The journal considers misconduct in scholarly publishing to include all actions or omissions that compromise the originality, truthfulness, traceability, legitimate authorship, transparency, or reliability of a manuscript or of an already published text.

The journal explicitly recognizes, among others, the following forms of misconduct:

• Plagiarism, understood as the partial or total appropriation of ideas, arguments, data, textual structures, images, tables, or expressions from third parties without proper acknowledgment of the source.
• Self-plagiarism or undisclosed text recycling, when an author substantially reuses previously published material of their own without indicating this transparently and without sufficient editorial justification.
• Duplicate, redundant, or fragmented publication, including the presentation of the same study as if it were different works without sufficient information for the reader or for the journal.
• Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one scholarly journal.
• Fabrication, falsification, or manipulation of data, results, documents, citations, tables, graphs, images, or research evidence.
• Improper manipulation of images or supplementary materials that alters the meaning or interpretation of the content.
• Improper authorship, including honorary authorship, guest/gift authorship, purchased authorship, exclusion of authors with real contributions, or inclusion of persons who did not participate substantively in the work.
• Omission or misrepresentation of conflicts of interest.
• Manipulation of peer review, including fraudulent reviewer suggestions, identity impersonation, or improper interference in the review process.
• Manipulated, coercive, or artificially inflated citation, when references are introduced without sufficient scholarly justification in order to alter metrics, favor specific actors, or simulate bibliographic support.
• Circularity, derived from the above, such as citing a secondary source to state basic, widely known theory in order to benefit specific authors or journals. The same applies when, except in specific studies, a single source accounts for more than one third of the reference list.
• Concealment of relevant ethical information, such as lack of consent, permissions, institutional authorizations, or approvals required by the nature of the study.
• Misleading or undisclosed use of technological tools, including tools that produce or alter text, images, data, references, or evaluations in a manner incompatible with authorial and editorial responsibility.

Means, Tools, and Procedures to Prevent, Detect, and Address Misconduct

The journal adopts a combination of preventive, verification, and editorial correction measures.

Preventive measures

The journal requires authors to know and accept its editorial policies before initiating a submission. It also publicly informs its evaluation criteria, originality requirements, and position regarding misconduct.

The journal may request declarations of originality, authorship, conflicts of interest, funding, ethical approval, informed consent, and data availability, according to the nature of the manuscript.

Verification tools

The publishing institution has access to Turnitin Similarity as a support tool for reviewing textual similarity. Its use makes it possible to identify textual matches, review similarity reports, and detect matches that require editorial analysis. However, the similarity report does not by itself constitute automatic proof of plagiarism: Turnitin expressly indicates that it detects textual similarities and that the determination of plagiarism corresponds to human scholarly and editorial judgment.

For this reason, the journal does not interpret similarity percentages mechanically or apply decontextualized automatic thresholds. Each case will be reviewed according to the nature of the matches detected, the presence of correctly indicated citations, the extent of the fragments involved, the type of manuscript, and the possible existence of improper conduct.

In addition to similarity review, the journal may employ further editorial checks, such as version comparison, reference verification, metadata review, requests for methodological clarifications, affiliation checks, image review, and analysis of argumentative or documentary consistency.

Procedure for Examining Cases of Misconduct

When there is an allegation, a well-founded suspicion, or a reasonable indication of misconduct, the journal will conduct a preliminary evaluation of the evidence. If the situation warrants it, the editorial process of the manuscript may be temporarily suspended while additional information is gathered.

Subsequently, the journal may request explanations from the authors or other persons involved, require supporting documents, request corrections or additional background information, and, when appropriate, consult COPE guidance, cases, discussions, or flowcharts in order to determine the most appropriate procedural route.

If the seriousness of the case so requires, the journal may bring the matter to the attention of the authors’ affiliated institution or other competent authorities.

Editorial Measures in Cases of Misconduct

Once the examination of the case has been completed, the journal may adopt, according to the nature, seriousness, and available evidence, one or more of the following measures:

• request for formal clarifications;
• request for corrections or substantive modifications;
• requirement to correct authorship, affiliation, or declarations;
• rejection of the manuscript;
• suspension of the editorial process;
• publication of a correction, erratum, or editorial note;
• publication of an editorial expression of concern when there is a well-founded concern that still requires further clarification;
• total or partial retraction of the article;
• communication of the case to competent institutions or bodies;
• temporary restriction on new submissions by those found responsible, in serious or repeated cases.

For already published texts, the journal will act bearing in mind that correction or retraction is not intended to punish authors in itself, but to correct the literature and preserve the integrity of the scholarly record, a criterion expressly emphasized by COPE in its guidance on retraction.

Corrections, Clarifications, Retractions, and Preservation of the Scholarly Record

When a published text contains minor errors that do not invalidate its results, the journal may publish formally identified corrections or clarifications.

When errors, omissions, or irregularities substantially compromise the reliability of the work, the journal may issue editorial expressions of concern or retractions, maintaining the greatest possible transparency regarding the reasons for the decision and preserving the historical character of the published record, except in exceptional situations involving legal matters or serious harm.

Conflicts of Interest, Complaints, and Appeals

Every person participating in the editorial process must promptly declare any real, potential, or apparent conflict of interest that may affect their independence of judgment. See the explicit conflict of interest disclosure policy.

The journal will receive and examine, on well-founded grounds, complaints, allegations, or appeals related to editorial decisions or possible ethical breaches. These submissions will be handled with confidentiality, respect for due process, and reasoned assessment of the available evidence.

Policy Update

The journal may review and update this policy when the requirements of the editorial field, international standards, COPE recommendations, indexing criteria, or the experience accumulated by the journal itself make its improvement or expansion advisable.