Ethics and Misconduct Policy
Colloquia and the journals edited by Universidad Hemisferios adhere to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing established by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), and are therefore committed to addressing all suspected cases of misconduct and to following fair and transparent procedures to maintain the academic community's trust in the integrity of publication.
Definition of Misconduct
Misconduct on the part of authors includes:
- Plagiarism: presenting the work of others as one's own without proper attribution.
- Falsification: manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes to obtain desired results.
- Fabrication: inventing data or results and recording them as if they were real.
- Redundant publication: submitting or publishing the same manuscript in more than one journal without notifying the editors.
- Authorship manipulation: including authors who have not contributed significantly to the work, or excluding those who have.
- Failure to declare conflicts of interest: not disclosing conflicts of interest that may influence the results or interpretation of the research.
- Lack of ethical approval: conducting research involving human or animal subjects without the appropriate ethical approval.
Procedures for Identifying and Handling Misconduct
Anti-plagiarism tools: all manuscripts submitted will be screened using software such as Turnitin, Viper, Plagium, Quetext, Grammarly, Plagiarisma, or iThenticate.
Peer review: reviewers and editors are trained to recognise signs of misconduct.
Receipt of complaints: authors, readers, reviewers, or members of the editorial committee may alert the journal if they suspect or have evidence of misconduct in articles that are under review or already published. Complaints must be sent to the journal's editor-in-chief.
If misconduct is suspected or a complaint is received, the following steps will be taken:
- Initial assessment: the editor-in-chief will conduct a preliminary review to evaluate the validity of the concerns raised.
- Notification of authors: the authors will be notified of the suspicion and given the opportunity to provide an explanation.
- Ethics committee: if the explanation is unsatisfactory, the case will be referred to an independent ethics committee for further investigation.
Corrective Actions
The following actions will be taken if an author or group of authors is found to have engaged in misconduct:
- Rejection of the manuscript: if misconduct is confirmed prior to publication, the manuscript will be rejected.
- Retraction: if misconduct is confirmed after publication, an official retraction of the article will be issued and the authors' institutions will be notified.
- Expressions of concern: in cases where a definitive conclusion cannot be reached, an expression of concern will be published to alert readers.
- Ban on future submissions: authors found to have engaged in misconduct will not be permitted to submit future manuscripts to the journal.
Decisions to retract an article or issue an expression of concern will be clearly communicated on the journal's website and linked to the original article. The institutions to which the authors belong will also be notified.
