Ethics and Good Practices

Declaration of publication ethics and GOOD publishing practices

The Refas Declaration of Publication Ethics and Good Publication Practices is based, in essence, on the guidelines and standards developed by ANPAD (National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Administration), in accordance with the following responsibilities:

Good Scientific Publishing Practices

Good Practice involves employing an electronic management system for the editorial process, which ensures its standardization, uniformity, agility, transparency and traceability.
Good Editorial Practice also implies speed in the publishing process. Along these lines, the main actors in this process – editors, reviewers and authors, must take actions to meet the following maximum deadlines in relation to the submission date:
1. Up to 30 days to communicate to authors the result of the desk review , which defines whether the manuscript will go through the journal's review process.
2. Up to 120 days, for forwarding the first opinion of each of the reviewers to the authors, in the case of manuscripts that have been accepted by desk review .
Online access to all published content, unrestricted and free of any burden for the reader, preferably under a Creative Commons license in the form of attribution, non-commercial use and sharing under the same license.
Inclusion, at the footer of all pages, of the summarized bibliographic caption (journal name, volume, article pagination) and the appropriate Creative Commons license logo, if adopted; and, at the top of the pages, alternately, the names of the authors and the title of the work.
Editorial process shared between researchers and professors belonging to different institutions, in order to avoid the proprietary journal, that is, produced mostly or by people linked to a specific institution.
Articles authored by the scientific editor or general editor, also called editor in this document, and associated editors should not be published, even if this authorship is shared with other authors.
No more than one article by an author should be published in the same year, regardless of their position in the authorship of the text.
In the case of publication of an article authored by directors of the institutions that maintain the periodical or by any of the members of the Editorial Policy Committee or the Scientific Editorial Board, it must be clearly specified, in the editorial piece that presents the respective number of the periodical, how the evaluation of the manuscript, highlighting the independence and impartiality of the respective process.
Each year, the fraction of articles originating from a given institution (that is, with at least one author, professor or student, linked to it) must not exceed 20% of the total articles published.
Clear definition of the requirements and selection processes and the roles/responsibilities of the general editor and associated editors (if any), the members of the Editorial Policy Committee and the Scientific Editorial Board.

Editor Good Practices

The editor is responsible for everything published in his periodical. When deciding that he will probably approve the publication of a manuscript, he must examine it in full, and it is recommended that he suggest and negotiate with the authors the modifications he deems necessary, for the benefit of clarity in the communication of ideas and scientific rigor – but must do so without interfering with the authors' style. The editor's responsibility cannot, however, cover unwanted or unforeseen consequences that may arise from the use or application of the information conveyed in the periodical. A scientific journal publishes research results, the proof of which is satisfactory in all aspects for the continuation of research at an academic level, but is not sufficient for completely safe and predictable use in any other context. The consequences of such use are the sole responsibility of whoever does so, which must be explicitly informed to readers.
The editor must strive to constantly improve the journal, aiming to meet the needs of all actors involved in the publication process, but must devote priority attention to the magazine's readers, main beneficiaries and preferred customers.
It is also up to the editor to promote the speed of scientific dissemination. When the periodical has a stock equal to or greater than two issues ready for publication, the time has certainly come to increase the number of articles per issue and/or the number of annual issues.
The editor must publish guidelines for authors on everything that is expected of them. These guidelines should be updated whenever necessary.
Upon receiving a manuscript, the editor must arrange for a d esk review , to be carried out directly by him or her or requested from a member of the Scientific Editorial Board, making sure that the manuscript meets basic requirements to be accepted in the process editorial (scientific relevance, correctness of language, good general presentation and compliance with editorial standards and policy). If it fails to meet any of these requirements, the original must be rejected immediately, courteously, but with sufficient firmness. Strictly speaking, when proceeding with a manuscript obviously prepared with little dedication, the editor becomes co-responsible with authors in the questionable attitude of transferring the latter's responsibility to reviewers. To assist him in the process, the editor-in-chief may turn to his associate editors or members of the Editorial Policy Council.
Another requirement that justifies the immediate rejection of an original, and which must also be observed in the admission review, is the lack of originality of the work. In addition to checking books and other magazines, the editor needs to check cases of resubmission to his own journal. There are reports of identical works presented more than once to the same journal, once being rejected, once accepted for publication, and having quality aspects as justification in both cases.
Guidelines for the peer review process (including guidance on what is expected of reviewers) should be published and updated as necessary. If significant deviations from these guidelines occur, the editor must be prepared to justify them.
For the sake of ethics, reviewers cannot belong to the same institution as any of the authors of the manuscript or be their usual co-authors. Likewise, it is unethical to induce acceptance (or rejection) of work by forwarding submissions to reviewers whose rigor is known to be below (or above) the average, or whose scientific paradigms are in agreement (or disagreement) with those followed by the authors.
The editor coordinates the evaluation of the submission by reviewers, although he may delegate this coordination to an associate editor or even a member of the Scientific Editorial Board. However, the final decision regarding whether to publish the work will always be his, the editor, and must be based on the importance, originality, clarity and relevance of the article to the journal's area of activity. Such a decision may contradict the reviewers' recommendations, as long as the editor is not convinced of the justifications they presented or if he observes serious scientific limitations in the article. In other words, the editor is not a hostage to the opinions and opinions that come to him, but, if he has to contradict them, he must act with ethics and very clear discernment. In this case, the editor should contact the reviewers and present them with the reasons for their disagreements. In this way, the editor would preserve a good relationship with the reviewers, valuing their work, instead of positioning himself as an unreachable judge.
The editor must also ensure that the deadlines for issuing opinions are met. An alternative course of action is to suggest a deadline and request explicit agreement or a counter-proposal from the reviewer. This breaks the feeling that the deadline (for what, after all, is a voluntary task) is being imposed on the evaluator and, as he participates in the definition, increases his commitment and responsibility to meet it.
The editor must ensure that the opinions analyze:
1. The originality of the work, that is, whether the manuscript truly presents a contribution to the area of knowledge, or whether it is merely a re-edition of ideas and concepts;
2. The solidity of the research basis;
3. In the case of empirical articles, also the rigor of the conditions under which it was carried out. It is also essential that the opinions contain suggestions that can improve the work and a clear and well-founded position regarding whether it should be published or not. If they do not meet these requirements, they must be discarded, making it necessary to consult another reviewer.
The editor must mediate the relationship between reviewers and authors, verifying the relevance of the changes requested by the former and, when applicable, accepting the latter's arguments not to accept them. Reviewers sometimes request exaggerated modifications to the original study, which may even distort it, or propose changes that are contrary to submission guidelines or editorial policy. It would be natural, then, for the author to argue about the adequacy of the requested changes, but he may feel uncomfortable doing so. It is up to the editor to promote constructive scientific dialogue, inhibiting the resigned and uncritical response to requests of questionable validity.
Unless very serious problems are identified in the manuscript, the editor should not reverse the decision to accept it, nor should a new editor do so, regarding a decision by the previous editor.
Following the same criteria used for other materials, a special opportunity for publication must be given to articles or comments that challenge or criticize work previously published in the journal. Only very strong and convincing reasons, which must be made clear to the authors of the review, can justify not doing so. The authors of the criticized material must be given the opportunity to respond. Preferably, criticism and response should be published simultaneously.
The editor must be reasonably certain that the research material he publishes complies with internationally accepted ethical standards. Therefore, you must request guarantees that all research involving sensitive issues (health, children's conditions, among other possibilities) has been approved by an appropriate body (for example, Research Ethics Committee, Institutional Review Board). It may, however, recognize that such approval does not guarantee that the research effectively follows ethical principles.
The editor must protect the confidentiality of individual (for example, obtained in the consultant-entrepreneur relationship) and business information. Therefore, it is almost always necessary for authors to provide written consent from those involved.
The editor must take all reasonable measures to guarantee the quality of the material he publishes and never allow individual interests and those of institutions that sponsor the journal to compromise the respective academic standards.
There must be procedures that guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of all materials submitted to the journal, especially during the review stage.
The editor must be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies whenever necessary.
The editor has a duty to act if he or she suspects misconduct. This obligation extends to authors and reviewers.
If, after appropriate investigation, an item is identified as fraudulent, it should be recalled. The deletion must be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems. Whenever the editor recognizes that inaccurate, misleading, or distorted material has been published, he or she must correct the problem promptly and prominently.
Editors must have systems for managing conflicts of interest for the different actors involved in the editorial process: administrative collaborators; authors; reviewers; members of the Editorial Policy Committee and the Scientific Editorial Board; associate editors; and their own.
The editor must make clear and publicly available, on the journal's pages and/or website, a complaints forwarding mechanism, through which any dissatisfied parties can express themselves; and any complaints can be promptly addressed.

Good Practices of the Editorial Policy Committee

The Editorial Policy Committee is formed by the Editor and members who adequately and democratically represent the interests:

From the area of knowledge;
From the institutions that ensure the scientific credibility of the journal;
Those that legally support it.

This Committee deals with the magazine's editorial policy issues and acts as a group (holds meetings, whether in person or not), making decisions collectively and, eventually, voting on matters; is not involved with the content of any particular issue or article, but with the collection as a whole, establishing the general guidelines that guide it.

Good practices for article reviewers

The reviewer should not accept the task of evaluating a manuscript if he or she does not feel professionally qualified in the respective topic.
If the review process is double blind, the reviewer must inform the editor if the author's identity is known. As for the associate editors and members of the Scientific Editorial Board, although they are not explicitly informed who the authors are, they could eventually recognize them based on the style or content of the article itself; but such identification would not be an impediment to continuing with the desk review process and appointing potential reviewers.
Each journal establishes a deadline for reviewers to return and they must explicitly commit to complying with it or negotiating changes. Meeting the agreed return date is a matter of ethics, respect and responsibility of the reviewer role.
The reviewer must carefully read the journal's editorial policy and instructions to reviewers. Editors may have guidelines that are unfamiliar to you or with which the reviewer does not fully agree, and there is a risk that the reviewer will request changes that are incompatible with what the journal recommends.
To obtain a first general perception of the article, the reviewer is recommended to read it in depth in a single session. Eventually, you can mark or note some points in this reading, but the proposal is to understand the whole, not focusing on specific aspects. It is also recommended to resume work three or four days later, going through the text thoroughly and simultaneously preparing the opinion.
The reviewer must be aware of the fact that paradigm differences can influence their decision about the quality of the manuscript and consciously avoid this from occurring.
The reviewer must point out correctable flaws and necessarily indicate what can be done to remedy them. A good reviewer, however, will allow authors the flexibility that allows them to continue writing the article they want to write. The reviewer must always evaluate the cost-benefit of each requested change in terms of effective improvement in the quality of the manuscript.
Whenever scientifically pertinent, relevant references for the manuscript and/or its reformulation must be suggested to the authors.
The reviewer must make every effort to point out all the changes he deems pertinent in the first review of the manuscript, in order to avoid new recommendations each time it returns reformulated.
When you receive a manuscript, reformulated by the authors based on your recommendations, those of other reviewers and the editors, pay attention to the recommendations of the other reviewers before issuing a new opinion.
If the manuscript presents uncorrectable flaws, evaluate the possibility of pointing them out as limitations of the article in the appropriate section. If this is not feasible, recommend its rejection, indicating the reason that makes the failures irremediable.
When recommending the rejection of a manuscript, the reviewer must point out the reasons very objectively and clearly.

Author's Good Practices

Carefully observe editorial policy and a sampling of recently published articles to select the journal to which you will submit your manuscript. A harmony in these aspects considerably increases the probability of acceptance for the editorial process, while a lack of it can lead to rejection during the desk review .
Only submit manuscripts that are grammatically revised and strictly in accordance with the rules for formatting, citations and references established in the journal's instructions to authors. Failure to meet these points will result in rejection in the admission review.
Clearly present ideas, including appropriate use of illustrations and references. The works must follow the format of the periodical and, in general, are composed of the following parts:
1. Introduction, which establishes the purpose of the research (what is the topic of the article, problematization, and what is its objective) and addresses its relevance;
2. Theoretical Reference;
3. Methodology or methods and techniques;
4. Results and discussion;
5. Final considerations and recommendations;
6. References carefully reviewed according to the journal's standards.
It is a serious ethical infraction to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal or to send it to a new journal without formally withdrawing it from another journal in which the text is being evaluated.
Submitting articles that have considerable overlap will only be appropriate if the texts are intended for different audiences (for example, professional and academic), but will be unacceptable (inappropriate ethical behavior) if the audiences are the same.
Still along these lines, it is only possible to generate several manuscripts from the same set of data if:
1. It is not possible to exhaust the information contained in the data in a single integrative article, which is clear and meaningful;
2. The various articles have different purposes.
It is abusive and unacceptable, from an ethical point of view, to submit a manuscript with limitations known to the authors, which could perfectly be corrected by them, in the expectation that it will be accepted despite these limitations or with the purpose of transferring it to editors and reviewers the function of improving it (perhaps “they” won’t detect everything, and I will have to work less or I will leave some inappropriate points for the reviewers to point out, perhaps “they”, therefore, won’t notice the most serious errors). Equally serious is taking advantage of the recommendations of a good review from a journal, making the requested improvements and then sending the manuscript to another journal that you consider more qualified.
Duly reference any replication of other researchers' methods and all statements that are not supported by the research described in the article. However, it always respects that what should be referenced are ideas and arguments, and not decontextualized phrases, from the cited authors. Also consider that an article must have a contribution from the person who writes it, and cannot, therefore, present references in a number comparable to that of paragraphs.
It is a serious ethical violation to cite works of questionable relevance, with the aim of increasing their impact. On the other hand, it is equally inappropriate ethical conduct to fail to do so due to antipathy or prejudice of any kind.
It is necessary to know that all referenced authors are candidates to evaluate your manuscript.
Remember that entering the review process does not imply acceptance for publication.
It is also necessary to remain aware that a manuscript can always be improved by external eyes. It is quite common, when learning about a comment or recommendation for an opinion, that it is difficult for the author to understand why the evaluator highlighted or commented on a certain passage or construction. For him, the author, everything is perfect: because he knows the research very well, his mind covers the gaps and eliminates the text's imperfections. The recommendation then is to never lightly dismiss an evaluator's considerations: he may not have exactly caught the spirit of the thing at that point, but he felt something strange there. A review is almost certainly necessary.
Learn, therefore, to absorb the comments derived from the review process and do your best to understand and incorporate as many of them as possible. However, if after all your effort some comments prove to be justifiably inappropriate, do not incorporate them: prepare a polite note to the reviewer, explaining your reasons for not complying with the request. In general, a message should always be sent to the journal, explaining how each point raised by the reviewers was used to improve the manuscript.
Learn to accept rejection and analyze the reasons for it. Consider whether a new document could be created from the rejected one or whether a revised version of the document could be published in another journal. It's not a good idea to simply submit the same manuscript to another journal. Among other things, the same reviewer may be asked to evaluate your manuscript.
Stay motivated. Motivation and belief in your own work are important elements in determining the acceptance of your manuscripts.
Work in a network with other researchers, as the collaboration process, in addition to promoting motivation and productivity, offers a multiplicity of views, identifying and overcoming limitations and improving ideas and arguments. However, to avoid incurring ethical misconduct, only include as co-authors those who have contributed effectively and significantly to the research. Formal acknowledgment, in the text, is a healthy alternative (Good Practice) for relevant, but minor, involvement in the preparation of the manuscript.
Always be involved with more than one manuscript, as there is generally a time lag between submission and publication in journals.
Avoid submitting too many articles per year to the same publication.
Expect to be hired as a reviewer by the journal that published your manuscript, especially if it has been well evaluated. Editors always consider the authors of the articles they publish to be potential reviewers, especially if they judge them to be insightful and capable of responding within a short period of time. If you act as a reviewer, do so with dedication, promptness and maximum scientific seriousness. Contribute to the improvement of the manuscript as if it were your own, with the ambition that, after publication, authors can be justly proud of it, and that it will have a significant impact on the area of knowledge.

Reference

ANPAD. Good practices in scientific publishing: a manual for authors, reviewers, editors and members of editorial boards. Available at: https://arquivo.anpad.org.br/diversos/boas_praticas.pdf.

REFAS. Ethics and good practices. Available at: https://www.revistrabalhos.com.br/RevFATECZS/Etica.

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