Ethics
Ethics
Boletín Científico CIOH follows three main reference frameworks in its publication ethics and research integrity policy:
- COPE: The journal adopts the principles, best practices, flowcharts, and case studies developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as the foundation of its ethics policy and as guidance for addressing any suspected cases of misconduct or violations of the principles of ethics, bioethics, and research integrity. https://publicationethics.org
- ICMJE: Although the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are primarily intended for biomedical and health science publications, the journal considers them an important reference because of their comprehensive and detailed approach to the scientific publishing process and the good practices that should guide the conduct of editors, authors, and reviewers. https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/
- Singapore Statement: The Singapore Statement on Research Integrity establishes the principles and responsibilities that should serve as the international framework for research integrity. It is particularly relevant to the journal, as it regularly publishes original research within its disciplinary scope. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2011.557296
In addition to these reference frameworks, the journal formally adopts the 16 Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing established by COPE, applying them in its day-to-day editorial management and in the resolution of ethical issues. These principles are described below.
Journal Content
1. Journal Name
The journal's title is clear and has remained unchanged throughout its history.
2. Website
All information regarding the journal's policies, processes, procedures, and editorial structure is published in full on its website in a clear and accurate manner.
3. Editorial Schedule
The journal clearly specifies its publication frequency (continuous publication) and the number of issues published each year.
4. Archiving
The journal ensures the long-term digital preservation of all published content and the technological stability of its publishing platform.
5. Copyright
The relationship between the journal and its authors regarding the publication of accepted manuscripts under a transfer of economic copyright is clearly specified.
6. Licensing
The journal publishes its contents under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, as explicitly stated in its policies.
Editorial Practices
7. Publication Ethics
The journal describes the ethical principles on which it is based and provides guidance regarding authorship, conflicts of interest, copyright, research integrity, corrections, and retractions.
8. Peer Review
The journal follows a structured peer review process based on the double-blind review model, which is described in a dedicated section of its editorial policies.
9. Access
The journal provides immediate open access to all its published content, as specified in its editorial policies.
Organization
10. Editorial Ownership and Management
The journal clearly identifies the institution responsible for its publication and its relationship with the Dirección General Marítima (DIMAR).
11. Editorial and Scientific Boards
Information regarding the researchers serving on the Editorial Board and Scientific Board, as well as those acting as editors, is publicly available on the journal's website and includes links to their respective ORCID profiles.
12. Editorial Team
Information about the editorial team is complete, accurate, and updated in a timely manner.
Business Practices
13. Author Fees
The journal follows the Diamond Open Access model; therefore, no fees are charged to authors. This policy is clearly stated on the journal's website.
14. Other Sources of Revenue
The journal is funded through public resources provided by the Dirección General Marítima (DIMAR).
15. Advertising
The journal does not carry commercial advertising, in accordance with its academic and scientific mission.
16. Direct Marketing
The journal occasionally contacts researchers, guest editors, and peer reviewers to request their voluntary (ad honorem) collaboration in the evaluation of manuscripts or the preparation of special issues. Such communications are solely intended to support the journal's editorial activities and are not conducted for commercial or financial purposes.
Confidentiality
The journal handles original, unpublished manuscripts, as well as the personal and professional information of its contributors. Accordingly, such information will not be shared with third parties and will be used solely for the proper management of the journal's editorial processes throughout the entire publication cycle.
Likewise, within the peer review process, reviewers are required to handle the data and contents of the manuscripts entrusted to them with the utmost integrity and responsibility, as these are original, unpublished manuscripts whose contents, during the review stage, belong to their authors and funding institutions. Any improper use of such information by a reviewer, or any disclosure or misuse of manuscript content, will be considered unacceptable and unethical conduct. In such cases, the journal will request an explanation from the reviewer and may notify the reviewer's employer.
Furthermore, because the journal follows a double-blind peer review system, the identities of all parties involved will remain confidential to safeguard these conditions and to ensure that manuscripts are evaluated independently. The identity of the parties will not be disclosed at any stage unless expressly and justifiably requested by the parties concerned.
Conflicts of Interest
The journal requires all participants in the editorial process (authors, reviewers, editors, and members of the editorial team) to disclose, in a transparent manner, any conflict of interest that may influence their judgment or their handling of a manuscript under consideration by the journal.
Authors are required to declare all conflicts of interest as a mandatory part of the submission process. Likewise, reviewers must disclose any conflicts of interest when invited to evaluate a manuscript. Editors and members of the editorial team are also expected to declare any potential conflicts that may arise during the evaluation or publication process in order to avoid compromising the proper conduct of the editorial process or introducing bias into editorial decisions.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
The journal adheres to the recommendations of the Heredia Declaration regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scientific editing and publishing:
https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.28-S.19967
In addition, all authors who use AI in the preparation of their work are requested to observe the following two fundamental principles:
1. Responsibility
Artificial Intelligence cannot be considered a co-author of manuscripts submitted to the journal. AI is a tool, not a co-author. The authors bear sole responsibility for all aspects of the manuscript, including its content, data, structure, organization, coherence, arguments, analysis, and reliability. Accordingly, the authors are fully responsible for the quality, accuracy, and scientific integrity of every manuscript submitted to the journal.
2. Transparency
Any use of AI in the preparation of a manuscript must be fully disclosed, together with a detailed explanation of how it was used, whether in data processing, data analysis, or the preparation of the manuscript's contents. Failure to disclose the use of AI tools will be considered an ethical breach and will constitute grounds for rejection of the manuscript at any stage of the publication process.
Authorship
In accordance with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the journal adopts its definition of authorship and encourages authors to avoid inappropriate practices such as gift authorship or the unjustified inclusion or exclusion of authors. As previously stated, authorship requires that all four of the following criteria be met:
- Make substantial contributions to the conception, design, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
- Participate in drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content.
- Approve the final version of the manuscript for publication.
- Accept responsibility for all aspects of the work and be prepared to respond to questions regarding its integrity and accuracy.
Authors must satisfy these criteria before submitting a manuscript in order to avoid the inappropriate inclusion or removal of authors.
Changes to the Authorship Group
Any change to the authorship group must be fully justified. Whenever possible, such changes should be avoided. However, if a change is necessary, the authors must submit a letter to the Editor explaining the reasons for the request, signed by all co-authors and by the author concerned. The journal will contact each co-author individually to verify that consensus has been reached.
Changes made without the agreement of all co-authors may give rise to serious ethical concerns and even legal implications. If the matter cannot be satisfactorily resolved, the journal reserves the right to discontinue the publication process.
Corresponding Author
For manuscripts with multiple authors, one corresponding author must be designated. This author will be responsible for communicating with the journal throughout all stages of the editorial process and must provide a unique bibliographic name, ORCID iD, institutional affiliation, email address, and institutional mailing address.
Final Statements
In order to ensure that the journal's ethics policy is reflected in the final published version of each article, all manuscripts must include a set of final statements, most of which are mandatory. These statements are described below.
Author Contributions (Mandatory for Multi-Author Manuscripts)
The contribution of each author must be clearly reported using the CRediT Taxonomy, which includes 14 contributor roles.
Example:
Juan Suárez: Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Resources, Supervision, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing.
The CRediT Taxonomy is available at:
Funding (Mandatory)
Any financial support received by the authors must be declared. If no funding was received, this must also be explicitly stated.
Conflicts of Interest (Mandatory)
Authors must declare any conflicts of interest that may have influenced the research or the contents of the manuscript, using the ICMJE disclosure form provided by the journal.
Ethical Considerations (Mandatory)
If the research involves personal information, experimentation involving animals or human participants, or any other relevant ethical considerations, these must be declared. Where applicable, evidence of ethics committee approval or informed consent must also be provided.
These ethical considerations must likewise be described in the Methods section of the manuscript, explaining how they were addressed during the conduct of the research.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (Mandatory)
Authors must declare whether any Artificial Intelligence tools were used, explain how they were used, and acknowledge that responsibility for the contents of the manuscript rests exclusively with the authors.
If no AI tools were used, this must also be explicitly stated.
Open Data Statement (Mandatory)
If the research data supporting the manuscript have been deposited in an open-access repository or are otherwise publicly available, authors must declare this and provide the corresponding DOI or URL, where applicable.
If the data are not publicly available, authors must also state this and indicate that any requests regarding the data should be addressed to the corresponding author.
Acknowledgements (Optional)
Authors may include acknowledgements to individuals or institutions that have made significant contributions to the research or to the preparation of the manuscript.
However, since this section is intended for acknowledgements rather than dedications (as sometimes included in theses or books), acknowledgements of a private, personal, or general nature will not be accepted. Acknowledgements must recognize third parties who have genuinely contributed to or facilitated the research or the preparation of the manuscript.
Plagiarism and Other Forms of Misconduct
The journal monitors for misconduct including plagiarism, self-plagiarism, redundant publication, text recycling, salami slicing, data fabrication or falsification, simultaneous submission, the undisclosed use of Artificial Intelligence, and other forms of unethical conduct.
If any of these practices are identified, the manuscript will be rejected outright, regardless of the stage of the publication process.
All suspected cases of misconduct will be handled in accordance with COPE recommendations. Authors will be asked to provide an explanation, or, where appropriate, the case will be referred to the authors' employer or affiliated institution. Once all available evidence has been collected and evaluated in light of the authors' response, the journal will make a final decision.
The journal also uses specialized software to detect certain forms of misconduct, particularly plagiarism, through the Turnitin platform.
Reporting or Suspecting Misconduct
The journal encourages all contributors to report directly any concerns or suspicions regarding possible misconduct, whether involving a manuscript currently under review (for example, if a reviewer or editor identifies a potential ethical issue) or an article that has already been published (for example, if a reader identifies an ethical concern).
Any communication, allegation, suspicion, or request related to ethical dilemmas or misconduct should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief through the journal's official email address:
Handling Allegations of Misconduct
When the journal's Editorial Office receives information concerning a potential ethical issue or suspected misconduct, the case will be evaluated in accordance with COPE recommendations and the corresponding flowcharts for investigating publication misconduct and determining the appropriate course of action in the event of a violation of the journal's ethical framework.
COPE flowcharts are available at:
https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/complete-set-english
Corrections and Retractions
Boletín Científico CIOH may issue corrections or retractions for manuscripts published in its regular or special issues.
Corrections will be issued when minor but significant errors are identified that may create confusion regarding the content of the article, the authors' information, or an undeclared potential ethical concern. Such corrections will be made particularly when the errors are unintentional but may mislead readers. In these cases, the journal will publish a correction (erratum) linked to the original article.
Retractions will be issued when serious errors or ethical violations (such as data fabrication, data manipulation, or plagiarism) are identified that compromise the credibility of the work, its findings, or its scholarly contribution. Depending on the seriousness of the issue and any potential legal implications, the journal will determine whether access to the article should be withdrawn or whether the article should be formally retracted.
