Code of Ethics

The Code of Ethics of Revista Fidélitas (hereinafter RF) is the statement of principles that frame the actions of detection, regulation, and standardization of scientific publication behaviors that are incompatible with ethics and international best practices in scientific research. This entails the application of the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki https://www.wma.net/es/policies-post/declaracion-de-helsinki-de-la-amm-principios-eticos-para-las-investigaciones-medicas-en-seres-humanos/

This Code consists of six chapters, detailed below.

Chapter 1. On authorship and contributions

Article 1. RF will publish manuscripts that must be original and unpublished and may encompass both basic and applied research.

Article 2. RF will reject manuscripts (in any language) that have already been published previously, in whole or in part. Manuscripts that are under review for publication in another journal or publication system will also not be published.

Article 3. If a document submitted to RF is shown not to have met the legal, technical, and ethical requirements consistent with international best practices and national legislation, it will not be accepted or evaluated for publication in RF.

Article 4. In accordance with the previous article, all manuscripts submitted to RF must complete the declarations of originality, Cover Letter, and adherence to and compliance with national and international research and ethical best practices.

Chapter 2. On the handling of complaints and appeals

Article 5. Authors may send their comments on publication timelines, inquiries, and other requests to the editor. This office will acknowledge receipt and provide the corresponding administrative response, based on timeliness, RF’s installed capacity, and the possibility of effectively resolving the request. A response must always be provided, whether positive or negative, regarding the request.

Article 6. Authors who have received a sanction from RF, whether regarding retraction (removal or modification of a published article) or a warning due to an ethical breach detected, may submit an appeal to the editor and, upon further review, to RF’s Editorial Board. The decision of this body will not be subject to appeal.

Chapter 3. Conflicts of interest

Article 7. Editors, authors, and reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest related to the review, issuance of opinions, and handling of manuscripts submitted for their analysis and study.

Article 8. Authors and reviewers must be willing to issue retractions or corrections when necessary, upon proper demonstration of the matter in question.

Chapter 4. Access to RF

Article 9. RF will maintain an open access policy for all its issues.

Article 10. Individuals or institutions wishing to access RF’s issues may download, store, print, search, index, and link to RF’s texts, provided that sources are cited (respecting their authors) and that use is non-commercial, and the texts are not modified nor are derivative works created from them. The Creative Commons license (Attribution – Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International) will be used.

Article 11. Authors will not be charged to submit their articles to RF or to have them evaluated by RF. Once an article is published, the author(s) may retrieve the files from RF’s website and store them on their web pages, attach them to their curricula vitae, or to institutional repositories.

Chapter 5. Ethical oversight

Article 12. Manuscripts submitted for review in RF must be original and unpublished.

Article 13. Software may be used to detect plagiarism in submissions to RF. Plagiarism will be considered to include verbatim copying without citations, paraphrasing without citing original sources, self-plagiarism by the author of the text in the manuscript submitted to RF without the corresponding citations, among other types of plagiarism.

Article 14. Articles will be analyzed by the editor, under the supervision of the Editorial Board and with thorough peer review. Information will be cross-checked, its veracity will be inquired into, clarifications will be requested when doubts arise, and manuscripts will be subjected to automated plagiarism-recognition platforms.

Article 15. Manuscripts will be required to include statements of conflicts of interest, and when appropriate, authors will be asked to provide copies of approvals from the scientific ethics committees of their institutions, evidencing approval of their research.

Article 16. RF is grounded in the principles and case law arising from the Copyright Law No. 6683 of the Republic of Costa Rica and is inspired by international best practices in publication and research ethics.

Article 17. Upon identifying plagiarism in documents submitted for publication, RF will reject the manuscript outright. If it is detected that the article has already been published in one of RF’s issues or is found in any other medium belonging to or external to RF or Universidad Fidélitas, the article will be retracted in accordance with international best practices on this matter.

Chapter 6. Intellectual property

Article 18. The works published represent only the viewpoint of their authors and not that of RF or Universidad Fidélitas. This implies that authors bear full responsibility for any issues, such as litigation or claims related to intellectual property rights or other disputes arising from the published manuscript. Authors release RF and Universidad Fidélitas from any liability.

Article 19. RF may conduct post-production of texts submitted for publication; authors, as part of their commitments, must sign their consent for their manuscripts to be edited in form, in accordance with RF’s editorial requirements and style. If substantive changes are necessary after acceptance for publication following peer review, the editor will request and indicate to the author(s) the modifications within a reasonable timeframe. If the author does not provide the modifications, the article will be published with a note explaining that the author did not modify the text.

Article 20. If an article could not be corrected in the original issue, an erratum will be added in the subsequent issue with the corrections sent by the authors. This will not change the original citation under which the article was published.