Ethical Oversight Policy

Ethics Policy and good Editorial practices in Scientific Publications.

The journal Scientia et Technica is committed to high ethical standards, therefore, it adheres to international standards in scientific publications, committing itself to the academic and scientific community to guarantee the ethics and quality of the articles published throughout the process. The journal's guidelines are the Code of Conduct and Good Practices: defined by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE(Committee of Publication Ethics)).

Additionally, all manuscripts received will be treated as confidential documents and the authors must declare the characteristics of originality and authorship at the time of submitting their work to the Editorial Committee of the journal Letter of referral must be sent. The journal Scientia et Technica will carry out the possible measures to avoid fraud, plagiarism and guarantee an adequate response to the needs of readers and authors, ensuring the quality of the publications made, protecting and respecting the content of the manuscripts, as well as the integrity of these. The journal Scientia et Technica uses the double-blind evaluation system, guaranteeing at all times the confidentiality of the evaluation process, the anonymity of the evaluators, the authors and the content of the evaluation. The Editorial Committee commits to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary.

Editorial Team:

Guarantee the confidentiality of all contributions received, whether they are published or rejected after the evaluation process, as well as the anonymity of authors and reviewers at all times.
Review compliance with all the ethical and editorial criteria of the submitted contributions, especially in relation to plagiarism verification, as a condition for the beginning of the evaluation process. In any case, authors must be informed promptly and clearly about any decision that is made, or request the corresponding clarifications whenever the situation warrants it.
Initiate the search process for peer reviewers in a timely manner, guaranteeing the ethical and scientific suitability of the reviewers assigned to each article in accordance with their academic careers and publications in relation to the subject, taking into consideration the suggestions of the authors as long as this does not represent any conflict of interest.
Give effective processing to all complaints, claims or suspicions in situations of fraud, plagiarism, anti-plagiarism or any other conduct that goes against the ethical guidelines subscribed by the journal.
Solve authors and reviewers’ in a timely and appropriate manner, publish retractions and errata when necessary and make the corresponding adjustments in the files published in digital format in cases where there have been inaccuracies or errors in the published information.
Keep authors informed of all updates that arise in the course of the editorial process, especially when complaints, claims or suspicions of editorial conduct contrary to the journal's ethical policy are encountered.
Grant conditions of equality and impartiality for the treatment of all contributions received, above the personal or institutional affinity between the authors and the members of the journal's editorial team.

Authors:

Declarar Declare authorship and possession of the intellectual property rights over all the contents submitted to the journal, as well as the respective authorization in the case of supporting graphic material.
Declarar Properly reference and adhere to the citation rules indicated in the editorial policy of the journal. Reference all of the authors’ or third-party works published in other scientific or popular journals, internet portals, media or institutional repositories.
Declarar Clearly state the sources of funding for the research that gave rise to the articles sent to the journal, as well as the participation of all the people involved in the preparation of the article.
Declarar Guarantee the originality of the contributions sent to the journal, which must not be compromised with ongoing publication processes in any other journal.

Reviewers:

Declare possible conflicts of interest before starting the review of the articles.
Commit to preserving the confidentiality of the articles submitted for review.
Refrain from taking and/or sharing ideas or excerpts from assigned articles.
Warn the editorial team of any suspicion of fraudulent conduct, plagiarism, anti-plagiarism or recycling of published texts.
Contribute to the training process of the authors with broad and detailed observations and comments aimed at the academic qualification of the articles.
Comply with the deadlines assigned for the review of the articles and timely inform the editorial team when inconveniences arise that may prevent compliance with said deadlines.

The editorial committee, the editor, the authors and all reviewers must comply with and follow the international ethical standards defined by the (COPE), in order to avoid cases of

Double submission: Submit the manuscript to several journals simultaneously.
Evaluation manipulation by academic peers.
Systematic manipulation of the publication process.
Fabrication, falsification or omission of data.
Plagiarism and self-plagiarism.
Redundant, duplicate or fragmented publication (salami article).
Omission of references regarding the sources consulted.
Use of content without permission or without justification.
Individual appropriation of collective authorship.
Changes in authorship.
Ghost Authors, Gift or Guest Authors on a submitted manuscript.
Conflict of interest not disclosed or declared.

The journal will act as severely as possible, when any of the aforementioned cases arise. In case of suspicion of any misconduct, the flowcharts prepared by COPE will be followed: https://publicationethics.org/files/recognizing-authorship-problems-cope-infographic.pdf .2022), in order to determine the corresponding actions. By accepting the terms and agreements expressed by our journal, authors must guarantee that the article and the materials associated with it are original or do not infringe copyright.

Authors must also justify, in case of shared authorship, having the full consent of all of the other authors, ensuring that the work has not been previously presented or published in any other means of dissemination, including other languages. All signing authors are defined from the initial submission of the manuscript to the journal. These cannot be modified in any way, by adding new ones or removing existing ones, during any stage of the editorial process. The sole request of adding or removing authors is a cause for withdrawal of the work, for which the authors must start the editorial process again in a new call if this were to happen.

Authorship criteria:

An “author” is the person who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the article, therefore, all persons named as authors must meet authorship requirements, and all those who meet them must be explicitly mentioned.

Three basic criteria must be met collectively to be recognized as an author:

Substantial contribution to the conception and design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the study.
Drafting or revision of the intellectual content.
Approval of the final version.

The order of authorship must be a joint decision by the co-authors. There are three types of authorship that are considered unacceptable: “ghost” authors, who contribute substantially but go unrecognized (often paid by commercial promoters); "guest" authors, who make no discernible contribution, but are named to increase the chances of publication; and “honorary” authorships, which are based solely on a tenuous affiliation with a study.

Recommendations:

Before starting the research project, it is recommended to establish the functions and the way in which authorship for each investigator will be acknowledged.
You must not lie about the participation of a person in the research or publication, if their contribution is considered "substantial", then authorship is justified, either as an author or collaborator.
Authorship should not be assigned without the person's consent.
All persons named as authors must meet the authorship requirements, and all those who meet the requirements must be listed as authors or contributors.
Some groups list authors alphabetically, sometimes with a note to explain that all authors made equal contributions to the study and publication.

Every person related to the publication recognizes and subscribes to the ethical principles of academic research and the publication of its results. The journal adheres in all its scope to actively try to avoid bad practices that may arise from works that are partially or totally related to falsification, manipulation, fabrication of results; misappropriation or insufficient credit recognition of texts whose authorship belongs to another author and duplicate publications.

The journal Scientia et Technica expresses its commitment to the respect and integrity of all of the published works. For this reason, manuscripts that are identified as plagiarism or whose content is thought to be fraudulent will not be published. The journal reserves the right to withdraw publications of those articles that,even after publication, are shown to have errors in good faith, or committed fraud or bad scientific practices. This decision will be based on the "Retraction Guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines" (COPE, 2019). If the error is minor, it can be rectified by means of an editorial correction note or an errata. Authors also have the possibility to request publication retraction when they discover that their work contains serious errors. In all cases, the electronic version will be kept and the warnings will be made clearly and unequivocally.

Process for identifying and addressing allegations regarding research misconduct

Readers, authors and evaluators can raise their complaints and/or warnings when they suspect or have evidence of non-compliance with our ethical guidelines at any stage of the editorial process, this includes, but is not limited to:

Plagiarism
Self-plagiarism or recycling of previously published works
Authorship and contribution disputes
Manipulation in the evaluation process
Conflicts of interest

The editorial team will be in charge of receiving complaints from readers, authors and/or reviewers following compliance with the following process, in accordance with COPE guidelines:

Readers will send their claims in written form through the email scientia@utp.edu.co with the corresponding evidence.
The editorial team will confirm receipt of the claim within a period of five (5) business days and will assess its content, as well as the evidence provided. For claims related to plagiarism, the documents will be submitted to a match check via the iThenticate software.
In the event that a misconduct action which violates the journal's ethics policy is identified, the editorial team will notify the author in written form and request the corresponding explanations, granting a period of no more than fifteen (15) business days to receive a response.
Once the author's response has been received, the editorial team will make the decision to:

In the event that a minor case of plagiarism or self-plagiarism is verified but it is then clarified that it was the result of a human error and not an act of bad faith: it will be requested that the author edit the document when it is identified that there was no act of misconduct.
In case the author clarifies the situation: the journal will inform the reader who made the claim about the arguments expressed by the author and thank them for their interest in the transparency of the publication.
In case of finding a premeditated misconduct action or an action in bad faith that violates the ethics policy of the journal by the author: the journal will eliminate the article in question and publicly report the situation with a message in the "Notices" section of the journal as well as on social networks.

Likewise,the journal will be in charge of making a final decision taking into account all the parties involved. In the event that the situation to be studied involves any of the members of the team or the editorial committee, the person will be removed from the process until a resolution is made.

Conflict of interest policy

Members of the journal’s Editorial Committee will be authorized to submit their contributions, as long as they declare themselves impeded and deviate from the process of assigning peer reviewers and ruling on the approval or rejection of their article. Furthermore, people affiliated to the editorial and technical team of the journal may not act as authors in the indexed sections, this does not exclude them from collaborating as authors in the Reviews and Annals and Memoirs sections.

In the case of the reviewers, they must express their impediment to carry out review of articles whenever they have had some relation with the submitting author so that it is not possible to preserve the criterion of anonymity.

Anti-plagiarism policy

All the manuscripts and supplementary material submitted to the journal, without any exception, are analyzed via the iThenticate software to identify the index of coincidences with other publications. Through this analysis, all the sources for which textual similarities are found can be indicated. The reports generated by the software are analyzed carefully and individually, in the event that it is found that any of the identified coincidences is not properly referenced, the author or authors will be asked for clarification and will be instructed to make corresponding adjustments. Then, the article will be submitted once more through iThenticate software analysis.

If the coincidence rate is greater than 10%, the originality of the article is considered compromised and the replication of information published in other sources is verified, the author will be informed that the contribution cannot be accepted for review and the submission process will be terminated immediately.

At all times, the editorial team will be interested in receiving and processing complaints about possible cases of fraud, plagiarism or self-plagiarism sent by readers, authors or reviewers of articles that are undergoing the editorial process or that have been published. This must be completed via the email scientia@utp.edu.co.