Ethical guidelines

Estado, Gobierno y Gestión Pública adheres to the codes of conduct and guides published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Responsibilities

From the editors

• They are responsible for each article published.
• Manage, coordinate, decide, select, reproduce and distribute the journal.
• Ensure that peer review is fair, impartial and timely.
• Maintain strict confidentiality of all manuscripts and annexes received for evaluation.
• They will strive to satisfy the needs of the audience and the authors.
• Constantly improve the journal and ensure the quality of the published material.
• Defend freedom of expression.
• Maintain the academic integrity of the journal.
• Maintain the integrity of the academic history of the publication.
• Respect the procedures and deadlines agreed for evaluation and publication.
• Be available to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions.

From the -guest editor

• Support the editors in pre-selection and selecting the manuscripts nominated for the thematic dossier.
• Propose evaluators for the manuscripts to the editorial team.
• Maintain strict confidentiality of all manuscripts and annexes received for evaluation.
• Write the dossier editorial.
• Support and participate in the activities the journal provides for disseminating the dossier.

From the editorial team

• Permanently review compliance with the journal's ethical principles.
• Inform the editors if errors are found in the publication.
• Ensure the quality of the magazine in its formal and content aspects.
• Ensure compliance with the journal's publication dates.

From the editorial board

• Support and guide the academic activity of the journal, advising on general decisions and key areas for its strategic development.
• Support the dissemination of the journal in their academic environments.
• Review manuscripts when requested by the editorial team; they may carry out reviews only at the first filter stage of the manuscripts.

From the evaluators

• Evaluate impartially the content of the articles and provide suggestions to the authors to improve their works, using constructive language that is respectful of authorship.
• Punctuality in carrying out the accepted evaluations within the period requested by the magazine, they must inform the editorial team when they are prevented from evaluating within the committed time period.
• Keep the information confidential and not use it for any purpose other than evaluating the manuscript.
• Refrain from evaluating in case of conflicts of interest (personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious), the editorial team must be informed in a timely manner.
• If inappropriate behaviour is recognized, they must write confidentially to the editorial team.

From the authors

• Send unpublished works not being evaluated for publication in other media.
• Declare the source of financing received for its publication and any conflicts of interest.
• Declare all references that serve as a basis for the work.
• Recognize co-authors' work and verify that all the information contained is authentic and that there is no fraudulent use of the data or plagiarism.
• Accept the journal's intellectual property rights policy, and submit to the peer evaluation process.
• Correct the work according to the observations received in content and form, which must be done on the dates requested by the editorial team.
• For articles that report empirical research results, the authors must declare the approval of their institution's ethics committee and the informed consent of the participants.
• Use respectful language with the editorial team and other professionals involved in the magazine's post-production process.

Criteria to regulate the ethical performance of the publication

Transparency: The journal's editorial policy, peer review process, manuscript evaluation criteria and responsibilities of the editor, editorial committees, evaluators and authors are published.

Retraction: Editors may consider retractions when: 1) there is strong evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of a significant error (e.g., calculation error or experimental error) or as a result of fabrication (e.g., data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation), 2) constitutes plagiarism, 3) results that have been previously published on another resource without proper attribution of sources or communication to the editor, permission to republish or justification (e.g. cases of redundant publication), 4) contains material or data without authorization for use. Copyright has been infringed, or other significant legal issues exist (e.g., defamation, privacy), 5) contains unethical research, 6) the publication is the result of a compromised or manipulated peer review process, 7) the author(s) did not declare a material conflict (i.e., a conflict of interest) that, in the opinion of the editor, would have affected the interpretations, work, or recommendations of the editors and peer reviewers.

Retractions will be made through a note mentioning the reasons and bases on which the retraction is based to allow readers to understand why the article is unreliable and specify who is retracting the article (name of editors). The retraction note will be reported in the online version of the journal and in all those databases in which the article is published.

The article may be removed from the online publication in extraordinary cases, such as defamation, violation of privacy, or when the article is the subject of a court order.

Claims and appeals: Editors will receive claims as long as they are well founded. They will be addressed as far as possible, following the guidelines and diagrams recommended by COPE and the journal's internal rules. In no case will the claims resolution process involve revealing the identity of the evaluators.

The journal is committed to following clear and fair procedures to deal with any complaints or appeals relating to the publication of articles.

Any complaint about an evaluation process will be attended to as long as the author identifies possible errors in the review. At no time will the aptitude of the evaluators be questioned. Complaints will be addressed to the editor, with the respective arguments and evidence to consider the case, all via email from the journal and confidentially to the editorial team, avoiding copying other recipients who are not related to the manuscript. If necessary, the support of the Editorial Committee or one of its members who is an expert on the subject of the manuscript in question will be requested. A response to the claim will be given in up to three months.

The journal is committed to rigorously investigating all complaints and appeals and taking appropriate action to address any issues identified.

Promoting academic integrity: editors will ensure that published research material conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.

Protection of individual data: editors must protect the confidentiality of individual information.

Monitoring of inappropriate conduct: editors have the duty to act if they suspect inappropriate conduct (plagiarism, falsification of data, works previously published in other media, undeclared conflicts of interest, non-recognition of the corresponding authorship, among others). They have the duty to reject articles that fail to comply with ethical standards and follow up on alleged cases of inappropriate conduct. This implies seeking a satisfactory and correctly argued response from the authors.

Editorial independence: The editors must decide which articles to publish based on their quality and suitability rather than on the economic or political benefits that this may bring.

Use of generative AI and assisted technologies in the editorial process: Manuscripts will be treated as confidential documents. The editors and other editorial team members will not upload the submitted manuscripts or any part thereof into a generative artificial intelligence tool, as this may violate the confidentiality and property rights of the authors. The article's personal identifiable information may violate data privacy rights.

This confidentiality requirement extends to all communications about the manuscript, including any notifications or decision letters, as they may contain confidential information about the manuscript and/or the authors. For this reason, editors should not upload their letters to an AI tool, even if it is only to improve language and readability.

If authors use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, the production of images or graphic elements of the article, or in the collection and analysis of data, they must be transparent by disclosing in the Methodology section of the article (or a similar section) details how the AI tool was used and what tool was used.

Conflict of interest: The editors must have systems to manage his/her own conflicts of interest, as well as those of his/her staff, authors, reviewers, and editorial board members.

Plagiarism detection: Estado, Gobierno y Gestión Pública uses a system of review of academic integrity of the writings and detection of similarity through the Turnitin software, which is carried out in two rounds: 1) prior to sending the evaluation by peer evaluators, 2) once the corrections requested in the editorial opinion have been made.

The maximum percentage of accepted similarity is 20%; It will be ensured that the percentage is the minimum possible. The report issued by the software is reviewed and evaluated in detail to determine if the percentage returned is correct.