This section prepared based on the materials of the International Committee on Public Ethics (COPE) and Elsevier Publishing House, in accordance with the accepted international standards and the norms of Chapter 70 «Copyright» of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. The journal «Proceedings of Voronezh State University. Series: Geography. Geoecology» follows generally accepted ethical standards for scientific publications.

In order to make a decision on weightier publish or reject a submitted manuscript the editorial board takes into account the following principles:

• the manuscripts are considered on the basis of their significance, novelty, validity of results, the quality of the content and layout
• the manuscripts are considered with no bias to the author’s race, sex, religion, nationality, social status or political views
• unpublished information in a submitted manuscript stay confidential, it is protected by copyrights and not transferred to third party
• plagiarism is prohibited
• ethical claims on the manuscripts under review or published articles are subject to mandatory examination

In order to evaluate a submitted manuscript the reviewer relies on the following principles:

• all reviews are strictly confidential. The editorial board shall disclose no information about a paper under consideration to anyone other than those from whom professional advice regarding the publication is sought
• the review should be unbiased and include constructive criticism on the research methodology, results and the article structure, The review checks if the manuscript matches the scope and meets the basic requirements of the Journal
• the review should focus on the quality of a manuscript on its own merit. Personal criticism is never appropriate. The reviewer’s recommendations effect the decision on the submission acceptance
• the reviewer must not use any unpublished information from a submitted manuscript on his private needs

Ethical obligations of authors:

• an author's central obligation is to present an accurate account of the research together with an objective discussion of its significance
• the author guarantee originality of information in the submitted manuscript
• a submitted manuscript shall contain detailed reference to publications mentioned in the text and shall not contain plagiarized material or falsified research data
• each listed co-author should make a considerable contribution to the given research or results. All the authors should be familiar with the final version of the manuscript and agree to publish it
• it is unethical for an author to submit for review more than one paper describing the same research or project to more than one journal for primary publication
• an author should follow guidelines and requirements for formatting and styling the paper. All the flaws noticed before publishing the manuscript should be immediately reported to the editorial board