Ethical standards

Publication ethics

Quipukamayoc understands the importance of ethics in scientific publication, thus, it recognizes and adheres to the good practices, norms, rules, principles, duties and prohibitions that the actors involved in the editorial process of the journal must adhere to in order to ensure the maximum probity of scientific research and its dissemination in the community. From this perspective, it is committed to international standards of scientific publication; it fosters a culture scientific and moral integrity during the editorial process and seeks that the information contained in the articles be truthful, accurate and reliable; and it preserves the rights and good behavior of those involved, as well as the procedures during the publication process.

Thus, Quipukamayoc's ethics supervision policy is oriented towards preserving the ethics of scientific publication, for which purpose it adopts and adheres to the "SciELO Guide of Good Practices for the Strengthening of Ethics in Scientific Publication" and the "Principles of Transparency and Good Practices in Academic Publications" recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).  Likewise, it is regulated by the Peruvian norms related to scientific research, such as legal norms on copyright, open access and others connected to the topics of our journal; and specifically, it establishes the following minimum ethical standards that all those involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal must respect with in order to guarantee the quality of the contents and the moral integrity of the scientific publication.

Quipukamayoc´´'s principles, duties, and general prohibitions

  1. Principles
    1.1 Respect
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal holds a relationship of respect within the process.
    1.2. Probity
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal acts with integrity and honesty, avoiding any personal gain or advantage.
    1.3. Participation
    Quipukamayoc journal provides the essential conditions so researches, professionals and the university community, participate in the submission of articles.
    1.4. Standardization
    All the articles must comply with the structures established in the guidelines for submitting the manuscript within the Submissions section.
    1.5. Predictability
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal has access to complete and reliable information that allows the comprehension of editorial guidelines and standards.
  1. Duties
    2.1 Neutrality
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal has to show neutrality in the performance of their duties.
    2.2. Transparency
    All the people involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal has to provide complete, accurate and timely information within the editing process.
    2.3. Responsability
    All those involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal must  accept, in a responsibly manner, the fulfillment of their duties required in the  Evaluation Standards.
    2.4. Honesty
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal must act with coherence and uprightness within the evaluation stages.
    2.5. Rigorousness
    All the people who participate in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc journal must accept their tasks with accuracy, precision and professionalism, in order to guaranty the manuscripts’ quality.
    2.6. Confidentiality
    Every information or document related to the submission of the articles received is used confidentially and exclusively for the purposes of the editorial process.
  1. Prohibitions
    3.1. Conflict of interests
    Every party involved in the editorial process of Quipukamayoc  should avoid situations of personal, academic, financial, commercial or other conflict of personal interest that may influence the outcome of the article’s evaluation.
    3.2. Multiple Application
    The author must commit not to submit the article for its publication in another journal, book or any other media or broadcast platform until the decision of the Editorial Team, whether of publication or rejection, is received.
    3.3. Misuse of the journal’s name
    The author may only publicly include the name of Quipukamayoc journal when the article is classified as “approved for publication” and is visible in the journal’s website.
    3.4. False information in the article
    The author must not include false information in their article, whether related to citations, calculations or others.
    3.5. Offenses or use of inappropriate language
    Any offensive treatment or use of inappropriate language in the articles or int the communication with the corresponding author, will be classified as non-academic acts outside of the editorial process.

Author's responsibilities or behaviors

  • Present the results of their research in a clear, honest, ethical, and responsible manner, without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate manipulation of the data, complying with all the indications indicated in the guidelines for submitting the manuscript, sited within the Submissions section.
  • Describe the methods used in the research in a clear and unambiguous matter, in order that other researchers can confirm their findings so these could be repeatable and reproducible.
  • Provide the correct indication of the sources and contributions mentioned in the manuscript.
  • Assume the moral obligation of the content of the manuscript’s final version; therefore, any misconduct in authorship that is discovered would be denounced in any part of the editorial process and will lead to the definitive withdrawal of the manuscript.
  • Provide retractions or errors’ corrections.
  • Define the role of the corresponding author (author with whom a continuous communication will be maintained during the editorial process) and indicate, precisely, the contributions of each author of the article before starting the manuscript.
  • Send the publication request signed by the corresponding author, as well as the sworn statement that supports that the article is an original and unpublished manuscript, that is not in the process of being published in another journal, in addition to accepting the open access policy and having read the Evaluation Standards.
  • Expressly indicate whether or not there is any conflict of personal, academic, financial, commercial or other interest that may influence the result of the evaluation of the article.
  • Guarantee the compliance and acceptance of the Evaluation Standards established by Quipukamayoc, as well as the observations indicated by the peer reviewers.
  • Respect the original authorship of the information used in the manuscript; therefore, all sources must be correctly cited with the APA 7th edition format.
  • Ensure the originality of the manuscripts submitted to the journal and that they are unpublished research.
  • Compromise not to submit the article for publication to another journal, book or any other media or broadcast platform until the Editorial team’s decision, whether of publication or rejection, is received.
  • Maintain professional and respectful communication with the journal's editorial team throughout the editorial process.

Any lack or breach of the aforementioned duties implies unethical conduct; therefore, the request for publication of the proposed article is rendered ineffective.

Responsibilities or behaviors of the members of the Editorial Team

  • Ensure impartiality during the process of evaluating the manuscript.
  • Reassure the effective communication with the authors concerning the results of the editorial process.
  • Verify that the received manuscripts do not incur in plagiarism, fraud, or misconduct; for which, there are mechanisms to avoid and fix it within the framework of the anti-plagiarism policy.
  • Publish clarifications or corrections of the articles published in the electronic or printed version of Quipukamayoc, in the event of any case indicated in the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
  • Be willing to post corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when necessary.
  • Guarantee the confidentiality of the expert peer reviewers.
  • Decide about the articles to be published in the journal.
  • Evaluate the articles and their content without distinction of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality or political philosophy of the authors.
  • Adopt editorial policies that promote maximum transparency and complete and honest information.
  • Ensure the quality, scientific rigor and originality of manuscripts.
  • Ensure that manuscripts are refereed by peer reviewers external to the institution and avoid any possible conflict of interest.
  • Accept or reject articles according to the thematic relevance, academic considerations and/or editorial policies established for the compliance of the journal's purpose.

Responsibilities or behaviors of the expert peer reviewers external to the institution

  • Guarantee compliance and acceptance of the Evaluation Standards established by Quipukamayoc.
  • Carry out the article’s examination in accordance with the Evaluation Standards, ensuring confidentiality, objectivity and impartiality before, during and after the evaluation of the manuscript.
  • Reserve the confidentiality of the data or information contained in the manuscript. The external peer reviewer cannot use the data or information obtained from the manuscript and use them for their own benefit.
  • Not to give an opinion on the manuscript based on any type of discrimination (racial, political, ideological, religious or cultural).
  • Evaluate the manuscripts in the shortest possible time in order to meet the deadlines.
  • Notify the Editorial Team of any circumstance that the author considers may prevent the examination of the article.
  • Indicate precisely the bibliographical references of fundamental works, possibly left aside or forgotten by the author.
  • Warn the journal’s Editorial team about any similarities or overlaps of the manuscript with other published works.
  • Give sufficient reasons for the evaluation of the manuscript, always using the review format.

Under any lack or failure to comply with the aforementioned duties, the Editorial Team reserves the right to issue any proof or acknowledgment of their participation as an external reviewer.

Complaints regarding an ethical violation, procedure and measures

Any person who becomes aware of or has been affected by the commission of an ethical infraction can denounce it in good faith and present some means of conviction to the journal's editor.

When the Editor becomes aware of or receives a complaint regarding an ethical infraction, they carry out the corresponding inquiries in order to rule out its configuration or, if there are elements of conviction, issue a report of preliminary observations in which it is clearly detailed and specify the possible committed infractions. Depending on the nature of the infraction, the required inquiries are made in accordance with the provisions of the COPE principles.

Potential offenders have a period of fifteen days to clarify, responsibly and honestly, the observations, which must be sent to the general editor, who evaluates the clarifications of the possible infringers in order to finally determine if such infractions were configured or not.

Once the complaint is received, the journal’s Editor makes the corresponding inquiries and takes any of the following measures is applied:

    1. Measures against the authors
      Rejection of the submitted manuscript and the communication of what happened to the institution to which the author is affiliated. Additionally, one of the following measures can be effected, depending on the seriousness of the specifics:
      1. Temporary ban to submit a new article, with a maximum period of one to three years.
      2. Publication of a note about the case on the journal's website and social networks.
    2. Measures against the members of the Editorial Team
      If a member of the journal’s Editorial team commits an ethical infraction, he or she must publicly apologize or resign, depending on the magnitude of the infraction, without prejudice to notifying the institution that promotes the journal or the institution to which it is affiliated.
    3. Measures against external peer reviewers
      If an external peer reviewer commits an ethical violation, without prejudice to qualifying him negatively in the database of reviewers, what happened is communicated to the institution to which they are affiliated. Additionally, depending on the seriousness of the facts, one of the following measures may be taken:
      1. Exclusion from the list of external reviewers
      2. Publication of a note on the case

Conflict of interest policy

Contributors to the journal (authors of an article and external peer reviewers), as well as members of the Editorial Team, must disclose any conflict of interest that could influence the manuscript or during the evaluation and approval stage. The conflict of interest statement includes the sources of funding for the manuscript.

In case of controversy, Quipukamayoc commits to resolve these cases through the Editorial Team. Throughout the editorial process, the journal will encourage the responsibilities and good behavior of collaborators and members of the Editorial Team.

Complaints and/or appeals policy

Quipukamayoc journal assists and resolves complaints and/or appeals related to non-compliance with some of the practices outlined in the editorial process.

  1. If the complaint and/or appeal is related to the non-publication of the manuscript, the Editor will evaluate the arguments thoroughly without implying a commitment to publish. 
  2. If the complaint and/or appeal is related to cases of plagiarism, the Editor will use the Turnitin anti-plagiarism software for its determination.
  3. If the complaint and/or appeal is related to the results of the external peer reviewer's evaluation, the Editor will verify the author's arguments and, if necessary, request the evaluation of a new external peer reviewer.

Whenever possible, complaints and/or appeals will be handled by the Editor of the journal, and if necessary, by the head of the Editorial Team. In case the applicant is not satisfied with the decision of the Editorial Team director, he/she may complain or appeal to a higher instance, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

For any of the above cases, the interested party should send a letter to the Editor of the journal to the following e-mail address: editorrevistaquipu.fcc@unmsm.edu.pe, duly motivated and justified.

The Editor reviews the letter and responds to it within ten calendar days.

Interpretation of ethical standards

Any doubts about the meaning and scope of the ethical norms are interpreted by the Editor and the director of the journal, in coordination with the members of the editorial Committee, in accordance with the international standards of publication ethics and the sources used for the elaboration of said norms.

Article correction and retraction policy

The correction of a published article is the amendment of the error made in the publication process of Quipukamayoc articles. If the amendment of the error is minor, it is made directly to the original article; and if the amendment of the error is major, the following procedures are applied:

  1. Errata
    Errata are material mistakes made by the Editor in the article, errors that violate the academic integrity of the registered article, the reputation of the author and even of the journal itself. Thus, an erratum notice is published when it is necessary to correct one of the errors indicated, which should clearly detail the error and the changes that were made in the manuscript. In this case, the erratum is registered online free of charge and should be linked to the corrected article.
  2. Corrections
    Corrections or amendments are notifications of a significant error made by the author of the article. Such corrections must be approved by the Editor of the journal, registered online free of charge, and linked to the article.
  3. Retractions
    If Quipukamayoc detects and confirms cases of plagiarism, fraud or any ethical misconduct in publication, the Editorial Team rejects or retracts the article and proceeds according to the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE - http://publicationethics.org/) that contemplates the determination of the fault of the author or authors, as well as the occurrence of the misconduct.
    The retraction of the manuscript consists of communicating the decision of the Editorial Team to the author, the other authors, the institution to which he/she belongs, the funding source, the ethics committee of his/her institution, and other scientific journals.
    The retracted article will be replaced by a file with a watermark indicating “article retracted” and the abstract will be replaced by an explanation of the case and an exhortation not to cite it, leaving the rest of the information unchanged. Likewise, the databases will be informed of what happened, and in the next issue of the journal, a retraction note will be published, which will have the same title of the article and the abstract included in the retracted article.

Data exchange and reproducibility policy

Quipukamayoc, committed to Open Science communication practices, encourages authors to exchange information that allows the reproducibility and reuse of data. Thus, it encourages authors to make available as much of the underlying data of their manuscript as possible (respecting the privacy of the authors); or minimally, data necessary to reproduce the findings presented in the article.

Anti-plagiarism policy

Plagiarism and misconduct

Quipukamayoc considers plagiarism as publication fraud, which is defined as: the appropriation of the ideas, processes, results or words of another author or authors without due recognition; the reuse of significant parts of a previously published work by an author without proper citing; presenting someone else's work as their own; the lack of quotation marks or indentation in a textual quotation; giving incorrect information about the true source of a quote; the paraphrasing of a source without acknowledging the same; excessive paraphrasing even if the source is mentioned.

The practices constituting scientific fraud are the following:

      • Fabrication (invention of data or results), falsification or omission of data (manipulation of research materials, equipment, processes to alter data or results, as well as change or omission of data or results) and plagiarism.
      • Duplicated or redundant publication. That publication of a manuscript which content is substantially similar to that of another previously published.
      • Conflicts of authorship. Refered to the type of contribution: who the authors of the manuscript really are, the number of authors, the order in which they appear in the article (main author/co-authors), ghost authorship, authorship dispute or undeserved authorship. Failure to determine authorship before or during the development of the research may cause conflicts between those responsible for a manuscript.

Quipukamayoc adheres to the anti-plagiarism principles of the Publication Ethics Committee Standards (COPE- http://publicationethics.org/). In addition, it does not tolerate plagiarism, fraud, or misconduct, so it establishes mechanisms to prevent and remedy it. As it follows:

      • During the editorial process, Quipukamayoc avoids the publication of works that contain plagiarism, fraud and misconduct by using peer reviewers and the revision of writing through the Turnitin platform. If the similarity index is greater than 10%, the originality of the manuscript is considered compromised and the author is informed that it cannot be accepted for evaluation and the editorial process is terminated immediately.
      • After the article’s publication, if Quipukamayoc Editorial team detects or is alerted and confirms cases of plagiarism, fraud or misconduct, it proceeds according to the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE- http://publicationethics.org/) and the journal can execute the retraction of the article.

Plagiarism is configured under the following modalities:

      1. Direct or textual plagiarism
        When plagiarism involves copying, as a whole or partially, a work not attributable to the author without properly citing it with quotation marks or indentation, as required in the submitted manuscript.
      2. Self-plagiarism or duplication
        When an author reuses parts of his previously published work without properly citing it with quotation marks or indentation, as required, in the postulated article. Even, on some occasions, different words are used to make it seem in another sense.
      3. Paraphrasing plagiarism and paraphrasing plagiarism
        Paraphrasing plagiarism occurs when the plagiarism implies the paraphrasing of a work not attributable to the author without properly citing it in the postulated article.
        Paraphrase plagiarism is configured when a paraphrase made in another's work is plagiarized, without consigning its author. This infraction occurs even if the sources that are the object of the paraphrase are duly recorded at the end of the text.
      4. Plagiarism dating
        When the author copies the textual quotations or paraphrases made in another work, which, analyzed as a whole, show that they have been taken from said work.
      5. Hybrid plagiarism
        When plagiarism involves the combination or a mixture of quotes from different works, conjugating them in the same sentence or paragraph without mentioning the authors. This infringement can be configured even if in these sentences or paragraphs some of the works used are correctly cited in order to disguise the infringement.
      6. Plagiarism of figures or tables
        All figures or tables must indicate their source correctly; otherwise, it is considered as plagiarism. In the case of self-made figures and tables, their content comes from another source, so the citation rules must be followed.
      7. Plagiarism of unpublished or similar works
        The obligation to duly cite extends to works that have not been published, communications via email or other cases. Consequently, it is considered plagiarism not to record such sources, which also require the express, clear and prior consent of their authors to be used.
      8. Plagiarism by translation
        When ideas, processes, results or words of another author or authors are translated to be used in the manuscript, without adequate citation.

Plagiarism as a crime

Regardless of the sanctions provided by the journal, it must be taken into account that plagiarism is classified as a crime in article 219 of the Peruvian Penal Code, and can be punished with a custodial sentence of not less than four years and not more than eight years. In this way, the penalty for plagiarism applies to anyone who copies or reproduces a work or a part of it verbatim (a paragraph, an idea, some lines, a chapter or a section, etc.) and disseminates it, attributing it as a work or own ideas.