Author Guidelines
Requirements for manuscripts
The Yearbook accepts manuscripts in Russian and English. They must be currently relevant and original. Submitted manuscripts must not be previously published in other journals. Submitted manuscripts must comply with the journal’s format requirements. The submission, reviewing, editing and publication of articles are free of charge.
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
The author bears full responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic information contained in the manuscripts. All the cited sources must be listed at the end of the article in alphabetical order by author's family/surname. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the Yearbook Editor and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.
Full-text versions of published articles and their metadata (abstracts, keywords, information about author(s) in Russian and English are available in open access on journal’s official website, in Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU (Russia), Cyberleninka (Russia) and in other archives.
Submission
Please send your manuscripts via personal account on the website of the Yearbook yearbookjapan.ru. The date of sending the manuscript is treated as the date of its receipt by the Editorial Office. By submitting a manuscript authors accept an offer of granting rights to use a manuscript in the Yearbook.
Checking for anti-plagiarism
The received manuscripts are tested in the "Antiplagiat" system, as well as through other, network search system on the Internet. If the Editorial Board has grounds for a more detailed testing, additional tools may be used to search for borrowings.
Peer-review and decision on publication
The Yearbook adheres to the double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of the Reviewers is always concealed. This guarantees the unbiased motivated reviews and assures a freedom for critical comments concerning the content of the articles to be published.
The Editor from Editorial Board who is responsible for the subsequent section of the Yearbook chooses two Reviewers for each manuscript received. The Reviewers can be chosen both from members of the Editorial Board or from well-known specialists in the academic profile of the Yearbook. The selection of Reviewers must not give rise to any conflict of interests.
In case a manuscript is submitted by a member of the Editorial Board, the Reviewers are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief. The Reviewers for the manuscripts of the Editor-in-Chief are selected by the Deputy Chief Editor. The Editor-in-Chief and the Deputy Chief Editor bear personal responsibility for the impartiality of their choice which must not give birth to any conflict of interest.
The Editor sends review requests to the chosen Reviewers, asking to give a reply within two weeks. Reviewers use the following form [doc], for their peer-review. If there is no reply from the Reviewers, the Editor sends a reminder after 14 days. If none of the Reviewers replies within one month, the Editorial Board assigns new Reviewers.
Received reviews are examined at the Editorial Board meetings, where quality of the reviews is estimated and a decision is made on accepting, rejecting, or revising the manuscripts. New Reviewers are assigned for the manuscript in the case of controversial comments from the Reviewers. When revised manuscript is received, the Editorial Board can either accept it or send it to a Reviewer for repeated revision.
In general, the decision-making process usually takes about two months. Within this period, the Editorial Board considers all the feedback from peer reviewers and makes an informed decision to accept or decline the manuscript. Thereafter one of the following four decisions is made: (1) to accept manuscript for publication without further development by author; (2) to accept manuscript for publication after its development by author; (3) to send manuscript for a profound development and then, to reviewers; (4) to reject publication of manuscript. In the case that the manuscript is declined, the Editor provides its author with a grounded conclusion containing the reasons behind the rejection.
The Executive Secretary of the Yearbook sends notifications to the authors about all changes of their manuscript: about successful submission, assigning reviewers, revision request, acceptance or rejection.
Violations of publishing ethics and the procedure for retraction of articles
Complaints about violations of publishing ethics can be submitted in written form to the email address japanstudiesinrussia@gmail.com. The complaint must clearly describe the alleged violation and provide information confirming this fact. When a complaint is received, the Editor must record the date of its receipt and ensure that it is thoroughly and objectively considered.
Complaints on publishing ethics violation may be connected with incorrect citing of information and plagiarism (using other authors’ content and conclusions without references to their papers), duplication of one’s own publications, inclusion of unreliable and/or false data in publications, and some other violations. The Editorial Board will request clarification, without involving persons who may have a conflict of interest with one of the parties.
If the consideration of a complaint or the identification of cases of violation of publishing ethics require an expert examination of the article and related materials, the Chief Editor forms an expert Commission consisting of the Chairman (the Editor-in-Chief or Deputy Chief Editor of the journal) and members of the Commission (not less than 2 members of the Editorial Board). The Editorial Board guarantees the confidentiality, fairness, and impartiality of all stages of investigation.
In case of revealing the facts of plagiarism, fraud, or other facts of inacceptable behavior and violation of the publication ethics, the expert Commission reports the matter to the Editorial Board which may impose the following sanctions upon the authors:
- reject the publication of the submitted manuscript;
- prohibit publishing the article in the Journal during a certain period;
- if occasionally any violations of the publication ethics, improper borrowings, duplicate publications or other cases of unethical behavior are discovered after an article has been published, the Editorial Board may retract the publication.
The decision on retraction of the article must be formulated in the Protocol of the meeting of the Editorial Board. The decision will indicate the reason of retraction (in the case of plagiarism detection with reference to the sources of borrowing) and the date of retraction. The Article will remain on the website of the Yearbook, but the electronic version of the text will be marked with the inscription "RETRACTED" and the date of retraction, the same mark being applied to the article and the table of contents of the issue.
If the Editorial Board decides to revoke the text of the article on the basis of its expertise or information received by the editor, the author / coauthors will be informed and asked for their reasoned opinion on the validity of the decision. If the author / co-authors ignore the editorial request, the Editorial Board will revoke the article without consulting the author. If the Editorial Board receives the appeal with grounds for article retraction, the editors inform the author of the appeal about the terms of its consideration. The maximum period for consideration may not exceed three months.
Author(s) shall have the right to appeal a decision on violation sanctions. All appeals must be submitted in written form to the Editorial Board within 30 days of notification of the decision. The appeal must include a rebuttal of the decision, explaining in detail the author(s) rationale for why the decision was in error.
Guidelines for Manuscripts
Format and volume
Texts for publication must be submitted in doc format.
If there are illustrations (jpg or png extensions are accepted), they should be numbered and attached as files separately from the text, and the name of the illustration and file name are indicated in the text.
The recommended volume of the article is 30,000 to 50,000 characters with spaces (roughly 3700 – 6300 words).
Title and main text of the article
Title page of the submitted manuscript should contain the following sections in both Russian and English:
Title of the article;
Abstract (250-300) words. It should contain the purpose of the study, the summary of the article, and its main conclusions. The abstract serves as an independent analytical text providing an adequate conception of the conducted research without any need to address the main text.
Keywords or phrases (6-8);
Information about the author (full name and surname, academic degree, academic title, position, and place of employment with postal code, ORCID, contact e-mail).
The main file of the article should contain: its title, text, footnotes, and a list of references at the end, both in Cyrillic and Latin. This requirement is essential for the anonymous review of all submitted manuscripts.
The authors, if necessary, indicate that the article was prepared with the financial support of an organization or within the framework of a grant.
Bibliography
Bibliography in Cyrillic should be in the format established by the Russian Science Citation Index.
Citations
Scientific literature, analytical reports, and articles in scientific editions should be cited in the manuscript’s body using an abbreviated form containing the authors’ surnames, year of publication, and pages. In case of no author indication, the title of the edition should be given instead. References should refer to the corresponding item in the list of references, which contains a complete bibliographic description of the source (see examples).
All other sources should be cited with in-page footnotes.
List of references
List of references in Russian and English should be composed alphabetically. They include academic literature, analytical reports and article in academic periodic journals.
References in Russian should contain authors’ first and last names, year of publication, title of the book, place of publication, publishing house.
References to articles published in academic journals should contain authors’ first and last names, year of publication, title of the article, volume and number, page numbers; for Internet publications – URL and date of access.
DOIs should be given in the end of bibliographic reference.
References in English should contain the author’s surname and initials, year of publication, title of the work, place of publication, publisher. Title of a book should be given in italics.
Articles in scientific journals, collections, or works published in continuing series should contain the author’s surname and initials, year of publication, title of the article, title of the journal or series, volume and number for journals / place of publication and publisher for collection, number of pages or page numbers, electronic address, and access date (if any). Title of the journal, collection or series should be given in italic.
All information on Russian works should be transliterated to English in correspondence with transliteration rules bgn-pcgn (you can use automatic transliteration https://www.translitteration.com/transliteration/en/russian/bgn-pcgn/). The place of publication should be given in full. The title of a book, report, or article should be transliterated and translated (translation should be given in square brackets).
