Assessment of results’ credibility

The editorial staff should take all available measures to assess credibility of the results and conclusions of the reviewed manuscript. For this purpose in addition to official reviewers other experts who are specialists in definite fields of medicine (genetics, hematology, etc.) as well as specialists in mathematical-statistical analysis can be involved. In exceptional cases the editorial staff may ask for copies of documents verifying the submitted materials.
To decrease maximally incompleteness and inaccuracy of information in the submitted article references the editorial staff makes verification of all references on a compulsory basis.
The editorial staff publishes information about correction of mistakes (if any) in the published articles. In case if after the article publication, one ascertains that authors have presented the falsified material, the editorial staff agrees that it will publish information about this fact in the next issue of the journal. The basis for this is the presented to the editorial staff results of investigation performed by the institution where the research was conducted. At the same time the editorial staff is obliged to doubt on the credibility of the previous works of the authors published in the journal. The editorial staff may address to the institution where the authors work to prove the validity of their previously published works. If there is no confirmation the editorial staff will announce that the credibility of the previous works has not been justified.

Conflict of interest

To ensure an unbiased independent and objective expertise of the reviewed manuscripts and to avoid the conflict of interest, the editors conduct their peer-reviewing in a strict correspondence with the reviewing guidelines approved by the Journal.
All the articles submitted to the editorial staff are subjected to peer-reviewing. Two independent reviewers are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief (Deputy Editor-in-Chief) from the members of the editorial board, editorial council who are experts in their respective fields. Leading specialists of the Republic of Belarus and CIS countries who hold a PhD degree can be involved in peer-reviewing.
Editor-in-Chief does not appoint external reviewers when there is an evident possibility of the conflict of interest.
Reviewers are informed that manuscripts of articles are the author’s private property and contain highly confidential information. Peer-reviewing is confidential. Reviewers submit a peer-review to the editorial staff in which they point out topicality of the conducted study, completeness and credibility of the submitted data, degree of the results’ novelty, their scientific and practical significance, economic and social value as well as substantiated conclusions about the article in general, remarks and if required recommendations concerning its improvement. The author of the reviewed article can get acquainted with the peer-review text. Based on the reviewers’ opinion the editorial board makes decision concerning possibility of publishing the manuscript in the submitted form, necessity to modify or reject it.
After the decision about the article's acceptance for publication is made, the executive secretary informs the author about it and specifies the terms of publication.
If the paper is rejected the author gets the detailed motivated refusal. In case of disagreement with the opinion of reviewers the author has the right to present a well-reasoned reply to the editorial staff. Inability and unwillingness of the author to take into consideration substantiated remarks and recommendations of reviewers are the cause to reject further viewing of the article.
In debatable cases the article can be referred for peer-reviewing to the optional reviewer. During the sitting of the editorial board, all obtained peer-reviews and the author’s replies are studied when decision is made concerning the article admission.
While preparing of concrete manuscript conflict of interest can arise in the case when one of the participants in the publication and peer-reviewing process (an author, reviewer or editor) has liability that may influence his/her opinion.
The causes of conflict of interest arising during the process of the article publication may be:
• financial or personal relationships
• academic competition
• intellectual passion of both directly the participants of the publication process (authors, reviewers and editors) and their close relatives.
For that reason:
All participants in the peer-review and publication process must inform the editorial staff about potential causes for the conflict of interest.
1. Reviewers should inform the editorial staff about possibility of arising the conflict of interest while reviewing the manuscript and about the causes that may affect their view point concerning the manuscript. They have the right to refuse to review a certain article if they consider it to be justified.
2. Members of the editorial staff as well as members of the editorial board who take part in decision making concerning the definite manuscript must not have a personal, professional and financial interest. Otherwise they should inform the Editor-in-Chief about their interest and refuse to take part in decision-making to avoid the conflict of interest.
3. While submitting the manuscript to the editorial staff authors should
- indicate on the title page whether the conflict of interest does or does not exist;
- inform the editorial staff about the sources of the research support such as grants, equipment, medicinal preparations;
- guarantee in the covering letter, that they have not received any rewards from manufacturers of medicinal preparations, medical equipment and materials including the competitors able to affect the research results.
Authors should inform about a sponsor and his role in determining the study design, in collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in study description; in making the decision to submit the report for publication. If necessary and asked by the editorial staff, authors must provide the additional information permitting the editorial staff to assess the impact of sponsors on the process of research. Authors have the right to indicate in the covering letter the names of those specialists they feel should not be asked to review a manuscript because of potential, usually professional, conflict of interest. The given information is strictly confidential and is taken in consideration while organizing the reviewing. The editors can use information presented in reports about the conflict of interest and about financial interest from the authors, reviewers, editorial board members when making decision about publishing the article. The editorial staff has the right to publish this information if considers it to be important for the article assessment.

Correction and approval of manuscripts

The editors reserve the right to shorten and edit the published materials.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licensethat allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.