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Reviewing (expert evaluation) of manuscripts for the collection of scientific articles "Academic Papers of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine" (further referred to as - the Collection) is conducted with the aim of ensuring the high scientific and theoretical levels of publications as well as selection of the most valuable and urgent (promising) scientific works, introduction of exact suggestions regarding the improvement of the reviewed materials.

Principles of the review

1. The reviewers evaluate the materials, which are considered for publication in the Collection, with the agreement of the supervisor of the structural department with the note on the conformity of the submitted manuscript with the thematics of the scientific and research results. The manuscript of the article is checked for conformity with the thematics of the Collection and its formal requirements. The manuscripts, which do not conform to the requirement for publication in the Collection, are declined. The author (authors) is sent a rejection letter with the enumeration of reasons for the denial. If the manuscript of the article fully corresponds to the aims and tasks of the Collection and conforms to the formal requirements, it is sent to the review stage.

Editor-in-chief or deputy editor-in-chief reviews the manuscripts. Editor-in-chief or deputy editor-in-chief entrusts the editor to accompany the manuscript throughout the entire process of its review and to return it with the recommendations for further improvement or a decision (be it positive or negative).

2. The editorial board involves such scientists for peer review, which conduct research in the corresponding field and have no less than at least one publication within the last three years in editions included to the List of scientific professional editions of Ukraine, or foreign editions, including in Web of Science Core Collection and/or Scopus, or have monographs or parts of monographs, published abroad by publishers belonging to categories A, B, or C according to the Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE) classification.

3. The editorial board adheres to the double-blind type of peer reviews. The manuscript of the article is sent to the reviewers without citing the names and personal information of the authors. The reviewers work with the article as if it were confidential material, ensuring the author's right for confidentiality of information found in the article.

4. Reviews of manuscripts of scientific articles, are signed by the reviewer either by usual or digital signature and are preserved by the editorial board of the Collection for three years or more.

5. The reviewer is appointed by the editor-in-chief of the Collection. The reviewer cannot be the author (co-author) of the reviewed article and cannot have recent publications with the author (authors) of the reviewed article. The editorial board aims to eliminate 'conflict of interests' between the authors and the reviewers. Additional review (control of fulfilling the correction remarks) is done by the reviewer in charge of the initial review.

6. Responsibility for the quality of the reviews and the timeliness of conducting the reviews of the articles' manuscripts lies on the editor-in-chief of the Collection.

Deadlines for the reviews

7. Deadlines for evaluation are determined by the editorial board in each separate case while taking into account the creation of conditions for maximum efficiency of the articles' publication. The review of scientific materials while taking into consideration the time needed by the authors to improve the manuscripts of the articles based on the reviewers' feedback as well as the repeated evaluation of the manuscripts, may take one month or move. The improvement of the manuscript by the author cannot take more than two weeks from the moment of the notification issued to the authors regarding the necessity to introduce some changes.

Rules of evaluating the material

8. The review must provide all-around objective evaluation, analysis of strengths and drawbacks of the submitted article. The reviewer evaluates the article according to the following criteria:

• scientific level of the material (urgency, scientific novelty, theoretical/practical meaning, formulation of the problem, formulation and argumentation of conclusions, choice of sources);

• level of presenting the material (correspondence to the title of the article and its contents, correlation of the annotation to the contents of the article, choice of key words and phrases, logic, coordination of the material and the quality of its presentation).

The editor-in-chief has the right to add own remarks to that of the reviewers.

9. In case of necessity, each evaluation is accompanied by the detailed commentary of the reviewer.

10. Based on the evaluation, the reviewer makes a conclusion on whether the scientific material properly fits the established requirements, necessity for further improvement, possibility for its publication or its retraction (recall).

The reviewer provides the review, as per his judgment, in free form or the form offered by the editorial board. The text of the review is submitted to the editorial board of the Collection in printed form with the personal signature.

To hasten the review procedure, it is possible to submit the review digitally via the reviewer's email address.

11. The quantity of submitted review is determined by the editorial board.

Decision regarding the publication

12. Based on the reviews containing expert evaluations of the reviewers while taking into account the conformity of the materials to the thematic direction of the Collection, their scientific significance and urgency, the editorial board issues the final decision:

• to published the scientific article;
• to submit the article for an additional review;
• to return the article for further improvement;
• to retract (recall) the material.

13. The author is notified about the issued decision.

14. Should there be insignificant remarks, which demand editorial fixes only, a decision can be made to accept the article for publication, provided that the authors issue their agreement.

15. Should there be redirection for further improvement, the author is provided a copy of the review in either printed or digital form under all circumstances, without disclosing the identity of the reviewer as well as recommendations to improve the material. The confirmation from the author regarding the fact of receiving the reviews is considered to be the fact of familiarisation.

The article finalized by the author is submitted for review again.

The date of the article's last submission after the corrections is considered to be the date of the article's submission to the editorial board.

The articles are published in order of the overall queue as they are submitted from the authors. Advantage when forming the next issue of the Collection is given to the articles written in English.

16. The author can disagree with some separate recommendations of the reviewers. In this case, he may prepare reasoned objections. The decision on further review of the manuscript is made by the editor-in-chief of the Collection.

17. The editorial board does not enter meaningful conversations with the author regarding the manuscript.

The order of retraction (recall) of the article from publication

18. The grounds for the retraction of the article:

• detection of academic plagiarism in the publication (presence of  improper borrowings in considerable volume);

• publishing the same article in several editions;

• detection of falsification or fabrications in the work (for example, citing fictional statistic and other data, which are supposedly taken from certain sources of information in cases, when such sources are non-existent or do not contain such information);

• detection of serious mistakes in the work (for example, incorrect interpretation of results), which arouses doubts regarding its scientific value;

• incorrect enumeration of authors (included individuals, who do not correspond to the criteria of authorship or omission of the individual, who is worthy to be considered as the author);

• republication of the article without the author's permission.

19. The grounds for retraction may be the official address of the authors (authors) of the article with the evidence of motivated reason for such a decision. The editorial board responds to the author (authors) and in case of evident grounds completes the retraction of the article's text on its own.

20.  The editorial board informs the author (main author in case of collective authorship) about the retraction of the article under all circumstances and explains the reasons for such a decision.