Publication Requirements

The Editorial Board of the Bulletin of Mariupol State University. Series: Philosophy, Culture Studies, Sociology accepts for consideration original and complete research articles that fall within the thematic scope of the journal, contain independently obtained research results, have not been published previously, and are not simultaneously under consideration by another publication.

Submission of a manuscript means that all authors have read its final version, have agreed to its submission to the journal, and accept responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the research presented.

1. Language and Length of the Manuscript

Manuscripts in Ukrainian or English are accepted for consideration. Submission of materials in other languages is possible subject to prior agreement with the Editorial Board.

The recommended length of a research article is 6,000–8,000 words, including the main text, notes, tables, figure captions, and the list of references. The minimum permissible manuscript length is 3,000 words (with the exception of reviews and materials submitted to the “Scientific Chronicle” section). The recommended maximum length is 9,000 words.

The Editorial Board does not impose an artificial minimum or maximum number of bibliographic sources. The reference list should reflect the actual state of research on the issue and should contain only sources directly used in the article.

2. Files to Be Submitted to the Editorial Office

To ensure anonymous peer review, it is recommended that two separate files be submitted:

1. Title Page (Author Information):

• full title of the article;
• first name and surname of each author;
• official name of the institution and structural unit;
• city and country;
• e-mail address;
• ORCID iD;
• designation of the corresponding author;
• funding information, if applicable;
• the contribution of each author according to the CRediT taxonomy for articles with two or more authors.

2. Anonymised Manuscript:

• title of the article;
• abstract;
• keywords;
• main text;
• tables and figures;
• notes;
• statements that do not disclose the author’s identity;
• list of references.

The anonymised file must not contain the authors’ names, institutional affiliations, acknowledgements, or any other information that could directly reveal the identity of the author(s).

3. General Technical Requirements

The manuscript must be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format.

Recommended formatting:

• page size — A4;
• margins — 2.5 cm on all sides;
• font — Times New Roman, 12 pt;
• line spacing — 1.5;
• main text alignment — justified;
• first-line paragraph indent — 1.25 cm;
• pages should not be numbered;

Manual hyphenation, indentation using spaces or tabs, manual numbering of notes, or other formatting elements that complicate editorial processing of the text are not permitted.

Headings and subheadings should clearly reflect the hierarchy of the text. The use of more than three levels of headings is not recommended.

4. Article Title

The title should be:

• concise;
• informative;
• unambiguous;
• directly related to the subject of the research;

The use of excessively general wording, unnecessary abbreviations, and cumbersome subtitles in the title is not recommended.

The title must be provided in the language of the article and in English. For an article written in English, the Ukrainian version of the title must also be provided.

5. Abstract

Each article must contain abstracts in the language of the main text and in English. If the article is written in English, the second abstract must be in Ukrainian.

The recommended length of each abstract is 300 words.

The abstract must be self-contained and should reflect:

1. the subject or research problem;
2. the aim of the research;
3. the materials, sources and/or methodology used;
4. the main results;
5. the scholarly novelty, significance of the results, or principal conclusions.

For humanities and philosophical research, the formal Objective – Methods – Results – Conclusions structure is not mandatory; however, the above-mentioned substantive components must be clearly represented.

The following are PROHIBITED in the abstract:

• bibliographic references;
• notes;
• tables and figures;
• abbreviations not generally known to a broad readership;
• general statements that do not provide specific information about the content and results of the article.

The English-language abstract must not be the result of unedited machine translation and must comply with the conventions of academic English.

6. Keywords

Each abstract must be followed by 5–7 keywords or key phrases in the corresponding language.

Keywords should:

• accurately reflect the subject matter and focus of the research;
• include the main concepts, names, processes, or phenomena by which the article may be retrieved in search systems;
• where possible, correspond to established terminology in the relevant field of research.

Mechanical repetition of all the words used in the article title is not recommended.

7. Structure of the Main Text

The Editorial Board does not require the mechanical application of the IMRaD structure to research in philosophy, cultural studies, art studies, intellectual history, and other humanities disciplines.

At the same time, the manuscript of a research article must make it possible to clearly identify:

• the formulation of the research problem and its relevance;
• the current state of research on the problem and the research gap addressed by the article;
• the aim and, where appropriate, the research questions;
• the source base, materials, and methodological foundations of the research;
• the main analysis and the results obtained;
• the relationship between the results and previous research;
• the author’s contribution and scholarly novelty;
• the conclusions and prospects for further research.

8. In-Text Citations

The journal uses the Harvard author–date referencing system in accordance with the journal’s version of the Harvard Referencing Style, based on the recommendations of British Standard BS ISO 690:2021.

Bibliographic references must be provided in the text in round brackets.

One author:

(Smith, 2024)

Reference to a specific page:

(Smith, 2024, p. 37)

Reference to a range of pages:

(Smith, 2024, pp. 37–42)

Two authors:

(Smith and Jones, 2024)

Three or more authors:

(Smith et al., 2024)

Several works by the same author:

(Smith, 2019, 2022, 2025)

Several different sources:

(Brown, 2020; Jones, 2022; Smith, 2024)

Several works by the same author published in the same year:

(Smith, 2024a, 2024b)

Corporate author:

(UNESCO, 2025)

For direct quotations, the page number or another precise locator must be provided, where available in the source.

References in footnotes must not replace the author–date system. Notes should be used primarily for additional explanations that would be inappropriate to include in the main text.

9. Reference List

The list must be provided at the end of the article under the heading References / List of Sources Used.

The list must include only sources cited in the text of the article. At the same time, every bibliographic citation in the text must have a corresponding entry in the reference list.

Sources must be arranged:

1. alphabetically by the surname of the first author or by the name of the institution;
2. where several works by the same author are cited — chronologically;
3. where several works by the same author published in the same year are cited — using the designations 2024a, 2024b, 2024c, etc.

The names of all authors and all bibliographic details must correspond exactly to the original publication.

Where a DOI is available, its inclusion is mandatory. The DOI must be provided as a persistent link:

https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx

Links to ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, library search pages, or other secondary aggregators should not be used instead of a DOI where a DOI or an official publication webpage is available.

Cyrillic-Language Sources

To ensure international indexing and the correct processing of bibliographic information, sources published in Cyrillic must additionally be presented in the Latin alphabet in the References section.

Authors’ names and titles must be transliterated in accordance with the official transliteration rules. The English translation of the title of a source must be provided in square brackets. Journal titles that have an official English-language title must be given using the official title of the publication.

10. Tables, Figures, and Illustrative Material

All tables and figures must:

• be numbered consecutively;
• have an informative title or caption;
• be referred to in the main text;
• include source information where the material was not created by the author(s).

Tables must be submitted in an editable format rather than as images.

The recommended minimum resolution for raster images is 300 dpi. Schemes, diagrams, and graphs should preferably be submitted in vector format or in a format that permits high-quality editing.

The author is responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce materials protected by copyright.

Figures and graphs should remain comprehensible when viewed in greyscale and should be accessible to readers with colour vision deficiencies.

11. Authorship and Author Contributions

Only a person who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research and accepts responsibility for its content may be identified as an author of the article.

For works with two or more authors, the Editorial Board recommends specifying each author’s contribution in accordance with the CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy, including:

Conceptualization; Methodology; Investigation; Formal Analysis; Data Curation; Resources; Software; Validation; Visualization; Funding Acquisition; Project Administration; Supervision; Writing – Original Draft; Writing – Review & Editing.

Technical, linguistic, administrative, or financial assistance alone does not constitute sufficient grounds for authorship and may be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section.

12. Declarations at the End of the Manuscript

After the main text and before the References, the following sections must be included where applicable.

Funding

The full name of the organisation that funded the research, the grant/project number, and the recipient of the funding must be indicated.

If there was no external funding:

Funding:
This research received no external funding.

Conflict of Interest / Competing Interests

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial circumstances that could influence, or could reasonably be perceived as influencing, the research presented.

If there is no conflict of interest:

The author(s) declare no competing interests.

Author Contributions

For articles with several authors, their respective contributions must be specified in accordance with CRediT.

Data Availability Statement

For empirical studies, authors must indicate where and under what conditions the data on which the article is based are available.

For example:

The data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository] at [DOI/URL].

If the data cannot be made publicly available for ethical, legal, or confidentiality reasons, this must be explained.

For theoretical articles or studies in which no new data were created:

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants, interviews, surveys, personal data, or other sensitive data must include information on compliance with the relevant ethical standards and on obtaining the necessary ethics committee approval and/or informed consent, where applicable.

Acknowledgements

This section may identify persons and institutions that provided substantial assistance in conducting the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship.

13. Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Generative artificial intelligence systems may not be listed as authors or co-authors of an article.

Authors bear full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, argumentation, sources, quotations, factual statements, and conclusions of the manuscript, irrespective of the digital tools used.

If generative AI or AI-assisted technologies have been used for substantive preparation or editing of the manuscript, the author must provide a separate declaration specifying:

• the name of the tool/service;
• the purpose for which it was used;
• the nature of the operations performed with its assistance;
• confirmation that the author has checked the results obtained and accepts full responsibility for the final text.

Routine automated checking of spelling, grammar, and punctuation does not require a separate declaration.

If AI technologies have been used directly as an element of the research methodology — for data processing, programming, corpus analysis, classification, modelling, etc. — their use must be described in detail and in a reproducible manner in the Methods / Methodology section.

The use of AI to fabricate or falsify sources, quotations, bibliographic records, data, or research results is prohibited.

14.
Research and Publication Integrity

Authors must guarantee:

• the originality of the submitted manuscript;
• appropriate citation of the ideas, texts, data, and illustrations of others;
• the absence of plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification;
• the accuracy of bibliographic references;
• that the manuscript has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal;
• the correct attribution of authorship;
• the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest;
• respect for the rights of research participants and compliance with personal data protection requirements.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject a manuscript without sending it for external peer review if it does not correspond to the thematic scope of the journal, does not meet basic academic standards or the requirements of research and publication integrity, or substantially fails to comply with these formatting requirements.

15. Pre-Submission Checklist

Before submitting the manuscript, the author must ensure that:

• the article corresponds to the thematic scope of the journal;
• the file contains the final version of the manuscript;
• an anonymised version has been prepared for peer review;
• the title, abstract, and keywords have been provided in English;
• complete information about all authors and their ORCID iDs has been provided;
• all quotations have corresponding bibliographic references;
• all entries in the References are cited in the text;
• DOIs have been added for all sources for which they are available;
• all URLs and DOIs have been checked;
• permissions to use third-party materials have been obtained;
• tables and figures are numbered and referred to in the text;
• funding and conflicts of interest have been disclosed;
• a Data Availability Statement has been included, where applicable;
• a Research Ethics Statement has been included, where applicable;
• author contributions have been specified for multi-authored publications;
• the use of generative AI has been appropriately declared;
• comments, Track Changes, and hidden personal data have been removed from the document.