Submission and Reviewing Process

Articles submission and reviewing process

Dear authors!

Please consider the following article submission and reviewing procedures when preparing your texts for publication in the journal Personality. Culture. Society. The editorial board requirements are defined by the academic status of our journal, the Higher Attestation Committee recommendations and the international standards advised by the generally accepted authoritative sources (such as SCOPUS, Web of Science, Academic Journals Database).

I. PEER REVIEWING

1. Most of the articles are submitted to the editorial board on the basis of the recommendation issued by the regional editorial board (or a university research department) after a preliminary review. The written review of the article must be prepared by a full professor working in the same region (or university) as the author and not his/her dissertation supervisor/director or a consultant. The review is submitted along with the recommendation of the regional editorial board (or a university research department).

2. The articles which are submitted on the author’s own initiative are sent through a thorough reviewing process which is conducted by the heads of the editorial departments according to the respective disciplines and then approved at the editorial board meeting according to a specific pattern. Such articles must be submitted along with the university (research department) recommendation and a review of a full professor working in the same university or region.

3. The submitted articles are then discussed at the editorial board meeting when no less than two members of the board who are specialist in the field, offer their opinions. The editorial board has departments of philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies.

4. To avoid the interests conflicts and to maintain high level of objectivity, the articles are submitted with no author’s names. The reviews sent to the authors for revision and rewriting purposes or when the article is rejected also must not carry the reviewer’s names.
5. The article is considered accepted for publication when both reviews are positive and when it was supported by the majority of the editorial board members working in the same area. The order and sequence of the publication is determined in accordance with the existing quantity of materials and a set of rubrics in each particular issue.

6. Reviews of the articles prepared by the members of the editorial board may be sent to the universities representatives and the authors upon request. In the case of the article’s rejection university representative and the author (at their request) are sent a comprehensive letter detailing the reasons for rejection in writing (electronically). The authors are entitled to reworking or replacing the article by another material.

7. The editorial board sends copies of reviews to the Ministry of Education and Science when requested.

II. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE CONTENTS OF THE ARTICLES AND OTHER MATERIALS

2.1. General requirements
The journal publishes articles on contemporary philosophy, social theory, methodology of social sciences, as well as investigations touching upon various aspects and levels of socio-cultural reality and containing logically derived generalizations. We welcome both fundamental materials and works which analyze contemporary social processes taking place in Russia and in the world. According to the editorial and publishing policy of the journal, preference is given to interdisciplinary articles linking specific research issues with the problematic of other humanities and social sciences.

The policy of the journal combines a serious dedication to academic research and an attention to current debates, discussions and dialogues in the field of the latest developments in the social sciences and the humanities. The journal is not merely interdisciplinary, it also is not associated with just one trend or scientific school, providing a platform for very different authors and positions.
The editorial board and the readers of the journal are interested in the articles that reveal the fundamental theoretical problems and develop promising methodological approaches to the study of areas of social and human sciences, as well as provide materials summarizing the results of empirical and applied research. Preference is given to a problem-oriented items that meet the criteria of complex study and relevant interdisciplinary orientation of the magazine.

The submitted articles and other materials can not be limited by a narrow applied, purely descriptive and too specific aspects of the research field, on which you intend to obtain a degree or confirm your academic qualifications. We accept for publication the papers with substantial theoretical and conceptual background inscribed into the philosophical, social, scientific and human context.

If the article is theoretical and/or methodological, it is desirable that the author has demonstrated the importance of his/her research results as applied to practical spheres. Materials based on empirical research should include the interpretation of data relevant to the understanding of the problem in a broad theoretical context (within the wider field of social sciences and the humanities).

The title of the article should reflect its contents as fully as possible. Its main points are intended to reveal the problem in question and contain detailed answers to the posed questions.

The submitted articles should comply with the accepted canons of scholarly publications, include a detailed and precise indication of all the sources of data and specific cited passages, as well as contain a clearly defined component of novelty and originality. They must be up-to-date both locally and globally.

In reviewing the submitted texts we take into account their structure, logic, the clarity of results (findings). Offering an article to our journal, the authors are personally responsible for the fair use of the data involved and the accuracy of quotes and references.

Please note that one of the important requirements is to comply with the genre of the journal article. We usually do not publish book chapters, monographs, dissertations, lectures and educational materials. All of these kinds of academic and educational products must be radically revised to ensure that they meet the requirements of the journal publication – in their subject matter, coverage width, composition, logic and style of presentation, etc.

2.2. Plagiarism and ethics statement
In accordance with the international academic requirements, as reflected in the decisions of the Committee on Publication Ethics, the editorial board declares its desire to maintain high standards in the area of academic ethics, to condemn all forms of plagiarism and other scholarly misconduct and to strictly follow both by the authors, and by the editors and reviewers a number of ethical standards. For instance our journal considers only original unpublished articles which are not under consideration by other presses at the time of submission to our journal. This does not apply only to the scholarly translations and some authors by contemporary foreign authors (in order to republish their works the editorial board invariably receives a written permission from the copyright owner – the author/editor).

All authors submitting their articles are requested to submit along with their manuscript the filled out and signed agreement form on their copyright transfer, in which the authors claim that their article is original, written really and completely by the specified author(s), does not contains plagiarism, was not previously published, does not include any statements that are contrary to the law, does not infringe on the rights of others, is not involved in a real or potential conflict of interest and that the author has obtained all necessary written permissions to quote from other sources and can provide them if need be. Once the paper is submitted to Personality. Culture. Society it is first of all checked by the reviewers for the presence of plagiarism. In case of its detection the article will be rejected and the authors will undergo the procedures described in a detailed way at Elsevier site (publishing about twenty five percent of all journal articles in the world) in the publication ethics rubrics at: http://www.elsevier.com /wps/find/editorshome.editors/Introduction

2.3. Abstracting and indexing:
The abstract must reflect the nature of the problem, its place in the social sciences and the humanities, the ways of solving the problem and the important results of the investigation. Abstracts create the crucial first impression of the article and its quality determines how the paper will be treated by the academic community.

This becomes particularly important today, when articles are included in the Russian and international citation indexes and abstract and bibliographic information solely indicate the quality of articles, contributing to, or, conversely, hindering the interest in the article and its author. In the conditions of a rather slow entry of our country into the international scientific competition, the role of the properly written abstract becomes very important.

The abstract should be as clearly structured as possible, in accordance with the following scheme: the object, the subject, the aims, the methods for their implementation, the scope of the results, and the conclusions. Naturally, not all the articles must follow this logic. For example, many papers in the humanities can not be so rigidly structured. However, all the authors should keep in mind this general scheme used in international citation indexes, as an abstract composed according to these principles makes your academic work visible to and understandable by international community, allowing the researchers from different countries who are not familiar with your work, to easily and quickly understand, if it makes any sense to read your entire article, if it is of any interest to them.

Finally, the abstract should be provided both in Russian and in English. Its English version should be written in a literary language and preferably by someone who has a professional command of English and is aware of the theory and practice of translation. The English abstract must not be a literate word-for-word translation of the Russian abstract.

To sum up, the abstract must be informative and avoid common places and vague expressions. It must be meaningful, that is really reflect the main content of the article and all the results of the investigation.

The abstract should be between 150 and 200 words. It is necessary to ensure that the article is fully represented in the citation indexes – both Russian and international. If you are unable to provide an adequate English summary it is necessary to provide the corresponding Russian analogue. The translation will be conducted by the editorial stuff of the journal.

III. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ARTICLES SUBMITTED IN THE CATEGORY OF SCHOLARLY REPORTS

This journal publishes articles and materials in all fields of social sciences and the humanities included in the list of the Higher Attestation Committee of the Russian Federation. Following are the recommendations of the experts on the editorial board on some areas that require special attention.

In the area of Philosophy our research priorities lie in the sphere of modern philosophical discourse: the ontological, epistemological, axiological, praxial and futurist aspects; the quality of contemporaneity, importantly, not in its chronological or even content, but rather theoretical, methodological and ideological understanding. The focus is on the up to date level of coverage of the raised problem (classical, non-classical, post-non-classical), in resonance with the spirit of our time.

Preference is given to creative articles which includes the high culture of questioning, creative imagination, reflective and critical intellectual and designing abilities. The submitted texts should not be, on the one hand, lightweight, popular, and on the other – technically complicated, narrowly specialized or esoteric. Philosophical logos has always been a concrete and methodically and analytically oriented entity that meets the highest standards of competence and taste.

In the area of Sociology we prioritize the fundamental problems of history, theory and methodology of sociology, especially the sociology of culture in its broadest sense, including economic, political, religious and civic culture of various social actors.
Preference is given to articles with a high degree of novelty and academic solidity, grounded in the results of the author’s sociological research.

In the area of Cultural and social anthropology priority is given to the following: interdisciplinary cultural studies and social anthropology as a discipline; the dynamics of contemporary social and cultural changes; a theoretical grounding of the strategies and priorities of social and cultural policies; the informatization, virtualization and mediatization of social and cultural space; the cultural diversity in the contemporary socio-political and economic processes; the perspectives of the local (including archaic and traditional) ethnic, economic, religious, cultural and social practices in modern societies; the preservation and development of tangible and intangible heritage in the context of globalization.

We look forward to articles in which the authors relate to the study of contemporary socio-cultural practices in the context of globalization and localization, the innovative educational technologies; and also works going in the direction of “cultural studies» («cultural studies»).