Editorial policies

Ciencia & Salud Journal / eISSN: 2215-4949 / https://www.revistacienciaysalud.ac.cr/ojs

Editorial policies

Editorial policies

EDITORIAL POLICIES

In its pursuit of quality in every manuscript, this journal establishes a set of policies that guarantee authors, readers, and peers transparent and ethical management of the publication process.

 

  • Open Access Policy

Ciencia y Salud is an open access journal. All of its content is available immediately, free of charge, and without restriction for reading, downloading, distribution, and use for educational and scientific purposes, on the principle that making research freely available to the public fosters the global exchange of knowledge.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), indicated on each document and on the journal's website, which permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format provided that the authorship is acknowledged and the original source is cited, the work is not used for commercial purposes, and it is not modified or used to create derivative works.

 

  • Peer Review Policy

As set out in our critical path, the journal evaluates content using a double-blind methodology. Furthermore, final decision-making authority rests with the Editor-in-Chief.

In addition, all manuscripts undergo peer review, and reviewers will be asked to assess the degree of originality and quality of the submitted documents.

 

  • Ethics Policy
    • Code of Ethics

This journal promotes good practices in academic publishing. Accordingly, we adhere and subscribe to the policies set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). By aligning ourselves with these internationally recognized standards, we ensure the integrity, transparency, and quality of our publication process. Authors must comply with these ethical guidelines, which cover issues such as authorship, conflicts of interest, data integrity, and peer review standards.

 

  • Registration of Biomedical Trials

In compliance with current ethical and legal standards, all biomedical trials submitted for consideration are required to comply with the provisions of the Biomedical Research Regulatory Act, Law No. 9234 of the legislation of Costa Rica. Under this law, any biomedical research conducted in Costa Rica must comply with the procedures and regulations established by the National Council for Health Research (CONIS).

To ensure compliance with these regulations, authors must consult the applicable legislation and submit the trial's registration documentation to CONIS. For further information, see the following link: Procedures (ministeriodesalud.go.cr)

The journal reserves the right to request proof of registration and compliance with the law before proceeding with the review and publication of the manuscript.

Failure to comply with these ethical and legal regulations may result in the manuscript not being considered or being rejected for publication in our journal.

 

  • Conflict of Interest Policy

To ensure the transparency and impartiality of the editorial process, authors must disclose, at the time of manuscript submission, any financial, employment, academic, personal, or institutional relationship that may influence, or appear to influence, the results, interpretation, or publication of the work, including sponsorships and funding sources. If no conflicts of interest exist, this must be expressly stated in the manuscript.

Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from evaluating a manuscript when a conflict of interest exists with the authors or with the content of the work, and must notify the journal. When an undisclosed conflict of interest is identified, the editorial board will assess the case and may request clarification, publish a correction, or reject the manuscript, depending on its severity.

 

  • Plagiarism Policy

During the first phase of the editorial process, all manuscripts are screened using the plagiarism and similarity detection tool Turnitin.

This tool performs a textual comparison between the document and its database (which includes international databases) and, based on the results, generates a similarity report. This report will be analyzed by the editorial board, and each case is assessed individually, with particular emphasis on reports indicating more than 25% similarity.

Authors will be notified of the report's findings and of the actions to be taken regarding their manuscript. If the editor determines that the alerts result from omissions or unintentional poor practice in writing, the author(s) will be given the opportunity to correct the text.

Intentionally plagiarized texts, or documents that fail to cite their sources, are grounds for outright rejection.

 

  • Retraction Policy

The journal may retract a published article when it is demonstrated that its findings are unreliable due to serious errors, data fabrication or falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, breaches of ethical standards, or undisclosed conflicts of interest that have affected the conclusions. Retractions follow the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

When a retraction is determined, the journal will publish a public notice, linked to the original article, stating the reason and who requested it. The retracted article will remain available on the site with a clearly visible retraction label. Errors that do not compromise the validity of the findings will be addressed through an erratum.

 

  • Authorship Policy

Authorship is granted to individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; who have participated in drafting the work or revising its content critically; who approve the final version; and who agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work, in accordance with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Those who do not meet these criteria but have contributed should be named in the acknowledgments.

Authors must declare their institutional affiliation and their ORCID identifier. Any change to the authorship list, whether an addition, a removal, or a change in order, must be requested before publication by means of a communication signed by all authors. Artificial intelligence tools may not be listed as authors.

 

  • Artificial Intelligence Policy

The use and application of artificial intelligence tools for drafting the manuscript, creating graphic materials, or analyzing data must be disclosed in the materials and methods section, and the tool used must be identified. The author(s) are responsible for the content generated by the tool and for any conflict arising from copyright infringement caused by it, in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (Authorship and AI tools | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics).

 

  • Data Policy

The journal promotes transparency and reproducibility in research. Authors must include in the manuscript a data availability statement indicating whether the data supporting the findings are available and where they can be accessed, preferably in a public repository with a persistent identifier. Where data cannot be shared, authors must explain the reasons, such as ethical, legal, or confidentiality restrictions.

Any data that are shared must not allow the identification of participants, patients, or communities, and their collection must have been carried out with informed consent and the corresponding ethical approval. The journal may request the original data during the evaluation process or after publication, and unjustified unavailability of the data may be grounds for rejection or retraction of the article.

 

  • Preprint Policy

The journal does not accept manuscripts that have previously been disseminated as preprints or deposited in preprint repositories. Consistent with the requirement that manuscripts be unpublished, a text that is already publicly available through such channels is considered published and will not be considered for evaluation.

Authors must refrain from depositing the manuscript in preprint repositories while it is under evaluation by the journal. If it is found that a manuscript has been disseminated as a preprint, the journal may reject it without continuing the editorial process.

 

  • Preservation Policy
    • Digital Preservation of Content

To preserve information, the journal applies the following digital preservation measures:

The final files of the publication process (PDF, XML, and HTML) and the editable files (Adobe InDesign) are stored and safeguarded on the server of the Department of Educational Technology of the University of Medical Sciences (UCIMED).

The server automatically performs a full daily backup using the ACRONIS client application, which stores the backup remotely, encrypted, and incrementally. This service is provided and supervised by the IT Department of the University of Medical Sciences (UCIMED).

In accordance with the requirements of the National Library System, legal deposit is made for the preservation of the country's memory, as indicated by that body.

    • Interoperability Service

The journal maintains an open OAI-PMH service for querying information systems and for interoperability with content management systems.

The public link to this service is: https://revistacienciaysalud.ac.cr/ojs/index.php/cienciaysalud/oai

 

  • Privacy Policy

All information submitted to the website of the journal Ciencia y Salud, such as names and email addresses, will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available to third parties or used for any other purpose.

 

Other Journal Policies

  • Declaration of Originality and Unpublished Status

This journal requires the exclusive submission of original manuscripts, that is, texts written by the signatories of the document, who must fully vouch for the text and declare no conflicts of interest.

In addition, manuscripts must be unpublished, which we understand as a text never before published, in whole or in part, in any other medium of dissemination, such as journals, repositories, websites, blogs, print media, and others.

Failure to comply with this directive will result in outright rejection of the manuscript.