Ethics

Revista Colombiana de Endocrinología, Diabetes y Metabolismo guides its ethics and scientific policy integrity based on COPE and ICMJE recommendations.

Regarding good publishing practices and transparency criteria, the 16 COPE principles have been adopted; below is how the journal reflects these principles in its day-to-day work:

1. Website: The journal works on an Open Journal Systems platform and includes all accurate and up-to-date information on its focus, scope, theme spectrum, editorial structure, policy, and procedures.
2. Journal name: The journal has been consistent in its name since its inception and does not leave room for misunderstandings with other publications.
3. Peer-review process: The journal thoroughly describes its peer-review process under the double-blind system.
4. Ownership and management: The journal is sponsored by the ACE.
5. Governing body: The journal has an editorial structure publicly available on its website and comprises a chief editor, associate scientific editors, and an editorial and scientific board. It also has an editorial and production coordinating area that supports journal management and technical and professional publication processes.
6. Editorial team/Contact information: The journal includes complete information on its editorial structure, profiles, ORCID, or information on the online CV of its members.
7. Copyright and licenses: The journal states its relationship with authors regarding the rights of approved manuscripts and the relationship with its readers through a Creative Commons license.
8. Handling fees: The journal explicitly declares that it operates under the diamond open access model; that is, it has no submission or publication costs for its authors.
9. Process to identify and deal with research misconduct reports: The journal states that it follows COPE flowcharts (procedures) to deal with potential ethical dilemmas or malpractice cases in research and scientific publication.
10. Ethics in publication: The journal has an ethics policy that encourages scientific integrity, which translates into procedures to promote and verify the quality of manuscripts.
11. Publication frequency: The frequency is mentioned in the journal’s policies.
12. Access: The rate specifies how to access its contents. It has no subscription costs, and its access is open under a Creative Commons license.
13. Archiving: The journal has a preservation policy and discloses it in its guidelines.
14. Sources of income: The journal is fully funded by the ACE. Moreover, its purpose is scientific; it seeks to advance knowledge of endocrinology and the particularities of the Latin American context in the professional practice of endocrinology.
15. Advertising: The journal has an advertising guideline, but a legal notice clarifies that none of the advertisers influences the selection or publication of the journal’s contents. The manuscript approval process is based on external peer review.
16. Direct marketing: The journal does not carry out direct marketing strategies or is for commercial purposes; it has no interest in this regard or charges handling fees to authors. It intends to create a community of collaborators (authors, reviewers, editors) and an inclusive, diverse audience of readers within the particularities of its area of expertise and theme spectrum.

Regarding manuscript submission and following the ICMJE recommendations, authors must consider three essential aspects:

1. Criteria that define authorship or co-authorship:
2. An author is a person who makes substantial contributions to conceiving or designing a manuscript or collecting, analyzing, or interpreting the data contained in a manuscript.
3. An author takes part in writing a manuscript or critically reviewing the contents of a manuscript.
4. An author participates in the approval of the final version of a manuscript.
5. An author agrees with all parts of a manuscript and is responsible for their accuracy or completeness to clarify or resolve doubts.

Conflict-of-interest statement:

Authors must declare any conflict of interest that could potentially affect the repercussions or interpretation of the results of their manuscript. Thus, authors must complete and submit, together with their manuscript, a conflict-of-interest statement form provided by the journal per the ICMJE guidelines.

Ethical implications of the research:

Authors whose research has been submitted for assessment by the ethics committee of the relevant institution or funding organization must submit this endorsement to the journal, together with the manuscript.

Likewise, the ethical implications of the research conducted must be expressly stated in the manuscript and its methods. The journal may also request additional reviews on the submitted manuscript and the described research if any ethical concern is identified by the editor-in-chief, the responsible editor, or the journal’s editorial and scientific board.

Furthermore, all those who collaborate with the journal from different roles (authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial team) are expected to act with scientific integrity and follow a scientific approach in their behavior and decisions, always seeking the transparency and generation or validation of knowledge to advance endocrinology and other areas related to the journal.

Concerning the primary roles of those participating in the journal, they are briefly outlined below.

Authors are expected not to engage in behaviors such as plagiarism, data fabrication or result manipulation, text recycling, or simultaneous application to other journals or publication media (to list some of the most frequent ethical issues). More importantly, authors who submit papers to the journal must have a genuine interest in publishing and participate continuously throughout the entire process: peer review, corrections, editorial production, and post-publication. The end quality of the work and its impact over time largely depends on the authors’ interest.

Reviewers must have a scientific, academic approach at all times when evaluating manuscripts. The journal evaluates manuscripts, not people, and the opinions must be expressed under this principle, avoiding personal attacks on authors. Reviewers should also avoid the misuse of both manuscripts and research data entrusted to them. Impersonation is also malpractice; the journal selects and convenes reviewers based on their academic training, experience, and publications, thus transferring the responsibility of reviewing a manuscript to a third party (student, resident, colleague), without consulting with the journal’s editor-in-chief, is unacceptable and should be avoided.

Editors or the editorial team must ensure that the principles of transparency and the processes and procedures of the journal are followed in the best possible way, ensuring fair treatment for all parties involved. Rather than serving as “gatekeepers” of knowledge, editors (and their team) must be authors’ “discrete collaborators.” Their intention should be that the journal is a reliable repository of knowledge of endocrinology and that each manuscript reaches a specialized reader in the best possible version.

About corrections or retractions of articles published in the journal:

Corrections. Corrections on a published article will be made if the error identified can lead to significant mistakes (an error in the affiliation of an author, ORCID, names, among others) or affects its interpretation due to an unintentional omission or error in its writing or format.

Retractions. If it is detected that an article has serious issues that affect the veracity of its results, compromise its scientific quality, or poses a grave ethical problem (plagiarism, data fabrication, manipulation, among others), the journal may retract and prevent access to the full-text manuscript, with the appropriate notice of the reasons for retraction. Such cases will be analyzed by the journal’s Editorial and Scientific Board and the editor-in-chief before reaching a final decision on a retraction.