Aim and Scope

LITHOSPHERE (Russia) aims to develop scientific knowledge in the field of a wide range of problems of solid Earth:

• the structure and dynamics of the lithosphere development  in space and time;
• sedimentation, lithogenesis, magmatism and metamorphism;
• mineralogenesis and ore formation, devising effective methods of prospecting and exploration of minerals;
• geophysical features of the Earth;
• development of modern technologies to study and monitor environmental conditions, forecast and prevent natural and technogenic catastrophic phenomena;
• development of geoanalytical techniques.

Section Policies

PALEONTOLOGY, STRATIGRAPHY, LITHOLOGY

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

REGIONAL GEOLOGY, GEOTEKTONICS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

PETROLOGY, GEOCHEMISTRY

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

MINERALOGY

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

MINERAL DEPOSITS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

HYDROGEOLOGY, ECOLOGY

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

GEOPHYSICS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

MINING

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES OF MINERALS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

TYPOMORPHISM, CRYSTAL CHEMISTRY, AND PHYSICS OF MINERALS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

RESEARCH METHODS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

SYNTHESIS AND PROPERTIES OF MINERAL-LIKE MATERIALS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Publication Frequency

The Journal is published 6 times per year.

Open Access Policy

The LITHOSPHERE (Russia) journal adheres to the policy of a maximal visibility of its content, which contributes to the sustainable development of scientific knowledge. Therefore, the Journal provides immediate open access to all articles published therein on the basis of principles formulated in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition, which permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles published in the journal, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from having access to the Internet itself.

Archiving

• Russian State Library (RSL)
• National Electronic-Information Consortium (NEICON)

Peer-Review

1. All manuscripts submitted to the Editorial office of the Lithosphere (Russia) journal are subject to mandatory double-blind peer review. This method of scientific expertise implies that neither the reviewer is aware of the authorship of the manuscript, nor the author maintains any contact with the reviewer.
2. Submitted manuscripts are initially checked against minimal acceptance criteria to verify that their research subject fits the aims and scope of the Lithosphere (Russia) journal and that all formal requirements set out in the Author guidelines are addressed. In the case where a manuscript is presented in a form contradicting the requirements given in the Author guidelines, the author/s are requested to re-submit the text in the appropriate form.
3. Manuscripts that do not fall within the thematic scope of the Journal are not accepted for further peer review, about which the author/s are notified within 2 weeks of submission.
4. A submitted manuscript that meets the minimal acceptance criteria is forwarded to peer review by one or more experts in the corresponding research field.
5. The Editorial board has the right to reject manuscripts without peer review in the case of their low scientific quality.
6. Peer review is performed by leading Russian and foreign researchers, including the Editorial board and Editorial council members. The Editor-in-chief or Deputy editors select reviewers for each submitted manuscript.
7. The peer-review process in the Lithosphere (Russia) journal is normally completed within the period of 1 month. However, upon the request of the reviewer/s, or if an additional expert evaluation is required, the peer-review period can be extended. The author/s are notified in writing on the extension of the peer-review period.
8. Reviewers are informed that the manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the author/s.
9. Reviewers should decline a peer-review invitation in the case of any relationships that could be viewed as a potential conflict of interest, since such relationships may affect the impartial evaluation of the work under review.
10. Upon the completion of peer review, reviewers are requested to make one of the following recommendations:

• accept the manuscript for publication it its current form;
• invite the author/s to revise their manuscript following the presented suggestions;
• suggest that the publication decision be reached following additional reviewing by another expert;
• reject the manuscript outright.

Reviewers are requested to include the assessment of the following aspects in their report: a) relevance of the presented research to the contemporary achievements in the corresponding field; b) novelty and impact of the obtained results; c) advantages and disadvantages of the work; d) quality of figures and tables, as well as other illustrative materials; e) suitability of the form, in which the research is presented, including the quality of references, the abstract, etc.

11. The texts of the reviews are forwarded to the author/s.
12. The authors are requested to notify the Editorial board verbally or in writing if they decide to refuse from revising their manuscript following the reviewer’s comments, thus refusing from publishing their manuscript.
13. In the case where the reviewer/s have recommended revisions, the Journal requests the author/s either to make the necessary corrections or argue them reasonably. The revised version of the manuscript is re-submitted within the period of maximum 2 months for final assessment. The revised manuscript is additionally sent for review.
14. Revised manuscripts re-submitted after 2 months of receiving the initial review are withdrawn from the publication process. The author/s are invited to submit their manuscript as a new submission. The Editorial board treats such manuscripts as entirely new submissions.
15. When one of the reviewers has not recommended the manuscript for publication, the Editorial board has the right to send it to one more reviewer for additional evaluation.
16. Positive reviews do not guarantee the acceptance, since the final decision on the publication lies exclusively with the Editor-in-chief.
17. Manuscripts that have been rejected following the peer-review process cannot be submitted to the Lithosphere (Russia) journal again.
18. Upon the decision to accept the manuscript for publication, the author is notified of the scheduled period of publication.
19. All conflict situations arising during peer review are resolved exclusively by the Editor-in-chief.
20. Original reviews of submitted manuscripts remain deposited during the period of 5 years.
21. No fee is charged for providing peer review.

Indexation

Articles in LITHOSPHERE (Russia) are indexed by several systems:

• Russian Scientific Citation Index (RSCI) – a database, accumulating information on papers by Russian scientists, published in native and foreign titles. The RSCI project is under development since 2005 by “Electronic Scientific Library” foundation (elibrary.ru).
• Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. The Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest scholarly publishers, plus scholarly books and other non-peer reviewed journals.
• DOAJ
• SOCIONET
• Lens
• Research4life

Publishing Ethics

The LITHOSPHERE (Russia) journal is an academic edition that has no political, ideological, confessional and other preferences. It is guided exclusively by the benefit of science and society. All parties to the process of scientific communication (authors, reviewers, editors and Editorial Board members) should make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical code that has been developed in compliance with international best practices in scholarly publishing and following the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Declaration “Ethical principles of scientific publications” by the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers (ASEP, Russia).

1. Authorship

When submitting a manuscript for consideration for publication in Lithosphere (Russia), the author thereby confirms his/her authorship. In the case when a study presented in the manuscript has been produced in collaboration, one of the authors handles the submission process provided that all co-authorshave been named and given full credit to. Each co-author should have participated sufficiently in the research to be named as a co-author. Authorship credit is based on a substantial contribution to either research design and conception, data collection and treatment, the analysis and interpretation of the results, or drafting the manuscript.

The authors are responsible for providing correct information about all funding and supporting sources. Appropriate gratitude statements to the colleagues who have made significant contribution to the work should be given in the manuscript subsection “Acknowledgements”.

All sources of information used in the process of research and manuscript preparation should be properly cited. The authors bear full responsibility for the correct bibliographic description of the sources.

Any changes into the text that has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication can be made only upon consent of the Editor-in-Chief. The authors have the right to withdraw their paper from publication only at stages preceding editing and typesetting work (unless some compelling reasons have appeared).

2. Plagiarism

Any form of plagiarism, including auto-plagiarism, constitutes unethical practice and is, therefore, unacceptable. Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is considered to be unethical behaviour.

All the manuscripts submitted to the Lithosphere (Russia) journal are checked for incorrect borrowings and plagiarism using either the Antiplagiat system (for papers written in Russian) or Google Scholar (at the moment used for papers written in English).

Plagiarism may take diverse forms, such as:

• use of any information published in other editions without indicating the primary source;
• use of images, pictures, photographs, tables, diagrams, schemes or any other forms of graphical information without indicating the primary source;
• use of any materials published in scientific and popular editions without approval of the copyright holder;
• incorrect citation, including incomplete bibliographic description of the source, which prevents its identification;
• reference not to the primary source of the borrowed text without clear indication of this fact, which may result in mistakes with the determination of the primary source;
• absence of in-text references to the sources listed in the bibliography of the paper;
• excessive citation not justified by the objectives and genre of the paper.

In the case when any form of plagiarism has been detected or suspected, the Editorial board of the Lithosphere (Russia) journal shall withdraw such papers from any stage of the publication process, even if the paper has already been published.

3. Retraction policy

A retraction mechanism in compliance with the COPE protocol shall be applied when the Editorial board:

• receives evidence of the fraudulence of the published information as a result of either the authors’ conscious actions or bona fide errors (e.g., non-intentional errors in calculations);
• receives evidence of multiple publications or multiple submissions;
• reveals the fact of a deliberate or non-intentional concealment of a conflict of interest, which could have affected the interpretation of the data or recommendations on the use of the obtained results.

Retraction is aimed at correcting errors in publications and informing the readership about those papers comprising erroneous data.

Retraction does not imply deletion of the publication from the Journal’s website or other bibliographic databases. A retraction note is published alongside the original publication. The original article is retained unchanged (with its DOI), except for a watermark on the .pdf indicating “retraction”. This is considered important, since the paper may have already been cited by third parties. Information about retracted papers is presented on the Journal's website.

4. Conflict of interest

The Editorial Board of Lithosphere (Russia) requires that the authors disclose any relations with industrial or funding organizations that may have affected the interpretation of the obtained results or the recommendations provided. This information should be disclosed in the paper subsection “Conflict of interest” (if relevant).

Reviewers should not consider manuscripts, in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any of the authors, companies or institutions involved in the research.

The Editor-in-Chief should pass the submitted manuscript for consideration by another Editorial Board member (Executive Editor, Editorial Board member) if he/she discovers conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relations with any of the authors, companies or institutions involved in the presented research.

Articles submitted by the members of the Editorial Board or the Editorial Council are treated on general grounds.

5. Ethical code for all the parties to the publishing process

5. 1. Ethical code for the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board members

The Editor-in-Chief bears full personal responsibility for the content published in the Lithosphere (Russia) journal. The Editor-in-Chief is guided by the ethical code presented herein, as well as by legal requirements with regard to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism. 

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board members should adhere to the following ethical principles:

• should base their decisions solely on the validation of the work in question and its scientific rigour;
• should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the race, sex, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, social status and political preferences of the authors;
• must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than those involved in the publication process;
• must not use information or ideas contained in the submitted manuscripts for their personal benefit;
• must guard the confidentiality of Reviewers’ information;
• should guarantee the confidentiality of the entire peer-review process;
• should ensure that the submitted manuscripts be processed in a timely and efficient manner;
• should be aware that the Journal’s primary goal is to contribute to the benefit of science, not to gain profit;
• shall withdraw manuscripts with suspected plagiarism from the publication process.

5.2. Ethical code for Reviewers

Reviewers' work is aimed at providing a rigorous scientific expertise of materials submitted to the Journal. Therefore, their behaviour should be unbiased, which is expressed in adherence to the following recommendations. Reviewers should:

• consider a manuscript under review as a confidential document, which cannot be forwarded to third parties without the Editor-in-Chief’s prior consent;
• provide unbiased and objective assessment of the paper under review;
• express their opinion clearly and comprehensively, refraining from any personal criticism of the author;
• never use information contained in the paper under review for their personal purposes;
• excuse himself/herself from the review process if they feel unqualified to review the proposed paper, or if there is any doubt that they might not complete the review within the specified time period;
• never suggest that authors include citations to the Reviewer’s work merely to increase the Reviewer’s citation count;
• declare any potential conflicts of interest (which may, for example, be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious) prior to agreeing to review a manuscript, including any relations with the author that might potentially bias their decision.

5.3. Ethical code for Authors

Authors bear personal responsibility for the content of their manuscripts and are expected to follow these ethical principles. Authors should:

• present accurate account of their research work.  The knowingly submission of false or fraudulent results is considered to be a case of malpractice and is, therefore, unacceptable;
• guarantee that their manuscript is their own original and independent work;
• ensure that all persons that have made a significant contribution to the research presented in their manuscript are named as co-authors;
• ensure that all named co-authors have expressed their consent to publication and to being named as a co-author;
• ensure that all co-authors have approved of the final version of the manuscript and expressed their consent to publication;
• give credit to the authors of cited documents by providing correct bibliographic references to the sources;
• if needed, provide access to the raw data, which has relation to the work, both at all stages of the publication process and after the paper has been published; 
• never submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication;
• refrain from making defamatory statements in their articles, which could be construed as impugning any person's reputation;
• indicate correctly all sources of financial support, particularly if these could have had an impact on the research results, their interpretation, the Reviewers’ decisions, or provoke any conflict-of-interest situations;
• inform the Editor-in-Chief about any errors that have been revealed in their work, at any stage of the publication process;
• disclose any intangible or tangible conflicts of interest.

Founder

• The founder and publisher of LITHOSPHERE (Russia) is Zavaritsky Institute of Geology and Geochemistry of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ekaterinburg, Russia (http://www.igg.uran.ru/)

Charge Policy

The Journal does not charge authors either article processing charges (APC), or article submission charges. Therefore, no fees are charged at any stage of the publication process, including submission, reviewing, editing and publishing.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express of a written consent from the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Reviewers should not consider 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 papers.

Plagiarism detection

LITHOSPHERE (Russia) uses the Russian-language plagiarism detection software Antiplagiat to screen all the submissions. In the case of plagiarism, the Journal follows the COPE guidelines on plagiarism.

Preprint and postprint Policy

Prior to acceptance and publication in LITHOSPHERE (Russia), authors may make their submissions available as preprints on personal or public websites.

As part of submission process, authors are required to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor has been submitted. After a manuscript has been published in LITHOSPHERE (Russia) we suggest that the link to the article on journal's website is used when the article is shared on personal or public websites.

Glossary (by SHERPA)

Immediate Open Access

All articles published in the Journal are made available on the Journal’s website and in PDF format for each article without any embargo period.

License Information

All articles published in the Journal are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 CC-BY license, which permits readers to use its content under the condition of providing a proper attribution to the work in the manner specified by the licensor.

Article Identification Policy

All articles published in the LITHOSPHERE (Russia) journal are assigned with individual DOIs (Digital Object Identifier).