In its activities, the editors of the "Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy" are guided by the following basic principles:

• Manuscripts containing metallurgical information are accepted for publication in the collection of scientific papers, regardless of the authors' affiliation. Publication preference is given to manuscripts whose purpose is solving the future priority tasks of the development of the metallurgical industry and which contain scientific results of fundamental and applied research in the field of iron and steel making, metal forming, heat treatment of rolled metal, management of metallurgical processes and materials science;
• The editorial board deciding on the publication of a manuscript is guided by the reliability of the submitted data, the originality and practical value for the development of metallurgical processes and technologies;
• The editorial board evaluates the content of the manuscripts regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious views, origin, citizenship, social status or political preferences of the authors;
• The editorial board guarantees that unpublished data obtained from submitted manuscripts will not be used for personal purposes or transferred to a third party without the written consent of the author; information or ideas obtained during editing and related to possible benefits will be kept confidential and will not be used for the personal purpose;
• The editorial board will not allow information to be published if there are sufficient grounds to believe that it is plagiarized;
• The editorial board ensures peer review of submitted manuscripts following their topics;
• A member of the editorial board carries out the recommendation of the manuscript for publication based on the peer review of the manuscript and accompanying documents sent to the editorial office and reviews;
• The editorial board makes the final decision on the publication of the manuscript.

A policy of the editorial board regarding plagiarism and self-plagiarism Materials containing plagiarism or self-plagiarism (duplicate) are not published in the collection of scientific papers "Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy". Any submitted manuscript is thoroughly checked for plagiarism or self-plagiarism using anti-plagiarism software or online plagiarism checkers such as Plagiarism Detector, Plagiarism Checker X, Turnitin or others. Each identified case of text matches is subject to additional analysis to confirm plagiarism by the manuscript's authors. If the fact of plagiarism is confirmed, the manuscript is rejected. If self-plagiarism is detected, the manuscript is rejected, and the author is notified that his manuscript is not unique. If plagiarism is detected after the article is published, the article will be marked as "PLAGIARISM" or "DUPLICATE" on the publication's website of "Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy". A notice about the discovered fact of violation of academic integrity by the authors will be published in the next issue of "Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy". Identification of authorship Identification of authorship means receiving confirmation that each author of the authorship of the manuscript contributed to the research in a particular part of it. In the event of doubt on the author's contribution, the editorial board reserves the right to demand information about each author's contribution to the conducted research and manuscript preparation. It is impossible to remove or add co-authors or change the order of authors after submitting the manuscript to the editorial office. In case of other questions regarding the reality of authorship in the manuscript, the editorial office takes actions based on COPE recommendations, in particular "How to recognize potential authorship problems". Collaboration policy The collection “Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy” aims to collaborate with researchers and scientific institutions worldwide, fostering openness and international knowledge exchange. However, as of February 24, 2022, due to the unprovoked full-scale armed aggression of Russia against Ukraine, the editorial board has ceased cooperation with:

• Individuals and legal entities who are residents of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, or are located within the territories of these states;
• Individuals or entities directly or indirectly sponsored by these states.

  Use of large language models (LLM) and generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools The collection “Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy” conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools. Large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Microsoft Copilot, and similar) cannot be listed as authors on your submission. Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI for data or code generation, data collection, cleaning, analysis, or interpretation, (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections. Photography, videos or illustrations created wholly or partly using generative AI are not considered acceptable.  The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or figures should be disclosed in the relevant caption upon submission to allow a case-by-case review. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical. The use of AI-assisted tools solely for language editingand grammar checking does not require disclosure. Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the editorial work and the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in editorial work and peer review. The editorial and review processes are confidential, and using AI tools on the manuscript makes it public, violating the confidentiality principle, disclosing confidential information in public, and compromising transparency.   Complaints and appeals procedure Readers who have concerns or complaints about published articles should first contact the respective author to try to resolve the issue directly before contacting the editor. The editorial office can be contacted in cases where it is impractical to contact the authors, if the authors did not respond, or if the problem was not resolved. Additionally, the editorial office should be contacted in cases where a complaint or inquiry concerns violations of academic integrity and/or publication ethics. The handling of complaints and appeals concerning violations of academic integrity by participants in the publication process (authors, reviewers, members of the editorial board) will be conducted in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On Academic Integrity" from the moment it enters into force. Violations of academic integrity subject to consideration include, but are not limited to: academic plagiarism (Article 24), fabrication (Article 27), falsification (Article 28), attribution of authorship (Article 25), dishonest use of results generated by artificial intelligence (Article 29), as well as dishonest assessment (Article 30). If a violation is confirmed, the editorial board shall apply the response measures provided for in Article 19 of the Law: refusal to publish, retraction of the article with mandatory publication of the reason, and shall also inform the management of the institution where the violator(s) work or study, for the application of sanctions provided by law (Articles 22–36). The editorial board is guided by the principles of responding to violations of academic integrity defined in Article 20 of the Law: mandatory and timely response, impartial (non‑discriminatory) treatment of persons against whom a report has been filed, proportionality of the violation and response measures, as well as transparency of procedures. The processing of reports is carried out in accordance with Article 37 of the Law, which guarantees the person against whom the report is filed the right to be informed of the commencement of the procedure, to access the materials of the investigation, to provide explanations, and to be present during the examination of the case. The editors will coordinate with the applicant, author/s and editors-in-chief or members of the editorial board to investigate, correct or resolve any problems or complaints. Complaints, comments or requests for updates regarding the scientific soundness, ethical or legal aspects of either the article or its peer review process will be further investigated where appropriate. All complaints, comments or requests for updates regarding published articles are investigated by the editors with the support of the editorial board and final approval by the editor-in-chief. For ethical reasons, final decisions are made by the Editorial Board to ensure adherence to the core principles of publication ethics formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics. Where necessary, consultations will be held with other individuals and institutions, including university leaders or experts in the field. A lawyer may be requested if the complaint has legal implications. Personal comments or criticism are not accepted. All complaints are investigated, including anonymous complaints. Complainants may request that the editors consider their complaint in confidence, and the editors, any editors-in-chief or other members of the editorial board will attempt to do so, to the extent appropriate and in accordance with our internal procedures. Decisions regarding corrections, comments and replies, expressions of concern, or retractions resulting from an investigation are made by the Editorial Board and communicated to the authors. If the complaint is not considered to be justified, further communication will only be considered if additional information is provided to substantiate the concern. Complainants may not receive an update on the status of the investigation until a final decision is made, however, complainants will be notified if an update is posted. The editors and members of the editorial board are not required to provide additional information. Communication will be terminated if it is not deemed fair or respectful. Readers with complaints or concerns should be aware that investigation require time, which shouldn't exceed 3 months. The editors work closely with authors and editors to promote adherence to the core principles of publishing ethics formulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We encourage the use of the COPE resources available on their website. All manuscripts must meet standards of ethical conduct. When we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking appropriate action. The publisher and editors are always ready to publish corrections, clarifications, reviews and apologies if there is a legal need to do so. Article retraction procedure The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty), unethical research  or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by “Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy”: – The electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article; – In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted; – The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.” Corrections to a published article are made in the following cases:

• Identification of errors in author information within the author list;

• Identification of an error in the research results or methodology that may lead to negative consequences from the use of the results or the inability to obtain or reproduce them.

Article Processing Charges (APCs) The publication of the collection is funded by the Publisher – Iron and Steel Institute of Z. I. Nekrasov National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editors, members of the Editorial Board, and reviewers perform their duties on a voluntary basis. The Editorial Board does not charge authors (including Master’s and PhD students) any fees (Article Processing Charges) for the submission, peer review, or publication of articles in both the print and online versions of the collection. Printing of complimentary author copies of the Collection is not provided. Open Access Policy “Fundamental and applied problems of ferrous metallurgy” is a Diamond Open Access Journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher. Archiving and Self-archiving Policy Authors can deposit preprints (versions before peer review), Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) and/or Versions of Record (VoRs) in a repository of the authors' choice (e.g. an institutional, disciplinary and general-purpose repository. etc.), author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process, at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, title of the Collection, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license. The Сollection is archived and deposited with the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. Link to the collection’s webpage. Metadata Policy The metadata of the Сollection are freely accessible to all, and freely reusable by all, under the terms of the Creative Commons Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. Adherence to FAIR and DORA Principles The Editorial board adheres to the principles of DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment), evaluating manuscripts solely on the basis of their scientific merit, rather than on the basis of journal metrics such as the impact factor. The Editorial Board supports the FAIR principles for research information. We encourage authors to share the data necessary to verify the validity of published results and/or improve the published manuscript, following the principle of "as open as possible, as closed as necessary." Authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose (e.g. Zenodo). Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results / their study and analysis of the research data. This includes details of any software, instruments and other tools used to process the results. A DOI will be assigned to each research data file, enabling the research data to be cited the same way as publications. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data. Exceptions to the Data Open Access Policy The editorial board recognises that, in certain cases, full disclosure of data is impossible or impractical due to legal, ethical, or contractual restrictions. Grounds for restricting access to research data include, but are not limited to:

• Commercial confidentiality: where the research was commissioned by a private company and the results belong to that company, or where the data contain confidential commercial information, know-how, or protected intellectual property.
• Contractual obligations: where access to the data is restricted by the terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or other contractual arrangement with a partner or sponsor.
• Personal data protection: where the data contain information that allows for the identification of an individual, and their disclosure would contravene the requirements of personal data protection legislation.
• Preparation for patenting: where the disclosure of data could prevent or complicate the acquisition of legal protection for the results of intellectual activity.

In such cases, the editorial board requests that authors indicate in the manuscript the existence of restrictions, their grounds, and the conditions under which interested researchers may obtain access to the data.   Copyright and licensing Consolidation and copyright transfer terms (identification of authorship) are carried out in the License Agreement. In particular, the authors reserve the right to authorship of their manuscript and transfer to  “Fundamental and Applied Problems of Ferrous Metallurgy” the right to the first publication of this work under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). At the same time, the authors retain the right to independently conclude additional agreements regarding the further distribution of their article in the form in which it was first published in “Fundamental and Applied Problems of Ferrous Metallurgy”, but on the condition that the link to the first publication of the article is preserved..