Ethical code

The journal Anales de Ciencias Básicas, Físicas y Naturales is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards through its code of good practices. By virtue of this, all parties involved in the authorship, submission, management and dissemination of manuscripts, such as research studies, projects and academic contributions, as well as bibliographic reviews, will be obliged to comply with this code of ethics.

1. Editorial team

The editorial team of the journal, in collaboration with the management and coordination, assumes the responsibility of guaranteeing the scientific quality of the contents and avoiding inappropriate practices in the publication of research results. To this end, it is committed to the following principles:

The editor and editor-in-chief of the journal will be responsible for the editing of the journal and for technical decisions related to its content.
The editorial team will carry out editorial tasks in accordance with the journal's policy.
The editors will process manuscripts in an expeditious manner, keeping the author informed about the status of his or her article at different stages of the editorial process.
The editors will act impartially when handling papers proposed for publication, respecting the intellectual independence of the authors and their right to reply in case of negative evaluations.
The editors, together with the journal editor, will be solely responsible for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Although they will rely on peer review reports, they may also reject papers for other reasons, such as lack of adequacy to the scientific objectives of the journal, evidence of scientific fraud, excessive self-citation, lack of quality, among others.
The editorial team will avoid managing an original in case of conflict of interest, such as family relationships, friendships or manifest enmity, belonging to the same research group, having participated in the direction or co-direction of a doctoral thesis in the last ten years, having defended a doctoral thesis under the direction or co-direction of the author or authors of the manuscript in the last ten years, collaborating or having collaborated in publications or patents in the last five years, having economic or scientific-technological relationships, sharing funds or national or international research projects in the last three years, among other cases.
In addition, the editorial team will refrain from selecting reviewers who are affected or may be affected by any of the situations mentioned above.
The editorial team will maintain the confidentiality of the texts received and their content until the moment of publication.
No member of the editorial team may use data, arguments or interpretations of unpublished papers submitted to the journal for their own research without the express written consent of the authors.
The editors will ensure that the published papers have been evaluated by two specialists in the field and that the review has been carried out using the double-blind method, guaranteeing the anonymity of both authors and reviewers. In case of negative evaluations, a third report will be requested.
The editorial team will value and acknowledge the contribution of the reviewers who have participated in the review of the papers submitted to the journal. Likewise, it will promote the recognition of peer review activities by the academic authorities, dispensing with evaluations of low quality, incorrect, disrespectful or delivered outside the established deadlines.
The editorial team reserves the right to disavow articles already published in case of lack of reliability due to unintentional errors or bad scientific practices, such as data manipulation, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, omission of sources consulted, among others. In case of conflict, the journal will ask the author(s) for explanations and evidence to clarify the problem and will make a final decision based on these. In addition, the journal will obligatorily publish in its printed and electronic versions the news about the disavowal of a particular article, mentioning the reasons behind such measure in order to distinguish between malpractice and unintentional error. The disavowal will also be notified to the heads of the institution to which the author(s) of the article belong(s).
De-authorized articles will be retained in the electronic edition of the journal, clearly indicating that it is a de-authorized article, in order to distinguish it from other corrections or comments. If only part of the article contains an error, it may be corrected later by means of an editorial note or an erratum.
Duplicity conflicts, caused by the simultaneous publication of an article in two journals, will be resolved by determining the date of receipt of the work in each of them.
In those articles involving data from studies or research involving human participants or based on clinical trials, the editors will ensure that the privacy rights of human subjects are respected. If questions arise or specific clarifications are needed, editors may request evidence of ethical issues, such as informed consent from research participants. Appropriate consents, permissions, and authorizations should be obtained if an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients or others in the publication. Authors should retain written consents, and the editors may request copies of consents or evidence of obtaining them, if required.
Editors should ensure that articles involving the participation of individuals or based on clinical trial reports mention compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. To this end, authors should include a statement in their paper that all procedures were carried out in accordance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines.
The journal's rules for publication of originals, which cover characteristics of the work, format, image resolution, bibliographic reference system, among other aspects, will be publicly available.

2. Authors and co-authors

The authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, who will publish the article on the Internet on the journal's website, under the terms of the license of use and distribution of the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. Authors must sign the letter of originality and grant of right of first publication, which is available on the publication's website.
Authors are primarily responsible for the content and statements made in their article in order to avoid conflicts of interest between the journal Anales de Ciencias Básicas, Físicas y Naturales and third parties or institutions.
In the event that an article has been written by several authors, the author who appears as responsible for the work must ensure that none of the signatures responsible for the work has been omitted, nor added others that are not, avoiding fictitious or gift authorship, which is a bad scientific practice. Likewise, it must guarantee that those who sign it have reviewed and approved the final version of the work and that they give their approval for its possible publication.
Authors should agree on the order of appearance in the publication of the article. If there are any changes in this regard during the review process, this must be communicated to the editor in writing. This document must be signed by all authors involved.
Authors must declare the exact origin of the content of the work (doctoral thesis, research project, teaching experience, etc.).
Authors must disclose to the editor any possible conflict of interest. When there is a commercial, financial or personal link that may affect the results and conclusions of their work, the text of the work must be accompanied by a statement of these circumstances (described in section 1 of this document), which will appear in the published version of the article.
Authors must indicate, clearly and concisely, all sources of funding granted for the study, mentioning the private or public entity responsible for such funding and the identification code of such funding, when it exists. This information should be included in the published version of the article.
Authors must ensure that their manuscripts contain original results, data, ideas and/or interpretations and that they have not been copied, invented, distorted or manipulated. In addition, they will have the obligation to review and ensure the accuracy and validity of the results before submitting the manuscript to the journal.
Authors agree not to submit articles that have been previously published or are in the process of being evaluated in another medium or support. They may send articles resulting from papers presented at scientific congresses that have not been published or are only accessible in proceedings books, specifying, at the time of sending the paper to the journal, its origin.
Authors shall undertake not to plagiarize or appropriate other people's texts without prior consent of their creators and without citing the source, even if the permission has been expressly granted by the latter authors.
The authors shall also commit themselves to submit other texts already created by themselves, avoiding that there is more than 20% coincidence between a previous work and the one submitted. The editors of the journal will check each article with anti-plagiarism software (SimilarityCheck). If they detect coincidences of more than 20%, they will review the sources of the text in depth and will send a report to the author indicating the definitive rejection of the paper or the possibility of rewriting it, properly citing the sources.
Authors will be legally responsible for not infringing copyright by requesting the necessary permissions for the reproduction of cited texts, figures, graphs, tables, photographs, etc., which must have their corresponding source of origin. When images are included as part of the research, it will be conveniently explained how they were created or obtained, as long as it is necessary for their understanding.
Excessive self-citation, citing sources without having consulted them, adding cited texts that do not contribute to the content of a manuscript with the sole purpose of increasing the citations of an author or a journal, making erroneous interpretations of other works consulted, releasing scientific results before peer review, hiding data and methods that allow reproduction of the experiments used, including information obtained privately that cannot be verified, etc., will be considered irregular practices.
In those articles that contain data from studies or research in which individuals have participated or that are based on clinical trials, authors must ensure that their privacy rights are respected. To comply with this requirement, authors must attach a written statement that they have obtained the informed consent (free and voluntary) of the individuals involved in the study for experimentation with human subjects. Privacy rights must always be respected. Appropriate consents, permissions and authorizations should be obtained when an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients or any other person in this publication. Authors are required to retain written consents and, upon request, the editors may ask for copies of consents or proof that consents have been obtained.
If the article involves the participation of individuals or is based on clinical trial reports, authors should ensure that the work described has been conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and should include in the article a statement that all procedures were conducted in accordance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.
When the author discovers a serious error in his/her work, he/she will have the obligation to communicate it to those responsible for the journal as soon as possible, in order to modify his/her work, withdraw it, retract it or publish a correction or erratum. If the possible error is detected by any of the members of the editorial team, the authors will be obliged to demonstrate that their work is correct.

3. Reviewers

Reviewers will act under the criteria of impartiality, objectivity, promptness, confidentiality, respect and acknowledgement of uncited sources. They should work in solidarity with the editorial line drawn and declare possible conflicts of interest. On the other hand, the reviewers will be external to the author's institution, as well as to the committees and editorial bodies of the journal. The commitments of the reviewers should be:

To make a fair and objective review of the articles.
Respect the evaluation deadlines established in the journal's publication rules.
Clearly state the arguments for their assessment.
Not to accept articles for review in which there could be a conflict of interest that would limit their objectivity.
Refuse to review an article if they do not feel technically qualified.
Maintain confidentiality of the information and data of the articles evaluated.
Indicate precisely the bibliographic references of fundamental works that may have been forgotten by the author.
Inform the editors of any similarity or overlap of the manuscript with other published works.
Evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content, regardless of the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, nationality, or political philosophy.
Not to use information, data, theories or interpretations of the manuscript for their own benefit or that of others, or to harm third parties. Only in special cases may they seek the advice of other specialists in the field, a circumstance of which they will inform the journal's management.

Suspicions of non-compliance with this policy may be reported to the editor by e-mail to comunicacionesanales@unimet.edu.ve, who will study them. If necessary, they may be referred to the Editorial Committee for review and subsequent recommendation.

If it is determined that an editor has violated the code of good practices of the journal Anales de Ciencias Básicas, Físicas y Naturales, the matter will be referred to the Editorial Committee.

If it is determined that an author has violated the code of good practices of the journal Anales de Ciencias Básicas, Físicas y Naturales, the journal reserves the right to impose sanctions, which may include withdrawal of a submitted article, rejection of an article, or even retraction of a published article.

In addition to its ethical assessment, improper conduct will result in the infringement of its own rights or those of third parties, for which the Centro de Estudios Financieros reserves the right to take appropriate legal action.

Note: this code of good practice largely reproduces the Guide to good practice for periodicals and unitary publications of the Spanish National Research Council.