The Journal publishes original research results, review articles (at the editorial board's request) and brief reports.
The Journal may publish materials of any author (irrespective of their place of residence, ethnic, racial, gender and national background and academic degree availability) who has submitted a paper that has not been published before and meets the Journal’s requirements.
Articles for publication are admitted on an ongoing basis.
At admission to the editorial board:
1. The article is registered by the executive secretary of the Journal's editorial board.
2. The article is checked using the Antiplagiat system. The check report can be sent to the reviewer together with the article materials in case of incorrect and/or illegal borrowings in a significant volume. If the review reveals that the article is a duplicate publication, its text has already been published in another journal (including translated version) or the article reveals a significant proportion of unformatted borrowings (including from the author's previous works), the chief editor decides on the further passage of the manuscript being governed by the ethical rules and standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), stated in the Declaration “Ethical Principles for Academic Papers” (in Russian) of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASEP) and adopted by the majority of academic journals according to the Article Retraction Procedure. In such cases, the editorial board reserves the right to send a request to the author for clarification of the situation and if the response is unsatisfactory or the request is ignored, to reject the article and forward the information to the management of the author's organisation.
3. A primary expert evaluation is performed that includes review of covering documents and assessment of the article’s correspondence to the Journal’s specialization, submission requirements and rules set forth by the editorial board (available at the Journal’s website: general requirements, styleguide).
Main assessment criteria for decision-making as to publication or rejection of an article:
The reasons to reject a manuscript before peer-reviewing include revealed violations of the publication ethics (plagiarism, duplicate publication, etc.), non-compliance with the Journal’s specialization, scientific topics and requirements. In case of non-compliance the article is rejected without further peer-reviewing.
4. All the articles submitted to the editorial board and complying with the Journal's specialization are peer-reviewed.
The peer review procedure in Ecological Safety of Coastal and Shelf Zones of Sea Journal is single blind (the reviewer knows who the authors are whereas the authors do not know who the reviewer is). The peer review period is one month. In case an expert refuses to review the article it is forwarded to another reviewer.
5. The reviewer may come to one of four decision options: to publish “as is”, publish after minor refinement, publish after refinement and a repeated review, and to reject publication.
In case a decision is made to publish the article after refinement it is forwarded to the authors for improvement, with the comments made in the review to be taken into account. Return of the manuscript for refinement does not mean it is accepted to print. The author is required to submit the refined text along with the original article and response to all the reviewer’s comments within a month. In case the author refuses to refine the article the latter is rejected.
6. The article refined by the author is forwarded to one of the editorial board member (an expert in the article topic) for expert evaluation. After that, the article is reviewed at an editorial board meeting where it is accepted to print or rejected. In case of discordance of opinions during the meeting with regard to whether to accept the article or not the latter may be forwarded to an additional review. The ultimate authority of decision as to rejection, forwarding to refinement or putting into print shall be reserved by the editor-in-chief. If the article refined by the author is submitted upon expiration of one month period it shall be considered newly submitted. The editorial board does not return manuscripts of rejected articles.
In case the editorial board decides to reject an article, within seven working days it notifies the author of rejection to publish, with reasons for non-acceptance specified.
In case of a corresponding request, the editors send copies of peer review reports to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
7. Articles accepted by the editorial board undergo scientific, stylistic and technical editing.
The editors send edited articles to the authors for review. All changes to the article are agreed upon by the authors. The final version of the article prepared for publication is approved by the author (if there are several authors, then by the author responsible for communication with the editorial board). The passage of the article through the editorial process is controlled by the editors.
If preferred, upon publication the author may be provided the published article in electronic format.