Ethical publishing policies

Probity and Integrity of Research
Research probity and integrity refer to both honesty and adherence to ethical and normative principles linked to all stages of research and, in general, to the creation or making of contributions to knowledge.

Therefore, Políticas Públicas adheres to the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity whose ratification have been approved by the Chilean governmental agencies relative to research since 2013. In this sense, Políticas Públicas is committed and makes commitment to the honesty, accountability, professional courtesy, fairness, and good stewardship as the principles of all epistemic creation process.

We invite to look the Authorship section for more detailed information about this.

Accountabilities and Definitions for Editor
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct points out general duties and purposes for General Editors, besides the compliance of outlined here and in the other sections responsibilities, i.e.:

  • Looking for satisfying the readers and authorships needs.
  • Improving constantly Políticas Públicas.
  • Ensuring the quality of the published material.
  • Championing freedom of expression.
  • Maintaining the integrity of the academic record.
  • Precluding profit needs or motives from compromising intellectual standards.
  • Seeking to always the publications of corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies or excuses as appropriate.

The following sections aim to guiding and performing the research probity and integrity and the purposes of Políticas Públicas Editor.

Complaints and Appeals
Every interested person has the right to make complaints or appeals to Políticas Públicas. In this sense, the Editorial Team will receive the notice in according with the above-mentioned principles. For this, these objections will not be considered valid:

  1. Objections of a personal nature against authors or members of Políticas Públicas. Any objection whose content refers to scopes away from the typical editorial functions and relating to the private life will not be admitted. If the objection is insisted upon, appropriate measures will be taken to avert the complainant from any communication with the aforementioned content.
  2. Objections which contain offensive, threatening or defamatory expressions. Any objection whose content contains terms that denigrate or attempt to threaten the physical, psychological or social life of authors or members of Políticas Públicas will not be accepted. Editorial Team will assess the propriety of submitting the objection to the police or judicial authorities as appropriate.

The complaint procedure consists of these steps for the concerned person:

  1. Sending Complaint. On behalf of the interested party, an email will be sent to revista.politicaspublicas@usach.cl as the unique valid means of admitting the notification: aforementioned email must contain a formal letter whose content details the complaint or appeal. The subject line of email must contain the word “Complaint” and/or “Appeal”. In the body of email, it will summarise the argument of complaint or appeal which is detailed in the formal letter. Likewise, the email will also contain all plausible evidence to be attached to support the claims made in the complaint/appeal. The argument of letter must point out, in a clear, accurate and explicitly manner, one or set of offences against the Declaration of Ethics, authorship processes or evaluation, minimum standards and/or editorial standards of Políticas Públicas.
  2. Políticas Públicas will acknowledge receipt of notification during the following five working days since date of submitting. A Recipient Committee will be organised and both Executive/Associated and General Editors will compose it with the aim to study the validity of objection in according with the aforementioned aspects.
  3. Políticas Públicas will notice the admission of complaint or appeal within ten working days deadline since the acknowledge receipting. In case of refuse, it will answer to complaint or appeal through formal letter to the concerned party together with the appropriately explicit foundations.
  4. Políticas Públicas will organise the Complaint Committee and will be composed by: General Editor, Executive/Associated Editor, Editorial Committee Representative, and a Representative from Journal Unit of Scientific and Technological Research Directorate of Santiago de Chile University. This Committee will aim to analyse the background information submitted by the complainant and to evaluate the procedure unfolded with the concerned party against the Declaration of Ethics, authorship and evaluation processes, minimum standards and/or editorial standards of Políticas Públicas. This Committee can ask for the submitting of other background information to both the concerned party and Políticas Públicas, which will be known by both concerned parties, in according to the adherence to a transparent compliment of process.
  5. The Complaint Committee will expose its results within maximum sixty working days deadline since date of admission. In case of acceptance, Políticas Públicas will take into account the recommendations of Committee. In case of refuse, the Committee will send, by way of formal letter through email, the foundations of that resolution to the concerned party.
  6. If the complaint or appeal involves rule aspects, by its concerning, the Complaint Committee or Políticas Públicas will send the background information to the competent normative/legal authority of the Santiago de Chile University.

Minimum Definitions for Ethical Supervision

RELATIVES TO AUTHORSHIPS
According to the Authorship definition, Políticas Públicas understand a behaviour against the ethics when somebody commits these actions. The definitions come from the Elsevier PERK basis which links and adjust itself to COPE.

  • Ghost Authorship. It defines as the non-impanelled author in manuscript or receipt article, despite to be qualified in according with the authorship definition.
  • Gift Authorship. It defines as the impanelled author in manuscript or receipt article, despite to be not qualified in according with the authorship definition.
  • Misappropriation. It defines as the awarding of research findings to an author or more who did not participate in such research.
  • Plagiarism. It defines as the fact which an author uses another work without permission, acknowledgment, or credit for such work. This last one belongs usually to another author, nevertheless, also plagiarism applies to works belonging to the same author where it does not identify or recognise the appearance of such work (self-plagiarism).
  • Literal Copying. It defines as the reproducing of a work word for word, in a full o partial manner, without permission and/or acknowledgment of the original source.
  • Substantial Copying. It defines as the reproducing of work content without permission and/or acknowledgment of the original source, either in terms of quantity or quality of core, independent of the literalism of reproduction.
  • Paraphrasing. It defines as the non-literal reproducing of a work, either in terms of meaning similarities or of content, in a full or partial manner, without permission and/or acknowledgment of the original source.
  • Falsification. It defines as the exposing of data, findings and/or conclusions in a partial manner from the information processing or experimentation of author(s). For example, it can consider the application of data measuring conveniently adjusted to a finding with the determined and desired purpose or hypothesis, excluding measuring or findings which disagree with or contradict such purpose or hypothesis.
  • Fabrication. It defines as the exposing of data, findings and/or conclusions which does not come from the information processing or experimentation of author(s). In terms of PERK: “fabrication is inventing results”.
  • Violations of Consents or Confidentialities. It defines as the exposing, using or treatment in being lives relatives to the information and/or experimentation without backing or support appropriately certified by the applicable normative.

In addition, together with precedent behaviours, there also are others which the Council of Science Editors (SCE) holds like threatening against the ethics, i.e.:

  • Citation Manipulation. It defines as any generalised or systematic practice where authors pressure or been pressured to cite certain sources with the primary goal of boosting citation rates (such as H factor, journal impact factor, e.g., among others). It also regards in this behaviour the collusion of researchers, research groups, scholars and/or students to prefer the cite each other or their members.
  • Authorship for Sale. It defines as any practice where a non-author person tries to or achieves, in any of steps or stages of editorial process, appropriate for himself/herself the authorship of a manuscript which belongs to other author through purchase (pecuniarily or by any whatever other compensation).

RELATIVES TO REVIEWERS
In our journal, reviewers must adapt to these responsibilities in their role, which come from the Council of Science Editors. All action, which do not belong to these definitions, will be considered as threatening against the ethics.

  • Confidentiality. It defines as the custody, secret and discretion (in other words, the no sharing, distribution nor discussion outside process and its members) of material under review.
  • Constructive Critique. It defines as the assessment of both positives and negatives aspects about the material under review, including the necessary improvements, whose purpose is the understanding the potentials and deficiencies of manuscript.
  • Competence. It defines as the evaluation of suitable and relevant epistemic fields for the material review; besides of the appropriate adjustments of Políticas Públicas Editorial Committee, every reviewer must accept or reject a review in according to the disciplinary adaptation to the manuscript object.
  • Impartiality. It defines as the adjustment of outcome from every review (i.e., remarks, recommendations and comments) to the qualification or quality, merit and originality of manuscript, excluding professional and/or personal biases.
  • Disclosure of Conflict of Interest. It defines as the whatever minimal knowledge or meeting by the reviewer about the author party of manuscript, against the doubleblind peer review, besides of adjustments by the Editorial Team. As the CSE says: “if reviewers have any interest that might interfere with an objective review, they should either decline the role o reviewer or disclosure their conflict of interest to the editor and ask how best to address it”.
  • Subject to Deadlines. It defines as the responsibility by the reviewer respect to adjust the review outcomes on determined deadlines, or otherwise to beforehand notify the requirements to assess such deadlines.

ERRATUM,CORRECTIONS AND RETRACTIONS POLICY
Políticas Públicas looks upon the monitoring of errata, corrections or retractions relatives to its publications in order to improve the quality and precision of these ones. For this, our journal considers these features and outlines, which come from the CSE and COPE, to become transparent the changes in our academic records respect to deal with detected inaccuracies.

Erratum
For Políticas Públicas, erratum is defined as the recognising of an error within a published material which comes from the publishing process, such as typographical, printing, text positioning or pagination problems. Therefore, an erratum does not consider the problems linked to the article content. The procedure is:

  1. Notify at the request of a party or ex officio the error.
  2. Assess the identification of error in according to the publishing process.
  3. Correct the published material in the error identification.
  4. Add a footnote or final material note with an erratum advertisement and “[Edition Note]” sign.
  5. Respond to the error request in according to the previous proceeding.

Expression of Concern or Interest
Our journal, considering our disciplinary area and always claiming the freedom of expression, reserves the right to express concern or interest, duly transparent, respect to the article content, not being prejudicial nor modifying the content. For this, in according with the CSE outlines, the use of concern or interest expressions will be looked upon:

The expression of concern is a publication notice that is generally made by an editor to draw attention to possible problems, but it does not go so far as to retract or correct an article. An editor who has a significant concern about the reliability of an article but not enough information to warrant a retraction until an institutional investigation is complete will sometimes use an expression of concern.

The procedure is:

  1. Notify ex officio or at the request of a party the concern or worry about the content of a published material.
  2. Assess the trustworthiness or effect to knowledge of the indicated part of published material.
  3. Delimit the indicated part of published material and its effect or trustworthiness.
  4. Add a footnote to the part or final material note with advertisement “Expression of Concern” or “Expression of Interest” and the “[Edition Note]” sign, and the remit description.
  5. Respond to the error request in according to the previous proceeding.

Correction
In our journal, correction is the identification of error or the concerning about a publication as long as refers to the partial content of a published material. In this sense, the journal follows this respect from COPE:

If only a small part of an article reports flawed data or content, this may be best rectified by a correction. (…). Similarly, if only a small section of an article (e.g., a few sentences in the discussion) is plagiarised*, editors should consider a correction (which could note that text was used without appropriate acknowledgment and cite the source) rather than retracting the entire article, which may contain sound, original data.

*Provided that the fact is recognised, or the source is requested.

The procedure is:

  1. Notify ex officio or at the request of a party the error or concern relatives to the content of published material.
  2. Identify the effects of error respect to the partiality of content of material.
  3. Evaluate the effects of error in according to the disciplinary integrity or the contribution to the knowledge.
  4. Decide the correction appropriateness.
  5. Correct the published material in the identification of error.
  6. Add a footnote or final material note with advertisement “Expression of Correction” and the “[Edition Note]” sign and the remit description.
  7. Respond to the error or concern request in according to the previous proceeding.

Retraction
Políticas Públicas adheres to COPE in retraction matters. Retraction is defined as the mechanism both for correction of published material and notification to interested people about gravely flawed or erroneous content or data which, therefore, affect to findings and conclusions.

A retraction will be looked upon when these duly evinced events (for all references, see our Minimum Definitions for Ethical Supervision):

  • Plagiarism and Copies. When an entire paragraph, at least, was showed which has been copied or plagiarised without fault acknowledgement, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Fraudulent or Inappropriate Authorship. When some authorship fault was showed, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Data Manipulation. When some fault linked to data collection or treatment was showed, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Peer Reviewers Manipulation. When it shows that there was a voluntary or intended alteration of observations in according to the manuscript content, during the doubleblind review process, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Material Reusing. When reusing or recycling of published material was showed, it will match with TRRP outlines and, in case of gap, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Copyright. When it shows that the published material has contained any copyright infraction, this will constitute a retraction causal.
  • Rule Infringement. When a breach against national or international rule was showed, either before, during, after of received material preparation, or in previous publication process, this will constitute a retraction causal (notwithstanding the sending of background information to competent normative/legal authority of the Santiago de Chile University).
  • Ethical Code Infringement. When a breach against any Ethical Code was showed, either before, during, after of received material preparation, or in previous publication process, this will constitute a retraction causal (notwithstanding the sending of background information to competent normative/legal authority of the Santiago de Chile University).
  • In general, duly evinced, all event linked to the Minimum Definitions will be retraction causal.

The retraction procedure will be as the reclamation or appeal way forward. In case of retraction causal acceptance, notwithstanding others corresponding procedures and those ones which are recommended or ordered by the Journal Unit of Scientific and Technological Research Directorate of Santiago de Chile University, this manner will proceed:

  1. Place the Retraction Declaration in first page of published material. Its title will be “Retraction: [Published Material Title]”, will describe the flawed or erroneous content and/or data together with the specified procedure, and will contain the General and Executive/Associated Editors signatures.
  2. Place, in previous of title or in the same line, “Retracted Article”, with the same typography of aforementioned title.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)USE
Políticas Públicas adheres entirely to the artificial intelligence use outlines, either tools manner as such or as machine learning, which CSE looks upon for all previous, proposed or remitted material in order to a future publication.

Authors should disclose usage of artificial intelligence tools and machine learning tools such as ChatGPT, Chatbots, Large Language Models (LLM). Políticas Públicas reserves the right to ask for information about artificial intelligence use to any authorship, in any step of previous publishing process. The response must be sent through letter signed by the authorship and must detailed describe why and how AI was used, specifying every aspect of material, or its making process, where AI was implemented. Likewise, Políticas Públicas can again ask for more background information due to an in-disagreement assessment from Editorial Team respect with the received response. The letter(s) can be added to the received material.

All human authorship must account about all aspects of material for publication. The specification of content (which was created with AI assistance), plagiarism absence, appropriated attribution to sources, and, in whole, ethical rulings are included in that.

The aforementioned outlines, policies and rulings are also attributable to editors, Editorial Team members and reviewers.