1. Purpose of the policy

Repository deposit expands access to theoretical, empirical and comparative research on crime, its causes and consequences, crime prevention, victimology, criminal policy and criminal justice. It helps preserve research findings and supports their use in research, education and professional practice.

Authors retain the copyright they hold and may deposit permitted versions without an embargo, within their rights, applicable licences and this policy. The journal charges no separate deposit fee and requires no additional permission for deposits already authorised by this policy or a current licence. Publication charges are governed separately.

2. Article versions

The following versions are distinguished for deposit purposes:

• Submitted Manuscript: the author’s text sent to the journal before completion of peer review and acceptance. Submission alone does not mean that the article has been accepted or published.
• Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM/Postprint): the text accepted after peer review and necessary revisions, before final publisher preparation and release of the official file.
• Version of Record (VoR): the version officially released by the journal with publisher formatting, publication details and a DOI, if assigned.

For this policy, a preprint is an author version made publicly available before the journal accepts the article. Not every submitted manuscript is a preprint: it may remain private. Public posting does not itself demonstrate peer review or journal endorsement; the version’s actual status is stated.

After acceptance, the deposited accepted text is labelled AAM; after official release, the publisher’s file is labelled VoR. The deposit date and file version must be distinguishable; the term “postprint” does not replace a clear indication of whether a copy is an AAM or VoR.

3. Permitted deposit locations

Submitted manuscripts, preprints, AAMs and VoRs may be deposited:

• on the author’s personal website;
• on the website of the author’s institution;
• in an institutional repository;
• in a subject or disciplinary repository;
• in a repository designated by the research funder;
• on a scholarly or academic sharing platform whose terms are compatible with the rights in the material.

Permission covers the relevant version and material that the author is authorised to share. Platform terms must not require the grant of rights the author does not hold or conflict with an existing open licence. Repositories with persistent links, version identification and clear preservation terms are preferred.

The VoR of an article published under the journal’s open access model is also freely available on its official website. Repository copies supplement that access; self-archiving does not replace the publisher’s responsibilities for preserving the official scholarly archive.

4. Embargo period

The journal imposes no embargo on submitted manuscripts, preprints, AAMs or VoRs. A version may be deposited as soon as it exists and the necessary rights and permissions are secured: an AAM after formal acceptance, and a VoR after official journal release.

Material must not be represented as accepted or officially published before those events occur. The absence of a journal embargo does not remove third-party restrictions or confidentiality requirements; these are assessed separately for each item.

5. Identifying the deposited version

The repository record and, where possible, the file itself identify:

• the status: submitted manuscript/preprint, AAM or VoR;
• the authors and work title;
• the date and version designation, where used;
• the licence of that version or other applicable reuse terms;
• the DOI or persistent link for that version and its relationship to the official article once published.

Preprints and AAMs must not be presented in a way that falsely implies official publication. A logo, publication details or publisher layout must not be used to pass off an unofficial text as a journal-issued file. Permitted copying of an authentic VoR with its formatting remains allowed.

CC BY 4.0 permits translations and adaptations within the licence. A user-modified text is clearly identified as a translation, adaptation or other modified copy and linked to the source article; retaining a logo, journal title or DOI does not make it an official VoR.

6. Citation and links after publication

After official publication, authors are encouraged, where possible, to add the following to earlier repository records:

• a full article reference and the authors’ names;
• the journal title — Criminology (Uzbekistan);
• the year, volume, issue and pages or article number, where available;
• the DOI or persistent link to the VoR;
• the official article’s licence information, with the deposited version’s licence identified separately.

A preprint DOI and a journal article DOI do not replace each other. Where versions have different identifiers, the records are linked as relating to the same work and the status of each is clearly identified. Linking to a journal DOI must not imply that an accepted manuscript has become the VoR.

A full bibliographic reference is a scholarly citation recommendation, not an additional CC BY 4.0 restriction. Sharing retains the required attribution information, notices, licence link and indication of modifications, as provided by the applicable licence and the Copyright and Licensing Policy.

7. Preprints

Prior preprint posting does not itself prevent consideration by Criminology (Uzbekistan). It does not guarantee acceptance or remove requirements for originality, research ethics and independent peer review.

At submission, authors disclose the preprint, its versions and licence, provide its DOI or persistent link, and disclose related publications. A version that has not undergone the journal’s peer review is clearly identified as such. If the public version is updated during assessment, authors inform the editors of substantive changes and the current link.

A public preprint may reduce authors’ practical anonymity. The journal retains its adopted double-anonymous peer review model; authors provide an anonymised manuscript for that process, and editors take account of possible recognition of authorship and conflicts of interest. A public preprint does not authorise disclosure of reviewer identities, confidential reports or correspondence.

After VoR release, authors are encouraged to link the preprint record to the official publication and retain the version history. A preprint is not equivalent to simultaneous submission to several journals; rules on duplicate publication and related work apply independently.

8. Corrections, retraction and changes of status

When a correction, expression of concern or retraction notice is published, authors are encouraged to update records under their control and contact the administrators of other repositories. The current status and a link to the official notice or corrected version, where issued, are added.

The publication history must remain understandable. A file unofficially corrected by an author must not be represented as the journal’s corrected VoR. Official changes and notices are determined by the editors under the relevant procedure and linked to the original article. Translations and adaptations permitted by the licence are also identified as modified material.

Retraction does not automatically cancel rights properly granted earlier under CC BY 4.0. However, the shared record must not mislead readers about the work’s reliability or status. Where unlawfully disclosed or protected information must be restricted, the editors and repository act under the applicable rules and document the information that may lawfully be recorded.

9. Copyright and licence

Authors retain the rights they hold; the authority of other rights holders is considered before deposit. Official articles released under the current open access policy and marked with the relevant licence are distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0.

Within the rights granted, CC BY 4.0 permits copying, distribution and adaptation, including commercial use, subject to the licence conditions. No additional journal permission is required for those acts. The CC BY 4.0 summary and full legal code are available; the full legal code is controlling.

The VoR licence is not automatically transferred to a preprint or AAM. Permission to deposit an author version and authority to make it available to everyone under a particular open licence are separate matters. Each version identifies its actual terms and requires the necessary authority; previously granted licences are respected and cannot be arbitrarily revoked.

Notices identifying separately excluded elements in a file are retained on deposit. Detailed conditions concerning attribution, adaptations, other rights and responses to violations are set out in the Copyright and Licensing Policy.

10. Third-party, institutional and funder requirements

Before deposit, authors check:

• co-authors’, employers’ and other rights holders’ rights, and authority for public sharing;
• the terms for third-party images, tables, questionnaires, data, software code and other included material;
• obligations to their institution and funder and the compatibility of agreements with rights already granted;
• lawful source access, confidentiality, personal data protection and participant consent where required.

An open article licence does not authorise deposit of restricted case material, identifiers of victims, suspects, convicted persons or other participants, signed consent forms, re-identification keys or confidential reviews. Interviews, criminal record information and other sensitive material require assessment of re-identification risk and the permissibility of public disclosure.

Material under another licence or separate permission may be excluded from the general CC BY 4.0 licence. Additional permission is necessary only where use is not allowed by an existing licence, an applicable exception or another lawful basis. If open deposit is impermissible, a lawfully shareable version or controlled access is used with a clear explanation of the restriction; a restricted file must not be described as openly available.

Licence and access terms for data and code are stated separately. The Data and Reproducibility Policy, Informed Consent Policy and Privacy Statement apply. Uploading material to a repository does not itself establish that sharing is lawful.

11. Previously published archival material

This policy and CC BY 4.0 do not automatically change the terms of material previously published under different legal arrangements. Deposit follows the actual licences, permissions and original publishing agreements applicable to that version.

Free availability of an older article is not equivalent to permission for every deposit or adaptation. Where information is missing or contradictory, the editorial office helps clarify the rights holder and terms; a new licence is stated only with the necessary authority. Existing permissions and applicable lawful exceptions remain relevant.

12. Policy administration

This policy applies together with the Open Access Policy, Copyright and Licensing Policy and other relevant journal rules. The editorial office is responsible for applying it; the founder and publisher is the Research Institute of Criminology of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Following approval, the policy takes effect on its publication date on the official Criminology (Uzbekistan) website. Actual publication and amendment dates are recorded. Review takes account of legal, publishing and technological practice and does not cancel users’ properly granted rights.

Questions about repositories, article versions and self-archiving should be sent through the institute’s contact address: info@uzkti.uz. Identify the article, DOI or link, the version to be deposited, the repository and the issue. Deposits already permitted require no additional clearance.