Declaration of Ethics and Good Practices

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

The editorial team, with the support of the editorial board, promote scientific integrity in all journal contributors by adhering to the policies of the Committee on Publication Ethic (COPE), its principles of transparency and good editorial practices, and to the recommendations for resolving ethical concerns or suspected misconduct-improper handling of images, improper handling of the publication process, conflicts of authorship, data fabrication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, plagiarism, misuse of unpublished information by reviewers, simultaneous submission, among others.
The procedures (flow charts) for dealing with cases that represent potential ethical problems can be found here:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.37
Also, we give some recommendations to the authors and reviewers related to the scientific integrity and expectations the Journal has about each role in the Publication Process.

Authors. Authors should consider the following aspects before submitting a manuscript to the Journal:

Authorship. Only an individual who participated creatively in writing and organization of contents of a manuscript should be considered as an author. It is not recommended to include authors who did not have a direct role in the project, such as advisors or tutors, or authors who contributed in a previous phase of the elaboration of the manuscript but did not have any direct and real participation in the writing and reviewing of the manuscript in its different versions. Also, all authors must agree with the contents of the manuscript and must be able to respond individually about the content.
Conflict of Interest. Authors are required to submit a written statement regarding 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 peer review process of their manuscript. The statement should be submitted on the form the Journal has for said purpose.
Transparency. Each manuscript submitted to the Journal is expected to come from a genuine interest in its publication. Submitting manuscripts to the journal for the purpose of fulfilling research projects commitments or as an exercise in an undergraduate major or graduate course is not acceptable. Each submission to the Journal involves human and financial resources, hours of editorial work, and the usual thorough peer review process.
Quality of the Contents. Authors are expected to submit only definitive versions of their manuscripts to the Journal. It is not acceptable to submit manuscripts in progress or unfinished versions of a text from an ongoing investigation.
Scientific Quality. Original manuscripts submitted to the Journal are expected to be the product of rigorous scientific research and must be done under ethical conditions. The journal will reject all manuscripts with manipulated or fabricated information, or manuscripts that make improper use of other works or content protected by copyright. In case problems are detected or gaps exist in scientific quality, including ethical issues; the Journal will follow the procedures established by COPE.
Originality. Recycled texts and self-plagiarism are not permitted. The Journal will review all manuscripts through anti-plagiarism software and if evidence is detected, the manuscript will be rejected immediately.
Reviewers. The reviewer’s role ensures the scientific quality of the Journal. Also, this role is central in the scientific quality of the international discussions in the scientific community. For this reason, we ask the reviewers to consider the following recommendations:
Conflict of interest. If, after receiving a manuscript, the reviewer identifies any professional, scientific, or personal impediment to providing an unbiased perspective of the article, we ask that the reviewer immediately notify the editor and refrain from further actions.
Focus. It is expected that concepts about the manuscripts will be issued with rigor and following a scientific approach. The concepts must not make personal attacks, nor should deviate towards opinions or recommendations without scientific basis. The Journal reviews manuscripts, not people.
Impersonation. The Journal invite its reviewers based on a comprehensive analysis of their curriculum vitae. This involves a review of their academic background, their current lines of research and their most recent publications. Thus, if the reviewer accepts peering the manuscript, it is not acceptable that he or she transfers his responsibility to a research assistant, a PhD student or another colleague.
Improper use of the contents. The Journal entrust reviewers with unpublished manuscripts which generally contain results of research, novel approaches or valued findings to science and the development of knowledge. In this regard, we ask for special care protecting the data and contents of all manuscripts that the reviewers agree to read. Any unauthorized use of such information will be considered a serious fault.
Diligence. The editor relies on the reviewer’s concept to decide about publishing a manuscript, on almost everything occasion. The excessive delay delivering a concept generates an overload on the processes of the Journal and can affect the validity of the contents of a manuscript, among other undesirable effects. For this reason, we ask reviewers to meet the deadlines for concept submission that were initially agreed with the editor. In case of any setback, it is important that the reviewer notifies the editor so a decision can be made about extending the deadline or seeking the concept of a new reviewer.
Retractions and corrections. The Journal follows COPE guidelines to proceed in cases that are likely to involve a correction or retraction of a published text. We should point out that withdrawals will be made when serious ethical and quality gaps are identified in a manuscript. These cases include data fabrication, plagiarism, among other problems that compromise originality, reliability, and results. Also, authors can request a correction if they notice an unintentional error that could affect the interpretation of their results or if they identified an error in the article’s metadata. Corrections will be made when there are fundamental issues affecting the understanding or interpretation of the published manuscript; minor errors will not imply correction (e.g., spelling).
Request or complaints. If a contributor has any request or issue about any journal process, or suspects misconduct in a published manuscript, they should contact the editor directly to the official mailbox: cuaderlam@unbosque.edu.co. The Journal Editorial Team will review such request and get in touch with you for further inquiry, analysis, solution, or action on the case.
Digital preservation. The platform where Revista Colombiana de Bioética is published follows the information security protocols of the institutional repository of Universidad El Bosque. This facilitate access and ensure digital preservation over time. Similarly, all published texts are given a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to ensure their online location and retrieval.
Indexing. The Journal frequently carries out indexing and updating processes of its volumes in indexes, bibliographic bases, databases, repositories, directories and catalogues. It is made to provide the greatest possible access to its contents to the specialized community of Bioethics in the world and to readers interested in the most relevant scientific discussions in the journal’s topics.
It is also part of the essential purpose of the Journal to consolidate and maintain itself as a reliable repository of peer-reviewed scientific knowledge, easily accessible, in order to promote an impact on the solution of problems and to contribute to more responsible and conscious professional and social practices around.

Procedure for Identifying Ethical Malpractices in Scientific Publications

Plagiarism and data fabrication 

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use or attempt to not attribute a content to its original author, whether ideas, texts or results. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines plagiarism as the "theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work." Plagiarism happens when large pieces of text have been cut and pasted without proper or unambiguous attribution to its author.  Manuscripts with suspicion of plagiarism are not considered for publication in the scientific journals funded by Universidad El Bosque. There must be proper attribution and citation when paraphrasing and summarizing the work of others. "Text recycling" or the reuse of portions of text from an author's previous research publication is a form of self-plagiarism.  This kind of plagiarism is not allowed by the journals.  When reusing a text, whether from the author's own publication or that of others, proper attribution and citation are necessary to avoid the reader's misperception of a unique contribution.

Duplication (or redundancy) of a publication occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing adequate references.  This covers cases such as the publication of an identical article in several journals or the addition of a small amount of new data to a previously published article.

Data fabrication is the presentation of false data as a result of an experiment or research. The intent of presenting this data is to construct evidence for an experiment proposal that may or may not have been done, and that did not yield the desired results.

The editors of our scientific journals and their respective editorial committees evaluate all these cases according to their individual characteristics.  When plagiarism becomes apparent after publication, we may correct, retract, or modify the original publication depending on the degree of plagiarism, the context within the published article, and its impact on the overall integrity of the published study.  The journals use the Turnitin tool, which is a software to review submitted manuscripts for text overlap.

Procedure

Detection

The editor of the journal, together with the editorial committee and the reviewers of the article, will try to identify cases of falsification of data or plagiarism. First, the journal's editorial team will use the Turnitin similarity identification software and from the report generated they will assess whether there is any malpractice. If the manuscript does not show any signs of malpractice, it will be sent for evaluation. Reviewers are empowered to inform the editor if they find signs of malpractice and can present the evidence to the journal (whether they found an article by the same author that was not cited, or, if they found an article with the same information without citation). The editor will consider the evidence presented by the reviewers and, after discussion with the journal's editorial board, will determine if there was any fault on the part of the author.

Research

 

In a meeting with the committee it will be decided whether the case needs further investigation or whether the evidence found at the detection stage. To determine the nature of the practice, the editorial committee must conduct a review of the evidence presented and a search for its classification. If an editorial malpractice is found, the editor will inform the authors by e-mail of the nature of the malpractice and submit a detailed report of how the fault was determined. The authors will have an opportunity to appeal the decision and submit their explanation of the situation and the evidence to support it. Authors must respond in a unified way. If it is determined that there was no malpractice, the investigation is closed and the manuscript continues its editorial process. If it is determined that malpractice did occur, the process moves to the penalty phase.

 

In order to conduct a complete and fair investigation, authors may be asked to provide supplementary materials to the manuscript. These materials include the data used to carry out the manuscript and other documents used. If an article uses data covered by a confidentiality agreement and they are unable to provide the requested data, the editorial board may request details of the agreement. The editorial committee must decide whether to grant the exception or not. If the committee decides that the authors should submit the data, the authors will have the option to withdraw the article from the evaluation process. However, despite the withdrawal, the committee may decide to continue the investigation and determine a penalty if malpractice is confirmed.

 

All information provided will be used only for the purpose of the investigation. It will be kept private and will not be distributed to entities other than those participating in the process. All materials will be archived once the investigation is concluded.

Penalty

In the event that a malpractice by an author or a group of authors is proven, they will be subject to a penalty. The nature and extent of the penalty will be determined by the editorial board of the journal taking into account similar cases in other journals. The penalty will be in accordance with the nature of the malpractice and will most likely include the prohibition to submit articles to any of the journals of Universidad El Bosque for a certain period of time. All editors of these journals will be informed of the situation. In extreme circumstances, the committee reserves the right to inform the institution of the perpetrators, depending on the seriousness of the offense.

Withdrawal of Manuscripts

In the event that ethical malpractice is found in an article published in a journal financed by Universidad El Bosque, the University reserves the right to withdraw the publication at stake. The citations of the manuscript will be marked as withdrawn in all databases and the electronic version of the article will be marked as withdrawn as well.