The journal will ensure at all times the quality of its content and the proper exercise of ethical practices by each of the actors involved in the publication. The following is the Code of Conduct and Good Ethical Practices that the journal follows and is based on the Guidelines on Good Practices for Publications developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In the event of suspicion or non-compliance with some of the good ethical practices established in this Code, proceed according to the guidelines in the Central Practices and the Flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for each case. Faced with the suspicion or detection of new ethical bad practices that are not declared in this Code of Conduct, the provisions of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be evaluated in its Code of conduct, and in correspondence it will act as established for the dishonest act detected.

General Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

The editors of this journal undertake to:

• Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors
• Strive to constantly improve the journal taking into account the different points of view of authors, readers, reviewers and members of the editorial committee
• Have all the necessary processes implemented in the journal to ensure the quality of the material that is published
• Allow freedom of expression without consenting to manifestations of discrimination or offensive
• Evaluate the articles without taking into account the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political belief, nationality, ethnic origin or personal position of the authors
• Decide which articles should be sent for peer review, as well as which ones are in a position to be published after review, in addition to preserving the confidentiality of the evaluated articles, not revealing any information about their content, subject matter, authorship, data included, analysis carried out or final conclusions
• Guarantee the preservation of all the content of the journal
• Prevent business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards
• Post corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when necessary
• Provide all the actors in the process with the information necessary to efficiently perform their function
• Support all actions necessary to reduce the various manifestations of research and publication misconduct, and encourage ethical and responsible behavior
• Ensure that each published document correctly reflects the results and interpretations proposed by the authors
• File the reports and the results of the evaluations of each article, and provide them whenever they are requested by the competent natural and legal persons
• Ensure peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sections are clearly identified
• Ensuring that peer review in the journal is fair, impartial and timely
• Adopt the most appropriate peer review methods for the journal and the research community it serves
• Publishers will be vigilant about intellectual property issues and in correspondence will work with their publishers to handle potential infringements of intellectual property laws and conventions.
• Best practices for publishers will also include adopting systems to detect plagiarism (e.g. software, searching for similar titles)

Related to readers

• They will be informed about the sources of funding, authors and institutions of the different works
• They will have all the necessary information and tools that allow them to retrieve the metadata of the different documents
• They will be able to access the full texts of the documents at any time they have it available and in different responsive formats
• They have the obligation to properly reference the documents they consult
• They have the obligation to make an adequate and responsible use of the information, ensuring that no principle of good practice is violated.

Related to Documents and Data

• The data declared in the documents presented for publication must be real and authentic
• Data that are not justified for the proposed study objective should not be used.
• All documents must include citations and references to the sources of information used
• It is considered an unfair practice to submit an article to more than one journal for evaluation
• It is considered an unethical practice:
• Plagiarism and fraudulent data in documents
• Publish the same article in more than one journal
• Copy and use textual information from any document
• Use data, images and other resources without the authorization of all the natural or legal authors of the work
• Use information that has not been consulted from the original source by some of the authors of the document
• Modify or misrepresent the meaning and context of the information contained in other works, as well as any other inappropriate use that alters the integrity of the information

Related to the authors

• Editors' decisions to accept or reject a work for publication will be based on the contribution of the document, originality, clarity, validity of the study and its relevance to the thematic field of the journal.
• The will to submit a document to the journal will not be rejected unless problems are identified in the guidelines established for its submission.
• New editors will not reverse decisions to publish work approved by previous editors unless issues are identified that were not addressed in previous reviews.
• Before and during the submission process, a guide will be made available to the author with all the characteristics and elements to be controlled in the peer review processes.
• The evaluation of each document presented in the journal will be carried out by competent and specialized professionals in each of the publication topics.
• Authors will remain anonymous throughout the peer review process
• The requests made by the authors that their work not be evaluated by a reviewer declared in the journal's arbiters folder will be respected, as long as the conflict of interest existing between the reviewer and one or more of the authors can be properly justified. of the document
• Presenting ideas of other authors as your own constitutes an unacceptable practice
• The authors must report any source of funding that has allowed the study to be carried out, as well as any other commitment that may influence the interpretation of the results.
• All authors are obliged to provide the necessary corrections to errors
• Only those people who substantially participated in the conception of the idea and design of the study, in the acquisition or analysis of the data, in the writing of the article or its intellectual critical review, and in the final approval are considered authors of the work. of the document that will be published as long as this person has a high experience in the subject and has contributed or guided in some of the previous points
• The acknowledgments will include the names of the people who have provided technical support to the work or general supervision of the research group and the institutions that provided the funding to carry out the research. Only substantial contributions will be appreciated and compliance with these conditions alone does not justify scientific authorship
• The main author is directly responsible for having correctly assigned the co-authorship of the work and the acknowledgments, and that there are no "invited authors" or conflicts of interest between them.
• In cases in which ethical misconduct is detected regarding the incorrect assignment of authors, omission of these and undeclared conflict of interest, the journal will automatically cancel the publication of the work and will issue a note to the entire scientific community informing the event and the names of those responsible for the unethical conduct
• Publishers will support authors whose copyright has been violated or who have been plagiarized by requesting retractions or removal of material from websites regardless of copyright rights.

Related to reviewers

• Reviewers must express their opinion objectively and without bias
• The reviewers will have all the necessary guidance and preparation, as well as an evaluation guide, which will allow them to know how to carry out the evaluation, weigh the quality of each of the parts of the document, declare their observations and final decision
• The reviewers will handle the papers and the information contained in them confidentially until the document is published.
• The journal will guarantee the preservation of the anonymity of the reviewers throughout the process
• The reviewers will immediately notify the editors of detected violations of good ethical practices during the review process such as: unethical research design, inappropriate data and rights manipulation, plagiarism, among others that it deems necessary.
• The reviewers will promptly communicate to the editors any conflict of interest that they may detect when reading an article that has been sent to them for review.
• The necessary procedures will be put in place so that the comments of the reviewers reach the authors in their entirety, ensuring that they do not contain offensive or defamatory comments
• The contribution of the reviewers to the journal will be recognized at all times by issuing a certificate that accredits the evaluation carried out, which may also be presented to the academic institutions to which they belong.
• The performance of the reviewers will be monitored regularly and measures will be taken to ensure that the reviews made are of high quality
• The database of reviewers will be maintained and renewed in order to present an adequate representation of the scientific community specialized in the journal's publication issues.
• Reviewers who consistently produce offensive, poor quality and late reviews will no longer be used

Related to the members of the Editorial Committee

• Editors will provide new Editorial Board members with guidance on everything expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies implemented.
• Qualified members of the editorial board who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal will be identified.
• Clear guidance will be provided to the members of the Editorial Committee on their expected functions and duties, which may be: development and implementation of dissemination strategies for the journal, search for new authors and novel works, review of submissions, writing editorials, comments and reviews of works in their specialty, consult the members of the editorial board periodically to evaluate the functioning of the journal, among others

Related to discussions

• Editors will encourage discussion and consider compelling critiques of work published in the journal
• The authors of the criticized material will have the opportunity to respond to the points made
• Studies reporting negative results will not be excluded as they may constitute a starting point for new research
• Editors will be open to research that challenges previous published work as this demonstrates the evolution of the quality of the same

Conflicts of interest

• A conflict of interest will exist in a certain manuscript when a participant in the process of its writing, review and publication (author, reviewer or editor) has links with activities that may influence their judgment in an inappropriate way, regardless of whether or not said judgment was affected. The most common conflict of interest resides in financial relationships, personal relationships, academic rivalry, or intellectual passion
• Peers acting as external reviewers should disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could skew their views on the manuscript and should excuse themselves from reviewing it if they deem it appropriate.
• The editors will be informed of the conflicts of interest of the reviewers so that they can interpret their reports and judge for themselves whether they should disqualify them.
• Reviewers should not make use of their reading of the work to further their own interests before the manuscript is published.
• When authors submit a manuscript for publication, they have the responsibility to acknowledge and declare their financial connections and any other conflicts of interest that could skew their work.
• The editors who make final decisions on the manuscripts may not have financial or personal commitments with any of the authors and works that will judge.
• The members of the editorial committee who participate in the final decisions on the manuscripts, must provide an updated description of their own financial interests (which could affect their editorial judgments) and exclude themselves from any decision in which they could have a conflict of interest.
• All authors must fill out and submit to the journal the mandatory Disclosure Sheet of Possible Conflicts of Interest of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This interactive worksheet will help each author to determine individually if they present any conflict of interest