Policies regarding ethics and scientific integrity
Policies regarding ethics and scientific integrity
- a) Authorship and contribution policies
- b) Plagiarism policies
- c) Policy on falsification and data manipulation
- d) Duties of authors
- e) Duties of the Editorial Board
- f) Duties of reviewers (peer reviewers)
- g) Handling complaints and appeals
- h) Conflict of interest policies
- i) Data sharing and reproducibility policies
- j) Ethical oversight policies
- k) Intellectual property and open access policy
- l) Policies for post-publication discussions and corrections
- m) Privacy and information use policy
- n) Right of retraction
The editorial team of Sophia Journal at Universidad La Gran Colombia is committed to the highest ethical standards and adheres to the principles of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), the Singapore Declaration on Research Integrity, and the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy).
a) Authorship and contribution policies: Authors are considered those who have made a significant contribution according to CRediT criteria. Authors must provide: Pen name, institutional email, academic degrees, full institutional affiliation, and an updated ORCID code.
b) Plagiarism policies: Articles must be original and unpublished. Sophia uses Plagiarism Detector software to verify every manuscript. If plagiarism is detected during the submission phase, the article will be rejected outright. If detected after publication, the article will be withdrawn and a public retraction will be issued following COPE protocols.
c) Policy on falsification, data manipulation, and plagiarism: The team follows COPE guidelines to prevent fabrication or deliberate omission of data. Fabrication (inventing data) and falsification (manipulating results) are considered serious offenses that disqualify the author from publishing within the institution.
d) Duties of authors: By submitting a manuscript, the author declares under oath that the work is original, that they hold all rights to the included images/graphics, and that the article has not been published nor is it under evaluation in another journal (absence of simultaneous submission).
e) Duties of the Editorial Board: The Sophia Board ensures scientific quality in accordance with Minciencias. Its functions include guaranteeing impartiality, proposing suitable reviewers, and safeguarding the confidentiality of the arbitration processes.
f) Duties of reviewers: Reviewers must provide objective and respectful critical judgment. They must notify the editor of any conflict of interest or suspicion of plagiarism detected during the double-blind review process.
g) Handling complaints and appeals: Any claim must be sent to the journal's official email. The Editorial Board will evaluate the merits of the complaint and respond within a maximum period of two weeks through a formal minute.
h) Conflict of interest policies: Sophia requires total anonymity in submission files. Editors and reviewers will refrain from participating in the management of manuscripts where a personal or professional relationship exists that compromises objectivity.
k) Intellectual property policy: Authors retain their copyright. Sophia publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, allowing the work to be shared and adapted as long as the original source is cited and the same license is maintained.
n) Right of retraction: The journal reserves the right to retract articles that demonstrate scientific fraud or good faith errors that invalidate the results, following the COPE 2019 retraction guidelines.
