Code of Ethics

The editorial board of the journal "Universum: Economics and Jurisprudence" is guided in its activities by ethical standards accepted in the international scientific community, in particular the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices) and the Ethics Council of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASE) (https://rassep.ru/sovet-po-etike/manifesty/deklaratsiya/).

The Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board, and Editorial Staff of the journal "Universum: Economics and Law" are committed to following the COPE guidelines and taking into account the experience of reputable international publications in order to ensure high quality scientific publications and trust in them on the part of the scientific community.

1. Editorial responsibilities

1.1. The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board are guided by the Journal's policies. The Editor-in-Chief has the exclusive right to accept or reject a manuscript for publication.

1.2. A manuscript may be rejected at the pre-review stage if the article is clearly of low scientific quality; has been previously published in another journal; or contains fundamental contradictions with the journal's ethical principles.

1.3. The decision to publish is made solely on the basis of the scientific quality, reliability of the data, relevance, and novelty of the submitted work, regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious and political views, social origin, and citizenship of the authors.

1.4. If there is a conflict of interest between the editor and the author, the article must be transferred to another editor. The editors are obligated to avoid situations in which commercial interests influence editorial decisions.

1.5. The editorial board ensures that published materials comply with international standards of scientific and publication ethics, and, if necessary, publishes corrections, retractions, and apologies.

1.6. The editors strictly maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts: they do not transfer received materials to third parties and do not use them for personal purposes without the written consent of the authors.

1.7. All reviews are kept by the editorial office for five years and are provided to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation upon request.

1.8. The editors are obliged to send the authors copies of reviews or a reasoned refusal to publish.

2. Review procedure

2.1. All incoming manuscripts undergo a blind review process: the reviewer is unaware of the author's name, and the author is unaware of the reviewer's name. This ensures the objectivity and impartiality of the expert assessment.

2.2. Independent experts who are qualified specialists in the subject matter of the manuscript being reviewed and who have published on the relevant topic over the past three years are involved in the review.

2.3. Members of the editorial board are not involved in reviewing manuscripts for which they have a conflict of interest.

2.4. Following the review, the author receives a response indicating the required revisions and deadlines for their completion. The editors reserve the right to reject the manuscript if the author fails to address the reviewers' concerns within the specified deadline.

2.5. Manuscripts are published by decision of the editorial board, which is guided by the journal's ethical standards and copyright regulations established by Russian Federation law. Submitted materials are evaluated strictly based on their scientific merit and novelty. Personal characteristics of authors, including race, gender, religious beliefs, ethnicity, citizenship, and political views, are not taken into account.

3. Responsibilities of reviewers

3.1. The reviewer is obliged to immediately notify the editorial board of any conflict of interest (personal, professional or financial) with the authors or the content of the manuscript and to refuse to review it.

3.2. The reviewer is obliged to maintain confidentiality: not to disclose the contents of the manuscript to third parties and not to use unpublished data for personal purposes.

3.3. The reviewer provides an objective, reasoned assessment of the scientific content of the manuscript. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable.

3.4. The reviewer evaluates the manuscript regardless of the author's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political views.

3.5. The reviewer is obliged to point out publications on the topic of the manuscript that are not referenced in it, and also to draw the editor's attention to any significant similarity of the manuscript with other publications known to him.

3.6. The result of the review is one of the following conclusions: accept for publication; accept after revision; reject. This conclusion is approved by the editorial board.

4. Authors' Responsibilities

4.1. Originality and Plagiarism. Authors are obligated to publish only original works. All borrowings from other sources must be properly documented, with attribution to the author and the original source. Plagiarism in any form, including undocumented citations, is unacceptable.

4.3. Data Accuracy. The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the data presented. Fabrication and falsification of data constitute gross violations of scientific ethics.

4.4. Authorship. Only those individuals who have made a significant scientific contribution to the study should be listed as authors. Individuals who did not participate in the study are not listed as co-authors.

4.5. Multiple Submissions. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously is not permitted.

4.6. Duplicate Publications. Publication of manuscripts based on previously published data without explicit reference to the original publication is unacceptable.

4.7. Conflict of Interest. Authors are obligated to disclose all sources of funding for the study and any potential conflicts of interest that could influence its results.

4.8. Correction of Errors. If significant errors are discovered in a published article, authors are obligated to promptly notify the editors for publication of a correction or retraction.

5. Artificial Intelligence Policy

5.1. The editorial board adheres to the position of the international publishing community on the use of artificial intelligence in scientific publications, drawing on, among other things, the COPE documents "Chatbots, Generative AI, and Scholarly Manuscripts" and "Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Decision Making." Based on these documents, the editorial board establishes uniform rules for working with generative AI tools for authors, reviewers, and editorial board members.

5.2. Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors of manuscripts, as they bear no responsibility for the presented results and are unable to critically evaluate their validity. Generating the main text of an article, as well as tables, images, and datasets, using AI is not permitted. The use of AI for auxiliary purposes—literature search, editing, translation, and data analysis—is permitted subject to mandatory disclosure: authors are required to indicate the name of the tool, the nature, and scope of its use in the "Methods" or "Acknowledgments" sections.

5.3. Reviewers and editorial board members are prohibited from using generative AI in preparing reviews. Articles containing significant portions of AI-generated text without appropriate disclosure are subject to rejection.

6. Retraction policy

6.1. The editors have the right to retract (retract) a published article in the event of detection of plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data, duplicate publication, as well as other gross violations of academic or publishing ethics.

6.2. When making decisions regarding retraction, the editorial board follows COPE guidelines. This decision is made by the editorial board regardless of the authors' consent.

6.3. The retracted article is saved in the journal's archive with the note "Retracted" and the reason for retraction. The article's metadata remains available in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) with the appropriate note.

6.4. Authors have the right to initiate a retraction of their own article by sending a corresponding request to the editorial board.

7. Confidentiality

7.1. The editorial board processes the personal data of authors and reviewers in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation on personal data.

7.2 The names of reviewers are not disclosed to the authors; the names of authors are not disclosed to reviewers throughout the review process.

The editorial board's primary goal is to promote the dissemination of reliable scientific results. Authors are responsible for ensuring ethical compliance in the preparation and submission of manuscripts: if publication ethics principles are violated, all reputational and other consequences will be borne by those who signed the manuscript and claimed authorship.