Editorial Policies
Aims and Scope
Bulletin of Medical Science was founded in 2017 and is an official scientific publication of the Altai State Medical University. The journal publishes articles and reviews by graduate students and leading specialists, materials of original research in the field of experimental and clinical medicine, descriptions of clinical cases, results of national and international clinical trials, scientific reviews and discussions, contributes to the growth of the scientific potential and professionalism of the medical community.
Peer Review Process
Articles submitted to the editorial board of the journal "Bulletin of Medical Science" must correspond to the Journal Scope and the Guidelines for Authors.
The Editorial Board provides a double (in terms of specialty and reliability of research results) independent expert evaluation (reviewing) of manuscripts.
For their expert evaluation, the edition reviews all materials that come to the editorial board, corresponding to its subject matter. All reviewers are qualified specialists in the reviewed materials and have publications on the subject of the reviewed article within the last three years.
The editorial board sends copies of reviews or a reasoned refusal to the authors of the submitted materials.
Reviews and other article materials are stored in the editorial office and the publishing house for five years. Their copies can be submitted to the structural subdivisions of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation if the editorial office receives the appropriate request.
The procedure of reviewing is confidential. Reviewers are notified that the manuscripts submitted for review are the authors' intellectual property and belong to the information that is not subject to disclosure.
The reviewer cannot be the author or co-author of the reviewed work and the scientific supervisors of candidates for a scientific degree and employees of the department in which the author/authors of the article work.
The reviewing procedure includes the following stages:
- Examination of the article by the scientific editor of the Journal for compliance with the basic requirements for manuscripts.
- It is performed within five days from the editorial board's day the article is received.
All articles submitted to the editorial board are checked using the "Anti-Plagiarism" system for the presence of borrowings. Manuscripts prepared without considering the Terms of publication of articles in the journal "Bulletin of Medical Science" are not considered; the author is informed about the refusal to consider the manuscript due to its non-compliance with the Terms.
- External Reviewing.
The journal "Bulletin of Medical Science" adopts the format of double anonymous reviewing. The choice of two independent experts is determined by the editor-in-chief, scientific editor, and members of the editorial board, taking into account the thematic orientation of the submitted materials. Reviewing of articles is voluntary and free of charge. Independent experts are selected from among persons who have a degree of at least a candidate of medical sciences and have no scientific, financial, or any other relations with the authors of the article and the editorial board. The articles are reviewed by invited reviewers - leading specialists in the relevant branch of medicine in Russia and other countries.
Reviewers and authors must follow the accepted Policy of the journal "Bulletin of Medical Science" in terms of compliance with ethical norms when publishing articles posted on the website of the Journal on the Internet.
In case of detection of a potential conflict of interest (due to competition, cooperation, and other relations with any of the authors, companies or other organizations related to the submitted work), the reviewer is obliged to declare it and refuse to consider the submitted manuscript. In particular, potential conflicts of interest arising in the review of manuscripts include the following cases:
- The reviewer works at the same institution as the author(s) of the manuscript;
- there is or recently was a collaboration between the reviewer and the author(s) of the manuscript;
- the reviewer has joint publications with the author(s) of the manuscript published within the last five years;
- the reviewer has a personal relationship with the author(s) of the article that interferes with the objective evaluation of the manuscript.
Thus, the reviewer cannot be the author or co-author of the reviewed work and scientific supervisors of candidates for a scientific degree and employees of the department in which the author/authors of the article work.
The reviewing procedure is confidential. Reviewers are notified that the manuscripts sent for review are the authors' intellectual property and belong to the information that is not subject to disclosure. Reviewers are not allowed to use manuscripts for their purposes. Violation of anonymity and confidentiality is possible only in case of claiming unreliability or falsification of materials. Unpublished data obtained from manuscripts submitted for review may not be used.
The review is prepared according to the standard form offered by the editorial board with obligatory coverage of the following points:
- relevance of the submitted article;
- scientific novelty of the direction of research considered in the article;
- the practical significance of the problem posed and/or the results obtained in the field of knowledge under consideration;
- adequacy and modernity of the research methods;
- sufficiency and informativeness of the research material;
- correctness and completeness of the discussion of the results;
- compliance with the conclusions with the goal and objectives of the research;
- admissibility of the volume of the manuscript as a whole and its elements (text, tables, illustrative material, bibliographic references);
- adequacy, quality, and expediency of the tables and illustrative material in the article and their correspondence to the topic;
- the quality of the article's design: the style of presentation, the adequacy of terminology, and its compliance with the accepted field of knowledge.
The reviewer is obliged to give an objective assessment of the manuscript. Personal remarks to the author(s) are unacceptable. The reviewer should clearly and reasonably express his/her opinion.
If possible, the reviewer should identify significant published works relevant to the topic and relevant to the manuscript under review that is not included in the bibliography of the manuscript. Any statement in the review that some observation, conclusion, or argument from the reviewed manuscript has previously been found in the literature should be accompanied by an accurate bibliographic citation.
The period of reviewing is 2-4 weeks, but it can be extended at the reviewer's request.
Each reviewer has the right to refuse the review if there is an apparent conflict of interest affecting the perception and interpretation of the manuscript materials. After reviewing the manuscript, the reviewer makes recommendations about the further fate of the article (each reviewer's decision is substantiated), viz:
- recommended for publication in its present form;
- recommended for publication after correction of deficiencies noted by the reviewer;
- needs additional reviewing by another specialist;
- cannot be published in the Journal.
- Procedure for informing authors about the results of reviewing.
The article can be rejected or sent back to the authors or accepted for publication according to the reviewing results.
If the review contains recommendations to correct and improve the article, the editorial board sends the text of the review to the author with an offer to take them into account in the preparation of a new version of the article or to refute them with arguments (partially or entirely). Revision of the article should not take more than two months from sending an e-mail to the authors about the need to make changes. The article revised by the author is re-sent for review.
If the authors refuse to revise the materials, they should notify the editorial board about their refusal to publish the article. If the authors do not return the revised version after three months of sending the review, even if there is no information from the authors with the refusal to modify the article, the editorial office removes it from the register. The authors are sent a corresponding notification about the manuscript withdrawal in such situations.
- Articles that do not meet the manuscript requirements will not be accepted for publication:
- articles that do not meet the Journal's requirements for manuscripts; if the authors refuse technical revision of the manuscript, the articles may be rejected without an external review procedure;
- articles whose authors do not comply with the reviewers' comments without a reasoned response.
The decision to refuse to publish a manuscript is made following the reviewers' recommendations at the editorial board's meeting. An article that is not recommended for publication by the editorial board's decision is not accepted for reconsideration. A message about the refusal to publish is sent to the author by e-mail.
After the editorial board decides on the admission of the article for publication, the editorial board informs the author about it and specifies the terms of publication.
The presence of a positive review is not a sufficient basis for the article's publication. The editorial board makes the final decision on the publication. In conflicting situations, the decision is made by the editor-in-chief.
The original reviews are stored for five years. When the editorial board receives a corresponding request, copies of reviews are sent to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
Publication pattern:
Articles are published as they are received. The text of the article should be carefully edited and signed by all authors in print. Authors of articles are responsible for the content of the articles and the fact of their publication.
Accepted for publication articles are edited, providing pre-press preparation of the article for placement in the next issue of the Journal.
Open Access Policy
Bulletin of Medical Science provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. However please also see our copyright statement.
The author(s) of a manuscript agree that if the manuscript is accepted for publication in ABS, the published article will be copyrighted using a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. This license allows full use, and reuse rights to everyone, as long as the work is attributed to the original authors