The following policies apply to the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters.

Please read these policies in full before submitting your article, to ensure you've correctly followed all the requirements.

Affiliations

You and your co-authors must provide all relevant affiliations (in three languages (Uzbek, English, and Russian (or the language of the article)) identifying the institution(s) where the research or scholarly work was approved, supported, and/or conducted:

• Full name(s) of the author(s) (in three languages);
• Academic degree(s), title(s), and position(s) of the author(s) (in three languages);
• Name of the region/place of residence of the author(s) (in three languages);
• E-mail address(es) of the author(s);
• ORCID iD(s) of the author(s);
• Contact phone number(s) of the author(s).

If available:

• Google Scholar profile link(s) of the author(s);
• Scopus Author profile link(s) of the author(s).

Appeals and complaints

The editorial office of the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on appeals to journal editor decisions and complaints about a journal's editorial management of the peer review process.

We welcome genuine appeals to the editor's decisions. However, you will need to provide strong evidence or new data/information in response to the editor's and reviewers' comments.

If you, as an author, wish to comment on aspects of the journal's editorial management, please contact us and select "Other" as the topic.

Please read the full guidance of the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters on peer review appeals and complaints from authors.

Authorship

Listing authors' names on an article is an important mechanism to give credit to those who have significantly contributed to the work. It also ensures transparency for those who are responsible for the integrity of the content.

Authors listed in the article must meet all of the following criteria:

1. made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that's in the conception, design, implementation, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the study, or in all these areas;
2. have participated in drafting, writing, substantially revising, or critically reviewing the manuscript;
3. have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted;
4. have reviewed and agreed on all versions of the article prior to submission, during the revision process, the final version accepted for publication, as well as any significant changes introduced at the proofreading stage;
5. agree to take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the article and to share responsibility to resolve any questions raised about the accuracy or integrity of the published work.

Defining authorship

It is the collective responsibility of all the individuals who have conducted the work to determine who should be listed as authors, and the order in which authors should be listed.

The journal editor will not decide on the order of authorship and cannot arbitrate authorship disputes. Where unresolved disputes between the authors arise, the institution(s) where the work was performed will be asked to investigate.

Please refer to our guide to defining authorship, which includes detailed information on the following:

• Corresponding authors;
• Changes in authorship;
• Assistance from scientific writers or translators;
• Acknowledging use of AI;
• Assistance with experiments and data analysis;
• Acknowledgements;
• Author name change policy.

Citations

Research articles must cite relevant, timely, and verified literature (peer-reviewed, where appropriate) to support any claims made in the article.

You must avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation or prearrangements among author groups to inappropriately cite each other's work, as this can be considered a form of misconduct called citation manipulation. Read the COPE guidance on citation manipulation.

If you are the author of a non-research article (for example, a Review or Opinion), you should ensure that all cited references are relevant and that the manuscript presents a fair and balanced overview of the current state of research or scholarly work in the field. Your references should not be unfairly biased towards a particular research group, organization or journal.

If you are uncertain about how to cite a source correctly, you are encouraged to contact the journal editorial office for guidance.

Please read the full citation guidance of the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, including recommendations on the sources that should be added to your references list of your manuscript.

Competing interests

You and all of your co-authors must declare any competing interests relevant to, or which can be perceived to be relevant to the article.

• A competing interest can occur where you (or your employer, sponsor or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them which could influence the research or interpretation of the results.
• Competing interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To ensure transparency, you must also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.

Please read our guide to competing interests. This includes examples of both financial and non-financial competing interests.

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions

Sometimes, after an article has been published, it may be necessary to make a change to the Version of Record (VoR). This will be done after careful consideration by the Editor with the support of the editorial staff of the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, to ensure any necessary changes are made in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Any necessary changes will be accompanied with a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original article. This can be in the form of a Correction notice, an Expression of Concern, a Retraction and in rare circumstances a Removal. The purpose of this mechanism of making changes which are permanent and transparent is to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record.

Read our full policy on corrections, retractions, and updates to published articles.

Data availability and deposition

Are you submitting your paper to the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, and is there a data set associated with your research? The journal has a data sharing policy that outlines how research data related to your article should be shared. The guide to understanding our data sharing policy provides detailed information and practical steps you'll need to take as an author.

A data repository is a storage space for researchers to deposit data sets associated with their research. If you're an author seeking to comply with a journal data sharing policy, you'll need to identify a suitable repository for your data. Read our guide to choosing a data repository, which includes some generalist repository options that you may consider for storing and sharing your research data.

Custom computer codes, software tools, and mathematical algorithms

To enable full assessment of submissions, you must make available on request to Editors and/or reviewers any custom computer codes, software tools, or algorithms which have been used to generate the results and conclusions that are reported in your manuscript.

Designations of territories

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters respects its authors' decisions regarding the designations of territories in its published material.

The journal's policy is to take a neutral stance in relation to territorial disputes or jurisdictional claims in its published content, including in maps and institutional affiliations.

Where a journal is owned by and published on behalf of a society or other third party, the editorial office of the journal will take into consideration the extent to which the policies of that society or third party may differ on this matter.

Editor Code of Conduct

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters provides a platform for reliable and high-quality research evaluated by leading scholars and experts from around the world. The editor of a journal plays a crucial role in advancing knowledge within the relevant fields of research. They do this by:

• ✓ maintaining and improving the quality of articles published in the journal, as well as preserving the integrity of the peer review process;
• ✓ supporting the journal's authors and reviewers;
• ✓ maintaining and enhancing the journal's reputation in cooperation with the editorial team.

To support this role, the Editorial Code of Conduct of the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters establishes minimum standards for journal editors who have responsibility for decisions on journal content to help ensure our journals publish quality, trustworthy content.

Funding

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters requires authors to declare all sources of financial support that contributed to covering the research expenses related to the work presented in their articles. Examples of these funding sources include:

• internal funds, grants, and other forms of financial support provided by the authors' institutions, employers, or affiliated organizations;
• external funds received from charitable or non-profit organizations, private foundations, commercial companies (e.g. technological or pharmaceutical companies), think tanks, advocacy groups, research associations, and governmental bodies.

The funding declaration enables authors to attribute credit to funders and facilitates transparency, especially where the funder may have additional roles or may have contributed to the research study. These contributions would also need to be defined in more detail within the competing interests declaration.

Authors should declare financial support used for, including but not limited to, the following purposes:

• Funding used to cover the expense associated with performing the research (e.g. costs of equipment or reagents used in the study) and/or analysis of the results;
• External assistance or funding used for experiments, comparisons, and/or data analysis presented in the manuscript;
• Additional funding used to cover language editing services, translators, or academic writing assistance;
• Travel funding required for the implementation of the research project.

Authors are expected to declare only those funds and grants that are directly related to the work presented in their article. If no funding was received for the reported work, authors are encouraged to declare that no funding was obtained. This ensures transparency and avoids concerns being raised about undeclared funding support.

Any funding declaration must include the full name(s) of the funding body, the grant number(s), and, where possible, the name of the individual or research group to whom this grant was awarded. If the funder also played an active role in the research process, such as the data collection or analysis, this should be clearly stated in the competing interests declaration.

Authors must be prepared to provide funding documentation and additional information to the editorial office if requested. Failure to disclose funding may, in certain cases, be regarded as a form of misconduct and may result in corrective action to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record.

Harassment

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters does not tolerate any form of harassment, intimidation, or undue pressure directed toward authors, editors, reviewers, editorial staff, or vendors.

The editorial office is committed to maintaining a professional environment based on mutual respect and will work with the publisher's ethics officers and legal representatives to deal with any cases of harassment.

Guidance for researchers experiencing harassment: As a researcher, you should expect that your work may attract public attention and be subject to scrutiny by the public, policymakers, and advocacy groups. However, researchers working on high-profile or controversial topics may also encounter online harassment. To assist researchers in addressing such challenges, the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters recommends consulting its guide on responding to social media harassment.

Images and figures

You should include images and illustrations in your article only if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported. Please avoid the inclusion of visual materials that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article.

Please read the journal's policy on images and illustrations for further guidance.

As a warranty in the Journal Author Publishing Agreement you make with the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, you must obtain the necessary written permission to include material in your article that is owned and held in copyright by a third party. Such materials may include, but are not limited to, proprietary text, illustrations, tables, audio or video materials, film stills, screenshots, musical notations, and any supplemental material.

Read the journal's guide to using third-party materials in your article, including FAQs on requesting permission to reproduce work(s) under copyright.

Content (e.g. photographs, video or audio recordings, 3D models, illustrations, etc) which can reveal the identity of patients, study participants or study subjects can only be included if they (or parents/guardians if they are underage or considered unable to provide informed consent, or their next of kin if participants are deceased) have provided consent to publish.

If any of this type of content has been obtained from communities where additional permissions are required (e.g. an Elder or community leader in an indigenous community), or from a protected source (e.g. museum collections), then authors must obtain the required permissions for use prior to submission of the manuscript.

Misconduct

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all necessary measures, in accordance with COPE guidelines, to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Examples of misconduct include, but are not limited to:

• Affiliation misrepresentation;
• Breaches in copyright/the use of third-party material without appropriate permission;
• Citation manipulation;
• Duplicate submission/publication;
• "Ethics dumping";
• Image or data manipulation/fabrication;
• Peer review process manipulation;
• Plagiarism;
• Text recycling/self-plagiarism;
• Undisclosed competing interests;
• Unethical research practices.

Read the full policy to find out more about the areas of misconduct listed above.

Peer review

Articles submitted to the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, including draft versions, undergo thorough peer review. The journal follows COPE guidelines for reviewers. The guide to understanding the double-blind peer review process may be useful in this regard.

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters publishes a statement describing the model of peer review used by the journal on the journal homepage. Each research article normally requires evaluation by at least two independent reviewers. The journal's aims and scope provide detailed information on its double-blind peer review policy.

The details of the reviewers' comments, together with their overall recommendations, are taken into consideration by the editor when making a decision; however, the final responsibility for accepting or rejecting a manuscript lies with the Editor.

In accordance with COPE Ethical Guidelines for new Editors, Editors must delegate any submissions that they are unable to handle impartially (e.g. if they are the author of the submitted manuscript) to a member of the Editorial Board or to a guest editor.

Please note that the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters does not permit authors to recommend reviewers for their manuscripts.

Confidentiality of peer review

It is a requirement to maintain confidentiality and integrity of the peer review and editorial decision-making process at all stages, complying with data protection regulations, including the GDPR. The invited reviewer should declare any competing interests before submitting their review report to the journal. If a reviewer wishes to involve a colleague as a co-reviewer for an article, prior approval from the editorial office must be obtained before the manuscript is reviewed, and the colleague's full name, affiliation, and any relevant competing interests must be declared to the editorial office when submitting the review report.

In the process of investigating an ethical query, the submitted manuscript, author, reviewer, and any other person (including whistleblowers) involved will be treated in confidence. During an investigation, the editor may need to share relevant information with third parties, such as ethics committees or the authors' institutions.

Plagiarism

Trust and integrity are among the most highly valued principles in scholarly peer-reviewed publishing. For this reason, the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously.

For Philology Matters, plagiarism includes the unauthorized use of information, images, words, or ideas taken from any material published in electronic or print form. Any direct or indirect use of such material must be properly acknowledged in all instances. You should provide appropriate citations and clearly indicate the source at all times.

Please read the journal's plagiarism policy and guidance for authors to find out what plagiarism is (and isn't) and how you can avoid it.

Preprints, Preprint Servers, and Early Reporting of Scholarly Work

The electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters supports the need for authors to share early versions of their work before peer review publication. Authors are provided with several options for sharing the final Version of Record of their published article.

A preprint, also known as the Author's Original Manuscript (AOM), is the version of your article prior to its submission to a journal for peer review. Preprint servers are online repositories which enable you to post an early version of your research paper online.

If you upload your AOM to a non-commercial preprint server, you can subsequently submit the manuscript to the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters. The journal does not consider posting on a preprint to be duplicate publication and this will not jeopardize consideration for publication.

If you have published an article in the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters, you may share it with colleagues and peers through various channels and platforms. Read our guide to sharing your work.

Research ethics and consent

All research published in the electronic scientific-methodological journal Philology Matters must have been conducted according to international and local guidelines ensuring ethically conducted research.

Standards of reporting

Research should be communicated in a manner that ensures transparency, verification, and reproducibility. Therefore, authors are encouraged to provide comprehensive descriptions of the study rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis. To assist authors in this process, several study-design specific consensus-based reporting guidelines have been developed, and we recommend you to use these as guidance prior to submitting your manuscript.