Bulletin of the Jusup Balasagyn Kyrgyz National University

1. General Provisions

The Editorial Board of the Bulletin of the Jusup Balasagyn Kyrgyz National University adheres to the principles of integrity, scientific validity, objectivity, editorial independence, confidentiality, transparency and responsibility for the integrity of published scholarly content.

In its activities, the Editorial Board is guided by the Core Practices and Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, as well as applicable COPE guidelines, position statements and flowcharts.

The Editorial Board takes account of national legislation and international professional standards applicable to the relevant field of research.

The main principles governing the journal’s publishing activities are:

making editorial decisions on the basis of the scientific value, reliability, originality and relevance of the manuscript to the journal’s scope;
ensuring that editorial decisions remain independent of commercial, administrative, political or other external influence;
ensuring the objective and impartial assessment of all submitted materials;
applying double-anonymous peer review in accordance with the journal’s Peer Review Policy;
protecting the confidentiality of authors, reviewers and materials relating to the editorial process;
requiring the disclosure of conflicts of interest and sources of funding;
observing the principles of appropriate authorship and recognising the contributions of all research participants;
preventing plagiarism, data fabrication and falsification, image manipulation, duplicate publication, citation manipulation and manipulation of the peer review process;
correcting the scholarly record where substantial errors or misconduct are identified after publication;
providing opportunities for constructive scholarly discussion of published materials.

Detailed procedures for considering reports of suspected breaches of publication ethics, as well as complaints and appeals, are established in separate journal policies.

2. Editorial Independence and Decision-Making

Decisions on whether to send a manuscript for peer review, request revisions, accept it or reject it are made by the Editor-in-Chief or by an editor appointed by the Editor-in-Chief who has no conflict of interest.

An editorial decision is based on:

the manuscript’s relevance to the scope and requirements of the journal;
the relevance and originality of the research;
the validity of the methods applied;
the reliability of the results;
the correspondence of the conclusions to the data presented;
the scientific and practical significance of the work;
compliance with research and publication ethics;
the validity of the conclusions provided by independent reviewers.

Reviewers’ recommendations constitute an important basis for editorial decision-making; however, the editor is not required to follow them automatically. Responsibility for the final decision rests with the journal’s Editorial Board.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author’s race, colour, ethnic or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, state of health, disability, citizenship, place of residence, language, religious or political beliefs, institutional affiliation or academic status.

The journal’s founder, publisher, sponsors, funding organisations and other external parties have no right to interfere in the assessment of individual manuscripts or in editorial decision-making.

Editors must comply with applicable legal requirements concerning copyright, personal data protection, confidentiality, defamation and other legal aspects of publishing activities.

An editor must not use unpublished information, ideas, data or methods contained in a submitted manuscript in their own research without the author’s written consent.

3. Confidentiality

Manuscripts, supplementary materials, reviews, authors’ responses, editorial decisions and correspondence relating to the consideration of an article are confidential.

Editors and editorial staff do not disclose information concerning a submitted manuscript to persons who are not involved in its consideration. Access to the materials may be provided only to:

the authors;
appointed reviewers;
editors and members of the Editorial Board directly involved in considering the manuscript;
technical and language editors;
academic advisers;
the publisher, to the extent necessary for performing publishing functions.

Materials relating to editorial consideration must not be transferred to third parties, used for personal purposes or discussed outside the editorial process.

Editors and reviewers must not upload a manuscript, any part of it, unpublished data or the text of a review to publicly accessible generative artificial intelligence systems or other external services where this may result in a breach of confidentiality, copyright or personal data protection.

Limited disclosure of information is permitted where it is necessary to investigate suspected publication misconduct, communicate with the institution of an author or reviewer, or comply with a legal requirement. In such cases, only the information necessary for the relevant investigation is disclosed.

4. Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest includes financial, professional, academic, institutional, personal or other circumstances that may influence, or may reasonably be perceived as capable of influencing, the objectivity of an author, reviewer, editor or publisher.

All participants in the publication process must disclose potential conflicts of interest in a timely manner.

Authors must disclose:

financial and non-financial conflicts of interest;
the sources of research funding;
grant numbers, where applicable;
the role of the funding organisation in the design of the research, collection and analysis of data, interpretation of the results, preparation of the manuscript and decision to submit it.

Where no conflict of interest exists, the authors must state: “The authors declare no conflict of interest.”

A reviewer must decline to review a manuscript where their objectivity may be compromised as a result of:

working at the same institution as the author;
recent or current research collaboration;
a supervisory or subordinate relationship;
personal or family relationships;
direct academic competition;
a financial or other interest in the results of the research.

An editor must not participate in the consideration of a manuscript where they are its author or co-author, have a close personal or professional relationship with the author, or have another conflict of interest.

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board or journal staff undergo the standard independent external peer review procedure. Such persons do not participate in the selection of reviewers, discussion of the manuscript or decision-making. Consideration of the manuscript is assigned to an independent editor who has no conflict of interest.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest identified after publication are considered in accordance with the journal’s Corrections and Retractions Policy.

5. Ethical Requirements for Research

Research must be conducted in accordance with national legislation, international standards and professional ethical requirements applicable to the relevant academic field.

Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants, personal data, biological materials, medical information, surveys, interviews or observations must receive approval from the appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board before the research begins, where such approval is required.

The manuscript must specify:

the full name of the body that approved the research;
the number and date of the decision or protocol, where assigned;
information on obtaining informed consent from participants;
measures taken to protect confidentiality and personal data.

Informed consent may be written, electronic or documented orally, depending on the nature of the research, the decision of the ethics committee and applicable legislation. The journal does not impose an unconditional requirement for written consent in every survey or interview without exception.

Participants must be provided with clear information concerning the purpose of the research, the nature of their participation, the ways in which the data will be used, possible risks, confidentiality safeguards and their right to withdraw without adverse consequences.

Separate consent for publication must be obtained for photographs, medical images, case descriptions or other information that may identify a particular individual. Merely removing a person’s name may be insufficient where the participant can be identified from the combined information presented.

Research involving children, persons lacking legal capacity, dependent persons or other vulnerable groups must include additional protective measures.

Where ethical approval was not required, the authors must provide an appropriate justification and, where possible, submit a decision from an ethics committee confirming exemption from review or refer to applicable legislation or institutional regulations.

Research Involving Animals

Research involving animals must receive prior approval from an authorised bioethics body and must be conducted in accordance with applicable animal welfare standards.

The manuscript must indicate the name of the approving body, the authorisation or protocol number and the measures taken to minimise pain, stress and the number of animals used.

Other Types of Research

For research requiring special permits, including field, environmental or archaeological research or work involving protected objects, authors must provide information about the permits obtained.

For clinical trials and other types of research subject to mandatory registration, the name of the registry and the registration number must be provided.

The Editorial Board may request copies of ethical approvals, informed consent forms, registration documents or other supporting materials.

Formal ethical approval does not in itself guarantee acceptance of an article. The Editorial Board may reject a work where the research described raises justified ethical concerns.

6. Responsibilities of the Editorial Board

The Editorial Board must:

ensure the independent, objective and timely consideration of manuscripts;
maintain respectful and professional communication with authors and reviewers;
preserve the confidentiality of the editorial process;
apply consistent requirements to all manuscripts;
ensure that competent and independent reviewers are appointed;
prevent personal interests from influencing editorial decisions;
take measures to identify plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, data fabrication or falsification and other forms of misconduct;
provide authors with reasoned comments from reviewers and editors;
ensure that substantial errors can be corrected after publication;
consider well-founded concerns regarding published materials irrespective of who submitted them or when they were submitted;
preserve the integrity and accessibility of the journal’s scholarly archive.

The Editorial Board may carry out scientific, literary, language and technical editing of accepted material. Changes that may affect the meaning, scientific propositions, results or conclusions of the article must be agreed with the author.

Before publication, the author is given an opportunity to review and approve the final version of the article. After approval by the author, the Editorial Board does not make substantive changes without the author’s consent, except for the correction of obvious technical errors.

Materials are not accepted for publication where they fall outside the scope of the journal, lack sufficient scientific justification, contain substantial deficiencies that cannot be remedied or violate the principles of publication ethics.

7. Responsibilities of Reviewers

A reviewer must:

assess the manuscript objectively, impartially and without discrimination;
accept an invitation only where the subject of the manuscript falls within their area of expertise;
inform the Editorial Board where they are unable to prepare the review within the specified period;
disclose any potential conflict of interest and, where necessary, decline to review the manuscript;
treat the manuscript as a confidential document;
refrain from transferring the manuscript to other persons or involving co-reviewers without the prior permission of the Editorial Board;
refrain from using unpublished data, ideas or methods for personal benefit;
provide specific, well-founded and professionally expressed comments;
assess the scientific content of the manuscript rather than the personality of the author;
avoid offensive, derogatory or discriminatory language;
refrain from requiring citations of their own works or other publications where those references have no direct scientific relevance to the manuscript;
draw the Editorial Board’s attention to substantial similarities with previously published materials;
report indications of plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation or peer review manipulation;
refrain from uploading the manuscript or any part of it to generative artificial intelligence systems or other external services that may compromise confidentiality.

Where a reviewer suspects or identifies the author’s identity, the reviewer must not attempt to obtain additional information about the author. Where this gives rise to a conflict of interest, the reviewer must notify the Editorial Board and withdraw from further consideration of the manuscript.

The reviewer bears personal responsibility for the content, validity and integrity of the submitted review.

8. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors must:

present reliable and original research results;
describe the materials, methods and procedures used accurately and completely;
refrain from fabricating, falsifying, concealing or selectively distorting data;
refrain from improperly altering images, graphs, tables or statistical results;
cite the works used appropriately and identify the original sources;
obtain permission to reproduce copyright-protected materials;
refrain from plagiarism, disguised paraphrasing, inappropriate textual borrowing and duplicate publication;
disclose the use of their own previously published materials;
refrain from submitting the same or a substantially overlapping manuscript to several publications simultaneously;
inform the Editorial Board about related manuscripts, preprints and previously published versions of the material;
disclose funding sources and conflicts of interest;
comply with research ethics requirements;
provide a data availability statement;
retain the original research materials for a reasonable period after publication;
provide data and documents necessary to verify the reliability of the research upon a justified request from the Editorial Board;
notify the Editorial Board immediately of any substantial errors identified;
cooperate with the Editorial Board in preparing a correction, editorial notice or retraction of the article.

Authors are responsible for the content of the manuscript, the accuracy of references, the reliability of the data and compliance with the rights of third parties.

The Editorial Board does not accept references added solely for the purpose of artificially increasing the citation indicators of an author, reviewer, journal or other publication.

9. Authorship and Contributor Roles

Only persons who meet all of the following conditions may be listed as authors:

they made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the research or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
they participated in drafting the manuscript or critically revising it in a manner that involved a substantial intellectual contribution;
they approved the final version intended for publication;
they agreed to be accountable for the content of the work and to assist in resolving questions concerning its accuracy or integrity.

Each author must meet all of the conditions listed above.

Persons who provided technical, administrative, language, financial or other assistance but do not meet the authorship criteria must be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section, subject to their consent.

The following practices are prohibited:

honorary or guest authorship;
listing supervisors or officials who did not make a sufficient contribution;
excluding persons who meet the authorship criteria;
ghost authorship;
selling, purchasing or transferring authorship;
listing fictitious persons or artificial intelligence systems as authors.

10. Originality and Submission Declaration

By submitting a manuscript, the authors confirm that:

the work has not previously been published in the same or a substantially overlapping form;
the manuscript is not under consideration by another journal;
all authors have approved the submitted version;
all necessary permissions to use third-party materials have been obtained;
the requirements of institutions and funding bodies have been observed, where applicable;
if the article is accepted, it will not be republished without the consent of the rights holder and an appropriate reference to the original publication.

11. Data Availability and Reproducibility Policy

The journal supports the transparency, verifiability and reproducibility of scientific research while respecting the requirements of confidentiality, personal data protection, intellectual property and research ethics.

Articles reporting the results of original research must include a data availability statement.

The statement must indicate one of the following:

the data have been deposited in an open repository, with a permanent link or identifier;
the data are included in the article and supplementary materials;
the data may be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request;
access to the data is restricted for ethical, legal, contractual or confidentiality reasons;
no new data were created or analysed during the research.

When selecting a repository, authors are encouraged to use reliable disciplinary or institutional repositories that provide a persistent identifier and long-term preservation arrangements.

Data, computer code, protocols and other research materials must be cited appropriately.

The journal does not require the open publication of data where this may:

compromise participant confidentiality;
conflict with the conditions of informed consent;
result in the disclosure of personal or sensitive information;
violate legislation, contractual obligations or the rights of third parties;
cause harm to people, animals, the environment or protected objects.

Restrictions on access must be explained specifically in the data availability statement. A general statement that the authors do not wish to provide the data is insufficient.

During peer review or an investigation into suspected misconduct, the Editorial Board may request original data, analysis protocols, computer code and other materials. An unjustified refusal to provide materials necessary to verify the results may affect the editorial decision or lead to post-publication action.

Requests from readers may be submitted directly to the corresponding author or through the Editorial Board. Authors must consider reasonable scholarly requests in good faith while observing legal, ethical and contractual restrictions.

Where data cannot be disclosed in full, authors should, where possible, provide anonymised, aggregated or controlled access.

12. Post-Publication Discussion

The journal supports open, evidence-based and professional discussion of published research.

Comments and concerns may be submitted to the Editorial Board in the form of a letter to the editor or by contacting the journal’s official email address. The Editorial Board also takes account of well-founded scholarly comments published on independent moderated post-publication discussion platforms, including PubPeer.

The journal does not own PubPeer and is not responsible for the content of that platform. The existence of a publication or comment on PubPeer does not mean that the relevant claims have been confirmed by the journal’s Editorial Board.

Comments must:

relate to the scientific content of the article;
be specific and well-founded;
be based on verifiable data;
be expressed in a professional manner;
be free from personal attacks, discrimination and unsupported allegations.

The Editorial Board assesses the substance and evidential basis of a comment rather than the identity or status of the person who submitted it.

Authors may be invited to provide a response, original data or other supporting materials. Where appropriate grounds exist, the Editorial Board conducts an investigation in accordance with the journal’s policies and applicable COPE recommendations.

13. Advertising and Commercial Policy

The journal does not publish commercial advertising.

The absence of advertising does not prevent the journal from providing information about academic events, new issues, the activities of the publisher or other materials directly related to the journal’s aims.

Financial support for the journal, sponsorship of individual events or organisational support does not give funding parties the right to influence:

the selection of manuscripts;
the appointment of reviewers;
the content of reviews;
editorial decisions;
the wording of conclusions;
the order in which materials are published.

The journal’s editorial and commercial activities are organisationally separated.

14. Research Funding

All authors must disclose the sources of funding for the research and preparation of the publication, including:

grants from research institutions and foundations;
government funding;
support from non-governmental organisations;
commercial or private funding;
internal funding from a university, research institution, clinic or other organisation;
payment for data collection, analysis, manuscript preparation, translation or editing services.

Authors must provide the official name of the funding organisation, the grant or project number, where available, and the recipient of the funding.

Authors must also describe the role of the funding party in:

the design of the research;
data collection;
analysis and interpretation of the results;
preparation of the manuscript;
the decision to submit the article;
payment of publication costs.

Where the funding organisation did not participate in these processes, this must be stated separately.

Where no financial support was received, the authors must use the following statement:

“The research received no external funding.”

The disclosure of funding does not affect the editorial assessment of the manuscript.