Publishing Policy

Submission policies

When you submit a manuscript to Iksad Publishing House, we will take it to imply that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere. If similar or related work has been published or submitted elsewhere, then you must provide a copy with the submitted manuscript. You may not submit your manuscript elsewhere while it is under consideration at Iksad Publishing House.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
If the manuscript includes personal communications, please provide a written statement of permission from any person who is quoted. Permission by email is acceptable.

We reserve the right to reject a paper even after it has been accepted if it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with its scientific content, or our publishing policies have been violated.

Transfers

If your paper has been previously submitted to another publisher, you can use our automated manuscript transfer service to submit the paper to Iksad Publishing House. Alternatively, you may choose to submit afresh, in which case you should not use the automated transfer link, and your paper will be evaluated without reference to the previous decision process.

Iksad Publishing House is editorially independent, and our in-house editors and Editorial Board Members make decisions independently from other publishers. It is for authors alone to decide where to submit their manuscripts. For papers that satisfy the scope of more than one publisher, the choice of which publisher to submit to first lies with the authors.

Peer review policies

The following types of contribution to Iksad Publishing House are peer-reviewed: Articles and Reviews. Correspondence and all forms of published correction may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the editors. Comment articles may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the editors, particularly if the Comment contains technical information or unpublished data.

Detailed information about our peer review policies and other important information for referees can be found here.

The review process

All submitted manuscripts are read by the editors. To save time for authors and peer-reviewers, only those papers that seem most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review (although these decisions may be based on informal advice from specialists in the field).

Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for formal review, typically to two or three reviewers, but sometimes more if special advice is needed (for example on statistics or a particular technique). The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers’ advice, from among several possibilities:

Accept, with or without editorial revisions

Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached

Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission

Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems

Reviewers are welcome to recommend a particular course of action, but they should bear in mind that the other reviewers of a particular paper may have different technical expertise and/or views, and the editors may have to make a decision based on conflicting advice. Editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, and we do not always follow the majority recommendation. We try to evaluate the strength of the arguments raised by each reviewer and by the authors, and we may also consider other information not available to either party. Our primary responsibilities are to our readers and to the scientific community at large, and in deciding how best to serve them, we must weigh the claims of each paper against the many others also under consideration.

We may return to reviewers for further advice, particularly in cases where they disagree with each other, or where the authors believe they have been misunderstood on points of fact. We therefore ask that reviewers should be willing to provide follow-up advice as requested. We are very aware, however, that reviewers are usually reluctant to be drawn into prolonged disputes, so we try to keep consultation to the minimum we judge necessary to provide a fair hearing for the authors.

When reviewers agree to assess a paper, we consider this a commitment to review subsequent revisions. However, editors will not send a resubmitted paper back to the reviewers if it seems that the authors have not made a serious attempt to address the criticisms.

We take reviewers’ criticisms seriously; in particular, we are very reluctant to disregard technical criticisms. In cases where one reviewer alone opposes publication, we may consult the other reviewers as to whether s/he is applying an unduly critical standard. We occasionally bring in additional reviewers to resolve disputes, but we prefer to avoid doing so unless there is a specific issue, for example a specialist technical point, on which we feel a need for further advice.

Selecting peer reviewers

Reviewer selection is critical to the publication process, and we base our choice on many factors, including expertise, reputation, specific recommendations and our own previous experience of a reviewer’s characteristics. For instance, we may avoid requesting reviews from people who do not return their reviews in a timely manner or do not provide reasoning for their views, whether harsh or lenient.

We check with potential reviewers before sending them manuscripts to review. Reviewers should bear in mind that these messages contain confidential information, which should be treated as such.

Access to the literature

If a reviewer does not have access to any published paper that is necessary for evaluation of a submitted manuscript, the publisher will supply the reviewer with a copy. Under these circumstances, the reviewer should send the publication reference of the paper required to the editor who sent them the paper to review. The editor will obtain the paper, paying any necessary fees, and send it to the reviewer.

Appeals

In cases where editors did not invite resubmission, authors are strongly advised to submit their paper for publication elsewhere, although it is possible for authors to ask the editors to reconsider a rejection decision. These are considered appeals, which, by policy, must take second place to the normal workload.

Decisions are reversed on appeal only if the editors are convinced that the original decision was a serious mistake, not merely a borderline call that could have gone either way. Further consideration may be merited if a referee made substantial errors of fact or showed evidence of bias, but only if a reversal of that referee’s opinion would have changed the original decision. Similarly, disputes on factual issues need not be resolved unless they were critical to the outcome.

If an appeal merits further consideration, the editors may send the authors’ response or the revised paper to one or more referees, or they may ask one referee to comment on the concerns raised by another referee. On occasion, particularly if the editors feel that additional technical expertise is needed to make a decision, they may obtain advice from an additional referee.

Author responsibilities

Being an author

The publishers do not require all authors of a research paper to sign the letter of submission, nor do they impose an order on the list of authors. Submission to Iksad Publishing House is taken by the publisher to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents, including the author list and author contributions statements. The corresponding author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been reached, that all authors have agreed to be so listed and approved the manuscript submission to the publisher, and for managing all communication between the publisher and all co-authors, before and after publication. Any changes to the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors, or the deletion or addition of authors, needs to be approved by every author.

The author list should include all appropriate researchers and no others. Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. The publishers do not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship but encourage transparency by publishing author contributions statements. Publisher editors at Iksad Publishing House are not in a position to investigate or adjudicate authorship disputes before or after publication. Such disagreements if they cannot be resolved amongst authors should be brought up to the relevant institutional authority.

The editors at Iksad Publishing House assume that the corresponding author (and on multi-group collaboration, at least one member of each collaborating group, usually the most senior member of each submitting group or team), has accepted responsibility for the contributions to the manuscript from that team. This responsibility includes, but is not limited to: (1) ensuring that original data upon which the submission is based is preserved and retrievable for reanalysis; (2) approving data presentation as representative of the original data; and (3) foreseeing and minimizing obstacles to the sharing of data, materials, algorithms or reagents described in the work.

Author contributions statements

Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript that specifies the contribution of every author. The level of detail varies; some disciplines produce manuscripts that comprise discrete efforts readily articulated in detail, whereas other fields operate as group efforts at all stages. For example, “AB and CD wrote the main manuscript text and EF prepared figures 1–3. All authors reviewed the manuscript.” Publisher describes this policy in more detail.

publishers also allow one set of up to six co-authors to be specified as having contributed equally to the work or having jointly supervised the work. Other equal contributions are best described in author contributions statements.

Corresponding authors have specific responsibilities (described below) and are usually limited to three.

Corresponding author—prepublication responsibilities

The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for communicating with Iksad Publishing House and for managing communication between co-authors. Before submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors are included in the author list, its order has been agreed by all authors, and that all authors are aware that the paper was submitted.

After acceptance, the proof is sent to the corresponding author, who deals with Iksad Publishing House on the behalf of all co-authors; Iksad Publishing House will not necessarily correct errors after publication if they result from errors that were present on a proof that was not shown to co-authors before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all content in the proof, in particular that names of co-authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Corresponding author—responsibilities after publication

Iksad Publishing House regards the corresponding author as the point of contact for queries about the published paper. It is this author’s responsibility to inform all co-authors of matters arising and to ensure such matters are dealt with promptly. This author does not have to be the senior author of the paper or the author who actually supplies materials; this author’s role is to ensure enquiries are answered promptly on behalf of all the co-authors. The name and email address of each corresponding author is published in the paper.

Correcting the record

Authors of published material have a responsibility to inform Iksad Publishing Housepromptly if they become aware of any part that requires correcting. See the section on Refutations, complaints and corrections for more information.

A confidential process

Iksad Publishing House treats the submitted manuscript and all communication with authors and referees as confidential. Authors must also treat communication with Iksad Publishing House as confidential: correspondence with Iksad Publishing House , referee reports and other confidential material must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission from the Iksad Publishing House editorial team, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published. Our policies about posting preprints and postprints, and about previous communication of the work at conferences or as part of a personal blog or of an academic thesis, are described in the Confidentiality section.

Referee suggestions

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent referees when they submit their manuscript. These suggestions may or may not be used by Iksad Publishing House at the editor’s discretion. Authors may also request that Iksad Publishing House excludes a small number of individuals or laboratories. Iksad Publishing House sympathetically considers such exclusion requests and usually honours them, but the decision of the editor on the choice of referees is final.

Embargo policy and press releases

Communication with the media

Material submitted to Iksad Publishing House must not be discussed with the media, except in the case of accepted contributions, which can be discussed with the media only once the publication date has been confirmed and no more than a week before the publication date under our embargo conditions.

Papers that are deemed especially newsworthy may be press released, to a registered list, by our press office. Publisherists are encouraged to read the full version of any papers they wish to cover, and are given the names and contact information of corresponding authors. Authors may therefore receive calls or emails from the media during this time; we encourage them to cooperate with publisherists so that media coverage of their work is accurate and balanced. Authors whose papers are scheduled for publication may also arrange their own publicity (for instance through their institutional press offices), but they must adhere to our media embargo and are advised to coordinate their own publicity with our press office.

The benefits of peer review as a means of giving publisherists confidence in new work published in publishers are self-evident. Premature release to the media denies publisherists that confidence. It also removes publisherists’ ability to obtain informed reactions about the work from independent researchers in the field.
The media embargo serves scientists, authors, publisherists and the public. Our policy is to release information about our content in a way that provides fair and equal access to the media, allowing it to provide informed comment based on the complete and final version of the paper that is to be published. Authors and their institutions’ press offices are able then to interact with the media ahead of publication, and benefit from the subsequent coverage.

Communication between scientists

Iksad Publishing House does not wish to hinder communication between scientists. For that reason, different embargo guidelines apply to work that has been discussed at a conference or displayed on a preprint server and picked up by the media as a result. (Neither conference presentations nor posting on recognized preprint servers constitute prior publication.)

Our guidelines for authors and potential authors in such circumstances are clear-cut in principle: communicate with other researchers as much as you wish, whether on a recognised community preprint server, by discussion at scientific meetings (publication of abstracts in conference proceedings is allowed), in an academic thesis, or by online collaborative sites such as wikis; but do not encourage premature publication by discussion with the press (beyond a formal presentation, if at a conference).

This advice may jar with those (including most researchers and all publisherists) who see the freedom of information as a good thing, but it embodies a longer-term view: that publication in a peer-reviewed publisher is the appropriate culmination of any piece of original research, and an essential prerequisite for public discussion.

If further clarification is required, please contact the press office by email.

Competing interests

In the interests of transparency and to help readers form their own judgments of potential bias, publishers require authors to declare any competing financial and/or non-financial interests in relation to the work described. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a competing interests statement on behalf of all authors of the paper.

Definition
For the purposes of this policy, competing interests are defined as financial and non-financial interests that could directly, or be perceived to, undermine the objectivity, integrity and value of a publication, through a potential influence on the judgments and actions of authors with regard to objective data presentation, analysis and interpretation.

Financial competing interests can include any of the following:
Funding: Research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication.

Personal financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration (including reimbursements for attending symposia) from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications (awarded or pending) filed by the authors or their institutions whose value may be affected by publication. For patents and patent applications, disclosure of the following information is requested: patent applicant (whether author or institution), name of inventor(s), application number, status of application, specific aspect of manuscript covered in patent application.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, but note that many US universities require faculty members to disclose interests exceeding $10,000 or 5% equity in a company (see, for example, B. Lo et al. New Engl. J. Med. 343, 1616-1620; 2000). Any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so we offer as one possible practical alternative guideline: “Any undeclared competing financial interests that could embarrass you were they to become publicly known after your work was published.”

We do not consider diversified mutual funds or investment trusts to constitute a competing financial interest.

Non-financial competing interests:
Non-financial competing interests can take different forms, including personal or professional relations with organizations and individuals. We would encourage authors and referees to declare any unpaid roles or relationships that might have a bearing on the publication process. Examples of non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

Unpaid membership in a government or non-governmental organization
Unpaid membership in an advocacy or lobbying organization
Unpaid advisory position in a commercial organisation
Writing or consulting for an educational company
Acting as an expert witness

Application to authors
Authors must disclose competing interest during the submission process. Authors submitting their manuscripts using the publisher’s online manuscript tracking system are required to make their declaration as part of this process and to specify the competing interests in cases where they exist. For peer reviewed contributions, authors’ declarations are disclosed to peer-reviewers. If authors have opted for double-blind peer review, a minimal statement disclosing the existence of a financial or non-financial interest will be provided to peer reviewers with a full competing interests’ declarations shared with reviewers at the time of acceptance. The corresponding author is responsible for providing a declaration on behalf of all authors.

Authors are required to include a statement at the end of their article to declare whether or not they have any competing interests.

The published article indicates the authors’ response using one of the following standard sentences:

The authors declare the following competing interests:
The authors declare no competing interests.

We recognize that some authors may be bound by confidentiality agreements. In such cases, in place of itemized disclosures, we will require authors to state: “The authors declare that they are bound by confidentiality agreements that prevent them from disclosing their competing interests in this work.”

We do not require authors to state the monetary value of their financial interests.

Availability of materials and data

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication inIksad Publishing House is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications in material transfer agreements. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the publishing team at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted manuscript, including details of how readers can obtain materials and information. If materials are to be distributed by a for-profit company, this must be stated in the paper. Our policies on data and materials availability are in line with those of the other publishers.

Supporting data must be made available to editors and referees at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Referees may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets; Iksad Publishing House reserves the right to refuse publication in cases where authors do not provide adequate assurances that they can comply with the publication’s requirements for sharing materials.

After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the publisher. In cases where we are unable to resolve a complaint, the matter may be referred to the authors’ funding institution and/or a formal statement of correction may be published, linked online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.

Details about how to share some specific materials, data and methods can be found in the sections below. The preferred way to share large datasets is via public repositories. Some of these repositories offer authors the option to host data associated with a manuscript confidentially, and provide anonymous access to referees before public release. These repositories coordinate public release of the data with the publisher’s publication date. This option should be used when possible, but it is the authors’ responsibility to communicate with the repository to ensure that public release is made promptly on the publication date. For a list of recommended data repositories and more information about data deposition, please visit this page at Scientific Data.

Any supporting datasets for which there is no public repository must be made available as Supplementary Information files that will be freely accessible on nature.com upon publication. In cases where it is technically impossible for such files to be provided to the publisher, the authors must make the data available to editors and referees at submission, and directly upon request to any reader on and after the publication date, the authors providing a URL or other unique identifier in the manuscript.

Springer Nature provides a Research Data Policy Support Service for authors, editors and Editorial Board Members, which can be contacted at [email protected]. This service provides advice on research data policy compliance and on finding research data repositories. It is independent of the Iksad Publishing House editorial/publishing office, and does not advise on specific manuscripts.

Data availability statement format guidelines

Data availability statements must be included in all manuscripts prior to publication, and we strongly encourage them to be included at the time of submission. For detailed information about data availability statements, visit the Data Policies site from Springer Nature.

The statement should be placed at the end of the Methods section (titled ‘Data Availability’). Data availability statements should include, where applicable, accession codes, other unique identifiers and associated web links for publicly available datasets, and any conditions for access of non-publicly available datasets. Where figure source data are provided, statements confirming this should be included in data availability statements. Depending on the data described in the manuscript, data availability statements commonly take one of the following forms, or can be a composite of the statements below:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its Supplementary Information files).
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON(S) WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [THIRD PARTY NAME] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [THIRD PARTY NAME].

For human sequence or genotype data that cannot be made publicly available for reasons of patient confidentiality, the Data Availability Statement should clearly indicate which datasets are restricted and what procedures should be followed to allow qualified researchers access to the data.

Sharing datasets

Iksad Publishing House adheres to the Springer Data Policy Type 3 for life sciences (details available here). A submission to the publisher implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

The publisher requires datasets to be made freely available to readers from the date of publication, and must be provided to editors and referees upon request, for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. We strongly encourage authors to deposit their data in a public repository prior to manuscript submission.

Authors should ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible.

For the following types of dataset, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Accession numbers must be provided in the paper. Examples of appropriate public repositories are listed below. Additional data types may be subject to mandatory deposition at the discretion of the editor. For suitable repositories for each data type listed below, please refer to the Springer Nature data policies page or the Scientific Data list of recommended repositories.

Mandatory deposition is required for:

Protein sequences
DNA and RNA sequences and sequencing data
Genetic polymorphisms
Linked genotype and phenotype data
Macromolecular structure
Microarray data (must be MIAME compliant)
Crystallographic data for small molecules
Mass spectrometry-based proteomics data

For more information on mandatory data deposition policies at Nature Research, please visit http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/availability.html#data

Refutations, complaints and corrections

Correction and retraction policy

We recognize our responsibility to correct errors that we have previously published. Our policy is to consider refutations (readers’ criticisms) of primary research papers, and to publish them (in concise form) if and only if the author provides compelling evidence that a major claim of the original paper was incorrect. Refutations are peer-reviewed, and where possible they are sent to the same referees who reviewed the original paper. A copy is usually also sent to the corresponding author of the original paper for signed comments. Refutations are published in the Correspondence section, sometimes with a brief response from the original authors. Some submitted refutations are eventually published as retractions by the paper’s authors. In both cases, the published refutation or retraction is linked online to the original paper, and the published paper is linked online to the refutation or retraction.

Complaints, disagreements over interpretation and other matters arising should be addressed to the chief editor. Because debates over interpretation are often inconclusive, we do not automatically consider criticisms of review articles or other secondary material, and in the event that we decide to publish such a criticism we do not necessarily consult the original authors. Editorial decisions in such cases are based on considerations of reader interest, novelty of arguments, integrity of the publication record and fairness to the parties involved. Publication may take various forms at the discretion of the editor. Corrections are published for significant errors in non-peer-reviewed content of the publisher at the discretion of the editors.
Iksad Publishing House operates the following policy for making corrections to its peer-reviewed content.

Publishable amendments must be represented by a formal online notice because they affect the publication record and/or the scientific accuracy of published information. Where these amendments concern peer-reviewed material, they fall into one of three categories: publisher correction, author correction or retraction.

Publisher correction

Notification of an important error made by the publisher that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the publisher.

Author correction

Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the publisher.

Retraction

Notification of invalid results. All co-authors must sign a retraction specifying the error and stating briefly how the conclusions are affected, and submit it for publication. In cases where co-authors disagree, the in-house editors may seek advice from independent referees and impose the type of amendment that seems most appropriate, noting the dissenting author(s) in the text of the published version.

Editorial decision-making

Decisions about types of correction are made by the publisher’s in-house editors, with the advice of the referees or Editorial Board Members. This process involves consultation with the authors of the paper, but the in-house editors make the final decision about whether an amendment is required and the category in which the amendment is published.

When an amendment is published, it is linked bi-directionally to and from the article being corrected.

Authors sometimes request a correction to their published contribution that does not affect the contribution in a significant way or impair the reader’s understanding of the contribution (eg a spelling mistake or grammatical error). Iksad Publishing House does not publish such corrections. The online article is part of the published record and hence its original published version is preserved. Iksad Publishing House does, however, correct the online version of a contribution if the wording in the html version does not make sense when compared with the PDF version (eg ‘see left’ for a figure that is an appropriate phrase for the PDF but not for the html version). In these cases, the fact that a correction has been made is stated in a footnote so that readers are aware that the originally published text has been amended.

Detailed description of correction types

Publisher corrections concern the amendment of mistakes introduced by the publisher in production, including errors of omission such as failure to make factual proof corrections requested by authors within the deadline provided by the publisher and within publisher policy. Publisher corrections are generally not published for simple, obvious typographical errors, but are published when an apparently simple error is significant (eg a greek mu for an ‘m’ in a unit, or a typographical error in the corresponding author’s name).

If there is an error in the lettering on a figure, the usual procedure is to publish a sentence of rectification. A significant error in the figure itself is corrected by publication of a new corrected figure as a publisher correction. The figure is republished only if the editor considers it necessary for a reader to understand it.

Author corrections are judged on their relevance to readers and their importance for the published record. Author corrections are published after discussion among the editors. All co-authors must sign an agreed wording.

Author corrections submitted by the original authors are published if the scientific accuracy or reproducibility of the original paper is compromised; occasionally, on investigation, these may be published as retractions. In cases where some co-authors decline to sign a corrigendum or retraction, we reserve the right to publish it with the dissenting author(s) identified.

Iksad Publishing House publishes author corrections if there is an error in the published author list, but not for overlooked acknowledgements.

Readers wishing to draw the publisher’s attention to a significant published error should contact [email protected].

Retractions are judged according to whether the main conclusion of the paper no longer holds or is seriously undermined as a result of subsequent information coming to light of which the authors were not aware at the time of publication. In the case of experimental papers, this can include further experiments by the authors or by others that do not confirm the main experimental conclusion of the original publication. Readers wishing to draw the editors’ attention to published work requiring retraction should first contact the authors of the original paper and then write to the publisher, including copies of the correspondence with the authors (whether or not the correspondence has been answered). The editors will seek advice from referees if they judge that the information is likely to draw into question the main conclusions of the published paper.

Duplicate publication

Material submitted to Iksad Publishing House must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This rule applies to material submitted elsewhere while the Iksad Publishing House contribution is under consideration.

Authors submitting a contribution to Iksad Publishing House who have related material under consideration or in press elsewhere should upload a clearly marked copy at the time of submission, and draw the editor’s attention to it in their cover letter. Authors must disclose any such information while their contributions are under consideration by Iksad Publishing House—for example, if they submit a related manuscript elsewhere that was not written at the time of the original Iksad Publishing House submission.

If part of a contribution that an author wishes to submit to Iksad Publishing House has appeared or will appear elsewhere, the author must specify the details in the covering letter accompanying the submission. Consideration by Iksad Publishing House is possible if the main result, conclusion, or implications are not apparent from the other work, or in some other unusual cases.

Iksad Publishing House is happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.

Iksad Publishing House allows and encourages prior publication on recognized community preprint servers for review by other scientists in the field before formal submission to a publisher. The details of the preprint server concerned and any accession numbers should be included in the cover letter accompanying submission of the manuscript to Iksad Publishing House. This policy does not extend to preprints available to the media or that are otherwise publicized outside the scientific community before or during the submission and consideration process at Iksad Publishing House (see the sections on embargo and confidentiality).

Iksad Publishing House allows publication of meeting abstracts before the full contribution is submitted. Such abstracts should be included with the submission and referred to in the cover letter accompanying the manuscript. This policy does not extend to meeting abstracts and reports available to the media or which are otherwise publicized outside the scientific community during the submission and consideration process.

Iksad Publishing House is happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed, and continues to form, part of an online scientific collaboration such as a wiki or blog, provided that the information has not been publicized outside the scientific community, and is not publicized until the publication date of the work in Iksad Publishing House. In case of any doubt, authors should seek advice from the editor handling their contribution.

If an author of a submission is re-using a figure or figures published elsewhere, or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. Iksad Publishing House editors consider all material in good faith that the publication has full permission to publish every part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

Confidentiality, pre-publicity and preprints

Confidentiality

Iksad Publishing House keeps all details about a submitted manuscript confidential and does not comment to any outside organization about manuscripts that are either under consideration or that have been rejected.

After a manuscript is submitted, correspondence with Iksad Publishing House, referees’ reports and other confidential material, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published, must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission. The editors themselves are not allowed to discuss manuscripts with third parties or to reveal information about correspondence and other interactions with authors and referees.

Referees of manuscripts submitted to Iksad Publishing House agree in advance to maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and any associated supplementary data.

Pre-publicity and preprints

Our policy on the posting of particular versions of the manuscript is as follows:

You are welcome to post pre-submission versions or the original submitted version of the manuscript on a personal blog, a collaborative wiki or a preprint server at any time.
Iksad Publishing House articles are open access and can replace the original submitted version immediately, on publication, as long as a publication reference and URL to the published version on the Iksad Publishing House website are provided.

Iksad Publishing House authors must not discuss contributions with the media (including other scientific publishers) except in the case of accepted contributions, which can be discussed with the media once an embargo date has been set.

Presentation and discussion of material submitted to Iksad Publishing House at scientific meetings is encouraged, but authors must indicate that their work is subject to press embargo and decline to discuss it with members of the media. Authors are free to publish abstracts in conference proceedings and to distribute preprints of submitted or ‘in press’ papers to professional colleagues, but not to the media.