Code of Ethics

Code of Ethics

Ethical principles and good practices

Fractal: Journal of Psychology has a commitment to ethics and quality of publications. Guided by the principles recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics - COPE (http://publicationethics.org/), we advocate ethical behavior from all parties involved in the publication process. Below, we list some of the policies we have adopted in this regard.

Editor's Duties:

Editors are responsible for each and every publication of the journal, and it is therefore incumbent upon them to:

- review all articles received, and it is their responsibility to reject or accept articles, based on their opinions;

- guarantee the desired quality standards, obeying the journal's objectives and its respective sections;

- avoid bad practices and unethical behavior, especially plagiarism and fraudulent information;

- select the evaluators/evaluators in an appropriate way, considering the thematic affinity with the articles and the production and respectability of the academic evaluators/evaluators in the academic-scientific environment;

- guarantee that the evaluation of the articles will be done by peers, in order to ensure the quality of the scientific publication, justifying any important deviation in relation to the evaluation process;

- permanently preserve the anonymity of the evaluators/peers, as well as the anonymity of the authors of the articles under analysis;

- evaluate the submitted manuscripts based solely on their importance, originality, clarity, and relevance of the study to the scientific field, without considering the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality, or political and/or ideological philosophy of the authors

- avoid disclosing any information about a submitted manuscript, except to the referees and editorial board members;

- prevent the use of unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript in one's own research without the express written consent of the author;

- prevent commercial interests from compromising intellectual standards;

- take appropriate action when ethical complaints are made about a submitted manuscript or published article, being willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies, when necessary;

- refuse to evaluate manuscripts in which I have conflicts of interest due to competitive, collaborative or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions linked to the manuscripts

- ensure that published research material conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines, reserving the right to seek guidance from the appointed Scientific Committee of this journal should the need arise;

- take all necessary steps in case of suspected unethical conduct. This duty extends to published and unpublished work.

Duties of the Editor in relation to unethical behavior:

- any unethical manifestation identified in scientific papers published in the Fractal Electronic Journal may be brought to the attention of the editor at any time, by anyone, provided that there is sufficient information and evidence for an investigation to be initiated;

- all necessary attempts should be made to obtain a resolution to the problem; in any case, the author should have the opportunity to respond to any allegations;

- inform or notify the author or reviewer where it appears to them that there has been any misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards;

- decide on retraction or formal withdrawal of publication from the journal.

Duties of Reviewers:

- assist the editor in making editorial decisions and, through communications, assist the author in improving the article;

- notify the editor immediately if they do not feel qualified to analyze the article or when they judge that immediate reading of the work will be impossible;

- treat the manuscripts received for analysis by the editor or by the author(s) as confidential documents, being forbidden to expose them to the appreciation of third parties;

- consider the relevance, correctness, originality, timeliness of discussions and references, adequacy to the field of knowledge, methodological rigor, and quality standards of the publication;

- fill in all the items of the evaluation form received together with the article to be evaluated;

- keep confidential privileged information or ideas obtained from reading the manuscripts, not using them for personal gain;

- conduct the reviews in an objective manner, expressing their points of view clearly, supported by arguments;

- identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors

- call the editor's attention in case of suspicion of plagiarism or self-plagiarism, pointing out any other published or submitted paper of which he/she is aware that is substantially similar to the work under review;

- decline to evaluate manuscripts in which you have conflicts of interest due to competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscripts.

Authors' Duties:

- must be academic researchers, engaged in serious and systematic work in their specific fields and subfields;

- declare, when submitting the article, that its content is original, that it has not been published or submitted to any other publication, in any language;

- identify institutions and agencies that supported (if applicable) the research financially;

- present an accurate account of the work done, as well as an objective discussion of its significance; the article must contain sufficient detail and references to allow others to replicate the work;

- give due credit to the authors of the works and/or works cited;

- do not publish manuscripts that essentially describe the same research in more than one journal; submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time and/or publishing the same article in more than one journal constitutes unethical and unacceptable editorial behavior;

- list the names of all co-authors who made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The lead author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors are included in the article; he/she should also ensure that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication. People who have participated in the research project should be listed as collaborators;

- immediately inform the journal editor or the Editorial Board member about knowledge of a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work and cooperate with the editor to correct the article;

- Commit to work as reviewers (referees) for other articles in their subfield of knowledge.