Editorial Ethics Policy

Purpose, Scope, and Frame of Reference

The journal assumes editorial ethics as a substantive commitment to the integrity of knowledge, the quality of scholarly communication, and the public responsibility of scholarly publishing. Accordingly, this policy establishes the principles, criteria, procedures, and measures through which the journal prevents, examines, and resolves situations related to editorial ethics and misconduct in scholarly publishing.

This policy applies to all stages of the editorial process and involves all persons who participate in it: authors, co-authors, reviewers, members of the editorial team, the editorial board, the scientific committee, copyeditors, translators, editorial assistants, and institutional authorities involved in the publication process.

The journal declares its adherence to international principles of editorial integrity and expressly recognizes, as a framework for consultation and guidance, the recommendations, guidelines, discussions, cases, and flowcharts developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), especially when it is necessary to interpret complex situations, examine controversies, or decide on proportionate editorial measures. COPE provides the editorial community with guidelines, discussion documents, cases, and support tools specifically for addressing issues of publication ethics.

What the Journal Understands by Editorial Ethics

For the journal, editorial ethics comprises the set of principles, responsibilities, and decisions through which a scholarly journal safeguards intellectual honesty, the transparency of its processes, the reliability of the published record, fairness in scholarly evaluation, and respect for the knowledge communities it serves.

In this sense, editorial ethics implies, first, a responsibility to the publication itself: each manuscript must be treated with seriousness, impartiality, confidentiality, traceability, and adherence to explicit scholarly criteria. Publishing does not mean merely selecting texts, but also ensuring that what the journal puts into circulation has undergone editorially responsible procedures.

Second, it implies a responsibility to the local context in which the journal exists and works. The journal recognizes that scholarly publishing is not neutral with respect to its social, institutional, territorial, linguistic, and cultural environment. Therefore, the journal understands editorial ethics also as an obligation of respect toward the problems, forms of knowledge, debates, and subjects that shape its space of scholarly intervention.

Third, it implies a responsibility toward the regional, national, and international levels of knowledge circulation. The journal is committed to maintaining recognizable and transparent editorial standards, so that its practices are understandable and trustworthy for readers, authors, reviewers, indexers, and scientific communities from different backgrounds. This responsibility also requires avoiding both localist isolation and uncritical subordination to models external to its own locus of enunciation.

Principles Guiding the Journal’s Editorial Ethics

The journal’s editorial practice is governed by the following principles:

Academic integrity. The journal promotes honesty in the production, presentation, evaluation, and publication of knowledge.
Editorial transparency. Editorial decisions must be based on public, understandable criteria that are consistent with the journal’s policies.
Impartiality and equity. Manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of their academic merit, relevance, and contribution, without undue discrimination on personal, institutional, ideological, territorial, linguistic, ethnic, gender-based, or any other grounds incompatible with responsible scholarly evaluation.
Public responsibility. The journal recognizes that published texts form part of the scholarly record and therefore assumes the duty to correct, clarify, warn, or retract when necessary to preserve the reliability of circulating knowledge.
Respect for epistemological and contextual diversity. The journal values the plurality of theoretical, methodological, territorial, and disciplinary approaches, provided that they meet verifiable academic and ethical standards.
Editorial due process. Any suspicion or allegation related to misconduct must be examined with prudence, confidentiality, the right of reply, evidence-based review, and proportionality in the measures adopted.