About the Journal | Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The purpose of the journal is to reflect and consider the fundamental and practically significant issues within geophysics, achievements within theoretical and methodological geography and geology, and opportunities to apply scientific results in nature management, territorial planning and regional management. The journal furthers the development of fundamental knowledge of spatial phenomena, processes and correlations in nature and society.

SECTIONS

Specific features of copyrighted materials

For publication, review articles, original scientific articles, reviews of scientific publications, short reports, a chronicle and information on important international scientific geographical and geological events relevant to the subject of the journal are accepted.

Original articles

Original scientific article should be prepared in accordance with the following principles: significance, the basic idea and the search for the scientific idea of article, novelty, targeting, the principle of economy, contexture and academic voice.

In the introductory part, the relevance and feasibility of developing topics (scientific problem or task) should be justified. In the main part of the article by analyzing and synthesizing the information it is necessary to open the researched problems and to study of possible outcomes and their reliability. Findings, recommendations and possible directions for further research should be presented in the conclusion. Original scientific articles undergo mandatory peer review and are published in the sections “Geography” and “Geology”.

Review articles

The most important and promising areas of science (practice), some of its activities, events should be analyzed, compared and identified in the review article. The material should be issue-oriented, demonstrate conflicting views on the development of scientific (practical) knowledge, contain findings, generalization, summary data.

Reviews

Analysis, critical analysis, evaluation of scientific work (except dissertation research) in the genre of newspaper and magazine journalism. Title reviews may be replaced bibliographic description of the product under review.

Chronicle, information

Information about past or planned important international scientific geographical and geological events (congresses, symposia, conferences, etc.)

Jubilees

Information about the anniversaries of leading geographers and geologists who have contributed to the development of science in the Belarusian State University.

To the memory of scientist

Information about losses among leading geographers and geologists who have contributed to the development of science in the Belarusian State University.

All articles in the sections “Geography”, “Geology” and “Reviews” are reviewed.

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

2 issues per year (May, November).

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

“Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology” is an open access journal. All articles are made freely available to readers immediately upon publication.

Our open access policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition – it means that articles have free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

For more information please read BOAI statement.

ARCHIVING

National Library of Belarus (print and online versions)
Fundamental Library of the Belarusian State University (print and online versions)
Scientific Electronic Library “Elibrary.ru” (online version)
Electronic Library System of Publishing House “Lan” (online version)
Bavarian State Library (online version)

PEER-REVIEW

A 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. Geography and Geology».

Order of peer-review

1. The scientific manuscript submitted to the editorial board of the journal is reviewed by the editor-in-chief 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 of the journal, 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).

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.

4. The deadlines of peer-review:

a) review of the article is carried out within 30 working days from the moment it is transferred to specialists;

b) 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 has the right to make 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:

- accept for publication without revision;

- accept after minor revision of comments;

- accept after radical revision of content/individual sections;

- reject (with reasons);

- redirect to another journal.

6. If the reviewer decides to re-review, the author must make all necessary corrections and submit the final option with a cover letter in response to the reviewer. In this case, the date receipt by the editor is considered the date of return of the revised article. When reviewing again, the reviewer makes a similar decision (impossibility of accepting the article without modification), the article is considered rejected and no longer subject to review by the journal's editors.

7. For overall negative assessment of the manuscript, the reviewer should make a very compelling argument for his conclusion.

8.The author receives notification of the decision within 10 working days (via the electronic editorial system). The editorship of the publication is mandatory sends a review of the article to the author in electronic form without a signature or indication surnames, positions, places of work of the reviewer. In case of refusal to publish an article, the author is sent a review and a reasoned refusal.

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.Reviews are stored in the editorial office of the journal for 5 years.

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. Geography and Geology» are indexed by several systems:

Russian Scientific Citation Index (elibrary.ru)

Google Scholar

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. Geography and Geology» follows the main standards, developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), as well as the declaration of «Ethical Principles of Scientific Publications», adopted by ASEP.

Author responsibility

The author submits materials, which have not been previously published, for review.
The author does not submit the same article for review to different journals.
All co-authors should agree to the submission of their article to the journal.
The list of authors includes only the persons who have made significant contributions to the research. Guest or gift authorship is not allowed.
If participation of contributing persons was insufficient to guarantee their identification as authors, they should be named in the section "Acknowledgements".
The author should obtain the consent to publish names from each person named in the section "Acknowledgments" because an editor can verify the information.
Authors should appoint a corresponding author who is responsible for communicating with the editorial staff.
The author should get acquainted with the editorial policy of "Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology" before materials are to be submitted, i.e. rules of correspondence with the reviewer and editorial staff, publication ethics, author guidelines.
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.
Responsibility for violation of exclusive rights to works rests with the authors.
The author properly corresponds with the reviewer through the editor and responds to comments and remarks, if any.
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.
If necessary, the authors either correct the data presented in the article, or refuse them.
The author should specify all funding sources (state, commercial and other).
The author informs the editorial staff of a potential conflict of interest.
The author should guarantee that the peer-reviewed original article.
The author should avoid duplicate publication or self-plagiarism.
The author should assure that the citations in the submitted article are correct.
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).
Prior to article submission, authors should clear permission to use any content that has not been created by them. Editors of the “Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology” are unable to publish any article which has permissions pending.
A. The rights we require are:
- non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the article or book chapter;
- print and electronic rights;
- to use the material for the life of the work (i.e. there should be no time restrictions on the re-use of material e.g. a one-year licence).
B. When reproducing tables or figures from another source, it is expected that:
- authors obtain the necessary written permission in advance from any third party owners of copyright for the use in print and electronic formats of any of their text, illustrations, graphics, or other material, in their manuscript. Permission must also be cleared for any minor adaptations of any work not created by them;
- if an author adapts significantly any material, the author must inform the copyright holder of the original work;
- authors obtain any proof of consent statements;
- authors must always acknowledge the source in figure captions;
- authors should not assume that any content which is freely available on the web is free to use. Authors should check the website for details of the copyright holder to seek permission for re-use.

Editor responsibility

The editor of «Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology» is solely and independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers should always underwrite such decisions.
The editors make fair and objective decisions, regardless of any commercial considerations and provide fair and efficient process for the independent review.
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.
The editors do not work with articles for which they have conflict of interest.
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.
The editors resolve conflict situations occurring during the editorial process, as well as use all available means to resolve these situations.
The editors of the journal publish information concerning corrections, rebuttals, and review articles, if it is necessary.
The editor, who provides convincing evidence that the substance or conclusions of a published paper are erroneous, should coordinate with the publisher to promote the prompt publication of corrections, retraction, expression of concern, or other relevant notes.
The editors of the journal do not publish the final version of the article without the consent of the authors.
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.

Reviewer responsibility

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.
The reviewer notifies the editorial staff of any conflict of interest (if any) before article review is to be started.
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.
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.
The reviewer does not send information about the article or any of the data from the article to any third party.
The reviewer does not use the information obtained from the article for any personal and/or commercial purposes.

Publisher responsibility

The publisher should develop codes of practice and inculcate industry standards for best practice in ethical matters, errors and retractions.
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.
The publisher does not affect the editorial policy of the journal.
The publisher provides legal support to the journal, if necessary.
The publisher provides for the timely release of issues of the journal.
The publisher publishes changes, explanations, and recalls articles that have been identified to contain scientific misconduct and/or critical errors.
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 the authors.

The journal doesn't have any arcticle processing charges.

The journal doesn't have any article submission charges.

ACTIONS OF EDITORS AT REVEALING PLAGIARISM, FABRICATION OR FALSIFICATION

In case of revealing the misconduct of an author, detection of plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data the editors should be guided by the COPE rules.
Misconduct is understood in “Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology” as any action of a researcher that involves mistreatment of research subjects or purposeful manipulation of the scientific record such that it no longer reflects the observed truth as well as the conduct of a researcher that falls short of good ethical and scientific standards.
In “Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology” the misconduct notion does not include honest error or honest differences in the design, execution, interpretation, or judgment in evaluating research methods or results or misconduct not connected with the scientific process.

CORRECTION OF ERRORS AND ARTICLE RETRACTION

If in an article the errors are found that influence its interpretation, but not distort the research results they may be corrected by substitution of pdf-file of an article indicating the error in the article file and on the numbered page of an article on the journal site.
If in an article the errors are found that distort the research results or in case of plagiarism, detection of misconduct of author/authors connected with falsification and/or fabrication of data, such article may be retracted and the retraction may be initiated by editors, author, organization, private person.
The retracted article should be marked “Retracted” and on the page of the article, the information about the reason for retraction should be given. Information about retraction is directed to the databases where the journal is indexed.

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.

SELF PLAGIARISM

Journal requires that all authors sign a copyright form that clearly states that their submitted work has not been published before. If elements of a work have been previously published in another publication, including an earlier “Journal of the Belarusian State University. Geography and Geology” publication, the author is required to acknowledge the earlier work and indicate how the subsequent work differs and builds upon the research and conclusions contained in the previous work. Verbatim copying of an author's own work and paraphrasing is not acceptable and we recommend that research should only be reused to support new conclusions.
No more than 3-5 citations of own works are allowed. Journal recommends that authors cite all previous stages of publication and presentation of their ideas that have culminated in the final work, including conference papers.

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.