Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The journal Biologica Nyssana is dedicated to all areas of biology science, including field (terrestic and aquatic) and experimental biology, from chemical level to ecosystems. 

The journal Biologica Nyssana publishes original work that have not been published previously, including original research papers, review papers, short communications, floristic and faunistic lists, book reviews and letters to the editor. Biologica Nyssana is an Open Access journal with free of charge publishing policy. The first volume of the journal Biologica Nyssana was published in 2010.

Contributions to journal shall be submitted in English, with Abstracts in English and Serbian languages. The journal Biologica Nyssana offers free of charge translation of the Abstract to the non-Serbian speakers.

The Journal is issued twice a year.

 

Section Policies

Articles

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assists the Editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Reviewing process is single blind and is done by two reviewers. The reviewers are obliged to complete the review process within two months from receipt of the manuscript.

The choice of reviewers is at the Editors' discretion. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor will finally decide whether to accept the manuscript for publication.

During the review process Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

 

Open Access Policy

Biologica Nyssana is an Open Access Journal. All articles can be downloaded free of charge in accordance with the type of the Creative Commons license, visible on the published paper.

The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages. 


 

Archiving

Journal content is archived in National Library of Serbia.

 

Editorial responsibilities

The Editor is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Biologica Nyssana will be published. The Editor is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

 

The Editor reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within ten days from the date of the manuscript submission.

 

Editor must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Staff. In the case that one or more members of the Editorial Staff hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members of the Editorial Staff will be withdrawn from the selection of reviewers and all decisions related to the manuscript.

 

Editor shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

 

The Editor and the Editorial Board must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

 

Editors and the Editorial Board shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the review process.

 

Authors' responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Biologica Nyssana.

 

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in the section Acknowledgements. A paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in Biologica Nyssana.

 

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to Biologica Nyssana are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

Reporting standards

 

A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

 

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved participants/parties to make the data public.

 

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

 

Authorship

Authors must make sure that all only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

 

Acknowledgment of Sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

 

Plagiarism includes the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

 

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and the authors will temporarily (for six months) lose the right to submit their manuscripts to the journal Biologica Nyssana. The journal will refuse to accept any submissions from these authors for a stated period.

 

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy, and authors will not be able to submit and publish in the journal Biologica Nyssana during a period of two years.

 

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.

 

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

 

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Biologica Nyssana’s Editorial Policies.

 

Procedures for dealing with unethical behaviour

Anyone may inform the editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

 

Investigation

  • Editor will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
  • During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

 

Minor misconduct

Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

  • Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
  • A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding fairly minor misconduct.

 

Major misconduct

The Editor, in consultation with the Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
  • Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
  • The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

 

When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Staff will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): http://publicationethics.org/resources/. 

 

Retraction Policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The main reason for withdrawal or retraction is to correct the mistake while preserving the integrity of science; it is not to punish the author.

 

Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Biologica Nyssana: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

 

Self-archiving Policy

The journal Biologica Nyssana allows authors to deposit Publisher's version/PDF in an institutional repository and non-commercial subject-based repositories, or to publish it on Author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and/or departmental website, at any time after publication and according to the Creative Commons license assigned to the paper. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI.

 

 

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