of review by the editorial board of the journal.
7. For overall negative assessment of the manuscript, the reviewer should make a very compelling argument for his conclusion.
8. The editorial board makes the final decision on article publication. The author is informed about the decision within five workdays (by phone or e-mail). The editorial board sends the review of the manuscript to authors in electronic format without the signature and indication of the surname, occupation and affiliation of reviewers in a mandatory manner. If the manuscript is rejected, the copies of review and reasonable rejection are sent to the author.
9. After peer-review the articles allowed to publication are edited and made up. PDF-file of the article is sent to the corresponding author for agreement. During two-three days the author should agree the article with the editorial staff. If it is impossible to come to an agreement (the editorial staff and the author cannot agree on the point in issue or the author doesn’t contact) the editorial staff is allowed to reject the article or with author’s agreement to include it in the next issue so as not to slow down the publication of the current issue.
10. The editorial board does not retain rejected manuscripts.
11. The manuscripts accepted for publication are not returned. The manuscripts with negative response from the reviewer are not published and also are not returned to the author.
12. The originals of reviews are retained in the editorial office of the journal for five years from the date of its approval by the reviewer.
13. The editorial staff has the right to send the articles (partly or completely) to foreign organizations, indexing the scientific publication and to post the articles on journal’s website.
14. The order for manuscripts’ publication is determined according to the editorial plan of journal issue.

 
INDEXING
Articles in «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Biology» are indexed by several systems:
Russian Scientific Citation Index (RSCI) (elibrary.ru)
GoogleScholar
 
PUBLISCATION ETHICS
All participants of publishing processes, i. e. authors, editors, reviewers, publishers, are responsible for observing publication ethics rules, stated below. The editorial board monitors the fulfillment of ethics requirements based on the guidelines prepared by international specialized organizations, associations and publishers, as well as the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASEP). The editorial staff of «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Biology» follows the main standards, developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the United Kingdom, as well as the declaration of «Ethical Principles of Scientific Publications», adopted by ASEP.

Author responsibility
1. The author submits materials, which have not been previously published, for review.
2. The author does not submit the same article for review to different journals.
3. All co-authors agree to the submission of their article to the journal.
4. The list of authors includes only persons who have made significant contributions to the research. Guest or gift authorship is not allowed.
5. If participation of contributing persons was insufficient to guarantee their identification as authors, they should be named in the section «Acknowledgments».
6. The author should obtain the consent from each person named in the section «Acknowledgments» because an editor can verify the information.
7. Authors should appoint a corresponding author who is responsible for communicating with the editorial staff.
8. The author should be familiar with the editorial policy of «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Biology» before materials are to be submitted, i.e. rules of correspondence with the reviewer and editorial staff, publication ethics, author guidelines and restrictions.
9. If the author sends the article that is under review to other journal, the author should give official notification to the editorial staff to recall the article. All co-authors give their consent to recall the article.
10. The author should guarantee that the peer-reviewed original article doesn't contain plagiarism.
11. The author should avoid duplicate publication or self-plagiarism.
12. The author should assure that the citations in the submitted article are correct.
13. The author cites his or her previous works correctly as to prevent self-plagiarism in the manuscript and avoid artificial increase of publications’ volume (salami-slicing).
14. If the author uses images or tables published in other editions, the author should refer to the edition.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. The author properly corresponds with the reviewer through the editor and responds to comments and remarks, if any.
18. The author, who is acting as a contact with the journal, informs all other co-authors of all changes and suggestions from the editorial staff, and does not make any decisions regarding the article alone without the written agreement of all co-authors.
19. If necessary, the authors either correct the data presented in the article, or refuse them.
20. The author should specify all funding sources (state, commercial and other).
21. Author should keep the correspondence with each other and with the editorial staff secret.
22. The author informs the editorial staff of a potential conflict of interest.

Editor responsibility
1. The editor of «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Biology» is solely and independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published, the editor is often working in conjunction with the relevant society (for society-owned or sponsored journals). The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers should always underwrite such decisions.
2. The editors make fair and objective decisions, regardless of any commercial considerations and provide fair and efficient process for the independent review.
3. The 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.
4. The editors do not work with articles for which they have conflict of interest.
5. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained during peer-reviewing must be kept confidential and shouldn’t be used for personal gain.
6. The editors resolve conflict situations occurring during the editorial process, as well as use all available means to resolve these situations.
7. The editors of the journal publish information concerning corrections, rebuttals, and review articles, if it is necessary.
8. The editor, who provides convincing evidence that the substance or conclusions of a published paper are erroneous, should coordinate with the publisher (and/or society) to promote the prompt publication of corrections, retraction, expression of concern, or other relevant notes.
9. The editors of the journal do not publish the final version of the article without the consent of the authors.
10. The editorial staff can abridge and edit the articles, make insignificant stylistic and nomenclature and formal corrections without author’s consent. The editorial staff is responsible for observing of orthographic and punctuation norms.
11. If the article is revised by the author during the processing before publication, the submission date is the date of submission of the final text.

Reviewer responsibility
1. The reviewer evaluates his or her own availability before the examination of the manuscript and accepts materials for review only if the reviewer is able to allow for sufficient time as to ensure quality work.
2. The reviewer notifies the editorial staff of any conflict of interest (if any) before article review is to be started.
3. The reviewers should identify a relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement (an observation, derivation, or argument) that had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
4. The reviewer does not make conclusions about the quality of the article on the basis of subjective data, e.g. the personal relationship to the author, gender, age, religion, etc.
5. The reviewer does not send information about the article or any of the data from the article to any third party.
6. The reviewer does not use the information obtained from the article for any personal and/or commercial purposes.

Publisher responsibility
1. The publisher should develop codes of practice and inculcate industry standards for best practice in ethical matters, errors and retractions.
2. The publisher not only supports scientific communication and invests in the process, but also is responsible for complying with all current guidelines and standards for publishing scientific works.
3. The publisher does not affect the editorial policy of the journal.
4. The publisher provides legal support to the journal, if necessary.
5. The publisher provides for the timely release of issues of the journal.
6. The publisher publishes changes, explanations, and recalls articles that have been identified to contain scientific misconduct and/or critical errors.
7. The publisher is responsible for observing the international scientific database requirements.
 
FOUNDER
Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus.
 
AUTHOR’S FEE
Publication in journal is free of charge for all authors.
 
POLICY OF DISCLOSURE AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Unpublished data from manuscripts submitted for consideration cannot be used for personal research without the written consent of the author.
Information or ideas obtained during peer-review and related activities, which potentially can be beneficial to any party other than the author, must be kept confidential and not be used for personal gain.
Reviewers should not participate in examination of manuscripts in case of conflict of interest that is a result of any competitive, cooperative, and/or other interactions and relationships with any of the authors, companies, and/or other organizations involved in the creation or presentation of the works.
 
DERIVATION AND PLAGIARISM
During the consideration of an article, the editorial staff carries out verification of the submitted materials with the help of the Anti-plagiarism system. In the case of the discovery of multiple incidents of content matching, the editorial staff acts in accordance with the rules of COPE.
 
PREPRINT AND POSTPRINT POLICY
During the submission process, the author should confirm that the article has not been published and/or accepted for publication in any other journal.
Articles, which have been previously posted by the author on personal and/or public websites that have no relationship to any other publishers, are allowed to be submitted to the journal.