Publishing Ethics

Ethical aspects, confidentiality and plagiarism

Ethics in scientific publishing

When the publication involves contact with human beings, especially during experiments, it must be indicated if procedures were done according to the Ethical Committee standards approving the scientific work. Besides, the scientific work should be in agreement to the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, revised by the 59th General Assembly of the World Medical Association at Seoul, Korea, October 2008, available at http://www.wma.net/s/policy/pdf/17c.pdf. The informed consent and the name of the ethical committee approving the study must be stated in the methodology section, and in the case of clinical trials, the register number must be indicated.

Patients' names, initials or hospital numbers must not be used at any time. In case of using pictures of patients, a consent letter for publication should be included.
In case of animal experiments, report that you have followed local regulations established to protect these animals.

Please, follow the guidelines suggested by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) published as "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals".  They are also available at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/. The Spanish version may be found at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/translations/.

Authorship

An author is the person who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the study.

The International Committee of Biomedical Journal Editors (IMJE) in its review updated in December 2019, recommends that “authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the word; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy of integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria forauthorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged”.

For more information, you may consult the ICMJE website, available from: http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf

It adheres to the recommendations set forth by the declarations of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

The following identifiers are required from authors: ORCID, Google Scholar profile link, CvLAC link, ResearchGate, Mendeley, Academia, Redalyc, among others.

Access, Processing Costs, and Article Submission

The MedUNAB Journal is an open-access scientific journal; moreover, submission and editorial processes, as well as acceptance for publication and the publication of manuscripts submitted to the journal, do not entail any costs for authors.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts received and evaluated no matter if they are accepted or rejected, they will be handled as confidential material: the editor and the publishing group will not share information from them, or about their receipt and evaluation, content or status of the review process, criticism of evaluators and their final destination to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. Requests for third parties to use the manuscripts and to review legal procedures should be politely rejected.

During the process of external peer review, they will be asked to handle the submitted material as confidential, that it must not be discussed in public, do not appropriate from the ideas of the authors, and once presented its evaluation they are asked to destroy paper copies and eliminate electronic ones.

The manuscripts that are received, no matter if they are accepted or rejected along with their respective correspondence, they will be stored in a repository, this is done in order to comply with the instructions from PUBLINDEX Colombia.

Plagiarism, Corrections, and Retraction

Plagiarism is one of the most common forms of misconduct in academic publications. It occurs when an author presents the work of others without permission, mention, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism can vary in its level of severity, and certain actions must be taken by the journal as the editorial body. The MedUNAB Journal adheres to the COPE algorithm https://publicationethics.org/files/plagiarism%20A.pdf in the case of suspicion of plagiarism in manuscripts submitted for consideration. In the case of plagiarism detected in a published manuscript, the retraction of the article will be considered following the corresponding algorithm: https://publicationethics.org/files/plagiarism%20B.pdf. 

Consequently, the journal also acknowledges that errors are part of the scientific and editorial process. In consequence, the MedUNAB Journal adopts the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding corrections and retractions.

  • Corrections: Issued when errors are identified after publication. These errors must be clearly highlighted without compromising or altering the original version of the work and the notice must be accompanied by a visible link to the article.
  • Retractions: Issued when the results of an article lack reliability, whether due to honest error or misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, data manipulation, or AI misuse, among others). The retracted article will continue to be accessible to the scientific community, but it will be labeled as “retracted” in all formats with a clear explanation of the reasons. The authors, the journal, or third parties can review the retractions, and sufficient evidence must be presented in each case.

MedUNAB adheres to the guidelines and international flowcharts for managing corrections and retractions, available at 

Policy on the use of artificial intelligence technologies

The journal adopts the policies established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available in its section on the use of artificial intelligence (https://publicationethics.org/cope-focus/cope-focus-artificial-intelligence), as well as the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding the use of these technologies, as detailed below:

  • Authors must disclose, at the time of manuscript submission, whether AI-assisted technologies (such as large language models, chatbots, or image generators) were used to produce the submitted work. If so, both the cover letter and the submitted manuscript must include a description of the technologies used and what was generated. For example, if AI was used to assist with writing, this must be described in the Acknowledgments section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors must describe this use in the Methods section.
  • Because the authors of a manuscript are responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, chatbots or other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authors must carefully review and edit all materials produced using AI to avoid submitting outputs that may appear authoritative but are incorrect, incomplete, or biased.
  • Authors should be able to affirm that there is no plagiarism of text or images in AI-generated materials. Authors must ensure that all cited material is properly attributed, including full citations.
  • Citing AI-generated material is not acceptable. The primary source must be cited.