Ethical Procedures

Cognitio is committed to high standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process in accordance with the procedures established by international institutions such as: COPE Principles of Transparency and Good Practice in Academic Publications, Directory of Open Access Journals, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, FAPESP’s Code of Good Scientific Practices, and SciELO’s Guidelines on Best Practices for Strengthening Ethics in Scientific Publication.

These procedures apply to the management of the journal and its editorial practices, with emphasis on the relationships with authors and especially the evaluation of their manuscripts.

When there are data and subjects in the context of a research subject of submission to Cognitio, authors must submit the opinion of the ethics committee, the authorization of persons involved in the research, and clinical trial records where applicable. In case of doubt regarding these and related elements, the editor-in-chief may contact you to request that the data be completed.

If any manuscript submitted to Cognitio contains experiments on animals, humans, and/or vulnerable populations, adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki will be required. In this regard, failure to adhere to the rules of the main national ethical committees with regard to experimentation involving human subjects, as well as failure to follow the standards of national ethical institutions regarding the care and use of animals in research, will be considered a serious form of misconduct.

For the purposes of a better understanding, the following cases of mistreatment of research subjects may be taken as examples: failure to obtain approval from an ethics review board whose review must precede the conduct of the research; failure to follow the protocols approved by an ethics committee during the conduct of the research; absence of informed consent from human subjects, if any; mistreatment of animals used in research; exposure of subjects to physical and/or psychological harm without ensuring, to such subjects, information about the potential risks; failure to maintain the confidentiality of human data whose exposure did not obtain consent from the subjects.

The authors, reviewers, and editors must commit to fulfilling their duties during the entire process of evaluation and publication of the article, detailed below:

Authors' responsabilities

Content: authors of manuscripts that refer to original research must provide an accurate account of the work performed, as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Fraudulent or intentionally inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Originality and plagiarism: authors are responsible for the content of their articles, including from the point of view of ethics and originality of the text. The occurrence of plagiarism or self-plagiarism implies unethical editorial behavior and immediate exclusion from the evaluation system.

Multiple, redundant and simultaneous publication: authors must not submit articles previously published in another journal or websites. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time and publishing the same article in more than one journal constitute unethical behavior.

Sources: the work of other authors involved or cited in each article must be acknowledged. The authors must reference the publications used in the research and in the writing of the article.

Authorship: the authorship of the work must be restricted to the authors who had significant contribution in the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the study developed. All those who have made significant contributions must be listed as coauthors. People who participated in specific aspects of the research project must be cited as collaborators. The main author takes responsibility for including all appropriate coauthors in the manuscript, making sure that they have seen and approved the final version of the paper, and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Authors must mention in the manuscript any financial or other conflicts that may influence the results or interpretation of the submitted manuscript. All sources of financial support for research must be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published work: if authors identify a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, it is their obligation to immediately inform the journal editor and cooperate in correcting the material.

Editors' responsabilities

Publication decision: the journal has an Editorial Board and a group of ad hoc reviewers. The members of the Editorial Board must provide advisory support in relation to editorial policies and may act as evaluators in specific cases to settle decisions. The day-to-day operation of the journal and the submission of texts to ad hoc reviewers is handled by the Editorial Board. The article selection process involves evaluation by two or three peer reviewers in a double-blind peer review process. In case one of the reviewers approves and the other does not recommend publication, the article is submitted to a third reviewer, after due review.

Quality of publications and improvement of texts: editors must continuously seek to improve the journal and value the quality of the texts published, committing to take all necessary measures to ensure the quality of the material to be published. They are responsible for orienting the reviewers about everything that will be expected of them, and will be receptive to any and all complaints or suggestions about the editorial process of the journal, thus encouraging constructive criticism.

Academic integrity: editors seek to ensure that published research material conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines, requesting, if and when relevant, peer reviews in order to ensure that the research material has been of quality. They must also prevent commercial interests from compromising the intellectual quality of the production.

Transparency and respect: editors must evaluate submitted materials so as not to publish anything that is connected to or expresses prejudice of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, lack of ethics, or connected to nationality issues. Likewise, ratings that announce any prejudice will be disregarded.

Confidentiality: editors must not disclose any information about a submitted material other than to the reviewers and editorial boards, also ensuring that their identities are protected while ensuring the confidentiality of the submitted manuscript.

Ethics: editors have a duty to act in case of suspected unethical behavior, considering both published and submitted papers to the journal. The editors' responsibility for ethics prevention is to not only reject articles that raise concerns about a possible lack of ethics, but to contact the authors and others involved to seek explanations, taking appropriate action when complaints are made.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: editors must not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript in their own research without express written consent of the author, and must decline to evaluate manuscripts in cases of conflict of interest due to competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscripts.

Corrections, clarifications, and retractions: whenever it becomes known that significant inaccuracy, error or fraud, misleading statement, or altered report has been published, the error must be corrected and highlighted. If, after proper investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be excluded from the journal. The retraction must be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.

Reviewers’ responsabilities

Contribution to editorial decisions: the review assists editors in making editorial decisions, helping to improve the article.

Punctuality: if the reviewer does not feel qualified to review the article or knows that immediate reading will be impossible, the reviewer must notify the editor immediately.

Objectivity: the evaluators' judgments must be objective and indicate positive and negative points clearly and extensively, supported by arguments.

Sources: reviewers must identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors, bringing to the editor's attention any significant similarity or overlap between the manuscript in question and any other published article of their knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest: privileged information or insights gained by the reviewer through reading the manuscripts must be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain. The reviewer must not review papers with which he or she has conflicts of interest due to competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, companies, or institutions linked to the manuscripts.