· Publications Ethics

· Authorship

· Peer review process and policy

· Open access policy and fees

· Copyright

· Anti-plagiarism policy

· Errata, corrections and retractions

· Crossref

· Information about funding

· Research data policy

· Researching involving human beings and/or animals

· Informed consent for publication

· Privacy statement

· Complaints

· Archiving

· Advertising policy

· Digital preservation

· Use of Artificial Inteligence (AI)

 

Publication ethics and malpractice statement (PEMS)

The Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement supports the combined efforts by authors, members of the editorial board and the scientific committee, and reviewers to produce a responsible scientific publication.

This statement is based on ethical principles that generally follow the lines established by the Committe on Publication Ethics (COPE).

1. Authors’ responsibilities

Manuscripts submitted for publication must be based on original, unpublished research. They must include the data obtained and used, as well as an objective discussion of the results. They must supply enough information to allow any specialist to reproduce the research and confirm or refute the interpretations defended in the manuscript.

Authors must be aware of and refrain from engaging in scientific misconduct, breaching publishing ethics.

Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation.

All authors must ensure that the data and results reported in the manuscript are original and have not been copied, fabricated, falsified or manipulated.

Plagiarism in all forms, multiple or redundant publication, as well as invention or manipulation of data constitute serious ethical failings and are considered scientific fraud.

Authors should provide appropriate authorship attribution and acknowledgement. Authors must refrain from deliberately misrepresenting a scientist’s relationship with published work. All authors must have significantly contributed to the research.

Authors must indicate the journal when they have a direct or indirect conflict of interest with editors or members of the Editorial board or International scientific committee.

No significant part of the article must have been previously published either as an article or as a chapter, or be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

If authors discover a serious mistake in their manuscript, they must report this to the person responsible for the journal as soon as possible, in order to modify, withdraw, or retract the manuscript, or to publish a correction or erratum notice.

If the Editorial Board detects the potential error, they authors must ten demonstrate that their manuscript is free from error.

Authors are obliged, for all materials submitted, to participate in a peer review process and to follow publication conventions.

2. Editors’ responsibilities

The Editorial Board will be impartial when handling submitted manuscripts proposed for publication and must respect the intellectual independence of the authors, who must be given the right of reply if they receive a negative review.

Members of the Editorial Board are obliged to maintain confidentiality about the submitted manuscripts and its contents until they have been accepted for publication. Only then, their title and authorship may be communicated.

Furthermore, no member of the Editorial Board may use data, lines of reasoning or interpretations in unpublished works for their own research, except with the author’s own written consent.

2.1. Publication decision

All contributions will be initially assessed by the journal’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is solely and independently responsible for selecting, processing, and deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal meet the editorial goals and could thus be published. Each paper considered suitable is sent to two independent peer reviewers who are experts in their field and able to assess the specific qualities of the work. The editor is responsible for the final decision regarding whether or not the paper is accepted or rejected.

The decision to publish a paper will always be measured in accordance to its importance to researchers, practitioners, and potential readers. Editors should make unbiased decisions independent from commercial considerations.

Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should withdraw from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential problems concerning articles under consideration. The responsibility of the final decision regarding publication will be attributed to an editor who does not have any conflicts of interest.

2.2. Peer review

Each article submitted is the responsibility of one member of the Editorial Board or of the international scientific committee, who undertakes to have it evaluated by two peers who are experts in the field and who evaluate it anonymously.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by editorial board members, members of the international scientific committee, and reviewers.

The Editorial Board will assess and acknowledge the input of all those involved in the review of the manuscript submitted to the journal. It will also encourage academic authorities to acknowledge peer review activities as part of the scientific process, and should decline reviewers whose submit reports that are of poor quality, improper, disrespectful or that are delivered after the agreed deadline.

2.3. Identifying and preventing misconduct

In no case shall a journal and members of the Editorial Board and international scientific committee encourage misconduct of any kind or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

Members of the Editorial Board and international scientific committee shall try to prevent misconduct by informing authors and reviewers about the ethical conduct required of them.

Members of the Editorial Board, scientific committee, and reviewers are asked to be aware of all types of misconduct in order to identify papers where research misconduct of any kind has or seems to have occurred and deal with the allegations accordingly.

In case of misconduct, the journal editor is responsible for resolving the issue. He or she can work in conjunction with the other co-editor, members of the Editorial Board and scientific committee, peer reviewers, and experts in the field.

The issue will be documented accordingly. All factual questions should be documented: who, what, when, where, why. All relevant documents should be kept, in particular the article(s) concerned.

The journal editor shall contact the author or publication involved, either the author submitting or another publication or author. The author is thus given the opportunity to respond to or comment on the complaint, allegation, or dispute.

In the event that misconduct has or seems to have occurred, or in the case of needed corrections, the Editorial Board deals with the different cases by following the appropriate COPE recommendations.

Great care will be taken to distinguish cases of honest human error from deliberate intent to cheat.

The editorial board will consider retracting a publication in case of misconduct, issuing an expression of concern in case of inconclusive proof of misconduct; or issuing a request for the correction of a misleading segment.

3. Reviewers’ responsibilities

All reviewers must know and keep in mind the Editorial policy and Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

The journal requires potential reviewers to have scientific expertise or significant work experience in a relevant field. They must have recently conducted research and/or work and have recognized expertise by their peers. Potential reviewers should provide personal and professional information that is accurate and that gives a fair representation of their expertise.

All reviewers must likewise withdraw if they know they are unqualified to evaluate a manuscript, if they feel their evaluation of the material will not be objective, or if they understand themselves to be in a conflict of interest.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by reviewers and members of the Editorial Board and international scientific committee.

Reviewers should point out relevant published work which has not yet been cited in the reviewed material. If necessary, the editor may issue a correction request to this effect.

Reviewers are asked to identify papers where research misconduct has or seems to have occurred and inform the Editorial Board, which will deal with each case accordingly.

4. Conflict of interest

Members of the Editorial Board and reviewers shall withdraw in any case of conflict of interest with an author or authors, or with the content of a manuscript to be evaluated.

The journal shall avoid all conflict of interest between authors, reviewers, and members of the Editorial Board and scientific committee.

The editors and reviewers should withdraw from making decisions if:

· There is a direct-reporting relationship between an author and a reviewer.

· There is recent, significant professional collaboration between reviewers and authors.

· An editor or reviewer is a collaborator on the project that is being submitted.

· The editor or reviewer has a financial interest in a company or competing company with a financial interest in the submission.

· The editor or reviewer believes that he or she cannot be objective, whether due to personal reasons or a financial interest otherwise not covered in the policy.

 

Authorship

The journal understands an author of a published work as an individual who has intellectually contributed to it in a significant form. Following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in order to be considered an author the following criteria must be met:

1. Having contributed significantly to the conception and design, or the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data of the study that resulted in the article.

2. Having contributed significantly to the writing or the critical revision of the text.

3. To have approved the final version of the text submitted.

Those who do not meet these three criteria can only be mentioned in the acknowledgements. In order to avoid the risk of ghostwriting or fictive/purloined authorship it is advisable that before the document is submitted all authors agree upon their contributions and upon the order in which they will appear on the list of co-authors.

In order to specify the contribution of each author to the work it is advisable to use the criteria established by the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy):

· Conceptualization – Ideas, formulation or evolution of the research’s objectives and general goals.

· Data curation – Managing duties to write down data (produce metadata), filter and keep record of the data (including the software code, whenever necessary to interpret the data themselves) for present or future use.

· Formal analysis – Use of statistical, mathematical, computational or any other technique to analyze or synthesize data.

· Fundraising – Securing financial support for the project that leads to the publication.

· Research – Carrying out the research, specifically conducting experiments or the data/evidence gathering.

· Methodology – Development or design of the methodology and models.

· Management of the project – Responsibility of the management and coordination of the planning and execution of the research.

· Resources – Providing the study materials, chemical reagents, laboratory samples, instruments, patients, animals, digital resources and/or any other analysis tools.

· Software – Software programming and development, design of software tools, implementation of code and supporting algorithms, testing of exiting code.

· Supervision – Responsibility of oversight and leadership in the planning and execution of the research, including the audit external to the core team.

· Visualization – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically the visualization and presentation of data.

· Writing – first draft – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically of the first draft (including translations).

· Writing – review and editing – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by the members of the original research group, and of critical revisions and notes. This includes the stages before and after publication.

The contribution of each author must be stated at the end of the work in a note named “Author contribution statement”

In order to determine the order in the signing of the article, authors can resort to any of the three standard practices:

· 'First-last-author-emphasis' approach (FLAE): the first and last signature are equally important. Between these two, the order of signature indicates decreasingly the grade of contribution.

· 'Sequence-determines-credit' approach (SDC): the order indicates the significance.

· 'Equal contribution' norm (EC): alphabetic order is used to acknowledge equal contributions and/or to avoid disputes in collaborative groups.

The opinions and facts included in each article are the sole responsibility of the authors, just as the ethic appropriateness of the same. Furthermore, authors must state explicitly that the authorship of the text is theirs and that the rights of intellectual property of any third party have been observed. Likewise, it is their responsibility to make sure they have the necessary authorizations to use, reproduce and print any material whose property belongs to a third party (tables, graphics, maps, diagrams, photographs, etc.). By sending an article for submission, authors accept that the work is original and has not been sent for consideration to or has been published in any other journal.

To avoid any possible confusion with the authors’ names and to guarantee the adequate attribution of publications and quotes, the journal requires the ORCID ID from all involved authors. Although, by itself, this cannot guarantee completely a correct identification, the adoption of ORCID constitutes an additional form of control against authorial fraud.

Changes in authorship

Any incorporation, exclusion or reorganization of the authors’ names must be done before the work has been accepted for publication and needs to be approved by the journal’s editor.

To request this change, the author must send to the editor:

a. The motive that justifies the modification of the list of authors.

b. The written confirmation of all involved authors stating their agreement with the incorporation, exclusion or reorganization of the list of contributors. In the cases of incorporation or exclusion, the confirmation of the author affected needs to be included as well.

Once a manuscript has been accepted, the incorporation, exclusion or reorganization of the contributors’ list will only be considered in exceptional circumstances. The publication of the article will stop while the request with the changes is evaluated. If the manuscript is published online already, the changes appertaining to a granted request will be introduced in a correction note.

Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest easily identified are financial interests such as direct employment, payment for consultancies, participation in a company, salaries fees, patent exploitation or payment for lectures. However, there may also exist conflicts derived from friendships, intellectual rivalry, academic competition or personal beliefs. When sending an article for publication, all authors are required to declare any financial or personal involvement with any public or private institution that might influence (even if unintentionally) the results of their work. Likewise, authors must declare any non-financial relation that may cause a conflict of interest in their work (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political or religious).

Conflicts of interest, both financial and non-financial, must be notified when the article is submitted. The rationale behind this requisite is not to impede the publication of authors who potentially may have competing interests, but to ensure that these can be identified clearly, so that readers are able to judge if authors may be predisposed or influenced in their work.

At the end of the work, a note referred to as “Conflict of interest” will be published. If no conflict exists, the note included will appear as 'None'.

 

Peer review process and policy

Peer review is the independent assessment of research papers by other experts in the same field. It is designed to check the validity of manuscripts and evaluate their suitability for publication. In addition to offering authors advice and guidance, peer review ensures that the manuscripts published are of the correct quality for the journal’s aims.

 All research articles published in the journal are subjected to a rigorous simple-blind peer review process based on the initial selection of the editor, the anonymous arbitration of external reviewers of expertise in their particular field and the subsequent revisions of the article’s own author(s) when needed.

 The Director will assign the article or note to an Associate Editor belonging of the Editorial Board, who will assign the article or note to a minimum of two specialists who will review it and provide recommendations to improve it, as well as give their verdict on the acceptance or rejection of the article or note. A definitive publication will require the positive evaluation of both. If such is not the case, the article will be subjected to a third evaluation. The result will lead to either the acceptance of the work, the need to introduce corrections to re-evaluate the potential acceptance of the work or to its final rejection.

 The simple-blind peer review process ensures that the assigned reviewers have knowledge about the identity of the author, but authors have no knowledge about who is reviewing their work. The lists of external reviewers that have collaborated with it each year are published.

 The Associate Editor, member of the Editorial Board, taking into consideration the reports of the external reviewers, will decide whether to finally publish or reject an article and will always notify their decision to its author(s).

 The content of each peer review is confidential, for use only by ABM editor and authors. The article review process is done with the Open Journal System (OJS) software that guarantees automated and auditable electronic registration of all interactions.

 The Associate Editor, member of the Editorial Board, taking into consideration the reports of the external reviewers, will decide whether to finally publish or reject an article and will always notify their decision to its author(s).

 A summary of the process is summarized below:

1. Submission of paper. The corresponding author submits the paper to the journal. ABM uses an OJS system for submission of manuscripts.

2. Editorial assessment. The ABM Direction screens the manuscript initially to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. At the same time, the document is passed through plagiarism check using Ithenticate Plagiarism Checking Software. The quality of the paper is not evaluated at this point.

Then, the Direction of ABM (editor-in-chief) check that the paper is appropriate for the journal. Only those papers that meet the scientific and editorial standards, and fit within the aims and scope of ABM, will be sent for full blind peer review. Manuscripts that do not comply with the formal requirements established in the authors guidelines will be returned to their authors, and those that do not follow the editorial line or are not sufficiently original and interesting be rejected for publication in ABM.

If the paper does pass the initial assessment it will move to the newt stage, and into peer review.

3. Assigning an associate editor. ABM has associate editors who handle the peer review. The editor in charge will always be external to the authors’ research and will not have any conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to the paper.

4. Invitation to reviewers. The editor in charge contacts other researchers who are experts in the field, asking them to review the paper. A minimum of two reviewers is required for every research papers. A period of one week be left for the reviewers to respond, in OJS platform, whether or not they accept the assignment.

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability.

5. First round peer review. This will be undertaken with the experience of the handling editor and the two independent reviewers selected for their recognized expertise. The reviewers will be asked to read and comment on the manuscript. They also will be invited to advise the editor whether the paper is suitable for publication in ABM.

The review criteria are as follows: originality, novelty, relevance, interest, quality and methodological rigor and practical contributions.

6. Journal evaluation of reviews. Once the handling editor has received and considered the reviewer reports, as well as making their own assessment of the paper, it may be rejected, accepted with modification or accepted without modification.  If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision. 

The decision will be shared with the Direction of ABM and will be communicated to the corresponding author via online system. The reviewer reports are anonymous and will be shared along with any additional guidance.

Decision regarding publication may be:

- Accepted with no changes (Accept Submission).

- Rejected (Decline Submission)

- Requested for revision and re-submission (Revision Required).

The maximum review time of the first round will be between 8 or 9 weeks. When that time passes, the editor will send a reminder message to the reviewer by on line platform.

The Direction of ABM is responsible of resolving conflicts, complaints or nonconformities expressed by the authors regarding the results of the evaluation process.

7. Revise and resubmit. It is very common for editor and reviewers to have suggestions about how the paper con be improved before it is ready to be published. These reports might have only a few straightforward recommendations (minor amendments) or require more substantial changes before the paper will be accepted for publication (major amendments).

In case of requesting minor changes, this follow-up review will be done by the handling editor. The manuscript will be accepted as soon as it includes the requested modifications, without the need for further revisions from the reviewers.  In case of major amendments, the revised manuscript will be re-submitted to be evaluated by the reviewers with the aim of giving greater coherence and fluidity to the process. This new revision lasts, on average, 6-7 weeks.

After this, the reviewers and editor may require more changes and authors may then be asked to make further revisions, or the paper might be rejected if the editor thinks that the changes were not adequate.

8. Final acceptance. The Associate Editor will evaluate the revised version and make the final decision in consultation with the Direction of ABM. If the paper is accepted, it is ready to move to production.

9. Production. The articles accepted for publishing will be checked by copyeditors, who will make the appropriate comments on them. PDF proof in editable form will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. The correction of proofs will be carried out by the authors themselves in the shortest possible time. 

10. Publication. Accepted papers will be published in the first available volume. Authors will know this information.

 

Reviewer guidelines

All reviewers must follow the following ethical principles:

• They must only accept to review manuscripts about subjects in which they are sufficiently experienced, pledging to complete the revision in the accorded period.
• They must be as objective and constructive in their review as possible, refraining from making personal comments that may be defamatory or insulting.
• They must indicate any potential conflict of interest, including any type of relationship with the author(s) that may bias their assessment.
• They must judge the author(s) by their merits, regardless of ethnicity, religion, nationality, sex, seniority or institutional affiliation.
• They must be confidential concerning the peer review process.
• They must provide a review report constructive, thorough, verified and adequately substantial.
• They must notify the journal’s editor concerning similarities between the article in consideration and any published work or manuscript sent for consideration known to them. 

All reviewers will send, on the OJS platform, a review report (one for the editor and another for the authors, which may be the same or different) and will respond to a review form, which will be sent to the Associate Editor. The review report will take into account the following aspects: importance, justification, clarity and format, methods, results/findings and discussion/conclusions. In the review form will answer scientific questions such as whether it is a new and original contribution, whether the topic is appropriate for the journal, the adequacy of the quantity of data presented, the quality of interpretation and conclusions; and technical questions such as whether adequate title, informative abstract, appropriate keywords, organization, easy to read/understand, written with good grammar and syntax, useful and necessary tables and figures, relevant and up to date references, appropriate length; as well as assess the overall quality of the work.

 The review criteria to take into account for the evaluation of the manuscripts are: originality, interest, quality and methodological rigor, scientific relevance and applicability.

 The review report will be used as a basis for the editorial decision. It also aids authors and allows them to improve their manuscript. The report should explain and support judgement so that both editors and authors are able to understand the reasoning behind the reviewer comments. Should also refer to page and line numbers in the manuscript when making specific comments, or better send a file with visible comments and modifications.

 

Open Access policy and fees

The journal is an open access journal, which means that all of its contents are available free of charge for all individuals and their institutions. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search and link the complete text of all articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without being required to ask for permission from their authors and editors beforehand. This definition of open access agrees with the Budapest Open Access Initiative,BOAI The re-utilization of works can be done in the terms listed under the license Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The journal does not charge authors any fees for article processing (submission, review or editing) or publication.

 

Copyright

University of Malaga (UMA) Editorial retains the patrimonial rights (copyright) of the published works. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) use and distribution license.

This license allows you to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) adapt (remix, transform, and build the material for any purpose, even commercially)

Attribution: you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions: you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

This type of license facilitates freedom of reuse and ensures that the contents of this journal can be used for research needs.

Authors are allowed to reuse published works, that is, the post-print (final PDF version of the publisher) can be archived. In addition, its deposit in social networks, in institutional and public repositories, in scientific social networks, in personal web pages, blog, etc. is recommended. With these actions, its circulation and earlier dissemination is favoured and with it a possible increase in its citation and reach among the academic community.

 

Anti-plagiarism policy

The journal guarantees the originality of all the submitted manuscripts through anti-plagiarism software provided by UMA Editorial. This policy ensures the appropriate originality standards as well as the detection of similarities between texts submitted for publication and those published previously in other sources. In the event of plagiarism, the manuscript will be rejected.

 

Errata, corrections and retractions

Articles and other kinds of documents published in the journal will be kept valid, exact and unaltered as much as possible. However, exceptional circumstances may occur in which a published article needs to be corrected, retracted, or even withdrawn. Such actions will be taken after being carefully considered by the Editorial Team of the journal, with the support of the staff of UMA Editorial, to ensure that they are done with the utmost guarantees and based on the rules set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

In such cases, the norms and mechanisms of control of scientific communication have several main procedures of rectification in accordance with the type, seriousness and consequences of the detected inaccuracy. These can assume the form of a notice of an erratum, a correction, a retraction or, in rare occasions, the removal of an article. The purpose of this mechanism is that changes are transparent and that the integrity of the academic record is always warranted.

Errata

Errata will be published when an error or omission made by the journal might affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal, but when the academic integrity of the article remains intact.

All errors will be accompanied by a separate notification. The notice must provide clear details of the erratum and the changes made to the document.

In such circumstances:

1. The article will be corrected.

2. A final note with the reference to the notice of errata will be included in the article.

3. Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.

4. The errata document will be paginated and have a DOI assigned.

Corrections

A notice of corrections will be published when an error or omission made by the author needs to be corrected, which otherwise would affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal but not the academic integrity of the article.

All errors will be accompanied by a separate notification. The notice must provide clear details of the erratum and the changes made to the document.

In such circumstances:

1. The article will be corrected.

2. A final note with the reference to the notification of errata will be included in the article.

3. Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.

4. The errata document will be paginated and have a DOI assigned.

Retractions

A notice of retractions will be published when a major error invalidates the conclusions of the article or in cases of misconduct in the research and/or publication process. Authors can request a retraction of their articles if any of the following criteria is met:

· If there is clear evidence that the results are not reliable, whether resulting from misconduct (for instance, fabricated data and manipulated images) or a mistake (e.g. an experimental error or miscalculation).

· If the findings have been published previously elsewhere without the adequate cross-referencing, license or justification (e.g. in cases of redundant or duplicate publication).

· If the research constitutes plagiarism.

· If there is evidence of fraudulent authorship.

· If the peer review process is proved to have been compromised.

· If there is evidence of unethical research and infringement of professional ethical codes.

Once the decision to retract an article has been made:

1. The watermark 'Retracted article' will be added to the published version of the article’s record.

2. The article’s title will be headed by 'Retracted article: [Title of the article]'.

3. A separate declaration of retraction will be published, titled 'Retraction: [Title of the article]', which will be linked to the retracted article. The editors of the journal will sign this note.

4. The declaration of retraction will be paginated and have a DOI assigned.

Removal of articles

The removal of an article will only happen on exceptional circumstances when the issues are exceedingly serious to be addressed through a notice of correction or retraction.

This will only happen when:

· The article is clearly defamatory or violates other legal rights.

· When the article is subject to a court order.

· When the article, if no action is taken, could suppose a grave health risk.

In the event of an article removal, the metadata (authorship and title) will remain and the text will be substituted by a document that indicates that the article has been removed for legal purposes.

 

Crossref

CrossRef provide a normalized form of locating the current version of a document. By including the Crossref, the journal acknowledges the significance of upholding the integrity of academic and scientific records, ensuring the access to their latest update.

In this way, the journal is committed to support the maintenance of the content it publishes and to register the modifications or updates that affect it immediately. 

 

Information about funding

All authors must state if their research has received private or public funding. Authors are required to indicate clearly during the process of submission of the article the financial support (whether from private or public sources) that may have been received for the recollection of data, analysis and/or interpretation of results, or even for the writing of the article’s text. Each author must provide individually all the information concerning the funding received for the research and work submitted to the journal. Said information includes the name of the funding entity, ID number of the fund and the description of the role played by the funding entity in the research process (selection of the hypothesis, design of the investigation/experimentation, participation in any phase, analysis, writing or review). If the funding entity has not participated in the execution of the research process, it must be specifically declared as well.

It must be stated:

(Optional) In the letter of introduction: this information should be included in the introduction letter sent during the article’s submission.

In the metadata: when the metadata for the article are introduced, the complete data about funding must be included (Title of the project, funding entity, program or call, reference) within the section 'Supporting Agencies' of Open Journal System (OJS).

In the article: information about funding must be included in the article’s final section, in a note titled 'Support'.

 

Research data policy

The journal encourages authors to store the data gathered for their research in repositories of renowned prestige, both field specific as well as generalist. The goal of this policy is to promote scientific development and ensure that research can be validated, reproduced and analyzed by other studies. To achieve this, it is necessary that all used data are available and with unrestricted access.

The chosen repository must be a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and open access repository. The register of repositories re3data can be consulted, taking into account that each repository has its own rules for deposit.

Data citation

Articles that comply with this recommendation and have stored data in a repository should indicate this expressively in the article, providing a description of the type of data, the name and URL of the repository, the identification code and the data of the license of use and distribution, under the heading “Availability of stored data”.

How to cite data

Data must be cited correctly, following a specific citation style and be listed with the rest of bibliographical references listed in the work. This includes all data used in the investigation, whether gathered by the article’s own author or data elaborated by other authors. Data must be cited correctly to facilitate their subsequent identification, search, recovery and reutilization. In addition to the complete bibliographical reference of the data, the citation must include the univocal and permanent identifier in which they are stored.

Example of a bibliographical citation:

Saiz de Lobado, E. y García-Delgado, B. (2022). Base de datos estudio hábitos de lectura y educación durante el COVID-19, Zenodo [Dataset].https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6539705

 

Research involving human beings and/or animals

All articles whose research has required human participants must be carried out in compliance with the ethical norms of the World Medical Association (WMA) and with the principles established in the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH).

Studies that involve animal experimentation or clinical trials (patients, samples from patients and/or personal data), must have the corresponding report of approval from a Research Ethics Committee whether at the national, regional or institutional levels. If no ethical approval is provided, authors must explain the motive, including an explanation about the study’s adherence to the criteria included in the DoH. In addition, they must state that the experiments have been carried out with the prior informed consent of each of the participants involved.

Both the committee’s authorization and the participant’s consent must be mentioned in the section 'Methodology'.

 

Informed consent for publication

Authors must guarantee the right to privacy of individuals involved in the study, protecting their identity in both the text and figures/images of the work, anonymizing the information to ensure the protection of personal data. Any identifying element that may reveal the identity of the author must be removed.
When an author wishes to include personal information or images of others, the corresponding consent document must be attached.
If, after the publication of the article, it is determined that any information within it has been used without informed consent, it will be withdrawn until this issue is corrected.

 

Privacy Statement

In compliance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council, regarding the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the free circulation of these data (RGPD), we inform you that the personal data you provide us through the portal https://revistas.uma.es/, via telephone, or by email will be treated confidentially and will become part of a file owned by the University of Malaga that has been duly registered with the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (www.agpd.es). Your personal data will be used to meet your request for information, the management and provision of the services offered by UMA Editorial, and to send future commercial communications that may be of interest to you.

Likewise, we inform you that you can exercise your rights of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council, regarding the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and the free circulation of these data (RGPD), by sending a letter together with a photocopy of your ID, to the following address: Bulevar Louis Pasteur, 30 (Campus de Teatinos ), Apdo. 3149, 29071, Malaga.

The data requested from the User through forms indicated with an asterisk (*) will be those strictly necessary to be able to provide the service or to be able to contact the User. In no case, the fact of not providing more data than what is strictly necessary will imply a reduction in the quality of the service.

The User guarantees that the personal data provided is true and is responsible for communicating any changes in them. The User will be solely responsible for any damage or harm, direct or indirect, that could be caused to UMA Editorial or to any third party, due to filling in the forms with false, inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date data. In the event that the User includes personal data of third parties, he must, prior to its inclusion, inform them of the provisions of this privacy policy, being solely responsible for its inclusion.

 

Complaints

The journal intends to answer and solve all complaints promptly and in a constructive manner. The Editorial Team and the staff of UMA Editorial will study the particular case of the complaint in accordance with its nature and complexity and any decision reached will take into consideration the recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Suggestions or complaints are to be sent to the journal’s e-mail address. All messages will be addressed and solved on a period up to thirty working days. However, depending on the degree of complexity of the complaint, the complainant will be informed if additional time is required to conclude the inquiry of the case.

The complaint must be succinct, specific and have enough data to demonstrate any possible fault to the journal’s publication ethics. If possible, complimentary documents as evidence of the particular request should also be provided.

Complaints beyond the journal’s capabilities like personal complaints against authors, editors, reviewers or the journal’s Editorial Team shall receive an answer that indicates the reasons why the complaint has been regarded as beyond the journal’s responsibility. In addition, the journal will refrain from undertaking the pertinent inquiry when complaints are addressed in an offensive, threatening or defamatory manner.

 

Archiving

The journal develops various procedures aimed at ensuring the permanent accessibility to the contents hosted in its servers:

· Backup copies

· Monitoring the technological aspects to prevent potential conversions of format or obsolete software.

· Digital preservation metadata.

· Using Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

· Using as an editorial manager software Open Journal Systems (OJS)) in its 3.1.1.4 version, an open source software with the interoperability protocol OAI-PHM ( Open Archive Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).

In addition, the journal stores its metadata in different national and international repositories to guarantee the long-term digital preservation of its articles, such as Dialnet.

Documents published in this website are available in formats easily reproduced. UMA Editorial will revise the archiving policy periodically.

 

Advertising policy

The journal does not accept any kind of commercial advertisement.

 

Digital preservation policy

The journal has, through OJS (Open Journal System), an archiving system that guarantees its digital preservation.

In addition, assigns a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which is a persistent identifier, managed by Crossref, which guarantees identification and avoids location problems due to URL changes or the like.

PKP Preservation Network (PN)

The PKP Preservation Network provides free preservation services for any OJS journal that meets the basic criteria. In this sense, with a view to their digital preservation, the articles of Research on Reading are archived in LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), thus guaranteeing the journal a permanent and secure archive.

LOCKSS

Open Journal Systems, which hosts Research on Reading, is compatible with the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system that guarantees the journal a permanent and secure archive. LOCKSS is an open source program developed by the Stanford University Library that enables libraries to curate selected web journals by regularly searching registered journals to collect newly published content and archive it. Each file is continually validated against records from other libraries, so any damaged or lost content can be restored using those records or the journal itself.

The archived numbers can be consulted in the LOCKSS Editorial Manifesto (https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/abm/gateway/lockss). In this way, the articles are progressively archived, thus guaranteeing that the stored digital information can remain and continue to be used in the future.

CLOCKSS

Open Journal Systems also supports the CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to ensure a permanent and secure archive for the journal. CLOCKSS is based on the open source software LOCKSS developed at the Stanford University Library, which enables libraries to preserve select web journals by regularly checking registered journal websites for newly published content and archiving it. Each file is constantly validated against other library caches, and if content is found to be corrupted or missing, the other caches or the journal are used to restore it.

CLOCKSS stores and distributes journal content to participating libraries through the CLOCKSS Publisher Manifest page: https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/abm/gateway/clockss

The Journal of Research on Reading is also complete and open access in different databases such as DIALNET, which guarantees identification and avoids location problems due to URL changes or the like.