Editorial Policy

The GENETIKA, the journal of the Serbian Genetics Society, is dedicated to genetic studies of all organisms including genetics of microorganisms, plant genetics, animal genetics, human genetics, molecular genetics, genomics, functional genomics, plant and animal breeding, population and evolutionary genetics, mutagenesis and genotoxicology and biotechnology. The journal GENETIKA publishes original papers (scientific articles, reviews, short communication) that have not been published previously. Also Journal is publishing review of books, letters to the Editor etc.

The GENETIKA is an Open Access journal and is issued 3 (three) times per year. Contributions to journal shall be submitted in English language with summaries both in English and Serbian language.

The journal is indexed in:
SCI(JCR)
Scopus
Medline
EBSCO
DOAJ
Full-text archives: DoiSerbia

Editorial Process

When a manuscript is submitted to the GENETIKA, it undergoes an initial prescreening by the Editor-in-Chief and appropriate members of the Editorial Board in order to determine whether or not the paper fits the scope of the journal. If the Editorial Board establishes that the manuscript meets the journal’s minimum standards for publication, the paper will then undergo the review process. After completion of the peer review process, which is described below, the manuscript enters the editing phase and is sent to the layout editor. If any additional corrections are required, the manuscript is returned to the author. After any minor technical corrections that do not require further peer review, the article obtains a DOI and is uploaded to the doiSerbia webpage: www.doiserbia.nbs.rs  

Publishing Ethics

The GENETIKA strives to ensure the accurate, timely, fair and ethical publication of a scientific paper. Therefore, it has adopted clear and strict guidelines for all parties involved in publication of a scientific paper: the author, the editor, the peer reviewers, and the publisher. The GENETIKA does not charge any manuscript processing and/or publishing fees. The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Editorial responsibilities

The editor and Editioral Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Editor’s responsibilities

• Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
• Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
• Editors should guarantee the quality of the articles and the integrity of the academic record.
• Editors and Editorial staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
• Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
•  Editors should base their decisions solely one the articles’ importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication’s scope.
•  Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
•  Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accept ethical guidelines. The Editors shall evaluate manuscript for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.
• Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
• Editors should not reject articles based on suspicions, they should have proof of misconduct.
• Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members. In case one or more members of the Editorial Staff hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members of Editorial Staff shall withdraw from the selection of reviewers and all decisions related to the manuscript.

Publisher’s responsibilities

• All submitted articles are subject to strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscript shall be confidential and not used for personal gain of anybody included in the process of publishing.
• Editors and Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure and publishing the paper.
• The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language.
• The possible decisions include acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.  
• The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Author’s responsibilities

• Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work.
•  Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
• Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
• Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research.
•  Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
•  Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
•  Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
•  Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
  • Each author must disclose if another party had the right to review the paper prior to its circulation.

When submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author has to disclose any actual or perceived conflicts of interest on the part of any author. A declared conflict of interest does not imply any unethical behavior. A declared conflict informs all parties about relationships that could affect scientific judgment. Potential conflicts of interest include affiliations, financial relationships, personal relationships, or funding sources that could be perceived as influencing an author’s objectivity regarding the content of the manuscript. A conflict of interest disclosure is published at the end of the article.

Reviewer’s responsibilities

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript. The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

• Reviewers should keep all information regarding articles confidential and treat them as privileged information.
•  Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
•  Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
•  Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the articles.
• Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Peer review

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a double blended peer review process by two reviewers. 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 paper 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 may assign additional reviewers. In the main review phase, the Editor sends submitted papers to two experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help referees cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers.

Procedures for dealing with unethical behavior

The Editor is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal will be published. The editor is guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.  Plagiarism includes: i) word for word or almost word copying or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment, ii) copying equations, figures or tables from someone paper without properly citing the source or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as long as it is possible. However, very occasionally, circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted.

Retraction policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like 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 the GENETIKA: 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.”

Open access policy

Articles published in the GENETIKA will be Open-Access articles distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercia-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Self-archiving Policy

GENETIKA allows authors to deposit Author’s Pre-print, Author’s Post-print (accepted version) and Publisher’s version/PDF in an institutional repository and non-commercial subject-based repositories, such as PubMed Central, Europe PMC or arXiv, or to publish it on author’s personal website and experimental website, at any time after publication. Publisher copyright and source must be acknowledged for deposit of Author’s Post-print or Publisher’s version/PDF, and a link must be made to the article’s DOI.

Copyright

Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors shall transfer the copyright to the Publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for publication by the journal, all rights shall be retained by the author(s). When submitting the work, each author has to complete the Copyright Transfer Agreement.

Article published in the GENETIKA will be Open-Access articles distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercia-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.