The editorial policy of the journal Oil Refining and Petrochemistry is based on the principles of publication ethics supported by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The Editorial Office adheres to the principles of transparency, integrity, scientific objectivity, and responsibility for the integrity of the scientific information published. The decision to publish is based on the reliability, scientific significance, relevance, originality, and conformity of the work with the subject scope of the journal.

Editorial decisions do not depend on citizenship, ethnic origin, gender, age, religious or political beliefs, institutional affiliation, or other circumstances unrelated to the scientific content of the submitted work.

I Principles of the Editorial Office’s Professional Activity

In reviewing manuscripts and preparing publications, the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board, and staff of the Editorial Office are guided by the following principles: to rely only on documented, empirically verifiable information; to avoid bias and discriminatory or disparaging tone; to ensure the confidentiality of submitted materials until the moment of publication; to prevent personal, financial, or institutional interests from influencing editorial decisions; and to ensure the objectivity, validity, and transparency of editorial procedures.

II Responsibility of the Editorial Office

The Editorial Office is responsible for the integrity of the scientific literature published in the journal. Upon detecting errors, unreliable information, or violations of publication ethics, the Editorial Office considers such cases objectively.

Violations of publication ethics include plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data, citation manipulation, and duplicate publication.

Peer review of manuscripts is carried out in accordance with the Review Procedure posted on the journal’s website. Reviewers are engaged with regard to their scientific competence and the absence of a conflict of interest. Reviewers undertake to maintain the confidentiality of the materials received and to report to the Editorial Office any detected signs of plagiarism, duplicate publication, data falsification, citation manipulation, or other violations of publication ethics.

Editors and reviewers are not entitled to require the inclusion of references to articles in the journal, to their own publications, or to publications of affiliated persons, if such references have no clear scientific justification. Actions aimed at artificially increasing the citation metrics of the journal, authors, editors, or reviewers are prohibited.

III Requirements for Authors

By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors confirm: the originality of the work and the absence of its simultaneous consideration in other publications; the reliability of the data, results, and conclusions presented; the correctness of citation and the absence of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and improper borrowing; the designation as co-authors of all persons who made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research, and the exclusion from the list of authors of persons who did not make such a contribution; the approval of the final version of the manuscript by all co-authors; and the disclosure of conflicts of interest and sources of funding.

Authors are obliged to promptly inform the Editorial Office of any substantial errors discovered in the submitted or published work and to cooperate with the Editorial Office in correcting them or, if necessary, retracting the publication.

IV Authorship and Authors’ Contributions

Authors of a manuscript are recognized as persons who have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research. All authors are obliged to approve the final version of the manuscript and are responsible for the reliability of the results presented.

The ordinal position of an author in the list is determined by agreement among the co-authors. The Editorial Office does not interfere in the establishment of authorship and is not responsible for resolving disputes among co-authors.

The list and order of authors must be agreed upon before submission of the manuscript. The addition, removal, or change in the order of authors after submission is permitted only in exceptional cases, upon a reasoned request from the corresponding author and with the consent of all affected authors. After a manuscript is accepted for publication, changes to the composition of authors are generally not permitted.

Designating as authors persons who did not participate in the research, as well as excluding from the list of authors persons who made a substantial contribution, constitutes a violation of publication ethics.

Disclosure of the individual contribution of each author is not a mandatory requirement of the journal; however, it is welcomed and may be included in the manuscript as an optional section (see the Publication Guidelines).

V Complaints, Appeals, and Reports of Violations

The Editorial Office considers complaints and appeals from authors, reviewers, readers, and other interested parties regarding editorial decisions, the review procedure, or violations of publication ethics.

Inquiries are sent to the Editorial Office’s address: info@npnh.ru. A complaint must contain a clear statement of the substance of the matter and, if necessary, supporting materials.

The Editorial Office considers inquiries in the following order:

Appeal of an editorial decision. An author has the right to contest a decision to reject a manuscript if they consider it unjustified or contrary to the principles of objective review. The appeal is considered by the Editor-in-Chief or an engaged independent expert. Re-examination of a manuscript does not mean its automatic acceptance for publication.

Complaint of a violation of publication ethics. Reports of possible plagiarism, data fabrication, improper authorship, or other violations are subject to verification. Until verification is completed, the Editorial Office refrains from premature conclusions and ensures confidentiality with respect to all participants. If necessary, the Editorial Office is guided by COPE recommendations.

The Editorial Office endeavors to send confirmation of receipt and to report the results of its consideration within a reasonable time.

VI Conflict of Interest

All participants in the editorial process — authors, reviewers, and editors — are obliged to disclose any interests that may influence, or be perceived as influencing, the objectivity of the results presented, their evaluation, or the editorial decision.

Authors disclose conflicts of interest in the relevant section of the manuscript (see the Publication Guidelines). In the absence of a conflict of interest, this is stated explicitly.

Reviewers are obliged to inform the Editorial Office of any conflict of interest before beginning the review and to decline to evaluate a manuscript if such a conflict could affect the objectivity of the conclusion. In particular, a reviewer should not evaluate manuscripts by authors from the same organization, nor manuscripts whose subject matter or authors they have competing or close professional ties with.

Editors do not participate in the consideration of manuscripts with respect to which they have a conflict of interest. In such cases, the manuscript is transferred to another member of the editorial board.

The existence of a conflict of interest is not in itself grounds for refusal to publish — what matters is the timeliness and transparency of its disclosure.

VII Data, Reproducibility, and Reliability

The journal adheres to the principle of reproducibility of scientific results. Authors are responsible for the reliability of the data presented, the correctness of the methods applied, and the accuracy of the conclusions.

Description of methods. Experimental methods, conditions of the experiments, and equipment used must be described in sufficient detail to allow an independent researcher to reproduce the results of the work.

Source data. The Editorial Office has the right to request from authors the source data, supplementary materials, or information on methodology at any stage of the consideration of a manuscript or after publication.

Data storage. Authors are recommended to ensure the storage of source data for at least five years after publication.

Fabrication and falsification. Intentional distortion, selective presentation, or fabrication of data is a gross violation of publication ethics and constitutes grounds for rejecting a manuscript or retracting a published article. It is inadmissible to remove, conceal, move, add, or alter elements of visual and tabular materials in a manner that distorts the scientific content. Technical processing of images is permitted only provided that it does not change the meaning of the results presented.

Supplementary materials. Where datasets are deposited in open repositories, authors are recommended to provide the corresponding references in the text of the manuscript.

VIII Originality of the Work and Borrowings

Authors are obliged to respect intellectual property rights, to cite the sources used correctly, to obtain the necessary permissions for the use of third-party materials, and not to submit for publication materials that infringe copyright or related rights.

When using texts, images, tables, data, diagrams, methods, calculations, or other materials to which third parties hold the rights, authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions and for properly indicating authorship, the source of the borrowing, and the conditions of use.

Plagiarism and improper borrowing. The journal’s Editorial Office adheres to standards of academic ethics and treats all cases of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, and other improper borrowing seriously. Manuscripts that raise doubts from the standpoint of compliance with ethical standards may be checked using specialized tools and other available means of verification.

Inadmissible forms of borrowing and violations of publication ethics include, in particular:

— verbatim copying of a substantial part of another person’s work without proper acknowledgment of the borrowing, including identification of the author, a reference to the source, and, where necessary, the use of quotation marks;

— improper paraphrasing of another person’s work in which the structure, logic of presentation, sequence of sentences, conclusions, or other substantial elements of the original text are preserved without a corresponding reference to the source. Substantial improper paraphrasing without a reference to the source is equated with verbatim copying;

— the use of elements of another person’s work, including figures, tables, diagrams, methods for constructing calculations, analyzing, or visualizing data, without indicating authorship, a reference to the source, an expression of acknowledgment, or obtaining the rightholder’s permission in cases where such permission is required;

— verbatim copying or improper paraphrasing of one’s own previously published works without a proper reference to them, if the volume of such borrowing is substantial for the manuscript;

— the simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to several publications;

— duplicate publication, that is, the repeated publication of the same manuscript or of substantially overlapping material with minimal changes;

— compiling a new manuscript from an author’s previously published works without proper citation, disclosure of the connection with prior publications, and a sufficient new scientific contribution.

The originality of research articles must be at least 80%; for review articles, owing to the specifics of the genre — the need to analyze and cite a significant body of existing publications — a lower threshold of at least 70% is permitted. In assessing borrowings, the Editorial Office takes into account not only the percentage of matches but also the nature of the borrowed material, its significance for the manuscript, and the presence of correct references, quotation marks, rightholders’ permissions, and other indications of fair use of sources. Borrowing of more than 10% of the text or other substantial content without proper acknowledgment is generally regarded as a significant violation and may serve as grounds for refusal to publish.

The Editorial Office considers each case individually and seeks to obtain the necessary information from authors, complainants, and, where necessary, rightholders. Until verification is completed, the Editorial Office refrains from premature conclusions, and its decision is made impartially and objectively.

Where there are reasonable suspicions of plagiarism or other improper borrowing, an author may be asked to provide explanations, proof of authorship, permissions for the use of materials, or a corrected version of the manuscript with proper acknowledgment of borrowings. Following verification, the Editorial Office has the right to reconsider the manuscript, reject it, terminate cooperation with the author, or apply to competent professional and expert organizations.

If a violation is discovered after publication of an article, the Editorial Office considers the question of correction, publication of a notice, or retraction. In the case of retraction, the article is retained on the journal’s website with an indication of its status, the reasons for retraction, and the date of retraction.

The Editorial Office has the right not to consider claims of plagiarism if the complainant provides false personal information, acts in an unethical, offensive, or threatening manner, or fails to provide the materials necessary for verification. The Editorial Office is not obliged to discuss cases of alleged plagiarism with persons who are not directly related to them.

IX Ethical Oversight

Safety and regulatory compliance. Research involving work with hazardous chemicals, toxic compounds, or flammable materials must be conducted in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements and safety standards. Where necessary, authors indicate in the “Subjects and Methods of Research” section that the research was carried out in compliance with applicable occupational health and industrial safety norms.

Permissions and approvals. If conducting the research required special permits, licenses, or institutional approval — for example, when working with substances restricted in circulation or when conducting tests at industrial facilities — authors are obliged to indicate the relevant information in the manuscript.

Use of third-party data. When using production data, technological parameters, or other information obtained from partner organizations, authors confirm that the necessary permissions for their publication have been obtained.

Research involving humans or animals. If the research involved the participation of humans or testing on animals, authors are obliged to indicate that the work was carried out with the approval of the relevant ethics committee and in accordance with applicable norms.

X Post-Publication Discussion, Corrections, and Retractions

The journal supports the possibility of bona fide scientific discussion of published materials. Reasoned comments, remarks, and objections concerning published articles are sent to the Editorial Office at info@npnh.ru and, where necessary, forwarded to the authors for a response.

Depending on the nature of errors or violations identified after publication, the Editorial Office makes one of the following decisions:

A correction is published when a substantial error is discovered that does not affect the main conclusions of the work but requires clarification.

A retraction is carried out upon confirmation of data fabrication or falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, improper authorship, or other gross violations that cast doubt on the reliability of the results. Such an article is retained on the journal’s website with a clear indication of the retraction status, its reasons, and the date.

The Editorial Office is guided by COPE recommendations in considering all cases requiring post-publication intervention.