Procedure for the Review of Articles

REGULATIONS
on the review of articles submitted to the editorial board of the scientific and technical journal ‘Journal of Coal Chemistry’

I. General Provisions

1. These Regulations govern the procedure for reviewing articles submitted to the editorial board of the scientific and technical journal ‘Journal of Coal Chemistry’ (hereinafter referred to as the Journal). The purpose of the review process is to facilitate the selection of manuscripts for publication and to provide specific recommendations for their improvement.

2. In these Regulations, the terms listed below are used with the following meanings:

• Author – a person or group of persons (a team of authors) who, based on the results of a scientific study, have prepared a scientific article and submitted it to the Journal’s editorial board for consideration.
• Editor-in-Chief – a person who heads the editorial board of the Journal and makes final decisions regarding the publication of the Journal.
• Deputy Editor-in-Chief – the person responsible for organising work relating to the planning, timely and high-quality preparation of the Journal’s content for publication, and for contributing to the improvement of the Journal’s impact factor.
• Editorial Board – the governing body of the Journal, which carries out a range of activities concerning the compilation of content and the publication of the Journal.
• Peer review – a procedure involving the examination and expert assessment by reviewers of articles submitted to the Journal, with the aim of determining their compliance with the Journal’s editorial policy, the quality and originality of the manuscripts provided, ensuring the accuracy of the facts and data presented in the article, the validity of the conclusions drawn and recommendations made, as well as its scientific and practical level.
• A reviewer is an expert who acts on behalf of the Journal and carries out a scientific assessment of materials, in particular articles submitted to the Journal, with a view to determining whether these materials are suitable for publication in the Journal. A reviewer may be a scholar holding a PhD or a Candidate of Sciences degree who conducts research in a speciality corresponding to the subject matter of the material submitted for publication, and is the author (co-author) of at least three publications in scientific journals included in Category ‘A’ and/or Category ‘B’ List of Ukrainian scientific journals, and/or in foreign journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and/or Scopus databases in the relevant field, published within the last five years. A reviewer may be a member outside the editorial board.

3. All articles submitted to the editorial board undergo the peer review process, with the exception of reviews and informational notices.

4. Reviewers for scientific articles are selected by the Editor-in-Chief (or Deputy Editor-in-Chief) of the Journal, taking into account the subject matter of the article and the experts’ areas of professional interest. Experts are selected from among the members of the Journal’s editorial board, or from authoritative scientists who are not members of the editorial board but are recognised authorities in the scientific field of the article (in particular, members of the expert group of the ‘Journal of Coal Chemistry’).

5. When conducting peer reviews, experts must adhere to the ethical guidelines for scientific publications set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org) and the Code of Ethics for Ukrainian Scientists (https://ips.ligazakon.net/document/MUS12440).

II. Article Review Procedure

1. The author submits an article to the Journal’s editorial board that meets the Journal’s criteria and is formatted in accordance with the requirements for Journal articles. If comments are raised at this stage, the article is returned to the author for revision. An article that does not meet the Journal’s criteria and the specified formatting requirements is not accepted for further review, and the author is notified accordingly.

2. Prior to the review process, the deputy editor-in-chief or the executive secretary of the Journal:

• Determines the degree of originality of the author’s text using software.
• Anonymises the author’s details.
• The anonymised article is submitted for initial review to one of the members of the editorial board or expert group, comprising leading specialists in coke chemistry, coal chemistry and other fields covered by the Journal. All articles scheduled for publication in the ‘Journal of Coal Chemistry’ undergo a peer-review process exclusively on the basis of mutual anonymity.
• Within 5 calendar days of receiving the article, the reviewer must assess their suitability to review the article, taking into account their own qualifications, the subject matter of the article and the absence of any conflict of interest, and must inform the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal accordingly. In the event of a conflict of interest or an inability to review the article, the Editor-in-Chief shall decide to appoint another reviewer. A reviewer’s refusal to review an article must be justified.

3. Within 20 calendar days of receiving the article, the reviewer shall provide a conclusion on the suitability of the article for publication in the Journal. If necessary, the review period may be extended to 25 days, of which the reviewer shall inform the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal.

4. The review procedure is anonymous for both the author of the article and the reviewers (double-blind review). Communication between the author of the article and the reviewers takes place via email correspondence through the executive secretary.

5. Based on the results of the review, the reviewer completes a standardised form (hereinafter – the form) for the reviewer’s assessment of the article (Appendix No. 1 to these Regulations), in which they indicate one of the following conclusions:

• recommend for publication;
• recommend for publication subject to the correction of comments;
• not recommended for publication.

The review form is sent to the Executive Editor of the Journal.

6. The Executive Editor shall inform the author of the article of the results of the peer review by email.

7. In the event of a rejection or the need for revisions, the reviewer must provide a written, reasoned explanation of the grounds for their decision. The Executive Secretary of the Journal, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief (or Deputy Editor-in-Chief), shall send the article to the author for revision. A list of the reviewer’s comments, questions and remarks is attached to the email. The deadline for revision is set by the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal and must not exceed 14 calendar days from the date the author receives the article.

8. If the reviewer has provided a recommendation for the revision of the article, the author shall attach a letter to the revised article containing responses to the reviewer’s comments and questions, as well as explanations of all changes made to the content of the article.

9. Discussions with the author regarding comments on the article and revisions may be conducted by the executive secretary or a person authorised by the editor-in-chief on a working basis.

10. The date of receipt of the article by the editorial office is deemed to be the date of its first submission (provided the reviewer deems it suitable for publication with or without amendments).

11. The final decision on the publication of articles is taken collectively at a meeting of the Academic Council of the State Enterprise ‘UKHIN’, which, under the founding agreement, is responsible for publishing the Journal. In the event of a positive decision, the date of the Academic Council meeting at which it was taken is considered the date of acceptance of the article for publication.

12. The DOI index is assigned to the article during the preparation of the original layout (master copy) and is activated after the article’s abstract is placed on the journal’s website.

If the author of the article does not agree with the reviewer’s opinion, they have the right to submit a reasoned response to the editorial board of the Journal. In such circumstances, the article is considered at a meeting of the editorial board or at the Academic Council of the State Enterprise ‘UKHIN’, which thoroughly examines the opinion of the reviewer and the author of the article. The editorial board of the Journal may send the article for additional review to another reviewer. The editorial board reserves the right to reject the article if the author is unable or unwilling to take into account the reviewer’s comments. The author of the article shall be separately informed of any decision taken by the working group.

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board, and the editor responsible for the issue shall not enter into discussions with the authors of rejected articles.

Further work with an article accepted for publication is carried out in accordance with the technological process of preparing the Journal. The editorial board reserves the right to unilaterally make stylistic, syntactic and punctuation corrections that do not affect the content of the submitted article, to abridge the text, and to reject manuscripts that are thematically inappropriate or improperly formatted, whilst adhering to the rules of editorial ethics.

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board, and the issue editor shall not disclose to any other person information relating to the content of an article under consideration, except to those involved in the professional evaluation of the manuscript (reviewers).

Responsibility for copyright infringement rests with the author of the article. The author of the article is responsible for the accuracy of the facts and data presented, the validity of the conclusions drawn, and the scientific and theoretical level of the article.

III. Procedure for retracting (withdrawing) an article from publication

1. Grounds for retracting an article:

• the detection of academic plagiarism in the publication (the presence of a significant amount of unauthorised borrowing);
• the duplication of an article in several publications;
• detection of falsification or fabrication in the work (for example, the inclusion of fictitious statistical and other data purportedly taken from specific sources of information in cases where such sources do not exist or do not contain the relevant information);
• the discovery of serious errors in the work (for example, incorrect interpretation of results), which calls into question its scientific value;
• incorrect authorship (inclusion of individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship or the omission of someone who is entitled to be an author);
• republication of the article without the author’s consent.

2. Retraction may be prompted by an official request from the author(s) of the article, provided there is a valid reason for their decision. The editorial board shall respond to the author(s) and, where justified, shall independently carry out the retraction of the article.

3. The editorial board shall, as a matter of course, inform the author (or the corresponding author in the case of multiple authorship) of the retraction of the article and explain the reasons for it.

All matters relating to publication ethics arising between authors and the editorial board of the Journal that are not covered by this document shall be governed by the internationally accepted standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Correspondence with authors/reviewers is retained for 90 calendar days from the date of publication or final rejection of the article.

Appendix 1

ARTICLE EVALUATION FORM

Article review

______________________________________________________________
(title of the article)

submitted for publication in the ‘Journal of Coal Chemistry’