Editorial Policies
Publication ethics and good practice
ScientiAmericana adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Duties of the editorial team
Editors decide on the publication of manuscripts solely on the basis of their scientific quality, originality and relevance to the journal’s scope, without discrimination as to the nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs of the authors. They guarantee the confidentiality of manuscripts, refrain from acting where a conflict of interest exists, and safeguard the integrity of the published record.
Duties of reviewers
Reviewers contribute to the editorial decision through objective, reasoned reports; they identify relevant work that has not been cited, report any substantial similarity to already published material, maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript, and decline to review where they lack the necessary expertise or where a conflict of interest exists.
Duties of authors
Authors guarantee the originality of the work, the accuracy of the data presented and the correct attribution of the sources used. They undertake to retain primary data and to make them available should the editorial team so require, to declare conflicts of interest and sources of funding, and to notify the editor immediately of any significant error they identify in their work, whether before or after publication.
Handling of allegations
Allegations of misconduct are examined in accordance with the COPE flowcharts, with the parties involved given a hearing, and in confidence. Allegations may be addressed to the journal’s institutional e-mail address.
Authorship and changes to authorship
ScientiAmericana applies the four ICMJE authorship criteria. To be listed as an author, all of them must be met simultaneously:
- Having made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of the data.
- Having drafted the work or revised it critically with relevant intellectual input.
- Having approved the final version intended for publication.
- Agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions relating to its accuracy or integrity are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Those who have collaborated without meeting all four criteria — for example through the acquisition of funding, the collection of data or general supervision of the research group — should be named in the acknowledgements, with their express consent.
The journal does not accept honorary or ghost authorship. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the list of authors is complete and that all of them have approved the submission.
Changes to authorship
Any change to the list of authors, to their order or to the corresponding author after submission requires a written request to the editor setting out the reason for the change and the express agreement of all authors, including those being added or removed. Changes requested after acceptance are exceptional and remain at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
Authors are encouraged to declare each author’s individual contribution using the CRediT taxonomy.
Conflicts of interest
A conflict of interest exists where professional judgement concerning a primary interest — the validity of the research and the integrity of the editorial process — may be influenced by a secondary interest of a financial or personal nature.
Authors must declare, in the cover letter and in the manuscript, any financial or personal connection that might be construed as a source of bias: employment, consultancies, fees, share ownership, patents, grants, payment for lectures, as well as relevant personal, academic or institutional relationships. The absence of conflicts must likewise be expressly declared.
Reviewers decline to assess manuscripts whose authors they have a relationship with that would compromise their impartiality, or where they have a direct interest in the subject of the work. Editors refrain from taking part in the processing of manuscripts in respect of which a conflict exists, and in such cases the manuscript is assigned to another editor.
The conflict of interest statement is published alongside the article. The existence of a declared conflict does not in itself lead to rejection of the work; its omission, by contrast, is regarded as a breach of integrity.
Research ethics involving humans and animals
All research involving human beings, biological material of human origin or personal data must have been approved by a duly constituted research ethics committee before the study began. The manuscript must state the name of the committee and the number or reference of its decision.
Studies must comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and with the national legislation in force on health research. Authors must record that informed consent was obtained from participants or, where applicable, from their legal representatives, and that the confidentiality of the data was safeguarded.
For case reports and for any publication including clinical images, medical records or any element that would permit identification of an individual, written informed consent to publication from the patient or their legal representative is required. Removing identifying features from an image does not replace this requirement.
Clinical trials must be registered in a public clinical trials registry before the first participant is enrolled, and the registration number must be stated in the manuscript.
Animal research must have been approved by the competent institutional committee and comply with the legislation in force on the care and use of laboratory animals.
The journal may at any time request a copy of the ethics committee decision or of the consent form. Inability to provide evidence of these matters results in rejection of the manuscript.
Plagiarism detection policy
All manuscripts received are subjected to a similarity check using Turnitin during preliminary screening, prior to being sent for review.
The similarity report is interpreted by the editorial team in context: no single percentage is applied as an automatic criterion for rejection, since overlap in standardised methodological descriptions, instrument names or correctly attributed citations does not constitute plagiarism. The nature of the matches detected is examined, together with their extent and whether they correspond to another party’s text presented as the authors’ own.
The use of text, data, images or ideas belonging to third parties without appropriate attribution, the substantial reproduction of the authors’ own previously published work without declaring it, and the simultaneous submission of a manuscript to more than one journal are all regarded as misconduct.
Where plagiarism is established, the manuscript is rejected regardless of the editorial stage reached. If detection occurs after publication, the journal proceeds to retract the article in accordance with its correction and retraction policy, and notifies the authors’ institution of affiliation.
Correction, retraction and expression of concern
ScientiAmericana accepts responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the published scientific record and applies the COPE guidelines to that end. Published articles are neither altered nor removed from the site; any amendment is made through a separate document, reciprocally linked to the original article, with its own DOI and freely accessible.
Erratum
Published where an error introduced during the editorial process affects comprehension of the article without compromising its results or conclusions.
Author correction
Published where the authors identify an error of their own that requires amendment but does not invalidate the findings of the work.
Retraction
Appropriate where the results are found to be unreliable, whether through honest error or misconduct; where plagiarism or duplicate or redundant publication is established; where the research was conducted without the required ethical approval; or where improper authorship is demonstrated. The article remains accessible, prominently marked as retracted, together with the retraction notice setting out the reasons.
Expression of concern
Published where there are well-founded indications of a problem with the article but the investigation of the matter has not yet concluded, or where the competent institution has not issued a ruling.
Requests for correction, or allegations that may lead to retraction, should be addressed to the journal’s institutional e-mail address and are handled in confidence, with the authors given a hearing.
Use of artificial intelligence
Generative artificial intelligence tools may not be listed as authors, since they do not meet the ICMJE authorship criteria and cannot take responsibility for published content.
Authors who have used such tools at any stage of the work — writing, translation, copy-editing, data generation or analysis, or image production — must declare this in a specific section of the manuscript, stating the tool used, its version and the specific purpose for which it was employed. The use of ordinary spelling and grammar checkers does not require declaration.
Responsibility for the accuracy, originality and integrity of the content rests entirely with the authors, who must verify every statement and every reference generated with the assistance of such tools. Bibliographic references that have not been checked against their original source may not be included.
The generation or alteration of research images by means of artificial intelligence is not permitted, unless this constitutes the very object of the study and is explicitly declared.
Reviewers may not upload manuscripts or extracts from them into artificial intelligence tools, since that practice breaches the confidentiality of the editorial process. The same restriction applies to editors.
Research data
ScientiAmericana promotes the transparency and reproducibility of the research it publishes and encourages authors to deposit the data underpinning their results in an open access repository, with a corresponding persistent identifier.
Every manuscript must include a data availability statement indicating whether the data are available, where they may be consulted and under what conditions, or else the reasons why they cannot be shared. Where the nature of the data would compromise participant confidentiality, restricted access on reasoned request is accepted.
Data deposit is not, at present, a requirement for publication. Authors must retain primary data for a minimum of five years from publication and make them available to the editorial team should it require them in connection with an enquiry into the integrity of the work.
Preprints and prior publication
ScientiAmericana accepts manuscripts previously deposited by their authors on recognised preprint servers. Deposit of a preprint is not regarded as prior publication and is no bar to assessment of the work.
Authors must declare the existence of the preprint in the cover letter and state its persistent identifier or web address. Once the article has been published, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with the full reference and the DOI of the published version.
Manuscripts that have been published in whole, or in substantial part, in another journal are not accepted, nor are those simultaneously under assessment by another publication. Prior dissemination of results in the form of a conference abstract or poster does not constitute prior publication but must be declared.
Copyright and licensing
Authors retain the economic and moral rights to their work and grant ScientiAmericana the right of first publication. The journal does not require transfer of copyright ownership.
All content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), which allows third parties to share and adapt the work, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is provided and any changes made are indicated.
Authors may enter into additional arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the article, with acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
The applicable licence and the copyright notice appear prominently on each article page and in the full-text file.
Self-archiving and repositories
ScientiAmericana authorises authors to deposit their work in institutional or subject repositories, on personal pages and in academic networks, with no embargo period.
The authorisation covers all three versions of the work: the submitted manuscript, the manuscript accepted following review, and the final version published by the journal. In every case the full reference of the original publication and the link to the article on the journal’s site must be stated.
This policy corresponds to the CC BY 4.0 licence under which the content is published.
Publication charges
ScientiAmericana applies no charges of any kind to authors. No article processing charges (APCs) are levied, nor any submission, assessment, editing, publication or download fees.
The journal is published and financed in full by Universidad Sudamericana. There are no hidden charges or billable items at any stage of the editorial process, including any requests to withdraw a manuscript.
Digital preservation
ScientiAmericana ensures the long-term conservation of its holdings by depositing its content in the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), a distributed digital preservation network that guarantees the permanent availability of articles even in the event that the journal or the site is discontinued.
The publishing institution additionally maintains regular backups of the database and the full-text files, together with an institutional backup of the published holdings.
The metadata of all articles are deposited with Crossref at the time the digital object identifier is assigned, and are harvestable via the OAI-PMH protocol.
Sources of support, advertising and sponsorship
ScientiAmericana is published and financed in full by Universidad Sudamericana, which meets the costs of the platform, of digital object identifier registration and of the editorial work. The journal receives no income from authors or readers.
The journal accepts no advertising of any kind on its site or in article files.
The journal receives no sponsorship from the pharmaceutical industry, the medical technology industry or any body with a commercial interest in the content published.
Institutional funding in no way conditions editorial decisions, which are taken independently by the editorial team on exclusively scientific criteria.
Complaints and appeals
Authors who consider that the editorial decision on their manuscript was based on a mistaken assessment or on an irregular procedure may lodge a reasoned appeal with the Editor-in-Chief within thirty calendar days of being notified of the decision.
The appeal must set out specifically the points in the report that are disputed and the scientific grounds on which the objection rests. Appeals based solely on disagreement with the outcome are not accepted.
The Editor-in-Chief decides within thirty calendar days and may uphold the decision, refer the manuscript to a further reviewer, or reopen the assessment process. This decision exhausts the avenues available within the journal.
Complaints concerning the conduct of the editorial team, the timescales of the process or the integrity of published work may be addressed to the journal’s institutional e-mail address and are answered within thirty days. Where the complaint involves the Editor-in-Chief, it is determined by the Research Directorate of Universidad Sudamericana.
