S.V. Titov, Dr. of Biological Sciences, Professor, Dean of the faculty of physical-mathematical and natural sciences of Penza State University

Being an independent edition, “Natural sciences” series is integrated into the set of seven journals “University proceedings. Volga region”. The journal “University proceedings. Volga region. Natural Sciences” journal provides an opportunity to publish scientific results in the fields of biology: evolutionary biology, zoology, botany, physiology and biochemistry of plants, bioecology, autecology, animal ecology, plant ecology, applied ecology, population ecology, community ecology, molecular ecology, population genetics.
This distinguishes the journal from the majority of focused scientific journals and enables all natural sciences researchers, first of all from Volga region, to present their research results and to pass the benevolent, but “rigorous” multistep review according to the modern rules, applicable in international scientific journals. Thus, we reach the main goal of the journal, which is the publication of high-quality scientific material, being of interest for the world scientific community.
The journal publishes original articles, describing the results of fundamental and applied research, as well as the overviews by leading experts in the journal’s subject area. Besides that, we publish short reports (1-5 pages), that describe new facts or introduce new ideas, having theoretical grounds, but lack sufficient experimental substantiation. On the pages of our journal the authors may publish the reviews of new books, as well as the chronicles of conferences, meetings and forums.
The journal’s editorial office have initiated efforts to raise the journal’s status by improving the quality of the publications through rigorous reviewing, by providing open charge free access to publications in the Internet and being included into electronic libraries and infobases. Thus, the journal is allocated on eLIBRARY.RU, participates in the project "Russian scientific citation index ". The journal “University proceedings. Volga region. Natural sciences” is allocated in the electronic library “CyberLeninka”. Scientific texts, presented in the library, are posted in the Internet on charge free basis and in open access. Library users have an opportunity to read scientific works from the screen of a tablet, mobile phone and other modern mobile devices. Our journal admits manuscripts both in Russian and English languages, which allows to considerably expand the readership and forward the research results to foreign experts. We assume, that such organization of the journal will allow to significantly increase the citation of the published articles, resulting in improvement of the journal’s status, particularly, entrance into international infobases and provision of efficient integration of Russian authors’ research into the world scientific information space.

Manuscript Processing Charges
The publisher is bears all expenses for journal production and publication. Publication of papers is free of charge for the authors. Peer review is not paid.

Open Access Policy
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access, recommended by DOAJ. 

The publication conducts the policy of maximal availability of the published materials for researchers. All the articles of archival and current journal issues are under free access on the journal’s web site, as well as on the portals of Russian and foreign e-libraries and online databases. Users can use, reuse and build upon the material published in the journal.

A policy of screening for plagiarism
All the articles provided for review have their original text tested for the level of uniqueness determined by using the appropriate software that shows the uniqueness of the article, sources used and coincidence of the text by means of Antiplagiatsystems.
During the examination, the reviewer analyses the report verifying the text originality in order to assess the reliability of identified citations and self-citations. The reuse by the author of his/her own texts from early works without reference to the source or to the extent not justified by the citation goal is recognised unconscionable self-citation and is prohibited. The author’s citation of his/her past publications is acceptable if the new paper is a follow-up to a previously initiated study. Processing of the text to increase the originality percentage is recognised a serious ethical violation. The authors are not allowed to reiterate the ideas and duplicate the results of scientific studies already published in printed or electronic form.

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 written consent of 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.

Privacy Statement
Specified when registering the names and addresses will be used solely for technical purposes of a contact with the Author or reviewers (editors) when preparing the article for publication. Private data will not be shared with other individuals and organizations.

Copyright Notice
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0. that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.