Publications Ethics and malpractice Statement

Publication and authorship

1. All submitted papers are subject to strict double blind peer-review process by at least two national and international reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper.
2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language.
3. The possible decisions include acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection.
4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
5. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
6. The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
7. No research can be included in more than one publication.

Author's responsibilities

8. Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work.
9. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
10. Authors must submit their papers respecting the indications included in the submitting process to assure an anonymous review process.
11. Authors must participate in the double blind peer review process. 12. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
13. All Authors must have significantly contributed to the research.
14. Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
15. Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
16. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
17. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.

Reviewer's responsibilities

18. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
19. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author
20. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments
21. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
22. Referees are requested to evaluate if the article is methodologically sound, contains results which are clearly presented and support the conclusions, contains an appropriate bibliography and makes a significant contribution to the legal or social sciences.
23. Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
24. Reviewers must consider the originals received for review as a confidential document. It should never be shown or discussed with third parties, except in exceptional cases where people who can advise scientifically or academically may be consulted. In these cases, the identities of the people consulted must be revealed to the editor.
25. Reviewers should not review 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.

26. Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
27. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
28.- Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
29. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
30. Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
31. Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
32. Editors must respect the intellectual independence of the authors and consider all the originals submitted for publication, evaluating each of the contributions objectively.
33. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
34. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
35. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
36. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
37. Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
38. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions, they should have proof of misconduct.
39. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
40. Unpublished information, arguments or interpretations contained in an original submitted to the journal may not be used in research developed by the editors.

Conflict of interest

41. The editors are committed to avoiding any conflict of interest between the actors involved in the production.

42. All texts submitted will be evaluated for their intellectual content, avoiding that the ethnic or national belonging of the authors, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religious beliefs, or their political philosophy interfere in the process. Likewise, external evaluations that interfere with the quality of the work will be rejected.

43. Authors and evaluators are asked to declare in advance any relevant conflicts of interest they might have, so that they can be taken into account when assigning evaluations. Should any conflict arise after the publication of the contribution, a retraction or statement of fact will be made if necessary.

44. A "conflict of interest" is a situation in which there is a divergence between an individual's personal interests and his or her responsibilities in respect of the scientific activities he or she carries out, whether as an author, a reviewer or a member of the editorial board, which may influence his or her critical judgement and the integrity of his or her actions.

45..An economic conflict of interest is when the participant (author/reviewer/editor) has received or expects to receive money for activities related to the research and its dissemination.

46.An academic conflict of interest is when reviewers or editors adhere to a certain methodological or ideological trend in such a way that they may be biased in evaluating the work of others. For this reason they are asked to express themselves in advance.

47.Personal or work relationships’ conflict of interest is when the participants  (authors/reviewers/editors) have some kind of friendship, enmity or work relationship. To avoid this, publishers should take into account the sources of funding and the affiliation of the authors, in order to choose evaluators who do not belong to those specific circles.

48..The policy of the journal is to publish original works, written by those who declare their authorship, and unpublished, may not have been previously published in any print or electronic media.

Given the limitations of automatic detection programs plagiarism with the Spanish language and in order to respond to broader aspects that are inscribed as plagiarism practices —including translations, fragmentation of results or "salami slicing", duplication, among others— the journal implements a specific procedure to avoid it, namely:

1. At the time of submission of an article, the authors/s are requested to declare that the article has not been previously published or sent to other journals for evaluation. In addition, they are asked to state that they are following the Guidelines for Authors, which state that the articles to be submitted must be original.
2. Upon receipt —and prior to the beginning of the evaluation process— search tools are used on the Internet, in order to track other works of the authors/s and collate the title, excerpts of the abstract, the methodological section and the results of the article submitted for review, in order to corroborate originality and avoid plagiarism practices.
3. When sending it to evaluate peer reviewers, evaluators are also asked to pay attention to possible indicators of plagiarism, since they are the ones who know the sources and literature on the subject.

The journal considers as plagiarism the practices listed and explained below:

Direct plagiarism. This type is incurred when:

1. There is authorship omission and it is not indicated with quotation marks what is taken from another text.
2. Minimal changes are made to the text of another (sentence structure is modified, lowercase is replaced with uppercase or vice versa, synonyms are used, etc.) and is presented as original.

Plagiarism by improper use of paraphrase, is performed when:

1. Although authorship is noted, the original text is reproduced with a few changes that do not constitute paraphrases.

Complex plagiarism using a reference is committed when: 

1. The original authorship reference exists, but the pages of the source are pointed out inaccurately.
2. Paraphrase summarizing lengthy texts, but with little or no indication that they correspond to paraphrase.
3. Absence of quotation marks in words and phrases from the original text reproduced verbatim.

Plagiarism with quotation marks is performed when:

1. A quotation continues to be reproduced once quotation marks have been closed or the above phrases have been omitted from the same quotation.

Paraphrasing as plagiarism occurs when:

1. There is paraphrasing and the original source reference is not noted.
2. Paraphrasing is continuous and extensive, no material is added that allows interaction or enriches information, although the source is mentioned.
3. Academic works —which require original thoughts and critical reflections on the views of others— become texts that do not exceed the repetition of other academic texts.
4. Paraphrased passages are not clearly identified as such. It is not considered plagiarism when:
   1. It does not dominate over the work of the writer.
   2. It is used to allow the author to critically interact with the views of another person.
   3. The argument of the original text is rewritten in different words.

"Auto-plagiarism" or recycling fraud is committed when:

1. The appearance of a job is changed and presented as if it were a different job.
2. It omits the indication that the work is being recycled, that is, that it is a previously published work but with corrections or new additions.
3. Autoplage is not considered when:
   1. The previous work is the basis for a new contribution, and key parts should be repeated to explain and defend the new arguments.
   2. The author considers that what he has already said cannot be better said for the new publication.
   3. Repetition does not exceed 25 per cent of the original work.