ABRA's Ethical Considerations and Behaviors

ABRA's Ethical Considerations and Behaviors 

ABRA is a journal that is published twice a year in both digital and printed versions. Its main goal is to promote and spread academic discussion and knowledge from a social point of view and following theoretical and practical perspectives, especially on the areas of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education.

Each member of the Journal (editor, International Board, Editorial Board, and evaluators) must prevent publications and practices that may affect the dignity of people and institutions. Such practices may include discrimination (political, economic, cultural, religious, ethnic, sexual orientation, among others), defamation, plagiarism, and any other act interfering with copyright and freedom of speech. 

This policy seeks to assure the quality of the editorial processes related to ABRA and help to find solutions in possible conflicts that may arise among the publication process of a paper.

Principles:

Principle of transparency: Adequate transparency means that any necessary information must be provided to assure ABRA´s publication processes and articles quality.

Principle of Mutual Respect: Mutual respect is about everyone being valued for who they are and their contributions. It involves keeping people's dignity, being tolerant, and communicating assertively. 

Principle of quality: this makes ABRA to stay updated in issues related to improving the quality of the journal´s productions and publications.

Principle authorship recognition: this means properly acknowledging sources and using information ethically.

Principle of author´s confidentiality: Members of ABRA respect and protect other people´s productions, acknowledge authorship, and avoid taking ownership of information. Each paper submitted to revision and publication is completely confidential and it will be protected from any type of intelectual violation. 

 

Each of the members of the journal will act under the following practices:

Editor´s responsibilities: 

  • Editors are those who oversee the following the evaluation and publication process, with all the required ethical and scientific criteria. Editors must be committed to: 
  • Make sure that every published article meets the highest scientific, intellectual, and ethical standards nationally and internationally.
  • Make sure to correct any errors that might be found once the articles are published. 
  • Make sure that all contributions are properly saved and indexed in online databases.
  • Create, and inform authors about the norms for article publication, and each of the steps oof paper submission, evaluation, and publications.
  • Keep authors, co-authors, and evaluators identities confidential during the whole editorial process. 
  • Assure an external double-blind review for each submission. The double-blind review process must be controlled, objective, and impartial in all senses; this will guarantee scientific, ethical, and intellectual quality. To this regard, the acceptance or rejection of a paper will be based on research quality, innovation, validity of results, fulfillment of publication guidelines, and ethical considerations established by the journal.
  • Make sure evaluators are experts on the area and avoid conflicts of interest among evaluators and authors. 
  • Inform within the previously set time about the acceptance or rejection of a paper submission. In case of rejection, editors must foresee and be open to analyze an appeal from the authors.

Editorial board responsibilities 

It the group of members that provide the journal with academical and political support.

 

People acting as members of the editorial board must:

  • Know and stay updated in the areas of guidelines, processes, and research about editorial processes. 
  • Provide and promote the initiatives, proposals, and activities of the journal.
  • Recommend and propose the insertion of new members of the Scientific Board and Editorial Board of the journal, as well as evaluators for future submissions. 
  • Instruct the editor on new changes that will improve the internal functioning of the journal.
  • Assure confidentiality of the reasons to reject any contribution or publication. Such information must not be given to people unrelated to the editorial process.

Evaluators responsibilities:

Evaluators are experts that have been requested to review and provide feedback on the submissions.

People serving the role of evaluators must: 

  • Evaluate the content of the articles assigned objectively and impartially following the guidelines stated by the journal. 
  • Assure confidentiality during the whole process of publication, as well as avoid using the contents of the assigned papers in their own manuscripts. 
  • Give the editors a report of their evaluation on the papers, in the pre-established time limit and guidelines.
  • Inform the editor about unethical behaviors or plagiarism in the reviewed paper. In such cases, the evaluator must also attach in their report evidence and relevant information to facilitate the investigation process of the journal members.

Authors´ responsibilities 

Authors are people involved in a manuscript production and comply with (1) a meaningful design, data collection, and data analysis; (2) design and review of the study draft; (3) final approval of the study; (4) strong explanation of every aspect of the study.

Authors submitting papers to ABRA must: 

  • Follow the publication guidelines and ethical considerations given by the journal.
  • Provide the editor with a letter stating the originality and copyright submission of the paper and assuring that the paper is not being submitted in other journals simultaneously.
  • Take full responsibility of the content of the paper, the accuracy of the used sources, and opinions stated in the papers. 
  • Mention all coauthors and collaborators of the paper.
  • Commit to make any necessary correction in every step of the editorial process. 
  • Inform the editor, as soon as possible, about any error or misleading information found in published papers for their correction.
  • Inform the readers about the origin and funding (in case of) of the contributions or publications.
  • Inform in other academic means about the contribution published by ABRA. 

 

Conflicts and editorial infringements

These are actions considered as undesired behaviors and infringements of the editorial process. People falling into commission of one or more of these behaviors will be subjects of an investigation process from the Editorial Board, and such group has the right to make any decision about the disciplinary actions for each given case.

  • Improper authorship: this involves both, undue credit to a non-contributor and no credit to a true contributor. This type of misbehavior can be classified as follows: 
    • Ghost authorship, which is problematic and unethical, as it does not provide credit to real contributors.
    • Guest authorship, which is when an authors do not give any substantial contribution to a paper but include their names to increase a publication visibility. This usually happens with renowned authors.
    • Gift author are participants of a study that had no substantial contribution. 

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) describes some problems that may arise from false authorship: https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/recognising-authorship-problems-cope-infographic.pdf

Plagiarism: Plagiarism means presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. There is no distinction of sources for this definition. It goes from copy-pasting a text exactly as the original version, to paraphrasing the ideas (using different words).

Self-plagiarism: This happens when authors use their own ideas from previous publications without full acknowledgement. 

 

Conflicts of interest 

ABRA promotes that the authors declare any conflicts of interest such as personal relationship, employment relationship, financing, or support, among others. Author, reviewers, and members of the editorial board of the Journal must indicate if there is any interest that may affect the effectiveness or objectivity of the tasks they performed for the publication.

Data Falsification or fabrication happens when any type of information (text, numbers, images, among others) is altered, included, or omitted leading to a misinterpretation of results.

Segmented publication is a form of publication which shows results of one research in different papers. The main purpose of this action is usually to increase the number of publications instead of the ethical production of knowledge. It is characterized by similarity of hypothesis, methodology or results.

Simultaneous submission occurs when authors submit their papers in two or more journals at the same time. 

Duplicate or redundant publication occurs when two or more productions share the same information, hypothesis, population, methods, data analysis, and conclusions without informing the editors. This may be common when committing plagiarism, self-plagiarism, or translating research to another language.