Ethical standards
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement:
Última Década is committed to promote the highest ethical and quality standards for articles submitted. Ethical responsibility is present in the stages of acceptance, assessment, and publication of articles on the journal. In addition, Última Década expects all involved parties (submitting authors, editorial team, reviewers, and publishing company) to uphold these high standards of publication ethics. Consequently, plagiarism or any lack of professional ethics is prohibited.
Editorial team responsibilities:
- Article selection process: the Última Década Editorial Team must ensure the monitoring and safeguarding of the publishing ethics and they are, therefore, responsible for the articles selected.
- Non-discrimination clause: the article assessment will not be influenced by aspects such as the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, or political ideology of its authors.
- Confidentiality: the Editorial Team and the Editorial Committee must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding authors.
- Transparency and interests: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by Editorial Team members for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent. In addition, the Editorial Team must refrain from publishing any articles if a potential conflict of interest of any nature, either competitive or mutual, with any institution, company, author, etc.
Reviewers’ responsibilities:
- Confidentiality: any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be sent, disclosed to, or discussed with others.
- Assessment: assessments provide crucial information to editors and are influential to their decision-making process. Reviewers will provide feedback and work with the Editorial Team in order to improve the article.
- Commitment: reviewers must report and reject the assessment of an article in case of limited knowledge of the topic reviewed, or of inability to provide a timely assessment.
- Neutrality: reviewers must be neutral in their reviews and support their view with rational, sensible arguments.
- Acknowledgement of sources: reviewers must check all sources cited in the article assessed. In addition, they are expected to point out any substantial similarity present between the manuscript under consideration and any other published work.
- Transparency and interests: reviewers must refrain from participation in assessing any article when they are involved in situations of a conflict of interest of any nature, with any institution, company, author, etc.
Authors’ responsibilities
- Authenticity and Plagiarism: authors must submit only entirely original works and must appropriately cite. Plagiarism is regarded as an unethical action and will not be tolerated.
- Research Principles: authors must not submit any article which is similar or equal to any previously published material on other journals. This behavior is regarded as an unethical action and will not be tolerated.
- Authorship: the authorship of an article will be held by all those who have contributed significantly to the production, design, execution, or comprehension of the reported article. All those who have made significant contributions must be acknowledged as co-authors. In the same fashion, all parties who have contributed to fundamental phases of the research process must be also acknowledged as contributors.
- Transparency and Interests: authors must disclose any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. In addition, all sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
- Fundamental errors in a published article: the author must promptly notify the Editorial Team and cooperate to retract or correct the paper in if a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work is found.
Ethical misconduct management:
Recognizing unethical conduct
- Any suspicions of ethical misconduct must be reported to Última Década’s main editor.
- Plagiarism and falsification are notable examples of ethical misconduct.
- Any ethical misconduct where reliable evidence for investigation has been provided will be investigated until a result or agreement has been reported.
Investigation
- The editor is responsible for choosing an appropriate treatment for a case. The editor can request advice from the Editorial Committee, the Editorial Council, or external evaluation parties.
- Evidence must be systematically and rigorously gathered.
Sanction guidelines (in order of importance)
- The author /reviewer will be notified of any ethical misunderstanding or malpractice against the ethical guidelines present in the article.
- The ethical misconduct will be made explicit to the author by means of a letter or statement.
- A formal inspection detailing the ethical misconduct will be published on the journal
- An editorial comment on the ethical misconduct will be published on the journal.
- All works tagged as unethical will be erased and removed from the journal. Their reviewers and audience will be notified afterwards.
Author(s) of the work will be temporarily banned from publishing on Última Década by the Editorial Committee.
The journal adheres to the codes of conduct and guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Our journal uses a review system for the academic integrity of the writings and plagiarism detection through the Turnitin software.
