Ethics
“Historical Courier” attaches great importance to adherence to ethical principles and takes into account relevant references developed by the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (http://rasep.ru).
Originality of articles
Originality is an inherent feature of a scientific article. Plagiarism is unacceptable, that is publication of texts (or their fragments) written by other people (both officially published or made available, e.g., via Internet) under your name.
Rewriting someone else's article basically means stealing someone's ideas and is considered to be a serious breach.
As a rule, scientific journals don't publish articles previously published in other editions. If an author proposes to re-publish his previously published article or if he submits a translation of his article previously published in other languages, he makes explicit reference to this fact and explains why this publication is necessary.
Repeating fragments from the editor's articles, submitted to other editions, is unacceptable, just as it is unacceptable to repeat the full text of the articles.
Reliability of Articles
Falsification and fabrication of data are considered to be a serious breach.
Authorship
The list of authors must include only those persons who in fact have made a considerable intellectual contribution to a paper. The publication is considered unreliable if nominal participants are mentioned among its authors or, on the contrary, if real participants have been ignored.
Citation
Reliable citation of previous publications written by an author and his co-authors is a natural part of scientific work. However, purposeful citation for the sake of improving h-index and other parameters is considered a disadvantage of an article.
Peer Review
All submitted articles (except for the editorial columns, book reviews, conference reports) are subject to double-sided blind peer review: an author doesn't know a reviewer, a reviewer doesn't know the author.
Reviewers are chosen by an executive editor and Editorial Board.
Peer review aims to confirm the submitted article's compliance with scientific criteria; to publish the most important articles as soon as possible; to help authors improve their articles their kind advices.
A reviewer must keep in secret contents of a reviewed article until it is published. He can show or give the article to third party persons only with the author's and Editorial board consent. The reviews and correspondence with authors will be kept in the Journal's archive for at least three years after the article's publication.
Retraction of Articles
If the Journal's Editorial Board finds out that a published article violates the principles of publishing ethics it must either retract it or make some corrections stipulating this in a proper way.
Authors themselves can initiate their articles' retraction.
The Editor's Responsibility
An issue's executive editor has a responsibility that the issue corresponds to the Journal's goals and objectives. The editor must preserve the author's style and ensure freedom of expression; he doesn't have to to share approaches and conclusions made in the articles.
However, he is responsible for the Journal's quality – both in terms of scientific validity and in terms of presentation of materials. He has the power to take the final decision regarding the articles in order to improve the Journal's quality.
The executive editor must strike a fair balance between the interests of science and education, on the one hand, and interests of the Journal's founder – on the other.