Author Guidelines
When compiling a portfolio of publications, the journal complies with the norms of copyright and related legal norms set forth in the Russian legislation, the ethical principles supported by the community of leading publishers of scientific periodicals. The Editorial Office of the Journal is responsible for making a decision on publication based on the credibility, scientific significance and relevance of the work under consideration.
The Editorial Board expects the authors submitting their materials for publication in the journal to adhere to the following principles:
- research originality;
- provision of the credible results of the work;
- unbiased discussion of the research significance;
- recognition of other persons’ contribution, mandatory provision of the bibliographic references to the works used;
- provision of the information obtained from the confidential sources, only upon permission thereof;
- provision of the information about all co-authors who have made a significant contribution to the research;
- approval of the final version of the manuscript by all the co-authors and their informed consent to its submission for publication
- immediate reporting to the Editorial Board about the significant errors or inaccuracies detected by the author in the publication and collaborating with the Editorial Board for prompt rectification thereof or retraction of an article, as well as timely correcting the errors and inaccuracies detected by the Editorial Office.
The articles should correspond to the subject area of the journal, meet the international standards of scientific publications and be designed in accordance with the established rules.
Text of an article must conform to the scientific style. Incorrect selection and unreliable facts, quotations, statistical and other data, proper names, geographical names and other information provided by the authors may cause rejection of the submitted material (including at the registration stage).
By submitting an article to the journal, an author hereby expresses consent to its publication on the journal’s official website in the open internet access, , transmission of the text of the article (including references, bibliographic information, etc.) to the persons authorized to claim mandatory provision of such information or to other persons for ensuring citation of a publication and increasing the author’s and the journal’s citation index.
The decision to publish the materials is made by the Editorial Board, which can accept an article for publication, recommend an author to revise an article or decline the materials.
The Editorial Board reserves the right to make reduction and editorial changes to a manuscript upon author’s consent.
The copyrighted materials published in the Journal reflect the private point of view of the authors, which may differ from the point of view of the Editorial Board.
All manuscripts are checked for plagiarism by using the customized software: Antiplagiat and iThenticate. If text reuse is found, the decision to decline a manuscript may be made depending on the clarified circumstances.
To publish an original article, the authors are requested to comply with the following requirements for submitting the materials to the Editorial Office:
- An article and all the data related to an article should be prepared in one file and submitted via the Journal’s electronic Editorial Office. First thing, it is necessary to get registered on this website as an author, and then register a publication. Registered authors get the opportunity to upload an article to the Journal's database on their own and subsequently track the status of their publications. The instruction for registration is here.
- The Editor's corrections highlighted in color in the article file sent for approval or correction must be saved, the author's corrections should also be highlighted in color.
- When submitting an article to the Journal, the author should provide an ORCID. ORCID is an international identifier of authors, which contributes to better dissemination of the author's articles after publication. To get this identifier, an author should register on the website https://orcid.org/register
The Journal accepts the original scientific articles in Russian and English, which correspond to the Journal subject area and present the results of the original scientific research of the authors. The optimal word count of the article is 4,000 - 7,000 words. Particular attention should be paid to the quality of translation. Advisable for translation to be made by a native English speaker.
Submission of an article to the Editorial Office
When preparing an article for publication in the Journal, it is necessary to use a TEMPLATE and take into account the following:
— specify the UDC;
— the heading of an article (no more than 20 words) should briefly and accurately reflect the problems referred to in an article, abbreviations or formulas should be avoided; the heading should be both informative and attractive, reflect the uniqueness of the author's scientific creativity;
— initials and family names of the authors (no more than 6 authors) are given with the links to contact information (place of work (study) of the author(s), city, country, e-mail, telephone (if desired). It is necessary to include the e-mail address of one of the authors (corresponding author) in the affiliation field. When transliterating the full names, the author must adhere to their uniform spelling in all articles.
— Abstract (200-250 words) should briefly define the content of an article, its objectives and results and should include the following mandatory parts:
- States the scientific problem and objectives of the work. The relevance of the research is described, and the gap in scientific knowledge that induced the research is indicated.
- Materials and Methods. Presents the methods and methodologies used or procedures applied for obtaining the scientific knowledge.
- Briefly describes the most significant and attractive to the reader and the scientific community results.
- Discussion and Conclusion. Briefly discusses the significance of the achieved results and evaluates the research contribution to science and possibility of applying the results in real practice.
— Keywords are a search tool for a scientific article. It is possible to search articles by keywords in all bibliographic databases. They should reflect the main provisions, achievements, findings, terminology of scientific research. The list of keywords can also include phrases of 2-3 words, but no more than 4 such phrases. They are given both in Russian and English.
— Acknowledgements. In this section, the authors express their appreciation to colleagues for their help; their gratitude for the financial support of the research (see examples in the TEMPLATE of an article).
All the information listed above, from the indication of the UDC to the acknowledgements, is then provided in English without fail!
The text of the article body is necessarily presented in Russian or English language in the certain order (IMRAD structure):
1) Introduction.
2) Materials and Methods.
3) Results.
4) Discussion and Conclusion.
These sections should be distinguished by appropriate subheadings and contain the relevant information.
- Introduction (1-2 pages) presents the statement of a scientific problem, its relevance, connection with the major objectives that need to be solved, emphasizes its significance for the development of a certain branch of science or practice. The Introduction should contain the information that allows the reader to understand and evaluate the results of the research presented in the article. The author should first of all state the general topic of the research, identify the problems that have not been solved in previous research, which this article is targeted to solve. In addition, the Introduction expresses the main concept of the work, which significantly differs from the existing concepts within the scope of the problem, complements or deepens already known approaches to solving this problem. The attention is drawn to introduction of the new facts, conclusions, recommendations, and patterns into scientific circulation. The objective of the article arises from the formulation of a scientific problem.
- Materials and Methods (1-2 pages). This section describes the process of organizing the experiment, the methods and equipment used; provides detailed information about the object of research; indicates the sequence of conducting the research, and justifies selection of the methods used (observation, survey, testing, experiment, laboratory experience, analysis, modeling, etc.).
- Results. In this section of the article, the author's systematized analytical and statistical material should be presented. The results of the conducted research should be described sufficiently fully, so that the reader could trace its stages and assess the validity of the conclusions made by the author. This is the main section aimed to prove a working hypothesis (hypotheses). If necessary, the results are confirmed by the illustrations (tables, graphs, figures), which represent the source material or evidence in a contracted form.
It is critical that the illustrated information does not duplicate the information already given in the text. It is advisable to compare the results presented in the article with the previous works of the author as well as of the other researchers in this field. Such a comparison can emphasize the novelty of the work done, increase its objectivity. The results of the study should be presented briefly, but contain enough information to evaluate the conclusions made. The selection of the data should also be justified. All titles, captions and structural elements of graphs, tables, diagrams, etc., are given both in Russian and English. - Discussion and Conclusion. Conclusion contains a brief summary of the research results. It summarizes the main ideas stated in the body of the article. Repetitions of the material presented should be rephrased to avoid the wording identical with that in the main text. In this section, it is necessary to contrast the obtained results to the objective of the research stated at the beginning of the work. The results of comprehension of the topic are summarized; conclusions, generalizations and recommendations arising from the work are made; their practical significance is emphasized; and the main directions for further research in this area are determined. In the final part of the article, it is advisable to include the attempts to forecast the possible development of the problems studied.
- References. The list of sources used (from 10 to 20) is drawn up in accordance with the requirements adopted in the Journal using the Vancouver citation style. The Reference List is compiled in the order a particular source is mentioned in the text. The Reference List indicates only peer-reviewed sources (monographs, journal articles, books and course books). Sources that do not undergo peer-review (normative acts, law enforcement materials, GOSTs, Construction Norms and Rules (SNiPs), electronic links, etc.)
are indicated in the page-by-page footnotes and are not included in the Reference List. It is not recommended to make references to the tutorials and guidelines. It is necessary to make references primarily to the original sources from among the scientific journals included in the international citation indexes. There should be at least 70% of sources published in the last 3 years, foreign ones – at least 10%. The acceptable self-citation rate – not more than 15%. Sources should not be older than 10-15 years. Each source should be assigned a DOI. See the rules for the Reference List design and a sample Reference List here.
The Reference List is given in Russian and English as two different sections named "List of literature sources" and "References".
References to the articles accepted for publication, but not yet published, must be marked with the words “in print”; authors must obtain a written permission for referencing such documents and confirmation that they have been accepted for publication. Information from unpublished sources should be marked with the words "unpublished data/documents", the authors must also obtain written confirmation for the use of such materials.
About the Authors. The section contains full family name, first name and patronymic name (if any) of the authors; position, official full name of the organization (it is required to specify all the places of work of the author, where the research was carried out (permanent place, place of execution of the project, etc.)); detailed information about the authors: scientific degree, title, position, ORCID, ResearcherID, Scopus ID, AuthorID, e-mail address, contact telephone number, full postal address for sending the author's copy. Information is given in Russian and English.
Claimed contributorship. At the end of the manuscript, the authors need to indicate the actual contribution of each co-author to the work performed. The procedure for specifying the authors and co-authors of the article is agreed by themselves. Information is given in Russian and English.
Accompanying documents. For each submitted manuscript, an identification examination report (expert evidence) on the possibility of open access publication is required (DSTU employees should address off. 2-612), as well as the license agreement.
Article Design and Formatting
1) The Editorial Office accepts texts saved in .doc, .docx, .rtf. It is advisable to use the Times New Roman font, size 14 and 1.5 line spacing. Manual hyphenation is not allowed. It is forbidden to use double spaces in the text, as well as to indent (indented line) using spaces (use the TEMPLATE to design an article).
2) The article should not exceed 25 pages, including a Reference List and illustrations (figures or photographs — no more than 5). The exception is given to reviews — 30 pages (10 figures). All the pages should be numbered (at the bottom of the page, centered).
3) Figures can be presented in vector or raster format with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. They should allow text editing and resizing. All graphic data is embedded within the body of the text, and also sent additionally as separate files.
Illustrations (graphs, diagrams, charts, drawings) drawn using MS Office tools must be contrasting and clear (graphs, charts and diagrams should be drawn in Microsoft Excel). Illustrations must be executed in a separate file and saved as an image (in * .jpeg, *.bmp, *.gif format), and then embedded in the manuscript file as a fixed drawing. Diverse illustrations should be brought to a single graphic style ensuring the uniformity of their design. Underneath each figure there should be a numbered caption. References to figures in the text are mandatory. If the image is copyrighted, it is necessary to write about it in the figure caption. If it is taken from the source, a reference to it should be provided.
4) The dimension of the physical quantities used in the article must correspond to the International System of Units (SI). Abbreviated words should not be used, except for the generally accepted ones (“i.e.”, “etc.”). The letters of the Latin alphabet denoting physical quantities are italicized; the letters of the Greek and Cyrillic alphabet are typed in a straight font.
5) Formulas are typed using a combination of the main font and the Symbol font (except for fractions, sums, square root) in Microsoft Equation 3.0 (Formula Editor in Microsoft Word). Latin characters in formulas and designations (both in the text and in figures) are italicized. Formulas are numbered in parentheses. Only those formulas and equations that contain a reference to them in the forthcoming presentation should be numbered. See an example of the formula design in the TEMPLATE of an article.
6) Tables are embedded in the text of the article. The table must have a title. See an example of the table design in the TEMPLATE of an article.
7) Illustrations (figures, graphs) are numbered in the order they are mentioned in the text, and embedded in the text after the paragraphs containing a reference to them. Each figure must have a caption. Designations, terms, positions, dimensions in the illustration should correspond to the references to them in the text and captions. All lengthy inscriptions should be replaced by the numeric or letter designations, whereas their explanations should be included in the text of the article or in the caption to the figure. See an example of the illustration design in the TEMPLATE of an article.
8) It is recommended to abandon color highlighting and the use of halftones (preferably black-and-white or gray image) to ensure a high-quality impression print.
Please note that the Editorial Office does not start working with the publications registered and uploaded to the Journal database if they are not designed in accordance with the above rules (the serial number is not assigned, and the manuscripts are not submitted for peer-review).
