The journal will make sure permanently the quality of its contents and the proper exercise of ethical practices by each of the actors participating in the publication. The following is the Code of Conduct and Good Ethical Practices followed by the journal and is based on the Guidelines on Good Practices for Publications developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Faced with the suspicion or disregarding of some of the good ethical practices established in this Code, the Editorial Committee will proceed as directed in the Central Practices and Flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for each case. Faced with the suspicion or detection of new bad ethical practices that are not declared in this Code of Conduct, the provisions of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be evaluated in its Code of Conduct, and accordingly, action will be taken as established for the dishonest act detected.

Duties and General Responsibilities of Editors

The editors of this journal commit themselves:

• To strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
• To strive to improve constantly the journal taking into account the different points of view of authors, readers, reviewers and members of the editorial committee.
• To have all the necessary processes in the journal to ensure the quality of the material that is published.
• To allow freedom of expression without going so far as to consent to manifestations of discrimination or offensive.
• To evaluate the articles without taking into account the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political beliefs, nationality, ethnic origin or personal positioning of the authors.
• To decide which articles should be sent for peer evaluation, as well as which ones can be published after their review, as well as preserving the confidentiality of the evaluated articles, not disclosing any information about their content, subject matter, authorship, data included , analyzes carried out or final conclusions.
• To guarantee the preservation of all the contents of the journal.
• To prevent commercial needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• To publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary.
• To provide all the actors in the process with the necessary information to perform efficiently their function.
• To support all actions necessary to reduce the different manifestations of research and publication misconduct, and encourage ethical and responsible behavior.
• To ensure that each published document reflects correctly the results and interpretations proposed by the authors.
• To archive the reports and the results of the evaluations of each article, and provide them whenever the competent natural and legal persons request them.
• To ensure that sections with and without peer review are clearly identified.
• To ensure that peer review in the journal is fair, impartial and timely.
• To adopt the most appropriate peer review methods for the journal and the research community that is served.
• The editors will be attentive to intellectual property problems and in correspondence will work with their editors to manage possible infringements of laws and intellectual property conventions.
• Best practices for publishers will also include adopting systems to detect plagiarism (for example, software, looking for similar titles)

Related to Readers

• They will be informed about the funding sources, authors and institutions of the different articles.
• They will have all the information and tools necessary to recover the metadata of the different documents.
• They will be able to access the full texts of the documents at any time that they have and in different responsive formats.
• They have the obligation to reference adequately the documents they consult.
• They have the obligation to make an adequate and responsible use of the information ensuring that no principles of good practices are violated.

Related to Documents and Data

• The data declared in the documents submitted for publication must be real and authentic.
• Data that is not justified for the proposed study objective should not be used.
• All documents must include citations and references to the sources of information used.
• It is considered an unfair practice to submit an article to an evaluation to more than one journal.

It is considered an unethical practice:

• Plagiarism and fraudulent data in documents.
• Publish the same article in more than one journal.
• Copy and use textual information of any document.
• Use data, images and other resources without the authorization of all the natural or legal authors of the work.
• Use information that has not been consulted from the original source by some of the authors of the document.
• Modify or distort the meaning and context of the information contained in other works, as well as any other inappropriate use that alters the integrity of the information.

Related to Authors

• Editors' decisions to accept or reject a work for publication will be based on the document's contribution, originality, clarity, validity of the study and its relevance to the journal's thematic field.
• The willingness to submit a document to the journal will not be rejected unless problems are identified in the guidelines established for its submission.
• New editors will not revoke decisions to publish work approved by previous editors unless problems that were not taken into account in previous assessments are identified.
• Before and during the submission process, the author will be provided with a guide with all the characteristics and elements to be controlled in the peer review processes.
• Competent and specialized professionals in each of the publication themes will carry out the evaluation of each document presented in the journal.
• Authors will preserve anonymity throughout the peer review process.
• Requests made by authors that a reviewer declared in the arbitrator’s folder of the journal does not evaluate their work, will be respected, if the conflict of interest between the reviewer and one or more of the authors of the document is justified.
• The presentation of ideas by other authors as their own constitutes an unacceptable practice.
• Authors should report any funding source that has allowed the study to be developed, as well as any other commitment that may influence the interpretation of the results.
• All authors are obliged to provide the necessary corrections to errors.
• Only those who participated substantially in the conception of the idea and design of the study, in the acquisition or analysis of the data, in the writing of the article or its critical intellectual review, and in the approval are considered authors of the work. Only they will be considered for the final approval of the document that will be published as long as those persons have a high experience in the subject and have contributed or oriented in some of the previous points.
• The acknowledgments will include the names of the people who have provided technical support to the work or general supervision of the research group and the institutions that provided the funding to carry out the research. Only substantial contributions and compliance with these conditions will be appreciated if they alone do not justify scientific authorship.
• The main author is directly responsible for having correctly assigned the co-authorship of the work and the acknowledgments, and that are no "guest authors", or there is not conflict of interests between them.
• In the cases in which bad ethical behaviors are detected concerning the incorrect assignment of authors, omission of these and conflict of undeclared interests, the journal will automatically cancel the publication of the work and issue a note to the entire scientific community informing the event and the names of those responsible for the unethical behavior.
• Publishers will support authors whose copyrights have been violated or who have been victims of plagiarism by requesting retractions or removal of material from websites regardless of copyright.

Related to the Reviewers

• Reviewers should give their opinion objectively and without bias.
• The reviewers will have all the necessary guidance and preparation, as well as an evaluation guide, which will allow them to know how they should perform the evaluation, weigh the quality of each of the parts of the document, state their observations and final decision.
• Reviewers will deal with the work and information contained in it confidentially until the document is published.
• The journal will guarantee the preservation of the anonymity of the reviewers throughout the process.
• The reviewers will immediately inform the editors about detected violations of good ethical practices during the review process such as unethical research design, inadequate data and rights manipulation, plagiarism, among others considered necessary.
• The reviewers will inform publishers in a timely manner of any conflicts of interest they might detect when reading an article that has been sent to them for review.
• The necessary procedures will be implemented so that the comments of the reviewers reach the authors in their entirety, ensuring that they do not contain offensive or defamatory comments.
• The contribution of the reviewers to the journal will be recognized at all times by issuing a certificate that certifies the evaluation carried out, which may also be presented to the academic institutions to which they belong.
• The performance of the reviewers will be monitored periodically and measures will be taken to ensure that the reviews made are of high quality.
• The database of reviewers will be maintained and renewed in order to present an adequate representation of the scientific community specialized in the issues of publication of the journal.
• Reviewers who constantly produce offensive, poor quality and late criticism will be stopped.

Related to the Members of the Editorial Committee

• The editors will provide new members of the Editorial Committee with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies implemented.
• Qualified editorial board members who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal will be identified.
• Clear guidance will be provided to the members of the Editorial Committee about their expected functions and duties, which may be development and implementation of journal dissemination strategies, searching for new authors and novel works, reviewing of submissions and editorial writing. Besides, commenting and reviewing about works in their specialty and consulting the editorial board members periodically to evaluate the functioning of the journal, among others.

Related to the Debates

• The editors will encourage the debate and consider the convincing criticism of the works published in the journal.
• The authors of the criticized material will have the opportunity to respond to the statements made.
• Studies that report negative results will not be excluded, as they can be a starting point for new research.
• The editors will be open to research that challenges the previous published works since this shows the evolution of their quality.

Conflicts of Interest

• There will be a conflict of interest in a particular manuscript when a participant in the process of drafting, reviewing and publishing it (author, reviewer or editor) has links to activities that may inappropriately influence their judgment, regardless of whether that judgment was or not affected. The most common conflict of interest resides in financial relationships, personal relationships, academic rivalry, or intellectual passion.
• Peers acting as external reviewers should disclose to editors any conflict of interests that could bias their views on the manuscript and should be excused from reviewing it if they consider it appropriate.
• Editors will be informed of the reviewers’ conflicts of interest in order to interpret their reports and judge for themselves if they should be disqualified.
• Reviewers should not use their reading of the work to further their own interests, before the manuscript is published.
• When authors submit a manuscript for publication, they are responsible for recognizing and declaring their financial connections and any other conflicts of interest that could bias their work.
• The editors who make final decisions on the manuscripts can not have financial or personal commitments with any of the authors and works that will judge.
• The members of the editorial committee who participate in the final decisions on the manuscripts, must provide an updated description of their own financial interests (which could affect their editorial judgments) and be excluded from any decision in which they may have a conflict of interest.
• All authors must fill out and submit to the journal the Compulsory Conflicts of Interest Dissemination Form of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This interactive spreadsheet will help each author to determine in a particular form if there is a conflict of interest.