Reference Information:

The Universal Copyright Convention.

http://elementy.ru/library9/convavtor.htm

Ethical issues

Authorship.

All persons designated as "authors" have to meet the criteria of this concept. The participation of each author has to be sufficient to assume responsibility for its content. The right to be called the author is based on the following facts:

1) significant contribution to the concept and design of the study or to the analysis and data interpretation;

2) preparation of the text of the article or introduction of fundamental changes;

3) the final approval of the version that is submitted for printing.

Participation, consisting only in securing financing or selecting material for the article, does not justify inclusion in the author's group. The overall management of the research team is not recognized as sufficient for the authorship.

The editors have the right to inquire the contribution of each author in preparation of the article; this information can be published.

All members of the team who do not meet the authorship criteria have to be listed according to their consent in the section "Expression of gratitude".

The order in which the authors are to be listed is to be determined by their joint decision.

Conflict of interest. Conflict of interests concerning a particular manuscript arises if in the process of review or publication one of the participants - the author, reviewer or editor - has obligations that could affect his or her opinion (even if this does not happen in reality). The most frequent reason for the conflict of interest is financial relations (for example, related to hiring, consulting, ownership of shares, fee payment and paid expert opinions), directly or through close relatives. There are other possible reasons - personal relationships, scientific rivalry and intellectual predilections.

Participants of the review and publication process have to report a conflict of interest.

The authors, when presenting the manuscript, are responsible for disclosing their financial and other conflicting interests that can influence their work. The manuscript has to contain all persons and organizations that provided financial support, as well as other financial or personal participation. The role of the sponsor/sponsors in the research structure, in data gathering, analysis and interpretation have to be described.

The authors have to indicate the names of those who, in their opinion, should not review the manuscript because of possible, as a rule, professional, conflict of interests.

Reviewers have to notify the editorial office on any conflicts of interest that may affect their opinion on the manuscript; they have to refuse to review a particular article if they consider it justified. In turn, the editorial staff has to be able to evaluate objectivity of the review and decide whether it is worth to abandon the services of this reviewer.

The Editorial Board can use the information provided in the reports on the presence of a conflict of interest and on financial interests as a basis for making editorial decisions.

Editors who make decisions on a manuscript cannot have personal, professional or financial interest/participation in any matter. Other members of the editorial team, if they participate in decision-making, have to provide the editors with a description of their financial interest (since it may have an impact on editorial decisions) and refuse to participate in decision-making if there is a conflict of interest.

Compliance with patients' rights and confidentiality. Patients have a right to maintain confidentiality, which cannot be disclosed without their consent. Personal information, including patient names, initials, hospital numbers and case histories, cannot be published as written descriptions, photographs or pedigrees unless this information is of a great scientific value or if the patient (or parent or guardian) does not provide (provide) written consent for publication. The authors have to inform the patients if there is a possibility that the material to be identified can be accessed via the Internet after publication. The authors have to provide written informed consent of the patient for sharing the information and report this in the article.

Protection of humans and animals in scientific research. If there are descriptions of human experiments in the article, the authors have to indicate whether they have been conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the committee responsible for experiments involving people (part of the institution or national) and the 1975 Helsinki Declaration and its revised version from 2000. In doubtful cases, the authors have to provide a justification for their approaches and evidence that the review board of the institution has approved the questionable aspects of the study. When presenting experiments involving animals, the authors have to indicate whether the requirements on keeping and using laboratory animals of the national leadership or institution managers have been met.

Publication of negative results. Many studies showing negative results are in fact non-committal/inconclusive. The possibility of publishing incomplete research results is considered by the editorial board in a special order, as often such articles do not have biomedical value and consume resources belonging to the journal.

Multiple publications. The editors do not consider manuscripts that are simultaneously submitted for publication in other journals, as well as the works that have for the most part already been published as an article or have become part of other work submitted or accepted for publication by some other print publication or electronic media. This policy does not exclude consideration of an article not accepted for publication by another journal, or a complete description presented after the publication of preliminary results, i.e. theses or posters presented at professional conferences.

Correspondence. Readers can, if necessary, direct their comments, questions or criticisms to published articles that will be published in the journal. If desired, the authors of the articles can respond to the comments.