Declaración ética y practica editorial

Ethical Statement

Relationship with Authors and Editors

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology, an electronic journal published by the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, is committed to ensuring the quality of the contributions it publishes, clearly setting out the journal’s objectives, publication requirements and guidelines, editorial policy and copyright notice, amongst other matters. From this perspective, the decisions of the editor responsible for each issue regarding the acceptance or rejection of an article will be based on the relevance, scientific originality and clarity of the work, as well as its alignment with the scientific field covered by the journal and its formal guidelines.

In the event of a conflict of interest between editors and authors, following the double-blind review, the Editorial Board will make the final decision on whether the contribution is accepted or rejected. At least 80% of the articles published in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology are the work of researchers not affiliated with Pablo de Olavide University.

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology , via the ‘Submissions’ section of its website, will describe in detail the peer-review process that each manuscript must undergo. The journal guarantees its authors that submitted manuscripts will be treated confidentially throughout the peer-review process.

Should any irregularities be detected, the Editorial Board will be prepared to explain and justify any significant deviations that may arise during the peer-review process. The journal has an authors’ guide setting out the relevant aspects concerning the ethics and originality of submissions.

On authorship and contributions

The authors of texts submitted for publication in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology are primarily responsible for their content. Research papers published in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology are evaluated by two specialists in the field, and it is the responsibility of the editorial team to ensure that this process is fair and impartial. This review will be double-blind (anonymity of both the authors and the reviewers), and reviewers must justify their assessment of the papers based on their scientific importance, originality and relevance to the journal’s editorial line. It is the responsibility of the editorial team to accept or reject a paper for publication, based on the evaluations received. The editorial team may reject submitted papers directly without resorting to an external review process if it considers them to be of insufficient quality, unsuitable for the journal’s thematic and scientific objectives, or if they show evidence of plagiarism. Similarly, authors shall have the right to appeal against editorial decisions.

In order to promote transparency in the peer-review process, the submission and acceptance dates of accepted articles will be published.

Texts submitted for publication in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology must be the result of original research. They must include the data used and present an objective discussion of the results, as well as sufficient information to enable the interpretations put forward in the work to be confirmed or refuted, indicating the source of any ideas or verbatim quotations taken from other previously published works. In the event of reproducing, in whole or in part, previously published graphic material (figures, photos, maps, etc.), the source must be cited, providing, where applicable, the necessary reproduction permissions. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the data and results presented in the work are original and have not been copied, invented, distorted or manipulated.

Authorship of articles must be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design and execution of the work. All those who have made a significant contribution must be listed as co-authors. If other individuals have participated in any substantive aspects of the work, they must be appropriately acknowledged in the article.

Authors must ensure, where applicable, that all co-authors are duly listed and that no person is listed as an author without justification. Furthermore, all authors must have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and its submission for publication.

It is recommended that the criteria established by the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) be used to classify authors’ contributions to the production and publication of articles and papers.

How the journal will handle complaints, claims and appeals

In the event of a dispute, complaint or appeal, the editorial team of RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology will request from the author the relevant explanations and evidence required for its resolution. Complaints, claims and appeals will be handled by the editorial team. If there are reasonable grounds to suspect a breach of the ethical standards set out in this Code, the Journal’s Management will immediately investigate the matter. To this end, it may consult the Editorial Board and seek its advice. If necessary, the journal will appoint two external reviewers, other than those who have already been involved, to give their opinion.

If the Editor-in-Chief ultimately considers that an author or authors have breached the journal’s ethical guidelines on publication, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to impose sanctions, such as refusing to accept any further manuscripts submitted by the author or authors, the rejection of manuscripts by the author(s) currently under review, as well as the withdrawal or correction of work published by the author(s) in the Journal.

The Journal’s Editorial Board, with the possible advice of the Editorial Committee and the Advisory Board, shall decide whether it is necessary to withdraw the work from the Journal or whether a correction is sufficient. Should the complaint result in the retraction of a work already published, the Journal shall publish the news on its own website regarding the retraction, stating the reasons for such a measure.

Furthermore, if well-founded suspicions of a breach of the ethical standards of this Code fall upon any member of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board, the Journal’s Management shall immediately investigate the matter, with the possible advice of the Editorial Board and/or the Advisory Board, without the participation of the member or members concerned from those bodies.

If the Editor-in-Chief ultimately considers that a member or members of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board has breached these ethical guidelines, they may take the necessary measures, which may include their immediate dismissal.

All complaints or suggestions from readers or authors should be sent to the journal’s email address. Furthermore, the editorial team responsible for each issue or the coordination team must respond promptly to suggestions or complaints via the email address of RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology (respublica@upo.es).

The editorial team will always be available to authors for any post-publication editorial discussions, with the steps to be taken being considered on a case-by-case basis and always by mutual agreement. RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology adheres to the code of good scientific practice approved by the CSIC in March 2010 and to the guidelines on good practice adopted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

On conflicts of interest/competing interests

Authors must inform the editorial board of RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology of any conflict of interest or serious issue they may have with the editors or any other member of the journal.

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology will establish the relevant measures and mechanisms to prevent and resolve any conflicts of interest that may arise between reviewers, authors and editors of each issue or monograph. Members of the Editorial Board must abstain from the direct handling of a manuscript when they have a family relationship with the author, or are part of the same research group, or have had a contractual relationship or shared funding or national or international research projects in recent years.

Protocol for dealing with plagiarism

Authors exempt RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology from any liability arising from non-compliance with or infringement of copyright, undertaking to use their best efforts to assist the journal in defending against any accusations, extrajudicial and/or judicial proceedings. In the case of multiple authorship, the person responsible for the work shall ensure that the other authors are acknowledged, given that all signatories share responsibility for the work submitted.

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology submits each manuscript for plagiarism detection. These are sent for detection using the Turnitin tool.

If, following the plagiarism check, the matches found in each study are significant, they are analysed in detail, as a result indicating a certain percentage of similarity does not automatically imply that plagiarism has occurred. The findings are analysed by the editorial team. Following this review, a final decision is made. If plagiarism is determined to have occurred, the author is contacted so that, depending on the findings, they may make corrections; otherwise, the work will be rejected.

Plagiarism is defined as the use of words, ideas, works, third-party data, images or other content authored by others without proper citation. Furthermore, the falsification of data and any act that contravenes copyright and intellectual property rights shall be considered scientific fraud.

Plagiarism in any form; the repeated publication of an article; the falsification or fabrication of research data; self-plagiarism without citing the source; multiple or redundant publication; and the fabrication or manipulation of data constitute serious breaches of ethics and shall be considered scientific fraud. Should it be observed that the content of a manuscript is fraudulent, shows clear signs of plagiarism, has been submitted simultaneously to several journals, or has been previously published in other journals with minimal modifications, will be rejected for review and potential publication. However, in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology , it is permissible to publish a paper that expands upon another previously published as a paper or abstract in conference proceedings, provided that the text on which it is based is cited and that the changes constitute a substantial modification of the previously published work. They are also acceptable if the work is published in a different language, provided this is specified and the original publication and date of first publication are cited.

On ethical oversight

Reviewers must treat the work they are reviewing as a confidential document until its publication, both during and after the review process. They must not disclose or use the information contained in the text. The reviewer shall objectively assess the quality of the work, the information on which it is based, the hypothesis, the data and their interpretation, as well as its presentation and drafting. They must be constructive in their comments and provide reasons for them. They must notify the journal’s editorial team of any relevant similarities between the work under review and other published works, indicating possible instances of plagiarism, falsification or manipulation.

Reviewers must adhere to the established deadlines, and if any reviewer feels they are not qualified to assess the work, they must inform the editorial team of this as soon as possible.

Reviewers who do not feel competent in the subject matter to be reviewed, or who are unable to complete the review within the allotted time, must notify the editors immediately. Reviewers undertake to review the papers as quickly as possible in order to meet the deadline, set at 30 days from acceptance. This decision must be issued within a maximum of 8 days from the date the request is sent.

Relationship with reviewers

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology guarantees the anonymity of reviewers. The editors will ensure that the review process is impartial, fair and timely, and will provide reviewers with a standard review report, maintaining confidentiality at all times. In the review form, reviewers will be encouraged to provide comments and to remain vigilant regarding possible duplicate publications or plagiarism. All articles published in the journal will have received at least two positive reviews from two specialists in the field. Similarly, in any subsequent review certificates requested by the reviewers, neither the title of the reviewed article nor the author’s name shall be mentioned.

In order to ensure an optimal peer-review process, the Editorial Board of RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology will monitor the quality of reviews and reject those that are not constructive, are of dubious quality, or are disrespectful towards the author or the work submitted.

Intellectual property and data processing

By submitting their manuscripts to RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology , authors guarantee that their work is original, has not been previously published in any form, and is not currently being prepared for publication elsewhere. Authors publishing in RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology agree to the following terms:

Authors publishing in this journal agree to the following terms:

Copyright.

Authors retain their copyright but grant the journal non-exclusive rights of use (reproduction, distribution, public communication and adaptation) and the right of first publication of their work. Authors may enter into additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of their work published in the journal, provided that the first publication is acknowledged under the same. The work published in the journal is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-4.0 International Licence (CC-BY-NC-4.0) the terms of which are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Self-archiving policy.

Authors are encouraged to disseminate their work electronically (for example, in institutional repositories or on their own websites) before and during the submission process, as this may lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and more frequent citation of published works (see The Effect of Open Access).

The journal does not charge authors for article processing or submission, and retains copyright for authors without restrictions; furthermore, it enables authors to retain their publication rights without limitations.

RES PUBLICA Journal of Law and Criminology is an open-access journal and its content may be freely used, read, downloaded and distributed in any medium for non-commercial purposes only without prior authorisation from the editor or the authors. In all cases, the source and the author of the original publication must be cited, and any changes made must be clearly indicated, without in any way implying that they have the endorsement of the editor or the authors.

The journal is primarily published online via the ‘Open Journal Systems (OJS)’ platform, which incorporates the OAI (Open Archive Initiative) protocol to ensure wider dissemination and distribution of its content on the internet, as well as greater accessibility and reuse of its content by the scientific community and society at large.