Ethics
Ethics
The Revista Colombiana de Bioética (RCB) follows two references in its publication ethics policy: the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the recommendations, good practices and principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As for the COPE principles of transparency, RCB applies them in its policy and management, as follows:
Journal contents
Journal name. RCB has an unambiguous name, reflecting its thematic spectrum, bioethics, and has remained constant since its inception in 2005.
Website. RCB has a website that runs on an Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform and has up-to-date, accurate and necessary information to understand its policy, processes and procedures.
Editorial schedule. The RCB is a continuous publication and it is indicated on its website. Month by month, the journal publishes new content in its annual editions.
Archiving. The journal's website has security and preservation policies for its contents, which guarantee their preservation over time.
Copyright. RCB clearly indicates the type of assignment that its authors make to the journal, once they have been approved by peers.
Licensing. RCB announces the type of Creative Commons license used by the journal in all its articles.
Editorial practices
Publication ethics and related policies. The journal outlines, in its policy and instructions for authors, requirements for key aspects such as the definition of authorship and contributions, copyright and licensing of articles, handling of misconduct or ethical issues, declaration of conflicts of interest, ethical implications, funding, and corrections and retractions.
Peer review. RCB explains, in detail, the type of system it uses for peer review ("double-blind") and all the stages of the review, the details and their average times.
Access. The journal has a stable publication platform, accessible from anywhere in the world and its articles are published in immediate open access.
Organization
Ownership and management. RCB openly declares that it is sponsored by Universidad El Bosque and its Department of Bioethics, with essentially scientific and academic purposes, i.e. for the validation and dissemination of knowledge in the area of bioethics.
Committees. The journal has an editor-in-chief, associate editor, scientific editors and an international editorial and scientific committee. A whole team of professionals and researchers contribute to ensure that the journal maintains its editorial and scientific quality for the benefit of its target audience.
Editorial team. Details of the editorial team and contact information can be found on the RCB website.
Business Model
Costs for publishing. RCB operates under the diamond open access model. Therefore, its entire process is free for authors; it has no article processing charges (APC).
Other income. The RCB is subsidized by the Bioethics Department of Universidad El Bosque. It has an annual budget that allows it to function and to cover its management, production and indexing expenses.
Publicity. The RCB does not handle advertising nor does it advertise on its web page or in its editions.
Direct marketing. RCB eventually contacts authors to invite them to participate in its editions, but exclusively for academic or scientific purposes, with the purpose of obtaining the most suitable and highest quality contributions for each of its volumes. The journal's business model does not allow it to charge its authors, so any form of promotion or dissemination of the journal does not involve commercial purposes.
Considerations for authors
We ask our authors to take into account the following aspects before submitting a manuscript to be considered for publication:
Authorship. Only an individual who participated creatively in writing and organizing the contents of a manuscript should be considered an author. It is not correct to include authors who did not have a direct role in the work, who participated as advisors or tutors in the research, or who contributed in the phase prior to the elaboration of the manuscript but who did not have any direct and real participation at the moment of writing and revising it in its different versions. Also, all authors must agree with the contents of the manuscript and must be able to respond clearly, individually, for its contents.
The journal takes into account the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to establish who is an author or co-author of a manuscript.
An author is:
- One who contributes substantially to conceiving or designing a paper and to collecting, analyzing, and interpreting its data.
- One who writes the draft of a manuscript and critically revises it to make important intellectual contributions.
- One who gives final approval of the final version for publication.
- The one who takes responsibility for all aspects of a manuscript and who has ensured its accuracy and completeness in any of its parts.
Inclusion or deletion of authors. All those who declare themselves as co-authors of a manuscript submitted to the journal must have full knowledge of its contents, have actively participated in its preparation and agree with everything that is stated, argued, analyzed and concluded therein. Co-authorships "given away" or the inclusion of authors who had no real participation in the manuscript constitute an ethical misconduct.
Likewise, if it is desired to include or eliminate an author at any stage of the publication process, after submission, the corresponding author must send a letter arguing the reason for the inclusion or elimination, and the other co-authors must express their agreement with the situation, individually, in writing (the corresponding author must send a mail with a copy to all co-authors and all are obliged to respond; if any of the co-authors does not respond, the manuscript process will be stopped and may be closed unilaterally by the journal). The co-author directly affected by the inclusion or deletion must also express his/her consent.
Each case of inclusion or deletion of authors will be analyzed by the Editor-in-Chief and the responsible authorities of the journal to make a decision on the future of the manuscript. Authors should be aware that a change in the authorship group may lead to a unilateral rejection of the manuscript for publication by the journal if the explanations are not convincing or if they represent a violation of copyright.
Identification (ORCID ID) and contribution (CRediT) of the authors. All authors of the journal must provide or issue their ORCID registration: https://orcid.org/signin.
Also, in the case of co-authored articles, the contribution of each author should be indicated, according to the CRediT taxonomy:
These contributions should be presented in a final section of the manuscript, before the list of references, which will be called "Authors' contributions" and will be presented according to the following example:
Authors' contributions
Francy Alejandra García Echeverry: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, methodology, writing (original draft); Jaime Eduardo Moreno Amézquita: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, methodology, writing (original draft); Bo-ris Julián Pinto Bustamante: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, methodology, writing (original draft), writing (refereeing and editing corrections); Ana Isabel Gómez Córdoba: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, methodology, writing (original draft).
Conflicts of interest. Authors should submit a written statement about the funding of their research and whether there is any potential conflict of interest that could compromise their results, the interpretation of those results, or the refereeing process of their manuscript. The statement should be submitted on the form provided by the journal for this purpose.
Ethical implications. Authors should declare if the research from which their manuscript derives has ethical or bioethical implications, if it was submitted to an ethics committee in their respective institution or if there are aspects that should be taken into account in its methodology, results or future repercussions. Such aspects should be unambiguously stated in the final paragraphs of the manuscript.
Funding. If the authors received funding from any organization or institution, if the manuscript is derived from a funded project, or if there is third party participation with support in resources for the preparation of the manuscript, these should also be declared in the final sections.
Transparency. It is expected that each manuscript submitted to the journal comes from a genuine interest in publishing it. Submitting manuscripts to the journal in order to fulfill research project commitments or as an exercise in an undergraduate or graduate course is not acceptable. Each submission to the journal involves human and financial resources, hours of editorial work and the review, usually thorough, of peer reviewers.
Quality of content. Authors are expected to submit only definitive versions to the journal. It is not acceptable to submit manuscripts in progress or unfinished versions of a text or research in progress.
Scientific quality. It is expected that the original manuscripts submitted to the journal are the product of rigorous scientific research conducted under ethical conditions. The submission of manuscripts with manipulated or fabricated information or that make improper use of other works or contents protected by copyright will not be admissible. In case of detecting problems or gaps in the scientific quality of research involving ethical issues, the journal will follow the procedures established through the COPE.
Originality. Reprints, recycling of texts or self-plagiarism are not admissible behaviors. The journal will review its manuscripts through an anti-plagiarism software and in case evidence in this sense is detected, the manuscript will be rejected immediately.
Considerations for reviewers
The role of the reviewers is very important to guarantee the scientific quality of the journal and to contribute adequately to the international discussions in the area. For this reason, we ask, on behalf of the reviewers, to take into account the following recommendations:
Conflict of interest. If after receiving a manuscript, the reviewer identifies that there is some kind of professional, scientific or personal impediment to be able to issue an unbiased and independent opinion on the article, we ask that he/she immediately notifies the editor and refrains from continuing with the process.
Approach. It is expected that the concepts on the manuscripts are issued with rigor and following a scientific approach. The concepts should not make personal attacks, nor deviate towards opinions or recommendations that do not have scientific support. It is important to emphasize that the journal evaluates manuscripts, not individuals.
Impersonation. The journal invites its reviewers to participate, according to a comprehensive analysis of their curriculum vitae that involves a review of their academic background, their current lines of research and their most recent publications. Thus, it is not admissible for an evaluator, after accepting to read a manuscript, to transfer this responsibility to a research assistant, a doctoral student or another colleague.
Misuse of content. Reviewers are entrusted with unpublished manuscripts that usually contain the final results of research, novel approaches, or findings useful to science and the advancement of knowledge. In that sense, we ask for special care in protecting the data and contents of all manuscripts that reviewers agree to read and, of course, any unauthorized use of such information will be considered a serious misconduct.
Diligence. The editor, almost always, relies on the reviewers' concepts to make a decision on the publication of a manuscript. Excessive delay in the delivery of a concept generates an overload on the journal's processes and may affect the validity of the contents of a manuscript, among other undesirable effects. For this reason, we ask reviewers to adhere to the deadlines initially agreed with the editor and, in case of any setback, it is important to notify the editor so that a decision can be made to extend the deadline or seek the intervention of a new reviewer.
Retractions and corrections. The journal follows the indications of the COPE to proceed in cases that probably imply a correction or retraction of a text published in the journal. Retractions, we should point out, will be made when serious ethical and quality gaps are identified in a manuscript, such as data fabrication, plagiarism, among other problems that compromise originality, reliability and results.
On the other hand, authors may request a correction if they have noticed that there is an unintentional error that may affect the interpretation of their results or if they have identified a mistake in the article metadata that may lead to an error. It is important to note that corrections will be made when they concern fundamental issues that affect the understanding or interpretation of the published manuscript; minor errors (e.g., spelling and typographical errors) will not imply a correction.
Requests or complaints. If a contributor has a request about a journal process, a complaint, wishes to report an inconvenience, or has suspicions of misconduct in a published manuscript, he or she should contact the editor directly, at the official mailbox: revistacolombianadebioetica@unbosque.edu.co.
The journal editorial team will review such requests and will get back in touch for the purpose of further inquiry, analysis, resolution or action on the particular event.
