Publication terms

Review procedure

All articles submitted to Universum journals undergo mandatory independent double-blind peer review to assess their scientific quality, relevance, reliability and compliance with the requirements of the respective journal.

1. Manuscript originality

The editorial office considers original scientific works. The minimum text originality score must be at least 75%. Manuscripts with a lower originality score may be returned to the author without being sent for peer review.

2. Initial editorial and technical assessment

Upon receipt of a manuscript, the executive secretary of the editorial board checks its compliance with the journal’s scope and manuscript preparation requirements. The initial assessment also checks compliance with publication ethics and the journal’s artificial intelligence policy.

The editorial office may use technical tools to detect improper borrowing, artificial manipulation of originality scores and indications of AI-generated text.

A high estimated probability of AI generation is grounds for an additional editorial assessment of the manuscript and does not, by itself, result in automatic rejection. A substantial amount of AI-generated main scientific content confirmed by editorial assessment, or unjustified use of artificial intelligence in place of the author’s independent scientific work, constitutes grounds for rejection. Permitted auxiliary use of AI must be disclosed by the author in accordance with the journal’s Code of Ethics.

If a manuscript does not meet the initial assessment requirements, it is returned to the author with reasons, without being sent for peer review.

3. Corresponding author

For a manuscript prepared by several authors, the author designated as the contact person when submitting the material acts as the corresponding author.

The corresponding author communicates with the editorial office throughout manuscript consideration, peer review and revision, and confirms that all coauthors have read the submitted version and agree to its submission, substantial changes made during peer review and the final version of the article.

The corresponding author’s status does not relieve the other coauthors of responsibility for the content, reliability and integrity of the submitted research.

4. Appointment of a reviewer

The editor-in-chief or responsible editor selects the reviewer. The reviewer is appointed from among editorial board members or invited external experts who specialise in the relevant field, hold a Candidate of Sciences or Doctor of Sciences degree and have published on the subject of the manuscript within the past three years.

5. Review period

The deadline for preparing the review report is agreed with the reviewer but must not exceed 30 working days from the date the manuscript is sent to the reviewer.

6. Reviewer conflicts of interest

A reviewer must decline to assess a manuscript if they have a conflict of interest with the authors or lack the expertise required for an objective assessment, and must notify the editorial office.

7. Content of the review report and final recommendation

The report assesses whether the content corresponds to the stated topic and the journal’s scope, the relevance and scientific novelty of the research, its alignment with the current state of science, the validity of the methodology and reliability of the results, the quality of the bibliography, the clarity of presentation and compliance with scholarly publication requirements.

Peer review results in one of four recommendations:

• recommended for publication without revision;
• recommended for publication after the comments have been addressed;
• returned for revision followed by further peer review;
• not recommended for publication.

The editorial office makes the final publication decision, taking the reviewer’s recommendation into account.

8. Manuscript revision and number of review rounds

If the review report recommends corrections or revision, the editorial office sends the reviewer’s comments to the author. The author must submit a revised manuscript and detailed responses to the comments within one month. The revised manuscript is sent for further peer review where necessary.

A manuscript within a single submission may undergo no more than three successive expert assessments: the initial peer review and no more than two further reviews after revision.

If substantive reviewer concerns remain unresolved after the third expert assessment, the scientific arguments or methodology still do not meet the journal’s requirements, or the reviewer again recommends against publication, the manuscript is rejected. No fourth review round is conducted within the same submission.

Minor technical and editorial corrections following a favourable expert assessment do not count as a new review round.

9. Disputed cases

If the author and reviewer disagree substantially, the editorial board may send the manuscript for additional independent peer review. Such review must remain within the limit of three successive expert assessments for a single submission set out in paragraph 8; no fourth review round is conducted. The editor-in-chief makes the final editorial decision, taking all expert reports into account.

10. Rejection and possible resubmission

Following a negative reviewer recommendation, the editorial office makes one of the following decisions:

a) Final rejection. This applies, in particular, where plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, improper duplicate publication, a serious breach of publication ethics or unjustified use of artificial intelligence is identified, or where the manuscript is fundamentally incompatible with the journal’s scope or requirements for scholarly publications.

b) Rejection with the possibility of resubmission after substantial reworking. This decision may be made if the work has scientific potential but cannot be published without fundamental methodological revision, additional data, new analysis or substantial changes to its structure and scientific arguments.

Where resubmission is permitted, the reworked material may be submitted later as a new manuscript and undergoes initial assessment and peer review afresh. Previous consideration does not guarantee acceptance of the new version.

The author receives a reasoned rejection decision specifying whether resubmission is permitted.

11. Appeal against an editorial decision

An author may appeal a manuscript rejection if they believe that a significant factual or technical error occurred during assessment, the reviewer overlooked an important part of the submitted material, there are reasoned concerns about the objectivity of the expert assessment, or the established peer-review procedure was breached.

The appeal must be submitted in writing by the author designated as the contact person at submission, within 30 calendar days of receiving the editorial decision.

The appeal must contain specific, reasoned grounds for disagreement and, where necessary, point-by-point responses to the reviewer’s comments.

The editorial office considers the appeal with the involvement of the editor-in-chief and/or editorial board members who have no conflict of interest. An additional independent expert opinion may be requested where necessary.

No more than one appeal is accepted per manuscript. The decision following the appeal is final. An expert opinion obtained solely to consider the appeal does not open a new manuscript revision round.

12. Retention of review reports and provision of information

Review reports are retained by the editorial office for at least five years. Copies are provided to authorised organisations and authorities in the cases and manner prescribed by applicable requirements. At the author’s request, the editorial office sends the review report or a reasoned rejection.

13. Acceptance for publication

After the editorial board makes a favourable decision, the author receives notification that the manuscript has been accepted for publication and information about the planned journal issue.

Publishing services

The decision to publish an article is made by the editorial board on the basis of independent peer review. The article processing charge is invoiced only after a positive decision to accept the article and covers the costs of editorial and production preparation, technical editing and hosting of the material.

Control deadlines

Requirements for article formatting

Universum journals’ materials are published electronically in open access on the website 7universum.com. The decision to publish an article is made by the editorial board on the basis of independent peer review.

1.  The article must not have been previously published or submitted for consideration and publication in another journal.

2.  The originality of the material must be at least 75%.

3.  The minimum length of a manuscript is 5 pages. The recommended length is up to 20 pages for an original research article and up to 30 pages for a review or theoretical article. Longer manuscripts are considered by prior agreement with the editorial office if there is a scientific justification.

The length is determined from the manuscript file formatted in accordance with the journal’s requirements and includes the author information, abstracts and keywords in both languages, the main text, figures, tables, information on funding, conflict of interest and acknowledgements, the reference list (Список литературы) and References.

4.  Microsoft Word should be used for typing the text, formulas and tables. Formatting parameters: page size — A4 (210 × 297 mm); margins — 2 cm; font — Times New Roman, size 14; line spacing — 1.5; alignment — justified; paragraph indent — 1 cm; page orientation — portrait.

Images are submitted in JPG, GIF or BMP format. Drawings created with Microsoft Word drawing tools are not accepted.

Tables must be created with the text editor’s tools and remain editable. Tables submitted as images or screenshots are not accepted.

Formulas must be typed in the built-in Microsoft Word equation editor or a compatible editor such as MathType and remain editable. Formulas inserted as images or screenshots are not accepted.

All figures and tables must be numbered consecutively, have titles or captions and be placed in the text where they are relevant, not at the end of the document. Table titles are placed above the table and figure captions below the figure.

5.  The beginning of the article in Russian contains, in the following order:

— UDC — Universal Decimal Classification code, for example: 821.161.1; set in bold and aligned left. The code can be determined at: https://teacode.com/online/udc/;

— the article title;

— the author’s full name — on the next line, in bold italics, aligned right;

— academic degree, academic title, position, name of the organisation, country and city — on the next line, in italics, aligned right;

— email address;

— the author’s personal identifiers: ORCID — if available; SPIN code and RSCI AuthorID — for Russian authors, if available; ResearcherID and Scopus Author ID — if available.

ORCID is given as a link to the author’s profile. If there are several authors, the information is given separately for each author.

6.  The article title and author information are repeated in English. Personal identifier numbers and profile links must be identical in the Russian and English blocks.

7.  Abstracts in Russian and English follow after one blank line.

The Russian abstract is 150–250 words long. The abstract must be a concise structured summary containing the purpose of the research, methodology, specific results, conclusion and practical significance. General phrases and repetition of the title are not allowed. The English abstract must correspond to the Russian one in content.

8.  Keywords and/or key phrases are given in Russian and English and separated by commas. The number of keywords is 5–7.

9.  The keywords are followed by information on funding, conflict of interest and, where applicable, acknowledgements. This information is given in Russian and English.

• Финансирование / Funding. State the source of funding, the grant number or information on the state assignment, if any. If the research received no external funding, use the wording:
  «Финансирование: исследование выполнено без внешнего финансирования».
  «Funding: The study received no external funding».
• Конфликт интересов / Conflict of interest. The authors disclose any existing conflict of interest. If there is none, use the wording:
  «Конфликт интересов: автор(ы) заявляют об отсутствии конфликта интересов».
  «Conflict of interest: The author(s) declare no conflict of interest».
  Information on funding and conflict of interest is mandatory, including when there is none.
• Благодарности / Acknowledgements. Where necessary, thanks are given to persons and organisations that helped carry out the research or prepare the article.
  If artificial intelligence tools were used in preparing the manuscript, the author must disclose this in the Acknowledgements section, stating the tool’s name, purpose, nature and extent of use.
  If artificial intelligence was used as a method or tool of the research itself, its use must also be described in the Materials and Methods section in sufficient detail to understand and reproduce the research.

10.  The main text of the article follows after one blank line. Original research articles use the IMRAD structure:

• Introduction. The relevance of the topic is substantiated on the basis of an analysis of current scientific publications; the purpose and objectives of the research are stated.
• Materials and Methods. The materials, methods and procedure of the research are described consistently and in sufficient detail to understand and reproduce the work.
• Results and Discussion. The results of the author’s own research are presented, analysed and compared with the results of other studies on the problem.
• Conclusion. Conclusions are drawn from the results obtained. No references to sources are given in this section.

Review, theoretical and other articles for which the classic IMRAD structure is methodologically inappropriate may follow a different logical structure by agreement with the editorial office.

11.  The reference list (Список литературы) follows after one blank line. Sources are listed in alphabetical order with continuous numbering.

Bibliographic descriptions in the reference list follow GOST R 7.0.100–2018 “Bibliographic record. Bibliographic description. General requirements and rules”. Bibliographic references and in-text citations follow GOST R 7.0.5–2008 “Bibliographic reference. General requirements and rules”. References to electronic documents published in information and telecommunication networks follow GOST R 7.0.108–2022.

Every source included in the reference list must be cited in the text of the article. Citations are given in square brackets, for example: [1, p. 277]. Automatic footnotes are not allowed.

The reference list must contain at least 10 sources. Self-citations must not exceed 10% of the total number of sources. Citing recent sources from the last 5 years and foreign sources amounting to at least 20% of all references is mandatory.

If a source has a DOI, it must be stated. References to generated or non-existent sources are not allowed.

Example of a Russian-language article with a DOI:

Антибас И. Р., Дьяченко А. Г. Моделирование, изучение и изготовление стойки культиватора из композитных материалов // Вестник Мордовского университета. — 2018. — Т. 28, № 3. — С. 366–378. — DOI: 10.15507/0236-2910.028.201803.366-378.

12.  The reference list is followed by the References section — the same list of sources in Latin script, keeping the same order and numbering.

Author names and titles of Russian-language journals are transliterated using the BGN standard. The title of an article or book is translated into English and enclosed in square brackets.

If a source has a DOI, it must be stated in both lists. For Russian-language sources, the note (In Russ.) is placed at the end of the entry, after the DOI.

Example of the same source in References:

Antibas I.R., Dyachenko A.G. [Modeling, Studying and Manufacturing a Cultivator Rack from Composite Materials] // Vestnik Mordovskogo universiteta. — 2018. — Vol. 28, No. 3. — pp. 366–378. — DOI: 10.15507/0236-2910.028.201803.366-378. (In Russ.).

For articles in English, References is the only reference list; a separate Russian reference list (Список литературы) is not required.

13.  Only one article by the same author may be published in one issue of the journal.

14.  Any mention of a foreign agent in the article must be followed by the note «включён в реестр иностранных агентов» (included in the register of foreign agents) in Russian. The list of foreign agents is available on the website of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

15.  Any mention of a terrorist or extremist organisation in the article must be followed by the note «организация признана экстремистской/террористической и запрещена в России» (the organisation is recognised as extremist/terrorist and banned in Russia) in Russian. Any mention of Facebook or Instagram must be followed by the note «принадлежат Meta, признана экстремистской и запрещена в России» (owned by Meta, which is recognised as extremist and banned in Russia).

16.  Articles that mention undesirable organisations are not accepted for publication (the list is available here).

17.  The published article on the website and in the PDF states the date the manuscript was received, the date it was accepted for publication and the date of publication.

The dates are filled in by the editorial office. The date of receipt is the date the editorial office first received the manuscript. The date of acceptance is the date of the editorial office’s final decision to accept the article following peer review.

18.  Articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Authors retain the copyright to their works.

Editorial assessment

Manuscripts are considered in accordance with the Peer Review Procedure and the Code of Ethics of the respective journal.

IMPORTANT: The editorial office reserves the right to revoke a previously made decision to publish if the text of the article shows signs of improper generation using artificial intelligence tools, improper borrowing or artificial inflation of the originality score in the Antiplagiat system. In this case the article processing charge is non-refundable.

The score of an automatic AI detector is not, by itself, grounds for rejecting publication. Scientifically and methodologically justified use of AI as an object, method or tool of research is permitted subject to proper disclosure of its use.

Editorial and production preparation

Scientific directions