The aim of this Code of Ethics is to ratify Melancolia's commitment for preserving and promoting compliance with regulations on good practice in scientific production. Therefore, the code that will be exposed next includes all those who conform the journal: Editorial team, evaluators/Scientific Committees and authors.

The code is governed by the standards proposed in the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which is internationally recognized and available at https://publicationethics.org/.

I. EDITORS

1. General duties and responsibilities of the editors

● Manuscripts will be evaluated solely on their intellectual merit and originality regardless of the author's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnicity, citizenship, institutional affiliation, or political philosophy.

● It will be ensured that under no circumstances will academic standards be affected by political and economic interests.

● The editors give careful due to the various demands expressed by authors and readers.

● They will seek to constantly improve the journal and the quality of what is published, with the support of authors, readers, evaluators and advisors.

● It will be safeguarded the freedom of expression and opinion.

● The editors will respect the integrity of the scientific works published.

● They will avoid that personal links, economic or ideological interests compromise the intellectual and ethical standards proposed by the journal.

● They will always be willing to publish the necessary corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies.

● The journal is committed to paying special attention to identifying and sanctioning cases of plagiarism. Any manuscript similar to other published work will be removed from the journal or excluded from publication.

● The editors will encourage the progress of research and the construction of new knowledge based on a system of external evaluators (peer review).

● They will contribute to eradicate the use of bad practices and inadequate conducts in the selection, evaluation and publication of research results.

● It will be ensuring the clarity of the instructions for author submissions, which include this Code of Ethics.

● Maintain the integrity of academic data, preventing and actively acting against plagiarism and the dissemination of fraudulent data.

 

2. Editor’s relations with readers

 

● All articles published in Melancolia. Revista de Historia del Centro de Estudios sobre el Esoterismo Occidental de la UNASUR are reviewed by evaluators external to the Editorial Team, researchers and professors of recognized and demonstrable experience in the field, under a strict policy of impartiality and objectivity; this applies with equal rigor to the texts presented by members of the Editorial Team.

● The editors are committed to reviewing the texts before a new issue is published, in order to ensure compliance with the rules of publication and the requirements of originality and scientific relevance established by the journal.

● The precise mention of the authors, their scientific and/or academic links, as well as the obligatory inclusion of a brief curriculum vitae where the main activities developed by the author are explained, are respected.

● We try to attend and answer the suggestions and complaints made by the readers.

 

II. RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS

 

● Authors will ensure that the submitted manuscript is not being considered or accepted for publication in another journal. If there are sections of their content that match the content of a published or submitted paper, they should cite the sources accordingly. 

● Renewed members of the Editorial Team may not change decisions previously made regarding the publication of already accepted papers unless serious procedural problems are noted.

● The procedure for the reception, selection and evaluation of originals must be published (through the journal's Statutes and Publication Standards, which are duly updated) so that any deviation or bad practice with respect to the described process can be detected.

● Authors are obliged to make any necessary corrections when so indicated.

● To obtain the corresponding permission to reproduce documentary sources.

● Dates of receipt and acceptance of all published articles will be included.

● The policies of the journal and its Rules for Authors will provide all necessary information on how to present their originals, the criteria for selection and assessment of the same, and the procedures for evaluation, editing and publication.

● When an author detects a significant error in his or her work, whether a published work or one in the process of being evaluated, he or she should bring this information to the attention of the editors and cooperate with them in correcting the problem.

● These guidelines will be constantly updated to ensure the best quality and assessment of the journal.

 

III. EVALUATORS

 

● The Editorial Team will provide the evaluators with an evaluation form and the criteria to be applied in this procedure, including: adequacy of the work to the norms and editorial styles established by the journal, scientific relevance, pertinent and updated bibliography to the developed topic, methodology, solidity in the argumentation and expositive clarity.

● Alert the editor of any work, sent or published, that in any way is similar to the one being reviewed.

● Be aware of conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, due to collaboration or any other type of relationship between the reviewer and the author) and alert the editor to these. If necessary, they should waive review of that manuscript.

● In this open review process, systems will be applied to ensure that the confidentiality of the identity of authors and reviewers is protected.

● Efforts will be made to update, improve and expand the list of potential evaluators.

● The changes and suggestions made by the evaluators will be sent to the authors, respecting due confidentiality and avoiding including personal comments that may be offensive or disqualifying.

 

These are considered "scientific misconduct":

 

Authors:

 

● Plagiarism: Copying in substance other people's works and ideas, giving them as their own.

● Total or partial duplication of research: any time the same is published and the title or summary of a work is changed, when the theoretical part is maintained and the demonstration of the hypotheses is modified, when the same work is translated into another language and published, among others. Also considered are: citing sources without having read them; not correcting erroneous interpretations of data observed in the articles of others; omitting data that contradict one's own previous research; releasing scientific results prematurely, before their review by experts; keeping the conclusions of a research study secret for several years; not sharing data and methods that would allow others to re-examine or replicate the experiments, or to carry out new research; accrediting false authorship or based on criteria other than the contribution to the work; exchanging quotes among friendly colleagues without their having participated in the study or in the article.

 

Editors:

 

● Try to add citations to articles published in your journal to the bibliography cited in the articles received with the aim of increasing your SJR (Scimago Journal Rank) or your IF (Impact Factor).

● Acceptance of articles by publishers who have a bias in favour of the advertisers' products.

 

Evaluators:

 

● To accept the evaluation of a work if there is not enough time to comply with the submission of the refereeing in a time considered not to delay the journal in communicating to the author the acceptance or rejection of his work.

● Do not notify the journal's editorial board if the text under evaluation contains plagiarized or manipulated data, as well as if they find any significant similarity between the article to be evaluated and another article already published or in the process of being evaluated in another journal.