For information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see www.elsevier.com.​ https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/publishing-ethics

Submission of an article to the Journal of Biological Research  implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint, see www.elsevier.com), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder.  In particular, translations into English of papers already published in another language are not accepted.

 

The editors of JBR support commonly held standards of ethics and principles shared by scholarly professional publishers. Authors who submit manuscripts to JBR must agree to the Author's Declaration confirming the following:

- The manuscript, either in its entirety or portions of the manuscript, is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere. JBR will not publish a paper that contains data that have been or will be published elsewhere.

- The results presented are the authors' original work and accurately and completely represent the results of the research performed.

- Plagiarism, data fabrication, selective reporting of data, or inclusion of data from other, uncredited sources is unethical and not acceptable.

- The authors credit and cite the relevant previously published work that influences or impacts the methods used or the interpretation of results and conclusions.

- The authors have acknowledged the source of funding for the research and disclosed to the editor any perceived conflicts of interest with funding sources or author affiliation.

- Violation of these standards will result in rejection of the submitted manuscript and may lead to sanctions including suspension of submission privileges to JBR.

No other forms of scientific misconduct are allowed, such as plagiarism, falsification, fraudulent data, incorrect interpretation of other works, incorrect citations, etc. The Journal of Biological Research follows the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and follows the COPE Flowcharts for Resolving Cases of Suspected Misconduct (www.publicationethics.org). https://publicationethics.org/files/ethical-problem-in-submitted-manuscript-cope-flowchart.pdf. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection service CrossCheck. https://www.elsevier.com/editor/perk/plagiarism-complaints/plagiarism-detection.

 

Authorship

Corresponding author should respect the value of the research of their peers by not devaluing authorship. Each author should have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the design, conduct, analysis, or interpretation of the study. Each author must approve the article before it is submitted for review, as well as the final version of the article to be published. In addition, the first author and the corresponding author are expected to take public responsibility for the entire paper.

 

Animal Welfare

Before papers describing animal studies are accepted for publication in Journal of Biological Research, the authors must satisfy the editors that the work conformed to appropriate ethical standards. The authors should provide written assurances that the project underwent ethical review and was given approval by an institutional animal care and use committee and the care and use of experimental animals complied with local animal welfare laws, guidelines and policies.

 

Informed consent and patient details

Studies on patients or volunteers require informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in an publication. Unless the author has written permission from the patient, the personal details of any patient included in any part of the article and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations) must be removed before submission.

 

Declaration of generative AI in scientific writing

Authors must declare the use of generative AI in scientific writing upon submission of the paper. The following guidance refers only to the writing process, and not to the use of AI tools to analyse and draw insights from data as part of the research process:

Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should only be used in the writing process to improve the readability and language of the manuscript.

The technology must be applied with human oversight and control and authors should carefully review and edit the result, as AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased. Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.

The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. 

An example:

Title of section: AI Declaration

Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

The declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references.

To protect authors’ rights and the confidentiality of their research, Journal of Biological Research does not currently allow the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies such as ChatGPT or similar services by reviewers or editors in the peer review and manuscript evaluation process.

 

Rights and responsibilities of editors, reviewers and authors.

 For the editor-in-chief:

Rights:

• make proposals aimed at improving the work of the editorial board.
• make decisions to ensure the daily activities of the editorial board - on all issues related to his competence;
• participate in the work of collegial governing bodies when considering issues related to the organisation of the editorial board.

Responsibilities:

• develop a concept for the development of the publication;
• manage the work of all editorial staff;
• edit articles prepared by the authors of the publication;
• send manuscripts for editing and review;
• prepare materials for publication;
• write reports on the work of the editorial board.

Members of the editorial board are required to: 

• attend meetings of the journal's editorial board, share their opinions on the agreement or disagreement with reviewers’ decisions regarding the articles, and make choices about the journal's content;
• assess the content of manuscripts without regard to the author's gender, nationality, religion, or any other personal characteristics;
• refrain from utilising materials submitted for publication in their own work, as well as that of editors, reviewers, and other personnel associated with the manuscript;
• decline to consider submitted materials for publication if any conflicts of interest are present and also ask the author to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

For reviewers:

The journal uses a double-blind peer review procedure (the reviewer does not know the authors of the manuscript, the authors of the manuscript do not know the reviewers) to ensure the quality of published articles. Manuscripts are sent to two reviewers for evaluation.

Rights:

• request an abstract of the manuscript proposed for review;
• refuse to conduct an expert evaluation of the article after both reading the abstract and after reading the full depersonalised text of the manuscript;
• refuse to review the manuscript, notifying the editors of this, if he is not an expert on the topic of the material.

Responsibilities:

• consider the received manuscript as a confidential document;
• give an objective and reasoned assessment of the received material;
• keep confidential information or ideas obtained during the review and associated with possible benefits;
• not take part in the review of manuscripts if there are conflicts of interest;
• not use any materials in the submitted manuscript in their publications.

For authors:

By submitting a manuscript to the editors, the author(s) guarantee that they do not violate anyone's copyright or principles of publication ethics. The authors grant the publisher of the journal exclusive rights for an unlimited period:

- the right to reproduce (publish, disclose, duplicate, distribute or otherwise reproduce the article) without limiting the circulation of copies, the right to distribute the article in any way. In this case, each copy of the article must contain the name of the author(s) of the article;

- the right to include in a composite article;

- the right to communicate to the public;

- the right to use the metadata (title, name of the author(s) (copyright holder), abstracts, bibliographic materials, full text of the article, etc.) of the article by distributing and communicating to the public, processing and systematizing, as well as including in various databases and information systems, including full-text versions of the published article.

The territory in which the use of rights to articles is permitted is not limited. The author(s) do not object to the publication of the article on the journal's website in an open-access format after the manuscript has been accepted for publication in the journal and the distribution of the printed issue of the journal with the published article in libraries and other organizations and/or institutions.

The author(s) also grant the publisher of the journal the right to store and process their personal data without time limitation (last name, first name, patronymic, education details, place of work and position held). Personal data is provided for their storage and processing in various databases and information systems, their inclusion in analytical and statistical reports, the creation of substantiated relationships between objects of works of science, literature and art with personal data, etc.

The author(s) is fully responsible for the unlawful use of intellectual property objects and copyright objects in the scientific article in accordance with the current legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The author(s) give their consent to the journal's publisher checking the manuscript for plagiarism and other signs of violation of publication ethics.

The author(s) allow the editorial board to independently carry out scientific and literary editing of the manuscript, without changing its key provisions, to review the manuscript and propose making the necessary corrections or changes, while the manuscript will be published only after the author(s) have made the necessary corrections and changes.

The author(s) acknowledge the right of the editorial board to refuse publication of the manuscript if its design and content do not meet the requirements of the journal, or under the conditions of a ban on publication of the information contained therein, established by regulatory legal acts and/or other official state documents, or in connection with the presence in the manuscript of violations of the principles of scientific and/or publication ethics.

The author(s) declare that he/she (they) have/do not have conflicts of interest with other scientists or members of the journal's editorial board. (If there is a conflict of interest, it is necessary to indicate the specific reasons that will prevent an objective assessment of the author(s) manuscript and to indicate the full names of the scientists who, in the opinion of the author(s), will not be able to assess the manuscript objectively). The author(s) declare that they have read the editorial policy of the journal, which contains general information about the journal, the procedure for reviewing articles, guidelines for authors, and publication ethics.

 

Requirements for reviewers and review rules

1. The reviewers are scientists with recognised authority who are working in the field of knowledge to which the content of the manuscript relates. The reviewer must have the academic degree of Doctor of Science / Candidate of Sciences / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Employees of external scientific organisations may be involved in the review.
2. Reviewers are required to follow the Publication Ethics of the scientific journal "Journal of Biological Research".
3. Reviewers who consider themselves insufficiently competent to make an opinion on a manuscript sent to them or who do not have time to review it within the specified period must notify the editorial board in writing and refuse to review it within three working days.
4. The review deadlines are as follows: no later than one month from the date of receipt of the article. The deadline may be extended if additional review is required and/or the specialized reviewer is temporarily unavailable.
5. The editors use the following manuscript review system:

1) technical check for compliance with the formal criteria, profile and thematic sections of the journal by the moderator. At this stage, errors or insufficient data may be identified that require revision of the manuscript, which will be reported to the author/group of authors;

2) checking the text of the manuscript for the presence of borrowed text. The moderator checks the manuscript through the "Antiplagiat" system. For acceptance of a manuscript, the originality of the text must be at least 65%, and the text matches must not exceed 25%.

3) “double-blind” review of manuscripts. Manuscripts that meet the requirements for formatting and originality are sent for further review to two reviewers, each of whom makes an independent decision.

6. Manuscripts may be sent for additional review (with up to three reviewers) if necessary.
7. The reviewer reviews the manuscript sent to him/her within the established timeframes and provides the editors with a properly formatted review in the language of the submitted manuscript. Reviewers must make one of the following decisions:

- accept: accept the manuscript;

- accept with minor revision;

- accept only after major revision;

- reject: reject the manuscript (changes will not be accepted).

8. If the reviewer recommends the manuscript for publication after revision or rejects the manuscript, the review must indicate specific reasons for such a decision with a clear formulation of the substantive and/or technical deficiencies identified in the manuscript, with particular pages indicated, if necessary. The reviewer's comments and suggestions must be objective and fundamental, aimed at improving the scientific and methodological level of the manuscript.
9. The decisions of the reviewers may differ. If one reviewer makes a positive decision and the other a negative one, the manuscript is sent to a third reviewer for review. The editors of the journal reserve the right to refuse publication to an author/group of authors who disagree with the reviewers’ comments.
10. If the reviewer recommends accepting the manuscript only after serious revision (significant changes and a 2nd review cycle are required), then the manuscript revised by the author/group of authors is re-submitted for review. Together with the revised manuscript, the authors send a letter to the editor-in-chief with a response to the reviewers, containing a consistent response to all the reviewers' comments.
11. If two reviewers give a positive conclusion, the manuscript is transferred to the publisher for preparation for publication, then a Certificate of Acceptance of the Article for Publication is issued and an agreement on the transfer of copyright is signed. The agreement specifies all the terms and stages of publication of the manuscript.
12. The article is rejected at any review stage if plagiarism, incorrect borrowing, falsification or data fabrication is detected.
13. If the manuscript sent to the author/group of authors for revision is received again unchanged, the article is automatically rejected.
14. The editorial board does not use manuscripts rejected by the editorial board based on the review results for its own purposes. The moderator notifies the author for correspondence about the refusal to publish and sends the reviewers' conclusions.
15. In case the author/group of authors refuses to revise the manuscript, he/she should notify the editors in writing about their refusal to re-examine and publish the manuscript.
16. When accepting a manuscript with minor but necessary changes, the author for correspondence receives a corresponding notification in the personal account on the journal's website: https://bioresearch.kz/.
17. Based on the available reviews and recommendations, one of the following decisions is made at a meeting of the editorial board of the journal:

- In the event of a positive conclusion from all reviewers, the manuscript is approved for publication in one of the issues of the journal.

- In the event of disagreement among the reviewers, the editor-in-chief makes the final decision on the publication of the manuscript.

- If the reviews contain significant comments and a conclusion about revising the manuscript, the manuscript is returned to the author/group of authors to correct the comments.

 

Conflicts of interest

 Conflicts of interest are situations in which authors, reviewers, or editorial board members have underlying interests that could influence their judgment about published material. A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment about a primary interest (e.g., the validity of the research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (e.g., financial gain). Understanding conflicts of interest is as important as knowing the actual conflicts of interest.

Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, patents, and paid peer review) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and are the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. However, conflicts can arise for other reasons, such as personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual convictions.

Authors should avoid entering into agreements with research sponsors, whether commercial or not, that prevent authors from having access to all of the research data or interfere with their analysis and interpretation of the data, and with the preparation and publication of articles.

All participants in the peer review and publication process - not only authors, but also reviewers, editors, and members of the journal editorial board - should be aware of their conflicts of interest when performing their roles in the review and publication process and should disclose anything that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest.

 Authors

When submitting articles of any type or format, authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might be biased or perceived to bias their work.

 Reviewers

Reviewers should disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that might bias their opinion of an article and should recuse themselves from reviewing particular articles if there is a potential for bias. Reviewers should not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing before publication to advance their own interests.

 Editors

Editors who make final decisions about articles should recuse themselves from decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that create potential conflicts related to the articles under consideration. Editorial staff should not use information obtained from their work on articles for personal gain.

To the extent possible, all stakeholders must avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest of any kind at all stages of publication. In the event of any conflict of interest, the person who discovered this conflict must immediately notify the editorial board. The same applies to other violations of publication and scientific ethics' principles, standards and norms.

Unethical behavior

The following constitutes conduct that does not meet ethical and scientific standards and is interpreted as fraud. All participants in the publication process should avoid them in their work.

Falsification of scientific results.

Plagiarism of data, ideas, or parts of articles (compilation).

Intentional selection or suppression of results in a publication when these results are relevant to the conclusions.

False use of statistical or other methods.

Intentional or reckless neglect in concealing details of the methodology.

False information about authorship (attributed honorary authorship, invisible authorship (no indication of the participation of researchers).

False presentation of the results of other researchers (fictitious citation).

Inadmissible duplication of publication (self-plagiarism and duplicate publications).

Inappropriate treatment of research objects.

Offering agency services: correspondence with the editors and revision of articles on behalf of the author.

Editors transfer article texts to other journals without the consent of the authors.

Transfer of author materials by editors or reviewers to third parties.

Violation of objectivity standards in peer review and/or when making decisions on publication.

All kinds of manipulations with citation (collusions to artificially increase citations, artificial increase in scientometric indices, excessive self-citation and friendly citation are interpreted as fraud).

Fan mailing of the same article text to several scientific journals.

All kinds of falsification and fabrication of digital images.

 

Instruction for retracting or correcting articles

Editorial board members are responsible for publishing articles with known signs of unethical behaviour, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, excessive self-citation by authors, and conflicts of interest. If the principles of publication ethics were violated when writing an article, the scientific editor of the journal, based on the editorial board's decision, must retract the publication. Articles can be retracted by the author (authors) or the journal's editorial board.

An article is retracted in the following cases:

- if there is clear evidence that the data obtained are unreliable or were obtained as a result of illegal actions, such as falsification of data;

- the discovery of the fact of publication of the article in another publication before its publication in the journal "Journal of Biological Research" - the discovery of plagiarism in the article, including the borrowing of figures, graphs, tables, etc.;

- the presence of gross errors in the article that could negatively affect other scientists and their research, for example, a miscalculation or experimental error;

- the article is plagiarism;

- the article contains information that contradicts the principles, standards and norms of publication and/or scientific ethics.

Articles can be retracted by their author(s) or the journal editor. The editor-in-chief makes the final decision on the retraction of the article. Publications must be retracted immediately after the journal editor is convinced that the publication has serious violations and contains knowingly false information.

The retraction must be:

- be retracted as soon as possible to minimize the negative consequences of false publications;

- indicate who is retracting the article;

- indicate the reasons for the retraction (distinguish conscious illegal actions from honest errors);

The journal "Journal of Biological Research" editorial board responsibly, objectively and carefully considers all justified appeals regarding the violations discovered in the published issues.

 

Publication of correction, apologies, refutations

The editors of the journal are responsible for all published materials and undertake to ensure their high quality and reliability.

Grounds for making corrections to a published article:

- the detected errors invalidate the work, but a small part of the publication turns out to be unreliable;

- there are errors in the list of authors;

- a small part of the article turns out to be plagiarism;

- it was discovered that the article was published in another journal.

Corrections are posted in the "Announcements" section as an editorial comment. The comment on the article contains the original phrase from the article and a comment on it. The online version of the material is corrected with an indication of the date of correction and a link to the printed source of the typo.

If falsified material is found in published articles, the corresponding editorial comment explains why the article is refuted, or an apology is made with a link to the article.

The journal's editorial board is always ready to publish corrections, explanations, apologies and refutations concerning the material published in the journal issues, if necessary.

The journal does not leave unanswered claims concerning the manuscripts reviewed.

If a conflict is identified, the editorial board will take all measures to restore rights violated.