Research Integrity

Publication Ethics

The European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies is committed to upholding the highest standards of quality and integrity in publishing its articles. ERLACS ensures that all research output is thoroughly peer-reviewed by external reviewers. Authorship is defined as per our authorship guidelines, and declarations of competing interests are requested. All special collections must exceed the minimum standards of editorial oversight, as defined in our Special Collection guidelines. The editors will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In no case shall this journal or its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

ERLACS adheres to the best practices in the ethics of scholarly publishing stated in the COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

The Editorial Board of ERLACS undertakes to publish all corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies as soon as possible if and when they are required.

Authors are required to ensure that the submission has not been previously published, that permission has been obtained for the use of copyrighted material and that they do not infringe on the rights of third parties.

 

Authorship Guidelines 

The correct list of authors must be attributed to an article from the start of the submission process. Author lists with incorrect information can result in academic or financial implications, whilst also providing the reader with the wrong information on where the responsibility and accountability for the published work should lie.

All authors listed on a submission must have given prior approval to have their name attributed to the file(s) that are being submitted and agree to the publication. The corresponding author has the responsibility to ensure that all authors qualify for, and have agreed to, authorship of the submission. They are also responsible for informing all co-authors of relevant editorial information during the review process.

Our recommendations are adapted from the ICMJE criteria for authorship and are by COPE guidelines. Authors must have:

  • made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; or the drafting the work, or revising the draft critically for important intellectual content
  • provided final approval of the version to be published
  • agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved
  • agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list as well as the order in which they are listed

Those who meet some but do not meet all of the above criteria should be acknowledged in the publication but not listed as an author. Examples that do not qualify for authorship but should be acknowledged are sources of funding, supervision of research groups, administrative support, language editing and proofreading. Written permission should be obtained from those being acknowledged, as in some cases being named in such a way may be seen as an endorsement of the publication.

 

Authorship and AI tools

ERLACS  agrees with COPE position statement, 13 February 2023, https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in research. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics. As with all content submitted to the journal, the author(s) must ensure that they have permission to use all third-party content included within the submission, including those sourced using AI.

 

Plagiarism 

The journal views plagiarism and the use of other people’s work without proper attribution and permission as a serious offence. All submissions to the journal are checked to assess if any content closely matches content already available elsewhere. If an allegation is made against a submission or publication, the journal will carry out an independent investigation by COPE guidelines and remedial action will be taken as per the journal's Appeals, Complaints & Misconduct policy if deemed appropriate.

 

Correction and Retractions 

If there is suspicion of misbehaviour or alleged fraud, the journal will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after an investigation, there are valid concerns, the authors concerned will be contacted under their given email address and allowed to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the journal’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

  • If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
  • If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:
  1. an erratum/correction may be placed with the article.
  2. an editor’s note or editorial expression of concern may be placed with the article.
  3. or, in severe cases, retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, editor’s note, editorial expression of concern, or retraction notice. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform watermarked “retracted” and the explanation is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

  • The author’s institution may be informed.
  • A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

 

Conflict of interest 

To ensure a reliable and open publication process, all authors, reviewers and editors are required to declare any interests that could appear to compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication.