Publication Ethics and Best Practice Guidelines | POTESTAS. Estudios del Mundo Clásico e Historia del Arte

Publication Ethics and Best Practice Guidelines

The Code of Ethics and Conduct of POTESTAS seeks, on the one hand, to show and disseminate the character of this Journal and, on the other hand, to act as guidelines to all those involved in the Journal’s different management and dissemination, and content selection, processes.

This is a formal document in which POTESTAS makes publicly known its character and its commitment capacity by showing its internal and external stakeholders the values that guide its activity in the moral sense that typifies it, the conduct norms that it establishes to modulate behaviours, the commitments it is capable of making to apply them, and their practical implementation.

The Code of Ethics and Conduct of POTESTAS thus affects all those involved in the Journal’s different management and dissemination, and content selection, processes.

COVER LETTER

The European Historical Research «Potestas» Group was formed in 1999 to carry out the interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of the manufacture, transmission, ritualisation and representation of power from the ancient world to the modern world through researchers of the Ancient History, Medieval History and the History of Art areas at the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón (Spain), the Universität Potsdam and the Universität Darmstadt (Germany).

To diffuse their research, the group created the journal Potestas. Studies of the Classical World and the History of Art, a periodical scientific publication open to all national and international research contributions that focus on analysing the relations that link Religion, the Monarchy and Power from the classical world to the modern world.

Recently, Potestas. Studies of the Classical World and the History of Art has commenced a second era after 9 years of fruitful existence. On the one hand, the journal, which was previously edited by the European Historical Research Group «Potestas», is now published by the Department of History, Geography and Art of the Universitat Jaume I. On the other hand, as of 2017, Potestas. Studies of the Classical World and the History of Art has become a 6-monthly e-Journal, which is managed over the OJS platform. The objective of this new era is to follow a process to improve the Journal’s quality continuously, dissemination and impact to contribute to social and human development by building scientific knowledge.

The actions undertaken to fulfil this objective include preparing, applying and implementing this Code of Ethics and Conduct. With them we wish to show our stakeholders what our character is and our way of being through values that guide our activity towards a social and moral horizon that typifies us, the commitments we make and the norms we apply to practically implement them.

Inmaculada Rodríguez-Moya

Director of the Potestas Journal

Castellón de la Plana, 01 January 2017

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

Potestas. Estudios del Mundo Clácio e Historia del Arte makes a commitment to the academic community by ensuring the ethics and quality of its published articles. As a benchmark, our journal uses the Code of Conduct and Good Practicesfor editors of scientific journals, developed by the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE). Our journal thereby guarantees an appropriate response to the needs of readers and authors, ensuring the quality of the published work, protecting and respecting the content and integrity of the articles. The Scientific committee will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary.

In compliance with these best practices, Potestas. Estudios del Mundo Clácio e Historia del Arte has a system that is followed for the selection of articles as well as the evaluation criteria to be applied by the anonymous, external peer-reviewers (double blind peer-review). Potestas. Estudios del Mundo Clácio e Historia del Arte keeps these criteria current, based solely on the scientific importance, the originality, clarity, and relevance of the presented article. Our journal guarantees the confidentiality of the evaluation process at all times: the anonymity of the reviewers and authors; the reviewed content; the reasoned report issued by the reviewers and any other communication issued by the editorial, advisory and scientific boards as required. Equally, the strictest confidentiality applies to possible clarifications, claims, or complaints that an author may wish to refer to the journal’s committees or the article reviewers. After the review, the Director, Secretary, and Editorial Board decide on the publication of the proposal and inform the author within a maximum period of 6 months.

AUTHORS AND AUTHORS RESPONSIBILITIES

This is an Open Access journal that provides immediate free access to its content on the principle of making research freely available to the public, which encourages greater global knowledge exchange. The publication works with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA) permits copying, distributing and communicating the text with authorship mention and a reference. It also allows for transformation and creation works with the licence indication.

This journal does not charge authors for the submission and processing of articles.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The text was not before published or sent to other journals for the evaluation process

The file has a format Microsoft Word, RTF, o WordPerfect

Online references are sending to the marked website.

The text is adapted to the editorial norms of the journal Potestas.

All figures and tables of content are in the right place inside of the text with an indication for evaluators.

The name of the author is not included in the text.

COPYRIGHT AND THE LICENSE NOTICE

Copyright is a law that gives the owner of a work the right to say how others may use it. Copyright licenses detail the rights to publish, distribute, and use the research. Potestas requests authors to have their article openly accessible online by accepting the Terms and Conditions that entail the transfer of their work to the platform to comply with publication requirements and thus ensure the widest possible dissemination of their work.

The articles published in the journal Potestas. Estudios del Mundo Clásico e Historia del Arte are protected and stored in the servers and repositories of the Universitat Juame I.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

The editors and reviewers of Potestas. Estudios del Mundo Clásico e Historia del Arte take responsibility for identifying and preventing the publication of an article where research misconduct has occurred. Under no circumstances the journal approves this practice. In the event that such a practice is detected, the editorial board will evaluate all cases individually and notify the author, giving him or her a 14-day period for the allegation.

The editors are willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies, when necessary.

STAKEHOLDERS

The Potestas Boards

Advisory Board

Editorial Board (director, secretary and editorial board members)

Male/Female Reviewers

Reviewers of articles of scientific journals

Scientific journal reviewers

Universitat Jaume I

Vice-Rector of Research

Department of History, Geography and Art

Publications Service

Male/Female Researchers

University Researchers

Researchers from Research Centres and Institutes

Researchers in general

Databases

Journal quality indices

Journal citations indices

Journal quality certificates

Journal impact index

Libraries

Libraries of Museums

Libraries of Universities

Public and private libraries

Resources centres

Scientific journals

Art journals

History journals

Archaeology journals

Society

Society in general

MAP OF STAKEHOLDERS

VALUES

NORMS

Quality

POTESTAS will conduct selection processes of articles by prestigious double-blind peer reviewers experienced in the given themes.
POTESTAS is governed by selection criteria for articles based on quality and interest, and on the impact that their content may have.
POTESTAS will bear in mind the degree of care taken with which the received articles are written in terms of the language’s grammar and richness, and if they thoroughly apply the Journal Guidelines and its Code of Ethics.

Integrity

POTESTAS will select reviewers of prestigious renown to review articles on different journal themes.
POTESTAS will ensure that reviewers’ reports maintain the minimum respect and dignity for people.
POTESTAS will remain impartial in the management, distribution and selection of articles.
POTESTAS will maintain all the information involved in the article selection process confidential.
POTESTAS will set up a Scientific Committee and Advisory Board of specialists in the Journal’s different theme areas.

Honesty:

POTESTAS will appropriately process all the information on the received articles, and everyone involved will take care to use contents correctly, and will maintain the confidentiality of all the data provided by authors.
POTESTAS will ensure that the reviews made during the article selection process are impartial.
POTESTAS will select articles exclusively according to quality criteria, and to the interest of their contents and their possible impact.

Originality:

POTESTAS will publish only original articles which have not been published elsewhere (other journals, books, congress minutes, webs, blogs or digital platforms (Academia.edu, Research Gate, etc.).
POTESTAS will publish only those articles whose contents provide quality scientific knowledge.

Equality

POTESTAS will base article selection on inclusive criteria, which do not consider the author’s/authors’ origin, occupied job post, academic level, language, race, gender or religion, but instead the quality and interest of contents and their possible impact.
POTESTAS will set up the Journal’s bodies (Director, Secretary, Editorial Board, and Advisory Board) based on specificity and quality criteria in the subjects of the Journal’s theme areas, instead of on the members or candidates’ origin, occupied job post, academic level, language, race, gender or religion. POTESTAS is committed to maintaining up-to-date and active the Editorial and Advisory Board.
POTESTAS will ensure an inclusive and non-sexist use of language in its publications, promoting commitment and good practice among the authors and reviewers of the works presented to avoid an increase in inequalities through the invisibility or lack of recognition of the most vulnerable groups.

Communication:

POTESTAS will optimally and continuously disseminate all contents.
POTESTAS will work transparently by offering true and exact information about the actions taken and decisions made by the Journal’s bodies.
POTESTAS will endeavour to seek the committed participation of all its stakeholders by applying and implementing the necessary communication channels.

Responsibility:

POTESTAS will make every possible effort to attempt to meet the legitimate expectations and interests of its stakeholders.
POTESTAS will ensure the dissemination, respect and follow-up of its Code of Ethics and Conduct.
POTESTAS will inform all the involved and/or affected parties if the Code of Ethics about conducted research or decisions made is not met.

Continuous improvement

POTESTAS will seek to improve its journal quality continuously.
POTESTAS will seek to continuously improve meeting the current and future criteria of the different national and international Journal Quality Indices.
POTESTAS will seek to continuously improve its inclusion in the most prestigious national and international databases.
POTESTAS will seek to continuously improve the dissemination, scope and impact of the Journal’s contents.
POTESTAS will seek to continuously improve its impact on society by building scientific knowledge based on ethical criteria.

COMMITMENTS

To correctly apply and implement this Code of Ethics, POTESTAS is committed to taking the following action:

POTESTAS is committed to contributing to social and human development by building scientific knowledge.

POTESTAS is committed to ensuring that the author’s/authors’ information and contents remain/s confidential throughout the article selection, management and publishing process.

POTESTAS is committed to maintaining up-to-date and active the Scientific Committee and Advisory Board that back the quality of the Journal’s contents, and that the different article selection, management and publishing processes operate correctly.

POTESTAS is committed to answering requests for publication in no longer than 4 months since it received articles.

POTESTAS is committed to constantly seek improvements that it can make to the Journal’s quality and selection processes.

POTESTAS is committed always to act morally and socially that confer it sense and credibility to carry out its activity.

POTESTAS is committed to establishing the necessary communication channels to warn about not fulfilling the Journal’s Code of Ethics, to report any irregularities in the article selection processes, or the improper use of information and contents from articles, to suggest improvements, to prevent possible ill practices, and to thank and congratulate the Journal’s quality and work.

POTESTAS is committed to informing the involved parties about any warning and/or reporting of this Code of Ethics not being met concerning conducted research, and about the measures taken within 30 calendar days since the notification was received.

COMPLIANCE

POTESTAS will make available a communication channel to its stakeholders to report and/or warn about this Code of Ethics not being met (Ethics hotlines). All warnings or reports will be dealt with the rigour and seriousness they merit, and also with the confidentiality and responsibility they require:

Confidentiality: the data of those who report incidents will be processed with the utmost confidentiality by those in charge of the system being fulfilled.

Responsibility: All reports and/or warnings about this Code of Ethics not being met will be investigated, and those who send reports/warnings will receive an answer from the POTESTAS Journal about the decisions made and the measures taken in 30 calendar days at the most.

Policy on best publishing practices, originality and authorship policy

Potestas only accepts original and unpublished works. Therefore, Potestas does not take any plagiarism, as well as self-plagiarism practices that do not correctly identify the source in a footnote and exceed 15% of the total content of the work.

Plagiarism is the total or partial reproduction of copyrighted content without explicit reference to its authorship or source.

Self-plagiarism is the total or partial reproduction of some of the author's content already published in other media, regardless of the language used.

On the other hand, if multiple authors have written the article, the person responsible for the work must guarantee the acknowledgement of all of them and their degree of distribution in outcome according to their degree of participation in the conception, planning, design, execution, data collection, interpretation and results of the work.

The journal Potestas will ensure the originality and suitability of papers through specific policies regarding the detection of plagiarism and self-plagiarism and the authorship of documents before the blind peer review process:

Declaration of authorship, good practices and transfer of rights form. This declaration, duly completed, must be submitted by the authors to the OJS together with the article proposal. Failure to include the Declaration excludes the article from the peer review process.
Guide to good practice in research. The author responsible for the submitted work must explicitly state that he/she has read and agrees with the Universitat Jaume I Code of good research practices, in which there is a specific section on originality and authorship.
Plagiarism detection. The journal Potestas uses the Oxsico tool (or similar) to detect plagiarism and self-plagiarism through the Universitat Jaume I's Request for similarity report (anti-plagiarism programme).
Ethical line. The journal Potestas makes available to those affected and the scientific community, in general, a communication channel (Ethics Line) to alert and denounce bad practices related to the originality and authorship of the works published by Potestas.

Conflict of interest policy

Potestas does not tolerate any conflict of interest either in the submitted papers or in the peer review process.

Conflict of interest. This refers to cases where a personal or collective interest may affect the research judgement and results of the submitted paper or the peer review process. For example, funding linked to the research results or a professional, parental, friendship or enmity between authors and reviewers.

Potestas will ensure that there is no conflict of interest in the submitted papers and the blind peer review process by applying different tools and processes to identify malpractice:

Declaration of authorship, good practices and transfer of copyrights form. This declaration, duly completed, must be submitted by the authors to the OJS together with the article proposal. The author responsible for the work must declare that the text submitted does not include any commercial, financial or private relationship with persons or institutions that may have interests related to the proposed work. Failure to include the Declaration excludes the article from the peer review process.
Guidelines for best research practice. The author responsible for the work submitted must explicitly state that he/she has read and agrees with the Universitat Jaume I Code of good research practices, in which a specific section on conflict of interest exists.
Plagiarism detection. The journal Potestas uses the Oxsico tool (or similar) to detect plagiarism and self-plagiarism through the Universitat Jaume I's Request for similarity report (anti-plagiarism programme).
Ethical line. The journal Potestas makes available to those affected and the scientific community, in general, a communication channel (Ethics Line) to alert and/or denounce bad practices related to the originality and authorship of the works published by Potestas.