Policies

Policies

Publication ethics 

These rules must be read by the authors before submitting an article. Likewise, reviewers and editors will ensure compliance with them. Innovare bases its standards on international ethical principles concerning the publication and editing of scientific journals. These standard rules can be found in pages such as: a) Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org), and b) International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) http://www.icmje.org/. The most recent versions should always be followed. While complying with these standards, Innovare maintains independence in its editorial decisions.

References and sites of interest on the subject: 

 

Authorship and contributions 

Each author of an article must meet these requirements: Have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) Conception and design of the study, or data collection, or data analysis; (2) Writing or major critical revision to the content of the article, (3) Final approval of the version of the article to be submitted to the journal, and (4) Agreement of responsibility for all aspects of the paper to ensure its accuracy, completeness, and any need for follow-up. Other contributors who do not meet these requirements may be mentioned in the acknowledgements section. 

The author contributions section should be filled out without exception, clarifying the contribution of each author according to the above parameters. In no way are courtesy authorships and others that do not meet the criteria described in the previous paragraph acceptable. Individual contributions can be made following the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) criteria, which can be found at: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/journal-authors/policies-and-ethics/credit-author-statement. 

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the listed authors meet the criteria to be included, and when submitting the paper, he/she is acting on their behalf. Therefore, he/she must maintain documentation that all authors were informed and that they authorized the final version.  

 

Originality and plagiarism 

Articles submitted to Innovare must be unpublished, the product of the authors' original work, done with ethical standards. They must be works not previously published or considered for publication in another journal at the same time. Exceptions to this are short mentions in memoirs or other printed or digital documents, which must be cited or reported by the authors at the time of submitting their article. The journal will make use of the appropriate software to review for plagiarism each article that meets the criteria for peer review.  

Plagiarism is an unacceptable practice and will result in the immediate rejection of an article. Plagiarism will be considered when the words, ideas or concepts of another author are intentionally presented in an article as if they were their own without giving credit to the author, either in a textual quotation or paraphrasing. 

An article will be considered to contain false information when the author or authors present fabricated data and results, or when data and information presented have been taken from other sources, but distorted or manipulated to present a desired result. Publication misconduct such as plagiarism, fabrication, fraud, duplication, and undeserved authorship are not acceptable and will result in rejection of the article and other actions at the discretion of the Editorial Committee. Authors should be subject to the Editorial Board's request for study data to review, verify or validate results of the article in process of publication or already published. Likewise, the Editorial Committee will ensure that the articles include a clear and well-defined methods section for the reproducibility of the study.  

 

Intellectual Property 

In addition to ensuring that the authorship criteria are met, authors should be aware of and respect copyright, intellectual property, citation and referencing protocols. Innovare manages proprietary rights under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). This license permits copying and redistribution of the material in any medium or format, as well as remixing, transforming and building upon the material for any purpose, except for commercial purposes. The authors retain the intellectual property of the articles published in Innovare. Proper credit must be given to the author, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes have been made.  

 

Conflicts of interest  

Authors should state any funding or interest conflicts that could influence the content of the article. It is necessary to disclose the financing related to the elaboration of the work. Other potential conflicts of interest include legal, commercial or professional aspects that may influence the development of the research. All articles must include this section regardless of whether or not they have to declare a conflict. For more details on the prevention, types, and treatment of conflicts of interest, it is suggested to consult the criteria of the World Association of Medical Editors (http://www.wame.org/conflict-of-interest-in-peer-reviewed-medical-journals) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) http://www.icmje.org/. These criteria are applicable beyond the area of health sciences. 

Along with their article, authors should submit the conflict-of-interest form, which should be downloaded below: http://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/. The conflict-of-interest form follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The form should be downloaded to your computer, completed and submitted with your article to Innovare's Open Journal Systems (OJS). If you have questions or comments you can email innovare@unitec.edu. 

 

Informed consent 

Innovare adheres to those international conventions that protect the involvement of humans and animals in scientific studies. The involvement of humans in scientific studies shall be governed by the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). When applicable, the Editorial Board may request verification of study acceptance by an active institutional ethics committee.  

 

Ethical misconduct or conflicts 

Violations of scientific honesty and publication will be handled according to the algorithms already published by COPE and others (https://publicationethics.org). The Editorial Committee will resolve conflicts between authors and others, promoting respect and integrity during their resolution. Written communications of any complaint or correction by publication will be archived. The Editor-in-Chief may convene the Editorial Committee to discuss specific cases. 

 

Complaints or Corrections by Publication 

If authors discover errors or situations warranting corrections, they must immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief of Innovare at the email address innovare@unitec.edu for the respective erratum, correction, or, in the last instance, retraction. In some cases, it may be appropriate to submit an article as a Letter to the Editor. All complaints or appeals by the authors will be handled confidentially and resolved promptly. 

 

Citations 

Citations are important for measuring the impact of authors and their publications, but citation manipulation is unacceptable. Anomalies such as excessive self-citation within the author's own articles or excessive citation of articles from the journal where the work is published should be avoided. To learn more about best practices in this regard, it is suggested to review the sites recommended at the beginning of this section.  

 

Use of Artificial Intelligence 

Innovare adheres to the standards for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) published by the World Association of Medical Editors (https://wame.org/page3.php?id=106) and the Committee for Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author). Artificial intelligence cannot be considered an author of publications; authors will take full responsibility for their writings and must declare if they have used AI-assisted products or technologies in justified cases, such as large language models, chatbots, or image creators. Authors must consider that AI might generate incorrect or incomplete results and must declare that there is no plagiarism in their article or images produced with AI. Additionally, authors are obliged to assign the appropriate credits where applicable. These aspects must be reported in the cover letter of the article, in the sections on methods, ethical aspects, or others where applicable. The Editorial Committee reserves the right to reject articles in which AI is deemed to have been used inappropriately. 

 

Open Access and Reproduction 

Innovare has signed the DORA declaration (https://sfdora.org/signers/). As described in the Intellectual Property section. Innovare is an open-access journal on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 

 

Editorial and Reviewer Ethics 

Editors and reviewers of Innovare will adhere to and enforce the ethical standards of Innovare and its peer review guidelines. Authors must stay in contact with the journal editors and follow instructions during the article evaluation process. Decisions regarding the acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection of articles will be based purely on scientific merit. To ensure this, a double-blind confidential review process will be conducted (neither authors nor reviewers will know each other's identities) using the journal's Open Journal Systems platform. Reviewers must not evaluate articles in which they have conflicts of interest. Reviewers can consult general guidelines at https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers. 

For access to reviewer guidelines and resources, reviewers should refer to the relevant section within Innovare's Open Journal Systems or contact the Editor-in-Chief at innovare@unitec.edu.  

Guidelines were updated on April 28, 2024.