Ethics code

This Ethics Code for the journal Anales de Psicología / Annals of Psychology, contains the following sections:

- Introduction
- Ethics code for Transparency in the Journal's Management and Editorial Policy
- Ethics Code for Authors
- Ethics Code for Reviewers
- Ethics Code for Editor

 

INTRODUCTION

This Ethics Code for the journal Anales de Psicología aims to publicize and fulfill the specific responsibilities involved in participating in the journal in the roles of authorship, peer review of manuscripts, and editors who manage the journal. It also aims to ensure transparency in the information the journal provides regarding management and editorial policy.

This Ethics Code proposes guidelines for good behavior and best practices for publishing quality research and maintaining the journal's good reputation.

It is based on recommendations for the preparation, submission of manuscripts, editing, and publication of academic work in the most current scientific journals from specialized institutions and organizations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It also reflects the ethics policies of major scientific journal publishers, such as the American Psychological Association (APA), Cambridge University Press, and others.

 

ETHICS CODE FOR TRANSPARENCY IN THE JOURNAL'S MANAGEMENT AND EDITORIAL POLICY

JOURNAL CONTENT

1. Journal name (criterion 14 in COPE): Anales de Psicologia is a unique name, sufficiently recognized by the international scientific community and not likely to cause confusion with that of another journal.

2. Website (criterion 2 in COPE): Our journal's website (https://revistas.um.es/analesps) includes everything necessary for its readers, authors, reviewers, and editors. Editorial management aims to offer the best possible selection of the manuscripts we receive, avoiding information that could mislead readers and authors. Our website includes a statement of objectives and scope and clearly defines the intended audience and main subject areas of interest. The electronic ISSN and basic journal information are clearly and easily displayed in the header of the website. Technically it is based on open source software (OJS) that meets all security, support and maintenance standards.

3. Publication calendar (criterion 3 in COPE): Anales de Psicologia clearly informs about the annual publication frequency in the “quarterly” format (three issues per year in January, May and September).

4. Archiving and digital preservation policies for journal articles (criterion 4 in COPE): All published articles are digitized on the journal's website (hosted on servers at the University of Murcia). Furthermore, like all journals published by the University of Murcia, this journal is hosted in the DIGITUM institutional repository for digital preservation purposes.

5. Archiving and digital preservation of datasets (criterion 4 in COPE): Anales de Psicologia, on the path toward Open Science, is committed to the deposit of research datasets in line with all policies, mandates, and initiatives that reveal the value of research data, as well as the importance of sharing and reusing them. Therefore, it has opened a collection in DIGITUM, the institutional repository of the University of Murcia, for the deposit of datasets linked to published articles in our journal. Authors can also deposit this information in any other general or thematic repository.

6. Copyright and Licensing (criteria 5 and 6 in COPE): The copyright policy is clearly stated in the guidelines for authors and in the journal's open access policy. The copyright holder will be named on all published articles. The latter document clearly states that authors may deposit accepted final versions or copies of published articles in third-party repositories, following the Open Science Principles.

JOURNAL PRACTICES 

7. Publication ethics and related editorial policies (criterion 14 in COPE): The journal's website includes statements and procedures on policies regarding authorship and contributions, handling of complaints and claims, reporting of misconduct, conflicts of interest, data sharing and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, corrections and retractions, and management of the integrity of scholarly literature.

8. Process for identifying and addressing allegations of research misconduct by authors (criterion 7 in COPE): The Editorial Board will take reasonable measures to identify and prevent the publication of papers in which research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, data falsification/fabrication, and improper use of Artificial Intelligence in the preparation of the manuscript, among others. If we become aware of any allegations of research misconduct related to an article published in our journal, we will follow COPE guidelines for addressing the allegations and assess the rejection of the manuscript or the possible retraction of an already published article, if necessary.

9. Peer review process (criterion 8 in COPE): The manuscript selection and evaluation system used is double-blind peer review. This system follows the standard processes for publishing serial scientific publications. Each article received is reviewed by two referees, ensuring the anonymity of both authors and reviewers. This process is clearly described on the journal's website and in the manuscript submission process, and short review and editing times are not guaranteed.

10. Access (criterion 9 in COPE): Access is free and open access to all journal content. 

11. Dissemination: Anales de Psicologia reports on the journal's news on social networks, specifically on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).

ORGANISATION

12. Ownership and management (criteria 11 and 12 in COPE): The ownership of the property rights to the published content belongs to the Publications Service [Servicio de Publicaciones] of the University of Murcia, as indicated in the submissions section and in the privacy and intellectual property section of the journal's website.

13. Governing and Advisory Body (criteria 11 and 12 in COPE): Anales de Psicologia has an Editorial Team composed of an Editorial Board (editorial committee) and an Editorial Advisory Board (scientific committee) made up of recognized national and international experts in the topics covered by the publication. At all times, efforts will be made to facilitate equitable gender distribution in the governing bodies and to promote their internationalization. The full names and affiliations of the journal's editors, as well as the journal's contact address, are provided.

FINANCING PRACTICES

14. Funding Sources (criterion 14 in COPE): The only two sources of funding for Anales de Psicología are: (1) Author Payments (APC) managed by the “Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia”, and (2) provided by the Colegio Oficial de la Psicología de la Region de Murcia (Spain) to assist in the management of the Editorial Board. The journal's website is provided by the “Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia” [Publishing Service of University of Murcia]. There are no commercial purposes in the journal.

15. Author Fees (criterion 13 in COPE): Anales de Psicologia is currently a "gold" open access publication. Therefore, it is a peer-reviewed scientific journal whose content is accessible without purchase or subscription, in which the author retains the copyright. This journal requires payment to the author for publishing costs, the so-called APCs (article processing charges) of €216 (+ taxes), upon acceptance and prior to publication. Anales de Psicología is clearly committed to the Open Science paradigm and adhered to the "Manifesto on Open Science as a Global Public Good: Non-Commercial Open Access" issued by the 2023 Toluca Summit.

16. Advertising (criterion 15 in COPE): Advertisements are not allowed in the journal.

 

ETHICS CODE FOR AUTHORS

1. General Responsibilities of the Authors

The general responsibilities of the authors must be declared and assumed in writing in the Cover Letter. The authors must declare their commitment to non-prior publication of the presented results, non-simultaneous submission to another publication, and the originality of the study and the contents of the manuscript. Malpractice in this regard, such as data falsification and selective or biased reporting of results, has no place in this journal, and appropriate measures will be taken.

2. Authorship and Contributions

Authorship must be based on substantial intellectual contribution both in the previous phases of the objectives, design, execution, analysis, or interpretation of the study, as well as in the preparation of the manuscript and critical review, both individually and collectively, by all authors before submission. The ethical obligations are as follows:

- All listed authors must have approved the final version of the manuscript and be able to assume public responsibility for its content. In the Cover Letter, the corresponding author (representing the other co-authors, if any) should detail the specific contributions of each author of the manuscript at the different stages of its development. The use of standardized nomenclature for the types of contributions and the estimation of the individual contributions of the authors of the manuscript is recommended, for example, based on CRedit (Contributor Role Taxonomy) (see here for a description in Spanish).

- The list of authors and their order should be agreed upon by all co-authors before submission of the manuscript, and in the Cover Letter, the corresponding author should sign the list and declare that all authors agree. If there are changes in authorship after submission, this should be requested from the editor and must be justified and signed (digitally or digitally) by all authors.

- There are irregular types of authorship, especially in multi-authorship: (1) "Ghost" authorship (they do not appear in the list of authors of the manuscript even if they made fundamental contributions, which may hide hidden conflicts of interest); (2) Honorary authorships (those who have not made substantial contributions, but are included in the author list). These are bad practices that should be avoided, as if they are verified, the journal would act accordingly. If you use AI systems, you must follow the recommendations in our AI Appropriate Use Policy.

- There may be insubstantial contributions such as technical assistance, writing assistance, superficial critical reading, obtaining funding, but without participating in the design/analysis, etc. These individuals should be listed in the acknowledgments (also included in the Cover Letter).

3. Originality and Responsible Publishing Practices

- The text is also original if it includes the necessary citations to provide the theoretical framework and the necessary prior evidence, but without plagiarizing, that is, without including ideas, methods, results, or words of other authors in the text as if they were one's own and without proper citation. This includes various uses of text from other authors or one's own in other publications without the corresponding citations and references (self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, mosaic plagiarism, plagiarism of ideas, "ghost" authorship, inappropriate paraphrasing, etc.). To prevent this threat to originality and intellectual integrity, the journal may use anti-plagiarism tools, and if detected, the journal will take appropriate action.

- Similarly, a text and research may cease to be original if there is misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI). See the journal's recommendations for use here.

- Authors must ensure that the manuscript submitted to the journal is original in that: (1) it has not been previously published in any language, nor is it being submitted simultaneously to other journals; (2) they should not publish the same set of data or substantial findings in multiple articles ("salami slicing") unless clearly justified (e.g., significant lengths, different populations) and referenced; (3) if parts of the manuscript have been presented at conferences or published as abstracts or preprints, this must be communicated to the editor in the Cover Letter.

4. Data Integrity and Transparency

Authors must present accurate, honest, and complete data. Examples of bad practices in this regard would be: fabricating data, manipulating results to fit the proposed hypotheses, or manipulating images or graphics.

- The journal may request study data for evaluation or verification, always respecting the confidentiality of participants.

- The journal always recommends publicly archiving data (when ethically possible) in specialized repositories and including the repository's web link in the manuscript text.

5. Disclosure of conflicts of interest

Authors must declare any relationships or interests (financial, personal, academic, organizational) that could be considered to unduly influence (bias) their research, its results, or its interpretation. Common examples include funding from sponsors with an interest in the results, employment relationships, stock ownership in related companies, consulting fees, personal or academic relationships that could appear to influence the work or the selection of reviewers, etc. The goal is transparency so that editors, reviewers, and readers can evaluate the manuscript taking these potential interests into account.

- Any potential conflict of interest must be declared in the Cover Letter, regardless of whether the authors believe these circumstances have not affected their judgment or integrity.

- The Cover Letter must state whether or not they have received funding for the study, whether public or private, indicating, if so, the name of the funding agency and the project code, and whether they may have been involved in the planning or execution of the study.

6. Compliance with Ethical Standards for Research Involving Participants

Authors must ensure that the research involving participants (human or animal) described in their manuscript was conducted ethically and responsibly, in accordance with applicable ethical guidelines and principles agreed upon by various organizations and publishers (APA Ethics Code Standard 8, COPE, Declaration of Helsinki, etc.). The manuscript must state that these ethical standards were followed. For example:

- With human participants, approval must be obtained from the institutional research ethics committee or equivalent, and informed consent must be obtained from the participants (or their legal guardian, in the case of minors), explaining the procedures, risks, benefits, confidentiality, and right to withdraw.

- Research involving anonymous surveys does not require written consent from participants, since their agreement to participate would imply consent. If survey data collection is included in a research project, it is usually subject to review by a research ethics committee.

- If the research required concealment of procedural details, then subsequent explanations should be provided to the participants (in a debriefing meeting, etc.).

- If the research involves animals, strict ethical guidelines for their humane care and use must be followed, in addition to requiring the approval of an institutional animal ethics committee.

7. Identification and Reporting of Errors After Publication of the Article

Errors may be made during the scientific research process. During the review process prior to acceptance, correcting them is the primary activity of peer review managed by the Editorial Board. However, once the work is published, if the authors detect errors, they must notify the journal so that they can be corrected as soon as possible. In these cases, noted by the authors, or in more serious cases reported by others, the Editorial Board's procedures are explained in more detail in the Editors' Code of Ethics document.

 

ETHICS CODE FOR REVIEWERS

The role of reviewers during the editorial process, from manuscript submission to the final decision on acceptance or rejection, is fundamental, as they help ensure the originality of the manuscripts reviewed and can suggest improvements to the authors that improve the quality of their research. The following are expected of them:

1. Declaration of Conflict of Interest

- Before agreeing to review, reviewers must declare any potential conflicts of interest that could bias the evaluation of the manuscript, whether financial, work-related, family-related, or otherwise. If any of these conflicts exist, reviewers must inform the journal and refrain from reviewing the manuscript.

2. Competence or Suitability for the Subject Matter of the Manuscript

- They must agree to review manuscripts for which they have sufficient knowledge and experience to conduct a rigorous and appropriate evaluation. If the reviewer considers they lack sufficient competence, they must decline the assignment and inform the journal as soon as possible.

3. Punctuality in Review Deadlines

- Once the reviewer receives the review request from the journal, the most important thing is to respond immediately or at least within the deadlines set by the journal, whether for accepting or rejecting the assignment.

- Once the assignment is accepted, they must meet the deadlines established by the journal for submitting their evaluations, and if they believe they will not be able to meet them, they must notify the journal as soon as possible. Delayed review can be detrimental to the authors (delaying publication or the next step in their career/project) and slow down the journal's editorial process.

4. Confidentiality

It is a privilege for a reviewer to read the work before it is published, but this entails the responsibility to treat the manuscript as a strictly confidential document, not sharing or discussing its contents (ideas, methods, results, conclusions) with anyone else. They may also not use any unpublished information obtained from the review for personal or third-party benefit, or in their own research or teaching.

5. Objectivity, impartiality, constructive and respectful feedback

- Reviews will be conducted objectively, clearly expressing orientations and points of view, providing supporting arguments and references as necessary, avoiding citations to one's own work unless they are genuinely relevant to improving the manuscript.

- They must evaluate the manuscript constructively, helping the authors understand the evaluation and improve their manuscript, regardless of the final recommendation (accept, revise, reject), based solely on the scientific merit of the work, its quality, originality, and relevance to the journal's scope.

- In the evaluation, they must avoid biases based on the authors' origin, gender, nationality, ethnicity, institutional affiliation, personal opinions, or any other non-scientific criteria.

- In the text of the evaluation report, they must refrain from personally attacking the authors, avoid inconsiderate language, and avoid critical comments that could be considered a personal discrediting of the author.

- For empirical studies involving participants (human or animal), the ethical research standards mentioned by the authors (informed consent, institutional research ethics committee approval, etc.) must be carefully reviewed by the reviewer to ensure they meet these standards.

6. Detecting Ethical Misconduct in the Manuscript

The reviewer must be alert to potential signs of misconduct in the manuscript under review, such as plagiarism, data manipulation, fabrication of results, or duplicate publication. If the reviewer suspects misconduct:

- They must inform the editor in as much detail as possible and provide any available evidence.

- They must not initiate their own investigation into the alleged misconduct.

 

ETHICS CODE FOR EDITORS

The decision-making roles of editors are central to the management of scientific journals. The ethics and transparency of editors are vital to the credibility and quality of the journal and, by extension, the scientific knowledge published. The editor is responsible for guiding the review and decision-making process to ensure the integrity and quality of publications. Strict adherence to this code of ethics by editors is essential to gaining and maintaining the trust of the scientific community, readers, and the public in the quality and veracity of psychological research published in the journal.

1. Fair and Objective Editorial Decisions

The decision to accept or reject a manuscript should be based exclusively on the relevance, originality, scientific validity (methodological soundness, significance of findings), and clarity of the work within the objectives and scope of the journal.

- Decisions must be independent of commercial considerations, external pressures, personal interests, or any type of discrimination against authors based on origin, gender, ethnicity, institutional affiliation, political opinions, or any other characteristic unrelated to the scientific merit of the manuscript.

- Articles reporting even negative research results in which the null hypotheses are not met should be permitted to be published.

- Based on certain minimum manuscript quality standards, authors must be given the opportunity to improve the submitted manuscript, as well as guaranteed the right to reply or appeal in the event of rejection.

2. Confidentiality

- Editors must maintain the confidentiality of the information contained in articles until publication.

- The information contained in an unpublished manuscript must not be shared with persons not involved in the review process (editors, reviewers, support staff) nor used by the editors or their staff for their own research or personal benefit. Impartial Management of the Peer Review Process.

- Editors must manage the publication process within reasonable timeframes to ensure the timeliness and relevance of published material.

- Editors must be objective and constructive in their communications with authors, avoiding inconsiderate or challenging language, as well as defamatory or personally disparaging comments. They must also ensure compliance with this criterion if such behavior is detected among reviewers.

- Select qualified reviewers with sufficient experience in the subject of the manuscript.

- Use the reviewers' recommendations in a thoughtful and reasoned manner in the final decision. Editors are not required to accept the reviewers' recommendations, but must take their comments into account and justify their decision to the authors.

- Maintain the anonymity of reviewers in double-blind systems.

- Avoid selecting reviewers with obvious conflicts of interest.

- Editors do not typically audit the ethical processes of research itself, but they should verify that the ethical requirements of manuscripts have been reviewed and ensure that authors declare they have complied with the ethical standards applicable to their research.

3. Editors' Conflicts of Interest

- Editors should recognize their own conflicts of interest (personal, professional, financial) and refrain from handling manuscripts where a conflict exists that could compromise their impartial judgment.

- They should not handle manuscripts from close colleagues, students/former students, family members, friends, or research projects in which they have a direct interest.

- If an editor submits a manuscript to their own journal, the review and decision-making process should be managed completely independently by another member of the Editorial Board who has no conflicts of interest, and the process should be transparent.

4. Transparency

The journal's policies and procedures should be clear, comprehensive, and publicly accessible. This means that editors should ensure that the journal:

- Include on its website information regarding the peer review process, ethics policies, journal governance, charges (if any) to authors for publication, conflict of interest management, open access policies, and data availability policies.

- Include in its web application mechanisms for informing authors about the status of their manuscript and the reasons for editorial decisions.

5. Managing Potential Misconduct

- Editors must act promptly and fairly when suspicions or allegations of editorial misconduct or misconduct arise in research published or reviewed by the journal.

- They must investigate complaints and allegations (plagiarism, fabrication/falsification of data, inappropriate authorship, undeclared conflicts of interest, ethical issues in research, etc.) following established procedures and the guidelines of leading scientific publication ethics bodies. This may involve contacting authors, institutions, reviewers, or other relevant parties to gather the information necessary for decision-making; they must also have protocols or procedures in place for publishing corrections, clarifications, expressions of concern, or, if necessary, publishing the retraction of published articles that are found to contain serious misconduct, justifying the reasons.
- Implement all necessary measures to detect plagiarism or any form of fraud or data manipulation, redundant or duplicate publication, and take appropriate decisions where appropriate.
- Ensure that all aspects related to compliance with publication standards and journal policies to promote gender equality in scientific publishing are taken into account, as well as take appropriate action in the event of non-compliance.

6. Post-publication and corrections

This involves assuming responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the scientific record after publication. This implies:

- When errors are identified in a published article, cooperate in issuing a correction (errata or addendum) promptly and clearly. These are errors that, regardless of their nature or origin, do not constitute scientific misconduct, but must be published as soon as possible, detailing the changes and citing the original publication. To this end, the journal must ensure that: (1) this correction is on a numbered page included in the table of contents or summary; (2) it must publish a new version of the article with details of the changes compared to the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made; (3) must archive all previous versions of the article (that there are more recent versions of the article).
- If a published article is proven to be fraudulent or contain serious misconduct, a retraction must be issued following COPE standards. A retraction is an alert to readers of scientific journals, a text published in the journal pointing out or reporting that a given published article contains data so flawed or erroneous that it cannot be assured that the findings and conclusions are unreliable, which may be the result of an honest mistake or research misconduct. The reasons that compel the journal to issue a retraction can be varied, but in any case, the publication of the retraction is similar to that for errors, although the reasons for the retraction must also be included, and both the text of the retraction and the original article must be mutually linked or constitute a single unit that clearly clarifies the retraction.