Policy of the journal

Conditions for publishing a manuscript

The International relations and international law journal is published 4 times a year in the online (electronic) format under the following terms: the first issue is published till March 20 of the current year, the second issue - till June 20, the third issue - till September 20, and the fourth issue – till December 20.

International Relations and International Law Journal accept articles for publication in Kazakh, Russian or English, which have not been published by the author (s) before and correspond to subject areas of the journal and are designed strictly according to manuscript requirements.

In scientific articles of the journal, the abstract, keywords and information about the authors must be indicated, including the following information - names, affiliations, countries, and addresses of the author(s) of the publication, indicating the main author, which is the first author in the list of authors, and the author for correspondence is indicated with the sign (*).

The manuscript of a research article is submitted to the editorial board by the author for correspondence (selected from the author's team if there are 2 or more co-authors) at least two months before the next issue of the journal is published. Manuscripts with a volume (excluding the title, information about authors, abstract, keywords, references) of at least 3,000 words and no more than 7,000 words are accepted for publication in the journal.

The manuscript must be uploaded via an electronic platform by the author for correspondence, indicating metadata and its authors. An article by the same author (prepared individually or with co-authors) can be published in the journal no more than once during a calendar year.

Authors must submit an original paper to the editorial board, which has not previously been published in other publications (in print, electronic, and other open sources). Authors are responsible for the reliability, novelty, and evidence-based nature of research results. At the stage of reviewing the manuscript by the editorial board and reviewers of “International Relations and International Law Journal”, as well as after its publication, authors are obliged not to submit this manuscript for consideration for publishing in other journals or publications.

Communication between the editorial board, author for correspondence, and reviewers is carried out via the OJS electronic (online) platform at the stages of working with the manuscript, and in exceptional cases - via email.

The Journal Editorial Board reviews manuscripts received from author/authors, organizes their review, and makes a decision on publication or refusal to publish within two months from the date of manuscript submission via an electronic platform.

The author(s) of the manuscript approved for publication in the journal must pay for publication in accordance with the approved price list of publication costs in scientific journals of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. A receipt for publication payment in .pdf is sent by the author (s) to the e-mail address of the journal's editorial office.

 Borrowings and plagiarism

The Editorial Board of the "International relations and international law journal" also checks for borrowed text or information in the manuscript through plagiarism check system, which is available through university subscription or on the basis of a national subscription, when reviewing a manuscript for compliance with formal requirements or national subscription.

Only original manuscripts and/or those that have been checked by the anti-plagiarism system for more than 75% originality are sent for further review. If the manuscript does not meet requirements for registration in the journal and is not an original paper, based on the results of plagiarism check, the manuscript is returned to the author for correspondence to make appropriate changes and resend the manuscript for review by editorial the board via journal electronic platform.

If authors use works, articles, statements, or quotations and statements of other researchers when writing the manuscript, they must necessarily refer to papers of these scientists and process the cited text correctly. Plagiarism is considered an unethical act that violates the principles of Scientist’s Ethics of Al-Farabi KazNU and is not accepted for publication in “International Relations and International Law Journal”.

Individuals involved in the publishing process, especially editorial board members of “International Relations and International Law Journal”, to ensure high quality of scientific publications, to avoid unfair practices in publishing activities, such as using false information, data falsification, etc., to ensure recognition of scientific achievements by society, are obliged to comply with principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics adopted by the international community and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, as well as to take measures to prevent such violations.

Editorial board members of the "International relations and international law journal" are obliged to prevent authors, editorial board members, and reviewers from violating the principles, standards, and norms of scientific ethics adopted by the international community and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

In case of violating principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics, adopted by the international community and in Al-Farabi KazNU, the editorial board undertakes to act in accordance with “Ethics for journal publication in Al-Farabi KazNU”, Scientist’s Ethics Code of Al-Farabi KazNU, and standards of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).

In case, when the violations of principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics are discovered in the article, published in the journal, the Editorial Board is obliged to remove this article from the issue, in which it was published and from the official website of the journal (to retract the article) with the mandatory indication of specific violations of principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics by the author (s) and place an appropriate announcement in the next issue of the journal.

Author(s) of the article with proved violation of principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics are not allowed to submit articles to “International Relations and International Law Journal” and in other scientific journals, published by Al-Farabi Kazakh National University for the next 3 calendar years from the date of detecting the fact (s) of violated principles, standards and norms of scientific ethics.

The review process

Manuscripts submitted to the editorial office of the journal and under appropriate formal requirements, design requirements and authenticity based on verification through a plagiarism verification system are necessarily sent for further review.

If the author (s) of the publication has a conflict of interest with other scientist (s), he (she) must denote the existence of such a conflict of interest in the covering letter in order to avoid sending this publication to the specified scientist (reviewer) and biased evaluations of the publication.

The journal "International Relations and International Law" applies double-blind peer review carried out by at least two scientists with the degree of Candidate of Sciences, Doctor of Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and scientific specialization on the subject of the reviewed publication.

The review is carried out confidentially: the article is sent to reviewers via the electronic platform of the journal without specifying information about the authors. Reviewers are required to make a clear, objective and reasoned assessment of the manuscript's compliance with the main scientific criteria, as well as its quality and significance.

After getting the conclusions from reviewers, the executive editor sends them to the author for correspondence without specifying the reviewers' data, for comment response, making appropriate changes and resubmitting the publication via the electronic platform. The author(s) may without explanation refuses to reply to comments, make changes to the publication and send it back to the editorial office of the journal.

After comment response, amendments for elimination and re-sending it to the journal's editorial board, the scientific editor forwards all materials to the reviewer (s) for re-review.

The manuscript with positive conclusions from two reviewers and a responsible editor is recommended for publication in the journal "International Relations and International Law "according to the priority of their adoption for publication. The manuscripts approved by the editorial board are referred to the responsible secretary to form the journal issue.

If one of the reviewers provided a positive opinion on the manuscript and the second – a negative one, the manuscript is sent by the editor to the third reviewer who is an expert on the subject of the manuscript.

If a third reviewer provides a positive conclusion, the final decision to accept/reject the publication of the manuscript is made by the editor-in-cheef of the journal.

In the case of two negative reviews, the manuscript is rejected from publication in the journal.

The articles rejected by the editorial board based on the results of the review are not used by the editorial board for their own purposes. The editor or executive secretary notifies the author for correspondence of the refusal to publish and sends the opinions of reviewers.

The manuscript reviews are stored for three years in electronic format on the journal's electronic platform.

The period for reviewing is assigned by the editor responsible for the article, and the period for reviewing the manuscript by the reviewers is no more than two months from the date of sending the material to the reviewers.

Free access policy and archiving

International Relations and International Law Journal provide open access to its content on the official website of the journal. This provides greater information access to the journal throughout the global scientific community.

“Open access” means its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, 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 gaining access to the internet itself."  (by Budapest Open Access Initiative). 

The journal's website also provides the necessary information for authors and readers about the journal's activities: publication conditions, rules for registration and submission of manuscripts to the journal, the procedure for forming the journal and reviewing manuscripts, publication ethics, information about the editorial board, contact details of the scientific editor and executive secretary.

Readers and authors can view the electronic versions of the current issue of the journal and archives for previous periods on the journal's website. Also, electronic and printed versions of journal issues are archived in the long term in the university library http://elibrary.kaznu.kz/en/, and all issues of the journal are transferred to the archives of the National Book Chamber of the Republic of Kazakhstan and to the archives of Scientific Center of State Scientific and Technical Expertise of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

All publications of the journal in electronic form are distributed free of charge and without restrictions under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Copyright and Licensing

The authors of articles of the journal "International Relations and International Law" transfer publishing rights to the publisher, licensing it under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0)The copyright holder of the published work is the publisher - Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

The authorship of the manuscript belongs to those researchers who have been engaged directly within the creation of the manuscript, the formation of the design, the writing of the article, the interpretation of the results and have made a significant contribution to obtaining scientific results.

Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, the authors hold on the right to their manuscripts, while allowing everyone to freely download, reuse, reprint, change, distribute or copy them, with a mandatory mark of authorship of the paper and a link to a unique publication in this journal. For all these actions, specifying a link to the journal permission of the authors or publisher is not required.     

The authors can distribute their article in other sources (for example, in the institutional archive, social networks, etc.) with the obligatory reference to its original publication in this journal.

Privacy policy

Information about authors - names, affiliation, contact information, information about their position and academic degree, as well as links to the IDs of authors 'profiles in international databases are placed in the article in the section "Information about authors".

Members of the editorial board of the "International Relations and International Law journal ” do not disclose to third parties the information about the manuscript accepted for review prior to publication, except for designated reviewers. Also, the editors do not disclose information about reviewers to authors and others.

These and other rules of conduct of participants of the publication process, namely principles, norms and standards of behavior for authors, editorial board members, publishers and reviewers based on the Ethics of publication for scientific journals of al-Farabi KazNU.