Submissions

The length of a manuscript formatted according to the journal requirement should be a minimum of 12 pages of the author’s text (without tables, figures, Abstract, Keywords, and References). 

The manuscript should be submitted in one file and have the following structure:

• Title
• Name and surname of the author, academic degree, academic status, occupation
• Affiliation
• Contact (corporate) e-mail of the corresponding author
• ORCID
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Text of the paper:
• Introduction
• Research results and their discussion (with mandatory separation of each section)
• Conclusion
• References

The manuscript title should reflect its content as accurately as possible, be short but precise. Its recommended length is no more than 13 words.

An Abstract of 200 to 250 words should contain the following information:

• definition (setting) of the problem under study;
• research objectives;
• main conclusions.

In the Introduction section, each research should contain a brief literature analysis demonstrating the author’s knowledge of what is known on the relevant topic. A review should involve the subject areas of basic prevailing theory and other theories, which have been developed and their criticism. The literature review should contain the newest studies on the topic.

The manuscript is a complete report of research. The effective way of organizing a manuscript is describing the problem to explaining what you did to solving the problem based on evidence. The Conclusions section should provide clear statements featuring the contribution of the research to the scientific record.

The submitted manuscript cannot be part of a thesis or dissertation as the research results of the thesis should be published before the thesis is defended.

The manuscript should be written in plain and good English so readers can understand it. Authors should use generally accepted terms and avoid scientific jargon or slang. The texts of the manuscripts are not edited by the journal.

The journal offers copy-editing of accepted manuscripts to ensure that the text is free of lexical, grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors.

Before the submission please read Editorial Policies, the COPE guidelines and standards, Ethic Statement for Authors, and the Author Guidelines.

ETHIC STATEMENT OF AUTHORS

All authors are accountable for the content of the manuscript.

The data of manuscript has to be original and never submitted or published before in other journals.

The author must guarantee:

• presentation of work results in an honest way;
• giving due acknowledgement to all contributors;
• presence of references for all sources;
• absence of self-plagiarism by papers published before;
• presentation of corresponding authors as all persons who contributed significantly to the research and paper compilation;
• revelation of potential conflicts of interest (such as presented information about obtained grants and other funding sources);
• fast line with editor for expeditious correction or paper rejection, if some kind of failure or misconduct was discovered.

The following is unacceptable:

• fabrication and/or falsification of scientific results;
• misrepresentation of the published material authorship (failure to indicate all persons participated in the research topic consideration, and/or indication of persons who did not participate in the work);
• plagiarism of data, ideas, and paper fragments;
• self-plagiarism (the representation of previously published materials);
• wrong citation – sense distortion of a quoted text, failure to indicate a reference to a cited source, etc.;
• combination collusions to raise the citation rate artificially.

Before sending a paper, authors should check the compliance of their material with all the following clauses. The materials can be returned to authors in the case the materials do not meet these requirements.

The Editorial Board accepts only original works. The standard is no less than 12 pages in length, excluding the title, keywords, the abstract, references, figures, tables, and formatting according to the requirements.

Manuscripts should be uploaded as Microsoft Word for Windows (Word document).

All margins – 2 cm, paragraph indentions – 0.5 cm. Font – Times New Roman in size – 14 with 1.5 line spacing.

When typing avoid the following:

• using macros in manuscripts files;
• text alignment using space bar (including non-breaking space);
• paragraphing using tab keys or space bar;
• inserting section breaks;
• figures appearing in tables with unmarked borders;
• using abbreviations and contractions without spelling them out at first mention.

1. The title of the scientific manuscript (The recommended length is no more than 13 words. It should reflect its content and the major problem as accurately as possible, be short but precise).
2. Copyright sign and year.
3. Information about the authors: first and last name, academic degree, academic status, occupation; affiliation with specifying the city and country; ORCID; contact (corporate) e-mail of the corresponding author.

Providing his/her e-mail in the article the author agrees to provide an open access to the article.

4. Abstract (200–250 words) should contain the brief summary of the concept of the article (read Abstract Guidelines).
5. Keywords. Minimum 5 words and/or word combinations, they should be separated by semicolon (read Keywords Guidelines).
6. Acknowledgements. Acknowledgements to individuals, granting organizations, grants numbers, etc. The granting organizations names should be written out.
7. The text of the manuscript should be structured in accordance with the rules (read Manuscript Structure).
8. REFERENCES (at least 20 sources) conformed to the formatting requirements (read References and Citations Formatting).

The abstract is one paragraph of 200–250 words. It is not permitted to divide the abstract into sections and use headings.

The abstract should be structured in the following way:

• a brief (not more than 40–60 words) justification of the relevance of the work;
• a brief (not more than 30–50 words) description of the matter the article touches upon (if it is not clear from the title);
• a brief summary of main results or conclusions. Herewith the abstract should not contain copied results or their literal repetition and conclusions, which should be given in the separate section of the article.  

When writing the abstract, the author should bear in mind that:

• The abstract is written to submit the article to abstract journals and databases;
• The abstract is read prior to the article and the conclusion about the need to address the article is made on the basis of the abstract. 

The main criterion the author should bear in mind when choosing key words is their potential value to summarize the content of the document or to help the readers to find the document. The key words may contain terms, phrases, abbreviations, numerical data, chronological data, proper names, symbols. The preferable length of the phrase is 2–3 words. Set expressions, set terms, technical terms serving as key words should not be changed as their changing leads to the loss of the term meaning. The preferable number of keywords is 5–9 words/phrases.

A scientific paper should represent a complete cycle of a holistic study, i.e. it should begin with a problem statement and end with a reliable solution to this problem or the result of the study. The results presented in the paper should be formulated in the form of scientific provisions that clearly define the essence of the contribution to science.

An original scientific paper is a logical narrative built according to certain laws, so it should be clearly structured. In general, the paper should be built according to the following principle.

The INTRODUCTION section should contain an answer to the question “Why was the study conducted?” and an analysis of the literature showing the thoughts of other authors on the problem raised in the study. In the INTRODUCTION section, all sources from the List of References should be analyzed.

The section should contain:

• Formulation of the problem to be solved by the study;
• Substantiation of the relevance of the problem under consideration;
• Research methodology (description of research stages, methods used). It is recommended to summarize it into a separate section, but it is allowed to include it in the introduction.
• Review of scientific papers on the problem under consideration;
• Goals and objectives of the study

The Introduction section should be ended with a clear statement of the purpose of the work.

Additional recommendations for writing an Introduction.

The METHODS section should show the author’s thread of thoughts when constructing arguments.

The RESULTS section is not a list of authors from the List of References and their thoughts or brief main provisions of the presented study. The RESULTS section should contain a detailed description of the author’s proposals for solving the problem raised and their detailed justification based on regulatory and legal sources and/or judicial practice with mandatory indication of sources in footnotes. The section should be structured into subsections, following the logic of the study structure set out in the METHODS section.

The DISCUSSION section should show how the author’s proposals relate to the literature analyzed in the INTRODUCTION section, i.e. determine the place of the presented study in a number of others on this topic. The DISCUSSION section should contain references to works from the INTRODUCTION section.

The summary section (CONCLUSIONS) is the logical conclusion of the study, which synthesizes and generalizes the findings. Its primary function is to demonstrate the achievement of the objective by presenting the concluding results. This section should present not a summary of facts, but a substantive summary that reveals the significance of the results in the context of the broader scientific problem. An assessment of the theoretical and practical significance (where applicable) of the work is mandatory. Therefore, the section should demonstrate the contribution of the study to the existing system of knowledge.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”

Isaac Newton

1. Quality and Relevance: Sources must be strictly relevant to the research topic and published in peer-reviewed journals. Monographs are permitted only for citations of fundamental theories and classical methods; priority is given to recent papers in peer-reviewed journals.
2. Recency: At least one third of the sources (excluding the works of co-authors) must be published within the last 3-5 years.
3. List Composition:
4. Textbooks, manuals, conference proceedings, dissertations, abstracts, reference books, specialist manuals, guides, encyclopedias, regulatory legal acts, anonymous sources, websites, etc. are not permitted.
5. Papers from international Q1-Q2 journals are welcome.
6. Self-citations: The proportion of self-citations (the works of co-authors) should not exceed 20 %.
7. Length: The total length of the Reference list should be 20 sources (±10 %).
8. Technical requirements: All sources with a digital identifier must include a clickable DOI link.

References are listed in the order of citation in the article. Reference list should not include the sources not cited in the article. Each citation in the reference list should correspond with only one article. Complex citations (grouping the sources under one number) are strictly prohibited.

The numbers of pages in the bibliographical entry of the source are required. If the citation refers to the independent publication (for example, a monograph), the total number of pages is given (for example, 345 p.). If the citation refers the journal article, the head and the last pages of the article are given (for example, pp. 17–19). 

A bibliographical entry is a set of bibliographical notes about the document cited, considered or mentioned in the text, needed and sufficient for general characteristics, identification and searching for the document. 

Bibliographical entries are used when:

• citing;
• borrowing concepts, formulas, tables, illustrations from other sources;
• paraphrasing, rewriting the text fragment in your own words;
• the reference to the other publication, where the question is discussed in a more detailed way, is needed;
• analyzing the works published.

In the text the index number of the source from the reference list is given in square brackets.
The pages number is given in square brackets only when the direct quote is used. All direct quotes should be quoted.

The simultaneous use of more than three references is not allowed. If several sources are mentioned they are separated by a semicolon (for example, [1; 2] or [3; 7; 12]) or a hyphen, if the sequence of sources is given (for example, [1–3] instead of [1; 2; 3]).

In case figures, schemas, tables in the text are taken from other publications it is necessary to refer to their sources. Herewith after mentioning the title of the figure, scheme, table “Retrieved from” is mentioned in square brackets. Then the number of the source in the reference list where the figure, scheme or table was taken from and separated by comma the number of the page, the figure, scheme or table is on in this source.