DORA & FAIR Policy

DORA & FAIR Policy

The journal “Human Geography Journal” upholds international standards of academic integrity, transparency, and responsible evaluation of scientific results. In its activities, the editorial board is guided by the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), which promote openness, reproducibility, and accessibility of scientific materials.

DORA Principles Compliance Policy

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) establishes standards for a responsible, non-discriminatory, and objective approach to the evaluation of scientific activity.

1. Rejection of the Use of Journal Metrics as the Main Evaluation Criterion

The editorial board does not use the impact factor or other journal-oriented metrics as indicators of the quality of individual articles.

Decisions regarding the acceptance of a manuscript for publication are based solely on scientific value, originality, methodological transparency and quality of argumentation.

2. Priority of Content Over Metrics

Manuscripts are evaluated based on their content, not on the authors' affiliations, prestige of institutions, or level of funding.

The editorial board encourages detailed descriptions of the methods, data, and analytical procedures for an objective assessment of the research.

3. Support for Various Forms of Scientific Results

The journal recognizes the importance of full-text articles, research data, software code, methodological developments, representative materials, negative results, and replication studies.

All such materials are accepted for publication on equal terms, provided that they meet the editorial requirements.

4. Transparency of the Review Process

Editorial decisions must be substantiated.

A double-blind peer review was conducted in accordance with the publication's policy and COPE international standards.

5. Prevention of Conflicts of Interest

All decisions underwent independent expert evaluations.

Editorial board members do not participate in decision-making regarding their own manuscripts or those of individuals with whom they have financial, familial or professional relationships.

FAIR Principles Compliance Policy

The FAIR principles aim to ensure the accessibility, reusability, and interoperability of scientific data and related materials.

1. Findability

Authors must provide complete metadata to describe their research.

Data associated with published results should be placed in repositories that assign persistent identifiers (e.g., DOI).

2. Accessibility

Data should be available in an open format or through a clearly described access procedure.

Access to data should not be restricted by artificial barriers such as paywalls. In cases where full disclosure is not possible (e.g., due to ethical or legal restrictions), the authors are required to provide a justified explanation.

3. Interoperability

Data should be presented in standardized formats that are compatible with international storage and analytics systems.

Authors must ensure the use of widely recognized metadata structures.

4. Reusability

Data and materials must be provided with a clear usage license, if applicable.

Authors are required to provide a sufficient description of the research context, methods, and tools so that external researchers can reproduce or reuse the data.

Authors’ Obligations

All authors must adhere to the principles of DORA and FAIR when submitting materials for publication in this journal.
The manuscript must include a Data Availability statement.
The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the submitted data and compliance with ethical and legal requirements.

Obligations of the Editorial Board

The journal ensures a responsible, objective, and non-discriminatory evaluation of manuscripts.

The peer review, decision-making, and publication processes are independent of any commercial or institutional influence.
The editorial board provides the technical conditions for the placement and verification of metadata and facilitates the proper implementation of FAIR principles.

Policy Violations

If the authors fail to adhere to the DORA and FAIR principles, the editorial board may request revisions to the materials, reject the manuscript, or publish appropriate corrections in accordance with the international COPE guidelines.

Ways for considering complaints and appeals.

The detailed procedure for considering complaints is defined (see here flowchart according to COPE), contacts for submitting complaints and appeals are provided. The journal promptly responds to complaints. A confirmation letter is sent to the complainant, which confirms the fact of receiving the complaint and determines the deadline (not exceeding one week), during which the Editorial Board undertakes to review the complaint on the merits and notify the complainant. If the Editorial Office receives any complaints about submitted or printed manuscripts, the Editorial Board must take appropriate and reasonable measures to objectively consider these complaints on the merits and resolve the problem (if the fact of ethical violations is confirmed). During the complaint review process, the author should be given the right to respond to any allegations and provide their own comments on the merits of the complaint.

Retraction and correction after publication.

The policy of making corrections, additions to already published articles, publication of statements about the removal of articles as well as notifications by the editor to readers about investigation of certain issues regarding the published article by the journal and statements by editors warning readers about serious concerns of the publication integrity are based on COPE instructions (COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Retraction Guidelines.) and recommendations of the European Association of Scientific Editors. Retractions are made when there is clear evidence that the study results are erroneous and unreliable, due to unethical behaviour, intentional or unintentional error.

The scientific article text recall from a publication (retraction) is a mechanism for correcting the published information and warning readers about the matter that a published scientific article contains serious faults or erroneous data that cannot be trusted. The inaccuracy of the data can result from both a conscientious delusion and deliberate violations.
Retraction is also used to warn readers about instances of publications duplication (when authors submit the same data in several publications), plagiarism, and interest conflicts concealment that could affect the interpretation of the data or recommendations for their use.
The main goalof retraction is the correction of the published information and ensuring its integrity, but not the punishment of authors who committed violations.

Reasons and grounds for recalling an article

The grounds for recalling the article are violation of ethical principles of the journal.

The reasons for the recalling of the article include:

The presence of undue borrowings in a significant amount;
Duplication of the article in several editions;
Detection in the paper of fabrications or falsifications (for example, juggling research data);
Detection of serious mistakes in the paper (for example, results misinterpretation), which casts doubt on the scientific value of the material;
Incorrect authors composition (There being included the persons who do not meet the criteria of authorship or there is no one who is worthy to be considered as an author);
The conflict of interests (and other violations of the publication ethics) is hidden;
Re-publication of the article without the consent of the author;
Other violations of the ethical principles of the journal.

The grounds for the recalling of the article are:

The author's appeal for the article recalling;
Decision of the journal’s editor-in-chief.

The procedure for recalling an article

The decision for recalling the article is made by the editorial board of the journal on the recommendation of the journal’s editor-in-chief, containing information on the existence of an excuse for recalling the article specified by these rules. The decision to recall the article is made taking into account the author's response to the article, which justifies his/her position on the issue of recalling the article, upon receipt of this response.
If the author/teamof authors find it necessary to recall the article, they appeal to the editorial office, explaining the reason for their decision reasonably. The editorial board responds to the authors and, if there are grounds for retraction, it independently retracts the text of the article.
If the editorial boarddecides to recall the article text on the basis of its expertise or the information received, the author(s) are informed of this and asked his/her opinion on the submission validity of the editor-in-chief on the article recalling. If the author/team ignores the editorial request, the editorial board has the right to apply to the Council for the Ethics of Scientific Publications and (or) to recall the publication without taking into account the author's opinion.
The decision to recall an article is made out in the minutes of the meeting of the journal’s Editorial Board.
By deciding to recall the article, the editorial board indicates the reason for the retraction (in case of detection of plagiarism - with reference to sources of borrowing), as well as the date of retraction. The article and the article description remain on the journal’s website as part of the corresponding issue of the journal, the inscription "RETRACTED" and the date of retraction are applied to the electronic version of the text, the same note is placed in the article and in the table of contents of the issue.
The journal’s editor-in-chief sends the minutes of the meeting of the journal’s Editorial Board to the Council for the Ethics of Scientific Publications and the database of scientific information, which indicates the date of the meeting, the composition of the meeting, the results of the examination, an informed decision and the completed form:

Author's name and title of the article
The title of the publication from which the text is recalled
The initiator of the article's review
Grounds for recalling the article and the date of the decision
Link to the page on the website of the publication, on which information is given on the retraction
The output of the article and the DOI (if any)
Theme of the article

The author (the lead author in the case of collective authorship) is sent the minutes of the meeting of the journal’s Editorial Board with a formulation that justifies the reason for the article's recalling.
The journal’s editorial board, along with the decision to recall the article, may decide to impose a ban on the adoption of articles from the author of a retracted article for a certain period of time.
The information about the retraction of the article is posted on the journal's website on the Internet.

Authorship and AI tools

AI tools (big language models, chatbots, image generators) cannot be listed as an author (or co-authors) of a papers. AI tools used in research or manuscript preparation must be disclosed in the cover letter, Acknowledgements, or in the description of the methods used. Authors are responsible for the reliability, accuracy, avoidance of plagiarism, and protection against AI-induced bias. The editorial board reserves the right to reject a manuscript for inappropriate use of AI, and reviewers should refrain from AI-generated reviews to maintain confidentiality. For more information see COPE’s position on authorship and AI tools.

Images and other multimedia generated by AI are not permitted for publication in the journal without the express permission of the editorial board. Subject to evaluation on an individual basis, exceptions may be considered for manuscript content directly related to artificial intelligence or machine learning (e.g., in geographic information systems).