Ethic code

The Revista Latina de Comunicación Social is committed to meeting and maintaining ethical behavior standards at all stages of the publication process. We adhere to industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Elsevier's Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK), that set standards and provide best practice guidelines to meet these requirements.

Below is a summary of these for editors, authors, and reviewers:

Responsibilities of the Editor and the Editorial Board

• Ensure the confidentiality of the authors' data in the review process.

• Ensure the custody of unaccepted texts and specify the manner of their destruction.

• Define and specify the acceptance criteria of the articles for their review.

• Avoid favorable treatment to the detriment of other authors.

• Have no conflict of interest with the presented texts.

• Do not make any use of the texts or the data that are presented in them, beyond being published.

• Establish clear and objective review criteria to avoid the subjectivity of the reviewers.

• Establish clear deadlines to respond to the authors regarding the acceptance or non-acceptance of the text.

• Review suspected incidents of plagiarism and solve any conflicts of interest.

• Evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content, regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, or political philosophy of the authors.

• Respect deadlines: the editors are fully responsible for meeting the time limits for reviews and publication of accepted papers, to ensure rapid dissemination of their results. They reliably commit to comply with the published times (maximum of 30 days in the acceptance/rejection from the reception of the manuscript in the Review Platform) and maximum of 100 days from the beginning of the scientific review process by experts). Likewise, the works will not remain accepted without being published in infinite waiting lists beyond the time for their edition in the next issue. In Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, therefore, job boards on the waiting list will be avoided.

• Not publishing works not approved by peer review designated for this purpose to maintain a quality criterion required in journals of high scientific prestige. Thus, the author will always know that publishing supposes clear support for their research career.

Good Conduct Committee of the journal

• Formed by 5 members of its Scientific Committee and renewed every 4 calendar years (since 2010), it will ensure to bring closer positions between authors and reviewers if discrepancies arise, in its capacity as Commissioner of the Editor.

• Authors can contact them by email at their address: editor@revistalatina.org They will be answered within a maximum period of 30 days from the receipt of the email.

• When any irregularity is detected or there are doubts about a proposal, they will act ex officio after their discovery, to clarify the situation, applying an ethical code that corresponds to the following flow chart taken as an international reference, among other existing ones, and created by the British body COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics), available on its website: publicationethics.org

• Their decisions will be final.

Duties, responsibilities of the Authors

• Originality: Ensure the originality of the works and that they have not already been published in another medium.

• Veracity: Provide truthful data and show that it has been collected in a technically correct way.

• Plagiarism or self-plagiarism: Do not make total or partial plagiarism of other already published works.

• Authorship: Confirm that the authorship of the text really belongs to the people who sign it. The condition of the author implies the active participation in the realization of the source work of the presented article, in the writing of the text, and its reviews.

• Conflict of interest: declare any commercial association that may pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.

• Sources: Indicate the sources of information used and differentiate those that have been used directly from those that have been used indirectly. Authors are responsible for obtaining the appropriate permissions to partially reproduce material (text, tables, or figures) from other publications and for citing their origin correctly.

• If the article is accepted, the authors must commit to making the modifications in the time limit that has been stipulated.

• In the cases deemed appropriate, submit documentation that ensures that minimum ethical criteria have been followed in the research, such as informed consent.

• Access and retention: If deemed appropriate by publishers, article authors should also make available the sources or data on which the research is based, which can be retained for a reasonable period of time after publication and possibly made accessible.

• Errors in published articles: When an author identifies an important error or inaccuracy in their article, they should immediately inform the editors of the journal and provide them with all the necessary information to list the pertinent corrections at the bottom of the article.

• Responsibility: all authors accept responsibility for what has been written. The authors also undertake that a review of the most current and relevant scientific literature on the subject analyzed has been carried out, plurally bearing in mind the different currents of knowledge.

• As it is a publication governed by the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 España, the author assigns the copyright and publication rights to the journal through said free access public intellectual property system, by signing the text of the letter of originality and transfer of rights found on its website.

Duties, responsibilities of the Reviewers

• Make a fair and objective review of the articles.

• Respect of deadlines: The reviewer who does not feel competent in the subject to be reviewed or who cannot finish the evaluation in the scheduled time will immediately notify the editors. The reviewers undertake to evaluate the works in the shortest time possible to respect the deadlines, given that in «Revista Latina de Comunicación» the custody limits of the pending manuscripts are finite and inflexible out of respect for the authors and their works.

• Clearly state the arguments for their assessment.

• Do not accept articles to review in which there may be a conflict of interest that limits their objectivity (for example, being an interested party in the research presented in the article, maintaining a personal or kinship relationship with the authors of the text, or be in a situation of a dispute against them or the person or group that presents it).

• Maintain the confidentiality of the information and data of the evaluated articles.

• Text display: Reviewers undertake to accurately indicate the bibliographic references of fundamental works possibly forgotten by the author. The reviewer must also inform the editors of any similarities or overlaps of the manuscript with other published works.

• Evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content, regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, or political philosophy of the authors. 

Guidelines for the evaluation and review of articles

The review process developed by RLCS follows its code of ethics. For the authors, applying to RLCS implies fully accepting this code of ethics and abiding by these evaluation and review guidelines.

The first step in the review and evaluation of articles is carried out by the Drafting Committee, who performs a first anonymous examination to verify that the article conforms to the characteristics, quality requirements, and thematic lines of the journal.

The articles that pass this first review go to the second, developed by doctors from the Academy, consisting of submitting the text to three anonymous evaluations: an internal one (a member of the Drafting Committee, academic doctor) and two external ones (by evaluators outside the Drafting Committee). In case of discrepancy between evaluators, a new one will be assigned to decide. The recommendations of these reviewers must be followed by the authors or scientifically justify not including them in the revised text; This non-compliance with the recommendations must be accepted by the affected reviewers and by the appointed member of the Drafting Committee, otherwise, its observance is mandatory and its non-observance entails non-publication.

Before making the final selection of texts for publication by the Drafting Committee, if certain circumstances arise, such as incurring an ethical conflict or there being an excess of approved works (positively evaluated) for the same issue, the Drafting Committee will review the score achieved in the previous evaluations and will decide the final composition of the issue of RLCS to be published following this evaluation criterion, deciding in the event of a tie. Their resolution is now final.

External evaluations always respond to the process called double (at least two) blind (anonymous) peer (academic peers) review carried out by accredited specialists in the subject, guaranteeing anonymity in the review.

In keeping with the RLCS’s code of ethics, the evaluators will review the work with criteria of independence, objectivity, responsibility, and absence of conflict of interest, scrupulously and exclusively abiding by academic values according to their fair judgment, observing that the texts comply with the formal and ethics requirements demanded by the RLCS.

To guarantee equality between evaluations, when reviewing the articles, the evaluators will use a common template where the technical and scientific criteria of arbitration will be collected, as well as the comments and suggestions for improvement, which should be followed by the authors to improve the quality of the article.

The evaluators will have three options for global evaluation of the article (in all cases the decision taken must be justified in the comments section and the specific template):

• Publishable without modifications.

• Publishable after making corrections and improvement suggestions.

• Not publishable.

To avoid plagiarism conflicts, RLCS filters the texts by an anti-plagiarism program, making the resulting report available to the evaluators, if they request it, and suggesting, in turn, that they can proceed to a review using free programs such as Grammarly, Google, Ephorus, etc...

The Revista Latina de Comunicación Social adheres to the COPE deontological framework.

Process for dealing with complaints

• Complaints from authors will be received as long as they are well-founded, which will be dealt with as far as possible following the guidelines and diagrams established by COPE, as well as the journal's internal rules. In no case will the complaint resolution process involve revealing the identity of reviewers.

• Any complaint about an evaluation process will be dealt with as long as the author identifies the possible errors in the review carried out. At no time will the competence of the reviewer be questioned. Complaints will be addressed to the editor, with the respective argumentation and evidence to consider the case. If necessary, the support of the Editorial Board or one of its members who is an expert on the subject of the article in question will be requested. A response to the complaint will be given within a period of up to three months.

• If a report of plagiarism is received after the publication of an article in Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, and this is verified by the Editorial Board of the journal, the manuscript will be removed from the web page of the published issue and from all repositories and databases in which the plagiarised text appears.

  Code of Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

  Ethics in scientific writing is a crucial issue for the scientific community and for society in general. Scientific writing is an activity that involves the creation and dissemination of knowledge, and therefore, it must be carried out with integrity and transparency. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a tool that is increasingly being used in scientific research, and therefore, its use should also be guided by ethical principles.
  When it comes to the use of AI in scientific writing, it is important for researchers to be transparent about how the technology is being used and how the results are being interpreted. AI algorithms can be useful for processing large amounts of data and for identifying patterns and trends, but they can also lead to errors if not used properly. Researchers must be clear about how the algorithms are being used and how the results are being interpreted, and must ensure that any automation does not undermine the integrity of the research.

  Ethical Extensions for Responsibility and Inclusion

  1. Coercive Citation: "At RLCS, we strongly oppose any form of coercive citation. To enrich academic dialogue without compromising the autonomy of authors, we include a 'Related Articles' section at the end of each publication. This section, curated exclusively by our editorial team, highlights previous research relevant to the topic addressed. Authors are not responsible for these selections, thus ensuring that no citation requirements are imposed on them. This approach aims to provide additional value to our readers, fostering a deeper exploration of related topics without engaging in ethically questionable practices."
     
     
  2. Data Fabrication: "RLCS strives to ensure the integrity and truthfulness of the research published. Any suspicion of data fabrication or falsification will be seriously investigated, and, if necessary, measures will be taken in accordance with COPE guidelines, including the retraction of the work and notification to the author's affiliated institutions."
     
     
  3. Defamation: "RLCS will not allow the publication of works containing defamatory or injurious statements. We reserve the right to request changes or reject works that we consider potentially defamatory to ensure that discourse within our community is respectful and constructive."
     
     
  4. Diversity and Inclusion: "RLCS is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion at all stages of publication. This includes promoting equal opportunities for authors, reviewers, and editors regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, or ethnic origin, and ensuring that our review and publication practices reflect this commitment."
  5. Open Access Policies: "RLCS supports the principles of open access to scientific research and is committed to maximizing the accessibility and reusability of published works. We will detail our open access policies, including licenses, copyright, and possible costs for authors, to ensure transparency and equitable access to our content."
     
     
  6. Environmental Sustainability: "Recognizing the importance of environmental sustainability, RLCS commits to adopting practices that minimize the environmental impact of our publishing operations. This may include promoting research that addresses sustainability issues, as well as adopting more sustainable office and publication practices."