Ethical guidelines

The journal ensures good practices in academic publishing by following the guidelines established by the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE). The ethical principles and other policies related to transparency, responsibility, intellectual property and reproduction rights, among others, are detailed below.

Authors’ responsibility and authorial contribution

Authors of a manuscript are considered to be those persons who have made a significant contribution to the final product. 

Authors should present results of rigorous, transparent and ethical research processes, assuming responsibility for the published research. Their research methods should be described, in such a way that the scientific community can corroborate or replicate the study.

When submitting their papers, authors must complete, sign and attach this Authorship Responsibility Statement in which, among other information, they declare that their work is original and unpublished. Authors should refrain from submitting the manuscript simultaneously to two or more journals.

Authors should carefully select the order of appearance of their names in the submitted paper. The first author will be considered the senior author and, unless otherwise specified, will oversee correspondence with the journal. After the article has been submitted, changes can only be made to the list of authors, both in the order and in adding or deleting people, by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Board and explaining the reasons for the changes.  

For reasons of transparency, each author of a manuscript must declare his or her specific contribution, for which the CRediT taxonomy of roles is followed.

Any controversy related to the authorship of a manuscript should be communicated by e-mail to the journal, and will be resolved by the Editorial Board and communicated to the parties involved in the shortest possible time.

Conflicts of interest

All those involved in the editorial processing of a manuscript must make explicit and/or alert, at any stage of the process, about any personal, academic, political, financial or other interest that may influence or compromise in any way the evaluation and publication of the work.

When submitting their manuscripts, authors must make explicit any possible conflicts of interest, as well as inform if their work has received any type of funding or economic support from agencies, projects or individuals, and make explicit any possible link with parties interested in the research submitted for consideration by the journal. 

The reviewers convened by the journal for the evaluation of manuscripts are responsible for alerting the Editorial Board of any conflict of interest or circumstance that may prevent them from carrying out the task in a suitable and objective manner.

In cases in which a member of the Editorial Board has a conflict of interest or is an interested party in the publication process of an article submitted to the journal, he/she will be replaced in his/her responsibilities by another member of the team, who will be in charge of managing the editorial process with independence and without compromising the principles of confidentiality and privacy of information.

Plagiarism detection policy

Authors are committed to submit original and unpublished articles. This implies the absence of plagiarism (appropriation of ideas or phrases from third parties) or self-plagiarism (duplicate publication without attribution or excessive self-citation).

Authors should indicate, by means of a note on the first page of the article submitted, whether it was prepared from materials available in previous publications, repositories or on the web. The contents reused in the manuscripts must be duly referenced in accordance with the Vancouver citation guidelines. The degree of self-citation allowed will be at the discretion of the editor in charge, according to each case and in accordance with the guidelines mentioned above.

As part of the initial process of receiving articles and the formal review of submissions, the journal performs a plagiarism check of the manuscript using Crossref and Turnitin software.

If plagiarism or self-plagiarism is detected in an article, the editorial team has the authority to reject the submission directly or to contact the authors to request the corresponding explanations and the necessary adjustments.

When the submitted articles require modifications by the authors —as part of the result of peer review— the new version of the paper will be subjected to the analysis of anti-plagiarism software.

Beyond the technical analysis performed by the journal, all participants in the editorial process (editors, reviewers, as well as readers of an article once it has been published) can alert the responsible editor or the journal to a possible detection of plagiarism by sending an e-mail. Actions to be taken when plagiarism is reported are addressed in the section “Management of corrections, complaints and claims”.

Policies regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is not recognized as the author of the work and the ultimate responsibility for the content lies with the undersigned authors.

The use of AI tools should be explicitly stated by the authors in the manuscript, in the methodological section, detailing which tool was used and for what purpose.

Review policies and responsibility of reviewers

Articles published in the journal are submitted to external peer review, using the double-blind refereeing system. Details of the evaluation process can be found in the Review Process section.

Reviewers undertake to referee articles on a voluntary and honorary basis, in order to contribute to improve the quality of the papers through an objective and constructive review. They must be free of conflicts of interest in relation to the study submitted for evaluation.

They should follow the evaluation guidelines provided by the journal and comply with both the policies of the evaluation process and the deadlines stipulated for the task.

The manuscript under review is a confidential document, implying that reviewers may not quote or use the material or distribute copies of the work to others. If a reviewer intends to consult a third party about any aspect of the work, he/she must ask permission from the editor beforehand.

Management of corrections, complaints and claims

The journal will receive via e-mail indications of corrections in the content of published articles, complaints of any kind involving the content of publications, and allegations of research misconduct or plagiarism. These communications may be made at any time during the publication process of an article by any of the parties involved in it or by the community of readers after the publication of the articles.

The Editorial Board will analyze each case following the guidelines provided by COPE for each scenario and will take the corresponding measures for each situation.

In all cases, we will proceed with maximum transparency and the complainant will receive a response on the actions taken by the magazine based on his or her complaint. The persons or institutions involved in the particular case will also be contacted, following up as necessary in each circumstance.

The magazine will communicate, by means of notices published on its website and available to all readers on the home page, any significant news related to the content of the articles.

In the case of errors made by the authors or controversies related to authorship, a correction will be published; whereas, if the error was made by the editorial team, an erratum will be published. Communications about errors will be made only when the information is incorrect or affects the content of the research; minor corrections such as spelling or typographical adjustments will not be announced.

Retractions are reserved for cases of plagiarism, duplicate publication, or research that presents errors of such seriousness as to compromise its results or conclusions. Any retractions will be analyzed by the responsible editor in consultation with the Editorial Board, the reviewers and the authors of the article in question. All authors involved must be notified, and declare to the journal that they accept the retraction.

In such cases, the article will be withdrawn and a notice will be published identifying the title of the retracted article, the names and affiliations of the authors of the article, and the reasons for the decision taken. The retraction will also be included as a document in the Table of Contents of the issue corresponding to the retracted article.

More details on the retraction process can be found in COPE.

Complaints or denunciations against the journal, its staff, the Editorial Board or the responsible editor can be sent to the Vice Rector’s Office for Research and Innovation (vii@ucu.edu.uy).

Data Availability

Following the SciELO Guidelines for Transparency and Openness Promotion in Journal Policies and Practices (Transparency and Openness Promotion)  on data transparency, authors of articles resulting from original research should report whether the dataset used in their study is available and, if so, where to access it.

Some possible repositories for open data are: SciELO Data, Mendeley Data, Zenodo, DANS, DataHub, FigShare.

In case the authors have their data in any server, they should state it alongside the submission as follows: “The dataset supporting the results of this study is available at [name and link to repository]”.

If not, they should include the following statement: “The dataset supporting the results of this study is not available”. 

In all cases, authors should make the research data available to the referees, if required.

Ethical oversight and responsibility of the editorial team

The responsible editor and the Editorial Board are committed to supervise the publication processes, following the highest ethical standards.

The editors will ensure that the articles are peer-reviewed by specialists in the subject, clearly informing about the rules of publication and respecting the confidentiality and anonymity of the arbitration process. Editors may not distribute copies of a manuscript under review to persons outside the review process, nor cite the material in their own publications until it has been accepted and published.

Manuscripts submitted for review must meet the international ethical standards set forth by the American Psychological Association and the Declaration of Helsinki.

For all research involving human subjects and animal experimentation, the submission of an Ethics Committee approval will be considered. This approval should provide specific details regarding the institution and the committee that granted it, including the corresponding number and date. The Method section should include a subsection on ethical considerations, detailing the main aspects related to procedures and informed consents pertinent to the study, as well as mentioning the approval (identification number and/or issuing institution) if available.

In research involving potentially vulnerable persons or groups (whether due to age, disability, gender, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic level, institutionalization, among others, as well as their possible intersections), the procedures and specific care taken to ensure compliance with the ethical guidelines that apply to research with these populations will be detailed.

Use of language

Authors are encouraged to use language that does not discriminate or reproduce discriminatory biases based on gender, race, age, disability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc.

Open Access Policies

The journal operates under the Vice-Rectorate for Research and Development of Universidad Católica del Uruguay and is part of the Publications Unit of the Ágora Center. The journal is funded by Universidad Católica del Uruguay and does not charge any fees for submission, evaluation, or publication of articles.

This journal provides open access to all its content, based on the principle that offering the public free access to research promotes a greater global exchange of knowledge.  

Copyright

If the manuscript is accepted, the authors agree to transfer the copyright to the journal according to the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), open access system, with the authors retaining responsibility for the content and opinions expressed, which do not reflect the views or scientific policy of the journal.

 The authors or assignors hereby declare that their work does not infringe on the rights of third parties and that they are the sole holders of the property rights being transferred, allowing them to dispose of these rights without any limitations or encumbrances. They also declare that, in creating the work subject to this transfer, they have not violated any third-party intellectual property rights. Consequently, the authors or assignors are obliged to guarantee the authorship and originality of the work’s content to the journal and ensure the peaceful exercise of the transferred rights. The authors or assignors will be responsible for any claims made by third parties regarding intellectual property rights over the work, thus exempting the journal from any liability. They will also be liable for any damages that may be caused to the journal due to such claims.

The article’s content will not be subject to any other rights by any other publication, nor has it been previously published. If tables or figures from other publications are reproduced, written permission from the authors or copyright holders will be provided as appropriate. In all cases, the Vancouver guidelines for presenting tables and figures will be followed.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal will be used exclusively for the purposes set forth therein and will not be provided to third parties or for use for other purposes.