Code of ethics

The journal Educatio Siglo XXI adheres to the international ethical code of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Code of Conduct, and the Best Practices Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices), intended for authors, editors, and evaluators.

 

FOR AUTHORS

In this code authors who wish to publish their work in Educatio Siglo XXI will find guidelines regarding the assurance of quality research.

1. Responsibility

1.1. Manuscripts submitted by authors to Educatio Siglo XXI should be original, unpublished, and not approved for publication in another journal.

1.2. All data, statements, and references in the text are the sole responsibility of the authors.

1.3. Clear and complete personal details of the author or authors (names, institutional affiliation, and research areas) should be specified.

1.4. In the case of empirical studies involving participation by individuals (teachers, students, family, etc.), authors submitting work must ensure that the participants have given their express permission to participate and for the study results to be made public, as well as guaranteeing the confidentiality of the participants.

1.5. If authors decide to withdraw their work before publication, they must immediately inform the editors.

1.6. Authors must promptly and clearly respond to the comments made by the reviewers about their work.

1.7. Authors must have proper permission or the required license or certification to partially reproduce any copyrighted material (images, graphics, and texts) according to Spanish or European Union legislation.

 1.8. Authors of a published article must seek permission from the Editor of Educatio Siglo XXI if they intend to reproduce it in whole or in part in another journal, as a chapter, or as part of a book, in either its original language or translation to other languages.

1.9. After a work is accepted for publication in Educatio Siglo XXI, the authors will receive a draft version and will have a short period to review it and send a list of any errors to the editors for prompt correction.

1.10. Authors should present their work with academic and professional accuracy, providing proper bibliographic references and citations from sources that have been authentically studied.

1.11. Authors of reviews of works must honestly present the research and conclusions of the work and impartially indicate its strengths and weaknesses.

2. Transparency of Authorship and Co-authorship:

2.1. In the case of a text with shared authorship, all co-authors must consent to such publication. The author designated as the contact person for Educatio Siglo XXI must have the express consent of their co-authors.

2.2. Authors are expected to be transparent in mentioning any support they have received in preparing their text, including access to public or private resources, any form of funding, specific materials or equipment for conducting the research, as well as data support, statistics, translation, and technical support.

2.3. The authors who have legitimately contributed to the preparation of the text, in order of their degree of contribution to the work, will sign the article.

2.4. Changes in the co-authorship of a text require the explicit agreement of all its contributors, including the replaced or excluded author. This agreement will be communicated to the journal editors in advance, in order to record the corresponding changes before publication.

3. Integrity:

3.1. Authors must present their research with honesty and sincerity, without any improper manipulation of data. Therefore, they must meticulously present their study method, results, and conclusions without ambiguity.

3.2. The presentation of the research results and conclusions will not omit inconvenient, inconsistent, or hypothesis-contradicting results.

4. Originality:

4.1. Authors will ensure the originality of their work, ensuring that they have not previously published such research when submitting to Educatio Siglo XXI. Authors must not submit the same work to two publications simultaneously.

4.2. If a manuscript contains material coinciding with a work already published, in press, or under evaluation by another journal, authors have a duty to reference it through a citation, specifying its publication status.

4.3. Authors must meticulously comply with copyright laws and agreements when reproducing external tables and figures, providing the relevant references, permissions, and acknowledgments.

4.4. Authors are obliged to accurately identify the parts of their work based on others' work, always citing their original authorship.

4.5. Authors should minimize self-citations in their work. These should appear anonymously with the term "Author" in the manuscript in order to ensure blind evaluation. Likewise, they should avoid redundancies and self-plagiarism.

4.6. Educatio Siglo XXI reserves the right to use anti-plagiarism software to ensure compliance with current academic and legal regulations.

4.7. Authors declare that their work is original, unpublished, and exclusively authored by them, not having been previously published, in whole or in part, in article, book, book chapter, or conference proceeding, nor is it being submitted for evaluation in another journal or by other editorial bodies. In case of the detection of possible plagiarism, the authors will be informed, and an investigation process will be initiated so as to seek clarification or, in severe cases, retraction, following COPE guidelines.

5. Conflict of Interest:

5.1. Conflict of interest arises in situations where the publication process of a work in a scientific journal is driven by motives outside strict research interests. These motives may include personal, academic, political, commercial, or financial relationships that could potentially influence the judgment of authors, evaluators, editors, and readers of the journal. Therefore, authors are required to disclose financial support and conflicts of interest that could influence the results and impact the interpretation of the article. Funding sources or other sponsorships must be indicated in a footnote on the first page of the work.

6. Double-Blind Peer Review:

6.1. Authors will accept the "double-blind" review procedure, which entails the anonymity of both reviewers and authors. Hence, authors will remove any identifying references from their manuscripts. The relationship between the author and reviewer must always be anonymous.

6.2. Authors have the right to express a preference for or against certain specialists in a research area as evaluators for their work. However, the decision on the reviewers who will assess the work lies with the journal's editors, who will not inform the authors about the chosen evaluators' identities.

6.3. Authors will accept the evaluation reports from the reviewers and the final decision of the editors regarding the acceptance or rejection of their manuscript as an article for the journal.

 

FOR EDITORS

Those who make up the Editorial Team and the Editorial Board of Educatio Siglo XXI (hereinafter referred to as the editors) are primarily responsible for the publication process. Their task is to ensure high standards of academic quality and basic ethical guarantees in research. Therefore, they must be up to date on the journal's development policies, ensure rigorous compliance with ethical guidelines, and inform authors and reviewers about honesty, responsibility, and impartiality in their respective tasks.

1. Responsibility

1.1. The editors of Educatio Siglo XXI are responsible for all materials published in this journal and, consequently, must adhere to the procedures necessary to ensure quality and preserve the integrity of what is published. The editor-in-chief will ultimately decide on the publication or rejection of each submitted work and will work with those involved in the publication process to ensure the honesty and veracity of its contents.

1.2. Through the "contact" section of the main office of Educatio Siglo XXI on the University of Murcia website, users can provide suggestions, complaints, and appeals to the editorial team and receive a response via phone or email. The editor of Educatio Siglo XXI will adopt reasonable procedures in cases of ethical complaints or conflicts of interest. Authors will be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to any complaint received about their article. All complaints will be investigated regardless of the original publication date. All documents related to such complaints will be preserved.

2. Independence

2.1. The editors must act constructively, impartially, and confidentially in the evaluation of manuscripts for their academic and scientific quality.

2.2. The Editorial Team of this independent journal will ensure its efficient functioning in infrastructure, management, and efficient training. Therefore, the internal procedures of Educatio Siglo XXI must dissociate their commercial actions from editorial processes. Thus, the editors will make decisions solely based on academic criteria and merits, actively engage in publication policies, strive to optimize access to published material, and differentiate academic-research content from promotional announcements about the distribution or sale of the journal.

3. Confidentiality

3.1. The editors must protect the confidentiality of authors' manuscripts and remind reviewers of this duty. Unpublished manuscripts cannot be submitted or shared with other journals by the editors without the authors' explicit permission. They should only provide information about the manuscript's status to the individuals responsible for the text.

3.2. The double-blind peer review system requires editors to protect the identity of reviewers, unless they wish to reveal their names.

3.3. The decision to express a preference for or against any specialists as reviewers of the author's manuscript is the responsibility of the journal's editors, who should not inform the authors of this selection. Such selection will be in accordance with the reviewer's professional judgement.

3.4. If there are changes in authorship of an article for appropriate reasons, the editors must ensure that all authors agree to such changes.

4. Integrity

4.1. The editors must ensure that all published articles make a substantial and original contribution to the corresponding field of educational research, avoiding redundancies and duplications.

4.2. The editors will courteously and honestly justify the editorial explanation for rejecting any manuscript through a report that incorporates comments and criticisms from the reviewers, as well as suggestions for improvement.

4.3. It is the editorial task to ensure compliance with manuscript evaluation deadlines and the timely delivery of reviewer comments so that authors can make the necessary modifications.

4.4. Educatio Siglo XXI will ensure strict control of plagiarism for all received works, to guarantee their originality and prevent dishonesty. Therefore, before proceeding to double-blind peer review, the plagiarism prevention program Turnitin will be used. This will generate a similarity report that will be subjected to evaluation criteria agreed upon by the Editorial Team, based on the percentage and reason for the detected similarities. A decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript for evaluation will be made based on this plagiarism check. In the case of rejection the Chief Editor of the journal will communicate this to the authors so they can argue their position regarding the matter.

4.5. In the event that the Editorial Team has evidence of plagiarism during the editorial process or receives a complaint of plagiarism from somebody regarding an article published in the journal, an investigation will be initiated to seek clarification from the authors. If, according to the Editorial Team's judgment, there is clear evidence of plagiarism or other copyright infringement, the publishing authority (Publisher), in collaboration with the journal editors, will take appropriate measures to address the situation. This may involve modifying the article and publishing a clarifying note, or in severe cases, proceeding with retraction and removal of the article from the journal, following COPE guidelines.

4.6. In the case of rights violations, the authors of the article will be solely responsible for the consequences.

 

FOR REVIEWERS

Reviewers must adhere to ethical guidelines to ensure that they conduct the peer review process of manuscripts with the highest standards of rigor and objectivity ("double-blind") in accordance with the journal's guidelines. Peer review of manuscripts, which is carried out by expert reviewers in the field who are not part of the journal's editorial team, should provide the editor with external assessments of the quality and suitability of the manuscripts intended to be research articles, for the purpose of deciding on their publication or rejection. Other academic content of the journal (book reviews and editorials) are not subject to this review process.

1. Right to Reject

1.1. The reviewer shall decline to review a manuscript if they do not possess competence in the subject proposed for evaluation, or if they cannot provide a response within the specified timeframe. In such cases, they must promptly notify this to the editorial team, who will assign the task to another reviewer.

2. Confidentiality

2.1. Reviewers should not conduct a review of manuscripts where the author's identity is disclosed. They should quickly notify the editorial team, who will review the text, remove authorial references, and send it to another reviewer.

2.2. Reviewers shall not disclose the contents of the manuscript to anyone except the members of the journal's editorial team, who are the only individuals authorized to address queries. They may share the manuscript with other specialists with prior permission from the journal editor and with a corresponding commitment to confidentiality.

2.3. If reviewers suspect any misconduct on the part of the author, they must promptly and confidentially notify the journal's editors.

3. Conflict of Interest

3.1. Reviewers must decline the responsibility to review a manuscript that raises a potential or actual conflict of interest, whether due to animosity towards the authors, familial relationship, academic or professional proximity, or any other relevant conflict. They must communicate this decision immediately to the editor for appropriate action.

4. Precision in Critiques

4.1. Reviewers are requested to be honest, meticulous, objective, and courteous in their evaluations, recognizing that their review involves an academic judgment of the manuscript in question. This should be particularly reflected in their critical reports, offering detailed, precise, and clear suggestions for formal corrections and providing sufficient supporting arguments for content corrections. Reviewers should also avoid inconsistencies in conduct.

5. Evaluation Timelines

5.1. Reviewers will conduct their reviews within the timeline stipulated by the journal. If a reviewer agrees to review but cannot meet the specified deadline, they will inform the editor and propose an alternative date. This alternative date will be accepted if it still aligns with the publication deadlines for the respective issue of the journal. If not feasible, the reviewer should decline, and the editor will assign the evaluation to another reviewer.