AUTHORS 

This section describes the guidelines and good practices for authors with the aim of ensuring quality research and maintaining the journal’s good reputation in every edition we publish.

The ethical guidelines that authors must follow throughout the process of publishing in a scientific journal are one of the most important aspects of a journal’s development. Authors should be aware that they are central to many of the aspects that may be evaluated in national and international journal publications. Below we outline certain guidelines that authors wishing to publish in RECERCA must follow in order to ensure originality and commitment in their writings. We recommend authors bear them carefully in mind before submitting any manuscript for consideration, as each author is wholly responsible for all the comments, allusions and data he or she includes in his or her writings. 

 

1. Responsibility

1.1  Authors are expected to take responsibility for all the data, statements and allusions made in the text. When the article is written by several authors, each one must clearly state his or her name, affiliation and specialty.

1.2  When an article is written by a single author, only one article will be considered per edition, or where appropriate one article (or interview) and one review if they are finally accepted for publication.

1.3  Authors must inform the editor if they decide to withdraw their submission, once it has been considered, before publication.

1.4  Authors must respond in a clear, straightforward and professional manner to the reviewers’ comments on their manuscripts before the deadline set for the new submission.

1.5  Authors must ensure they have the necessary permission, or where appropriate any licence or certification required, to include data, analyses, interviews or comments in a respectful and proper manner. Authors must not include personal data about any individual without their due consent.

1.6  Once an article has been published, authors must request permission to reproduce it (in whole or in part) in any other format, as a chapter or part of a book, and as future translations into other languages.

 

2. Transparency of authorship and co-authorship

2.1  On no account must a text be published without the consent of all authors involved in its production.

2.2  There are many cases where researchers have worked on a text but are not included as authors because their collaboration was either not substantial or purely technical. In this case, if relevant data were used from other researchers who are not included as authors, this must be acknowledged on the first page of the document with due gratitude acknowledged for their contribution.

2.3  Authors are expected to be transparent in their manuscripts, indicating any resources or direct economic funding they have received, as well as specific material or equipment for the research, sources of data and statistics, and technical, translation or other writing support.

2.4  The list of the article’s authors must reflect this transparency, presenting their names in order of the importance of their contributions to the manuscript in terms of the work carried out.

2.5  Authors must ensure that only those people who have made a relevant contribution to the text are included as signatories. The inclusion of “gift authors” must be avoided, namely, people who have not participated in preparing the article but whose name implies an authoritative reference in that particular field of research. “Guest authors” must also be avoided, namely, individuals who have made no contribution to the article but whose name is included as a personal favour. Finally, the use of “ghost authors” must be avoided, namely authors who have made substantial contributions to the article but whose names do not appear in the list of authors.

2.6  Any changes to the authorship of an article written by various authors must be agreed upon by all of them, including the author who has been replaced or eliminated. The editors of the journal must be informed of such changes with sufficient time to make the necessary changes prior to publication.

 

3. Honesty

3.1  Authors must present their research in an honest and sincere manner, without any undue manipulation or falsification of data. Authors are expected to be meticulous in their presentation of the research methods, results and conclusions, without any deception or ambiguity.

3.2  Authors are expected to always report the conclusions and results of their research, without omitting inconvenient or inconsistent results or those that do not support the main hypothesis.

3.3  If authors detect any error once an article has been accepted and prior to publication, they must inform the journal editors with sufficient time to correct the error before it is published. Likewise, authors and editors are expected to collaborate closely in correcting any problems that may be detected in the research articles.

3.4  Authors are expected to present their articles appropriately and professionally, with the due bibliographical references and citations of other authors. Authors must not include any references to citations that have not been read and used during the preparation of the article.

3.5  In the case of reviews, the article presented is based on another author’s research, and as such must give an honest report of the research described in the work and the conclusions drawn from it.

 

4. Originality

4.1  Authors must ensure that their work is original, and guarantee from the moment it is submitted to the journal that the same research has not been published elsewhere, or in any other language. In other words, authors must not submit the same work (in whole or in part) to two publications at the same time.

4.2  The only exceptions to the previous point are papers that have been presented orally. If authors wish to publish such papers that they have personally presented before, they must clearly inform the journal’s authors of this fact, indicating that the manuscript refers to proceedings from a conference, forum or other event.

4.3  If a manuscript contains material that coincides with a previously published article, or one that is currently in print or has been submitted for consideration in another journal, the author must refer to this fact, indicating the current state of the information included (in press, or published).

4.4  Authors are expected to comply in full with copyright laws and agreements. Tables, figures or lengthy extracts from other works must only be reproduced with due permission and reference must be made in the acknowledgements; such content must never be reproduced in such a way as to infer that the only author of these texts is the person presenting them as the author of the article in question.

4.5  Authors must clearly identify the sections of their research that are based on the work of others, including translations and adaptations of other texts; a citation of the original source must always be given.

4.6  Authors must not self-reference excessively in their articles. This type of practice should be avoided. Any self-references that do appear must not include the authors’ names to safeguard the blind review process. Authors should replace their names in self-references with the term ‘Author 1’, and in the case of more than one author, ‘Author 1’, ‘Author 2’ etc.

4.7  Authors are expected to avoid plagiarism, falsification or omission of any significant material in any of their forms. In other words, direct plagiarism, copying or paraphrasing substantial sections of other authors’ works, or the attribution of others’ results to the author must be avoided.

4.8  Authors must avoid repetition and self-plagiarism. Likewise, they must refrain from recycling substantial parts of previously published work in any form: by directly copying sentences or paragraphs, or by paraphrasing previous research. Generating various articles based on an article already published in another journal so as to increase the number of articles the author has published is also considered to be unacceptable.

4.9  The journal RECERCA reserves the right to investigate and evaluate any suspicions of plagiarism and repetition on a case by case basis.

5. Conflict of interests

5.1  Conflict of interests is understood to include all situations in which there are secondary motives or intentions in the process of publishing in a journal which are not strictly research motives or intentions. These situations could lead any reasonable reader to feel deceived or cheated caused by the perception that the relationships among the individuals involved in the journal are unethical. These are relationships of favour or conflict in personal, commercial, political, academic or financial aspects that could condition the judgement of the journal’s readers, authors, reviewers or the editor.

5.2  Authors, as the initial agents of the research process, are expected to disclose any financial support and conflicts of interests that could influence the way the article is interpreted. Any funding received must be disclosed in a footnote following the manuscript title, and where appropriate, any sponsor’s details must be provided, together with the purpose of the sponsorship.

5.3  When an author submits a manuscript to RECERCA, he or she is given the opportunity to suggest or recommend an area for possible reviewers based on their experience in a specific subject. Notwithstanding, when authors exercise this right, they must avoid any potential or real conflict of interests.

 

6. Blind peer review

6.1  Authors must respect the blind peer review process at all times. To this end they must not include any personal or other type of reference in the manuscript that could identify them. Anonymity between reviewer and author must be respected at all times.

Authors must accept the reviewers’ assessment, as well as the final decision taken by the editors or managers regarding an article’s acceptance or rejection. In the extreme case that an author threatens, insults or shows a lack of respect to any editor, manager or other member of the journal, this author will be excluded from any future consideration in RECERCA.