1. GENERAL INFORMATION

1.1. The Geophysical Research Journal, hereinafter referred to as Journal, is a scholarly peer-review periodical that publishes original research articles, reviews, alerts of scientific events, and other relevant information on a wide range of theoretical and applied geophysics.

1.2. The Journal aims to promote the exchange of new scientific results, to discuss the current problems in geophysics and related sciences, and to inform the research community on the scientific events.

1.3. The Journal is founded by the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences (IPE RAS).

1.4. All the activities of the Journal are subject to the law of the Russian Federation, international legislation, agreements and laws on copyright issues and intellectual property, Regulations of IPE RAS, and present Regulations.

2. JOURNAL SCOPE

2.1. The Journal publishes original papers presenting the modern experimental and theoretical results, new methods, and interpretation and scientific reviews in the following subjects:

• theory, methods, and results of regional and global geophysical studies including seismology, seismic forecasting and hazard assessment;

• theory, methods, and algorithms for processing and interpretation of geophysical data; mathematical aspects of modelling the geophysical fields and processes; computing procedures and geophysical software;

• methods and metrology of the field and observatory geophysical measurements and the results of these works;

• laboratory rock testing experiments and rock physics;

• geomagnetic, paleomagnetic, and rock magnetic studies;

• geospace research focused on the phenomena and processes in the Earth's atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere and their interaction with solid Earth;

• geophysical methods for prospecting and exploration;

• environmental and engineering geophysics;

• geophysical monitoring of natural and anthropogenic processes;

• physical processes associated with mining and production and other underground activities; their geophysical monitoring;

• geoinformatics: databases and knowledge bases in the Earth’ science; network technologies in organizing the observations, data exchange, and computations.

2.2. Information materials include:

• chronicles of scientific events;

• brief communications on the awards and jubilees; the obituaries;

• announcements of competitive selections for academic positions;

• calls for the research grant proposals announced by the research foundations;

• other relevant information on the activities of IPE RAS and other scientific institutions;

2.3. The Journal does not publish

• papers falling outside the scope of the Journal;

• intellectual content that has been already published in other journals or by other publishers;

• papers that do not contain any new information and results compared to the previous publications;

• papers containing factual, metrological, mathematical, or other errors that cannot be fixed;

• papers containing the statements and hypotheses that explicitly contradict the established scientific facts;

• fictional and journalistic essays in any fields including science;

• any information and announcements that are irrelevant to scientific research;

• materials containing the data referred to the official or commercial confidential information as determined by the acting legislation of the Russian Federation, departmental regulations, agreements, etc.;

• materials that contain insulting, calumniating, or knowingly false information about persons or organizations.

2.4. Issues of the Journal can either be compiled of the papers devoted to different research fields, or address a single special scientific topic, or present the conference proceedings, or pay tribute to the institutions and outstanding individual scientists on the occasion of their jubilees.

3. JOURNAL MANAGEMENT

3.1. General Journal management including editorial politics, periodicity and the number of pages in an issue, selecting the submissions, organizing the peer review process, acceptance of manuscripts for publication, and all other current questions is the responsibility of the Editorial Board of the Journal headed by the Editor-in-Chief.

3.2. The Editorial Board consists of the leading Russian and international experts in the fields of the Journal Scope. The Editorial Board is approved by the Scientific Board of IPE RAS.

3.3. The Editor-in-Chief is selected from among the leading scientists with international academic reputation in the fields covered by the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief is approved by the Scientific Board of IPE RAS.

3.4. The Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Executive Secretary, and, if required, the Executive Editors on selected scientific fields are suggested by the Editor-in-Chief and approved by the Editorial Board.

3.5. All the decisions of the Editorial Board are made by simple majority of its members attended at the meeting if at least half of the members of the Editorial Board are presented. When the Editorial Board vote is split equally, the decision is made personally by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editorial Board meetings can be conducted in the form of on-line conferences. The particular questions can be solved by questioning (including the Internet-based interviewing) the Editorial Board members.

3.6. The Editorial Board has the exclusive competence to accept for publication the manuscripts indicated in section 2.1 of these Regulations. All author’ submissions including that to the Discussion section are mandatory peer reviewed. In all cases, the decision of the Editorial Board is ultimate.

3.7. The Guidelines for Submitting, Processing, Reviewing, and Publishing original research papers and reviews in the Journal approved by the Editorial Board and available at the Journal's website regulate processing of manuscripts.

3.8. The Editor-in-Chief makes the decision on evaluation of manuscripts on the fields listed in sections 2.1, 2.2 and appoints an Executive Member of the Editorial Board for processing of each submission.

3.9. The final content of a Journal issue is approved and transferred for production office by the Editor-in-Chief or Deputy Editor-in-Chief.

3.10. The Executive Secretary organizes the work of the Editorial Board, prepares the materials for the Editorial Board meetings, maintains and updates the Russian and English language versions of the Journal website, and provides communications with the International Citation Systems.

3.11. Communication with authors and reviewers as well as keeping the Journal's archive is a responsibility of the Editorial Secretary.

4. PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board, authors, and reviewers follow the ethical norms which include but not restricted by the following.

4.1. The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board members

• provide an unbiased, objective consideration of the submitted manuscripts irrespective of the author' place of employment and residence, their religious ethnic, and political affiliation;

• respect the scientific opinion of the authors and do not disclose the contents of the submissions to anyone except for the potential reviewers;

• select the reviewers from among the highly qualified experts in the scientific field corresponding to the submission and ensure a blind review process;

• when selecting the reviewers, avoid the known or expected conflict of interests which might lead to biased evaluation of the manuscript; exclude reviewing the manuscript by the co-authors of previous publications, persons administratively subordinated to any co-author, and scientists who currently are or have recently been the research supervisors of any co-author;

• do not use the data, results, or interpretation contained in the submitted manuscripts without permission of the authors;

• if having obtained a reasonable evidence of erroneous data, results, or their interpretation been published, inform the readers and make the appropriate corrections whenever possible;

4.2 The reviewers, by accepting the invitation to review the manuscript, agree

• to consider the submitted manuscript in unbiased and objective manner, provide an evaluation of the manuscript taking into account the novelty and validity of the presented data and results and compliance of the submission with the world standards and the scope of the Journal;

• to report the revealed facts of plagiarism and repeated submission of the material that has been already published in another journal; check if the author gives proper references to the related previous work;

• in the case of the conflict of interests or if this conflict is revealed in the course of reviewing, to resign immediately reviewing the manuscript;

• not to use in their own research the data, results, or interpretation presented in the reviewed submission without receiving permission of the authors;

• not to disclose the information on the materials submitted to the Journal.

4.3 The authors :

• take full responsibility for the reliability and validity of the presented materials;

• avoid plagiarism and multiple submission/publication of the same manuscripts;

• give proper references to the previous publications, databases, and other sources of information used in the manuscript, and acknowledge the financial support provided for the study;

• include in the list of the authors all the persons substantially contributed to the study and do not include those who were not involved in the study;

• timely, correctly, and ad rem reply to the reviewers' comments and recommendations arising at the stage of manuscript editing and preparation of the artwork;

• inform the Journal editorial board on the errors detected in the submitted or published materials and provide the appropriate corrections whenever possible.

5. FUNDING AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE JOURNAL

5.1. Publication of the Journal is funded by IPE RAS from the income of IPE RAS activities conducted in accordance with the Regulation of the Institute and legislation of the Russian Federation including the income from the subscription (both printed and electronic).

5.2. Publication fees are not charged and author's royalty is not paid by the Journal.

5.3. The Journal is distributed both for free and on the paid basis.

5.4. The agreements with the subscription and sales agencies concerning the selling of the Journal are negotiated by IPE RAS. All the income of Journal sales is provided to IPE RAS and is used for accomplishing the goals and objectives stated in the Regulations of the Institute (including funding the Journal).

6. RESPONSIBILITY

6.1. Authors of original research articles and reviews published in the Journal take full responsibility for the compliance with the legislation on copyright issues, official secrecy and commercial confidence, publication of materials covered by the copyright transfer agreements, contracts, or other juridical documents, patents, and licenses. When submitting their manuscripts to the Editorial board, authors confirm that the manuscript was not published (in full or in part) elsewhere and that it is now submitted for publication to another journal.

6.2. Authors should provide one copy of the Copyright Agreement signed by all manuscript authors, by which the copyright on the publication (in Russian or English depending on language of submission) is transferred to the publisher. By transferring the manuscript to the Journal, the authors agree with the publication on the Journal website (both Russian and English versions) of the abstract of their article, list of references, and the author information and with subsequent (six months after printed copy issue) publication of the full text of the paper in the language of submission.

6.3. If a third party asserts a claim on the Journal relating to the violation of the Russian Federation legislation and/or violation of intellectual copyright, the material and juridical responsibility rests on the authors in so far as it is defined in section 6.1 of the present Regulations.

6.4. The responsibility associated with the distribution of the Journal via the subscription agencies (including the electronic subscription) and distribution of the Journal on a negotiable basis rests on these agencies and IPE RAS in so far as it is determined by the corresponding agreements.