Ethical publishing policies

Research Integrity

Research integrity presupposes respect for ethical and legal principles in the development, conduct, and publication of research. This is why the RHSM journal agrees with the publication of scientific articles produced from research in a correct, honest, responsible, and transparent manner and adheres to the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity.

Authorship and Contribution

RHSM considers as an author a person who has intellectually contributed to the preparation of the manuscript submitted to the journal. Following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), to be considered an author, the following criteria must be met:

Participated in the conception and design, or in the acquisition of data, or in the analysis and interpretation of the data that resulted in the article.
Participated in the drafting or critical revision of the text.
Approved the version that will ultimately be published.

Complaints and Appeals Policies

In case authors or other parties associated with the RHSM journal have any type of complaint or appeal, they should proceed with the following steps:

Send an email to revista.historia@usach.cl, indicating the subject: complaint or appeal.
Describe in the body of the email the points to be developed in the disagreement, along with evidence if applicable. The complaint or appeal must be clear, concrete, and supported by sufficient data demonstrating a possible breach of the journal's editorial ethics statement.
Attach a formal letter addressed to the journal stating the reasons for the complaint or appeal.

It is important to note that complaints or appeals beyond the scope of the journal, such as personal grievances against authors, editors, reviewers, or the journal's editorial team, will receive a response indicating the reasons why the complaint is not considered within the journal's jurisdiction. Additionally, the journal will refrain from conducting the corresponding investigations if the complaints or grievances are presented in an offensive, threatening, or defamatory manner.

RHSM, in this situation, will establish a committee for resolving complaints and appeals composed of the editor, a representative of the advisory board, a representative of the scientific committee, and a representative of the journal unit of the Scientific and Technological Research Directorate of the University of Santiago de Chile, to study the case. If the case involves legal matters, the process will be directed to the university's legal department. Decisions will be made considering the recommendations set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Journal Policy on Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest is considered when the author has personal or academic relationships that may bias or affect their actions in research and publication.

Authors must ensure that their procedures and methodologies comply with international ethical codes of scientific research in history and related sciences. This guarantee will be provided in writing in the [copyright transfer form] and in the conflict of interest declaration that appears in the OJS, which will be considered upon submission of the article for preliminary review, making the authors fully responsible for any ethical violations they may have committed in the research from which the article is derived.

Members of the editorial and scientific committee may submit articles. However, in such cases, only one submission is allowed every three years. This ensures impartiality in the review of articles submitted by committee members. The editor will be responsible for managing the normal editorial process as declared in the author’s guide.

RHSM will reject any articles that implicitly or explicitly contain experiences, methods, procedures, or any other activity that follows unethical, discriminatory, offensive, or aggressive practices, etc.; or those that fail to clearly disclose any type of conflict of interest, leaving their publication to the judgment of the Editorial Committee.

Journal Policy on Ethical Supervision

Fraud and Ethical Violations by Authors

An author or authors engage in unethical behavior when they perform any of the following actions:

Fabrication of data: Inventing or using fictitious data in research and publication.
Falsification: Manipulation of materials, altering or omitting data or results of research to force the verification of hypotheses or to align with the study's objectives.
Plagiarism: Taking as one's own texts, sections, ideas, methods, or any information (tables, figures, maps, etc.), as well as published procedures or techniques, without crediting the original author.
Self-plagiarism: Presenting as original, novel, or unpublished material previously published by the same author without proper credit: self-citation.
Inappropriate authorship: Including individuals as authors who did not participate in the research or editing.
Repeated publication: This includes three cases: 1) Duplicate publication: partial or total publication of an article by the same author already published elsewhere. 2) Segmented publication: dividing a study into several parts to increase the number of articles published independently. 3) Inflated publication: adding part of the results to a new article without proper credit.
Biases: Ignoring studies that contradict the research results.
Excluding authors who actively participated in the research or editing of the article.
Affiliating institutions in the article that had no involvement or did not fund the research.
Violating confidentiality or publishing personal data of participants without their consent.
Submitting an article for publication without the authors' consent.
Submitting an article to more than one journal or publisher simultaneously.
Including bibliographic references in the article that were not cited to increase indicators for authors, journals, or institutions.
Citing unrelated bibliography to the research.
Abusing self-citations to increase the researcher's h-index or impact factor.
Omitting information or hiding important research data.
Endangering or harming research participants.
Failing to provide study data to the editor or reviewers for result validation.
Not declaring conflicts of interest.

Fraud and Ethical Violations by Reviewers

A reviewer engages in unethical behavior when they:

Plagiarize information from the articles they review.
Accept to review an article despite having conflicts of interest.
Violate confidentiality and anonymity in the review process.
Intentionally delay the review process for personal or third-party benefit.

Fraud and Ethical Violations by Editors

An editor engages in unethical behavior when they:

Bias the selection of articles: based on the authors' profiles, research groups, or institutions, etc.
Do not subject articles to peer review.
Have conflicts of interest in the publication of articles.
Pressure authors to cite the journal itself or other journals to increase the impact factor.
Publish their articles in the journal without having another editor oversee the process.
Violate confidentiality, such as disclosing the article to other researchers or revealing the identities of authors or reviewers during the review process.

Procedure for Addressing Fraud or Ethical Violations

Unethical behavior in research or publication can be identified by editors, the editorial or scientific committee, reviewers, the audience, or others who come into contact with or serve the journal. The editor will be responsible for receiving and managing all cases, applying protocols guided by COPE.

In cases of unethical behavior, the editor must rely on their editorial board and follow COPE's guidelines: maintain and protect accurate and complete records of the case, ensure confidentiality and neutrality, refrain from making accusations, allow the accused to defend themselves, notify authors, funders, editors, and other involved parties, and delegate investigations to the appropriate institutions (ethics committee, intellectual property committee, legal advice, or the institution responsible for the research).

The editor must follow the recommended COPE guidelines and notify the Electronic Academic Journals Unit of the Scientific and Technological Research Directorate (DICYT) of the University. If the complaint is made before publication but is not serious, the authors will be notified to present their written apologies. The editor will inform the authors of the final decision. If the misconduct is serious, the editor will reject the article and notify all involved in the process. If the complaint is made after publication and is not serious (minor errors in the article), an erratum will be published in the next issue of the journal. If the misconduct is serious, the article will be retracted, and all involved will be notified of the journal's actions, following advice from relevant bodies and COPE guidelines.

Corrections and Retractions Policy

RHSM will consider retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern regarding its publications in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The regime of norms and control mechanisms of scientific communication will depend on the type, severity, and consequences of the detected inaccuracy. The purpose of this mechanism is to ensure that changes are transparent and always guarantee the integrity of the academic record.

a) Errata An erratum notice will be published when it is necessary to correct an error or omission made by the journal after publication that may affect the publication record or the reputation of the authors or the journal, but where the academic integrity of the article remains intact. In these circumstances:

The article will be corrected.
A note will be added at the end of the article with a reference to the erratum notice.

b) Corrections A correction notice will be issued when it is necessary to correct an error or omission made by the authors that affects the publication record or the reputation of the authors or the journal, but where the academic integrity of the article remains intact. In these circumstances:

The article will be corrected.
A note will be added at the end of the article with a reference to the correction notice.

c) Retractions A retraction notice will be published when a significant error invalidates the conclusions of the article, or when there has been research misconduct or publication misconduct. Authors may request the retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the retraction criteria. Retraction will be considered:

If there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication or image manipulation) or an error (e.g., miscalculation).
If the findings have been previously published elsewhere without proper cross-references, permission, or justification (e.g., cases of redundant publication or duplicate publication).
If the research constitutes plagiarism.
If there is evidence of fraudulent authorship.
If there is evidence of compromised peer review.
If there are indications of unethical research and violations of professional ethical codes.

When the decision to retract an article has been made:

A "retracted article" watermark will be added to the published version of the article record.
The title of the article will be preceded by "Retracted Article: [title of the article]."
A separate retraction statement will be published, titled "Retraction: [title of the article]," which will be linked to the retracted article. This note will be signed by the journal's editors.
The retraction statement will be paginated and assigned a DOI.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Authors must be transparent when using chatbots and provide information on how they were used. Given the rapidly evolving field, authors who use a chatbot to help write an article must declare this fact and provide complete technical specifications of the chatbot used (name, version, model, source) and the method of application in the article they are presenting (query structure, syntax). This aligns with the ICMJE recommendation to acknowledge writing assistance.

Authors are responsible for the work performed by a chatbot in their article (including the accuracy of what is presented and the absence of plagiarism) and for the proper attribution of all sources (including material produced by the chatbot). Human authors of articles written with the help of a chatbot are responsible for the contributions made by the chatbots, including their accuracy. They must be able to affirm that there is no plagiarism in their article, including the text produced by the chatbot. Human authors must ensure appropriate attribution of all cited material, including full citations. They must declare the specific query function used with the chatbot. Authors should search for and cite sources that support the chatbot's claims. Since a chatbot may be designed to omit sources that oppose the views expressed in its output, it is the authors' duty to find, review, and include such opposing views in their articles.

Editors and reviewers should specify, both to authors and among themselves, any use of chatbots in the evaluation of the manuscript and the generation of reviews and correspondence. If they use chatbots in their communications with authors and among themselves, they should explain how they were used